The Search for a Philosophy of Indian Education

The Search for a Philosophy of
Indian Education

BY Dr. P. NATARAJAN, D’Litt. (Paris), Varkala.

Every living nation has a national system of education based on a philosophy which it has accepted. There is perhaps no domain of national activity so dependent on a clear-cut philosophy as the education of the young. Is the mind of the child a clean slate on which impressions have to be made in future, or is it already full of impressions which determine its future activity and education? Is religion to be taught in schools? Are children to be assumed to be scientific materialists for the future of India? These are some of the questions that have to be answered before anything like planned national effort in educational reconstruction could be thought of. Schools which consider themselves ‘national’ have to come to some sort of understanding in these matters. Then alone could we expect concerted action to develop. At present the energy of national enthusiasts seems to spend itself in the wearing of national dress and the shouting of slogans. At best, it might reach out to the admiration of national heroes or go one step further to accepting in a lukewarm way such items of the national programme as the abolition of untouchability. It is deplorable, however, that no serious or patient and painstaking effort is in evidence which would help us to have a theory of education suited to our national genius.

It is true that there are some who have devoted some attention to this matter. It was Sister Nivedita, under the inspiration of Swami Vivekananda, who attempted early to formulate the aims of national education. Then came that patriot, Lala Lajpat Rai. Since the time of these early writers and thinkers literature on the subject, it is true, has grown, some inspired by spiritual considerations, others by requirements of the State. Educational philosophy, as such, however, has not so far received the attention it ought to have received.

With the younger generation of the vocalized urban public in India Russia has become a word to swear by. Youth is carried away by the imagination of the revolution in that vast country but many of them do not seem to realize the implications of the revolution, and the thorough going materialistic philosophy that has come to be accepted by that nation. This materialism does not stop with politics. It encroaches into the field of the education of the youngest nurslings of the nation. While the rest of the civilized world has accepted the principles of the liberty of the child, with a sheer attitude of vengeance and reaction, it would seem, the Russians wish to apply the opposite Philosophy. The following striking sentence from a resolution passed at a large Conference held to consider the principles underlying pre-school education will reveal this attitude unmistakably. The import of the words become all the more striking when we remember that it refers to children under three years of age. It laid down the object of even pre-school education as “the development of the maximum activity and initiative; the maximum possibility of collective direction of activity; while preserving and developing such elements of individuality will guarantee each child the greatest capacity for living and manifesting its instincts of creative work and research, and the possibility of acting on its own experience, from definite sense observation capable of immediate utilization.”¹ In another place² Mr. A. Pinkevich states as follows in so many unmistakable words: “It need not be stressed hat the pre-school period, as well as the school period, aims at the inculcation of the materialistic international world outlook.” These are plain indications of the philosophy underlying education in Soviet Russia. How many of us here want this attitude in India when its implications are fully understood?

America is perhaps the other country which strikes the imagination of Indian youth. America does not take the extreme utilitarian and materialistic position as Russia but the Pragmatic philosophy which is the accepted basis of American education contains the same principle though in a more diluted form. There are no absolute values in Pragmatism. What ‘works’, or succeeds here and now, is everything, and the True and the Good are to be reduced and boiled down to terms of usefulness if they are to be acceptable to the pragmatist. This philosophy might suit certain stages of the development of the individual personality in the process of education but it cannot satisfy all stages. The child under twelve must definitely be left free to understand things which may not fulfill the strict pragmatic tests. In higher education, again, the pragmatic touchstone in education would mislead us.

The failings of the matter-of-fact and conventional English attitude in Education is what we know so well here in India. It is supported by the philosophy of Spencer and Locke and at the best works on the basis of biological analogies. Purely human values get left out and the scope of education becomes restricted by a biological determination, on which mental testing is a superstructure. The development of a strong individuality is all that it aims at, even when it works at its best. Competition and survival of the fittest are ideas that are tacitly implied, and the higher and truly human aspects of the development of the personality are left out of its scope. Some public schools attempt to develop something vaguely resembling character; but this they succeed in doing through certain traditional factors peculiar to these institution rather than on the basis of any conscious educational theory.

In our search for a suitable educational theory for our country we can go to more remote continental philosophers. Here, again, we cannot find a basis which can be said to be perfectly in keeping with India’s heritage. The idealism of Kant comes very near to what we want and what in keeping with the genius of our country. Kant himself depends on Rousseau, who may be said to be the father of modern educational theory. Close students of Rousseau’s philosophy and his ideas as developed in the Emile See revealed for the first time some simple concepts which would throw at least a faint light on our own basic concepts like Brahmacharya, Gurubhakti etc.

It is not, therefore, to Russia, America or England that we have turn to see common aspects between the soul of India and what is most genuine and true in the thought of modern humanity. Hidden away from the glamour of modernism there is a thin line of thought which brings to our own national experience; and this is to be sought in the line of thought that unites Rousseau through Kant and Froebel, through Pestalozzi and Fichte to modern idealists like Giovanni Gentile.

Every patriotic Indian talks of education along national lines refers to the ancient forest schools of our country. There are a few catch words like Gurukula Vasa on which he keeps harping; but the great task of formulating educational theory still remains to be accomplished. We are still in the stage of slogans in this matter. Tacitly we look at each and seem to think that we understand what we want but when it comes to a formulation of accepted notions we get lost in banalities and contradictions. Indian educational practice, even in national institutions, is at that precarious stage in which we intend to do one thing but are actually compelled to do quite another.

Dr. Zia-uddin Ahmad has put his finger on a difficulty peculiar to this country when he says: “No sound system of education can be devised till we answer the question, ‘Who is responsible for our education? The State or the people?’ “The joint responsibility of the State and the people means,” he goes on to say, “dyarchy in education, which is bound to be even more disastrous than dyarchy in Political administration, for its evil effects do not become visible to the people till it is too late to find a remedy.”³ Popular sentiment grows in one direction till it attains a point in which action is likely to follow and then opposite forces push it , till another wave brings it again forward so that between advancing and receding impulses the matter of national education remains without proper formulation.

What is it that can save us from the disastrous effects of dyarchy in education? It is evidently a love of investigation for its own sake. Investigation has to be undertaken free from any kind of religious or political bias, in what is called an ‘objective’ spirit. There must be an institution which will devote itself to the organization and codification of existing knowledge and which will be neutral in politics and unprejudiced in matters religious. Vague spiritual values, which might easily degenerate into a sort of sentimentalism, must be carefully avoided in the study of educational problems of our country. Too easy generalizations, convictions based on metaphors and analogies, acceptance of particular schools of orthodox thought which conduce to so much vagueness in educational literature, taking the end however noble to justify the means, all these have to be vigilantly fought against.

When the foundations of a national institute which would undertake study educational problems impartially have been laid, we shall begin witness the rare phenomenon of the growth of education thought from stage to stage. Concepts will be piled on concepts. The publications and discussions will make it clear that we have been traversing definite ground. The ground once conquered will then be annexed and made part of the stock of knowledge that is accepted. Consensus of opinion then grows beyond that stage and as a result of decades at least of persistent effort, we shall have worthy basic concepts which shall furnish the administrators and statesmen with definitions and programmes which will help them in the task of expending large sums of money at their disposal in a more intelligent and consistent way than hitherto.

Educationists should not blame administrators for not spending the large amounts that governments budget year after year more intelligently according to them. The task of making this possible is mainly that of Educationists themselves, and so long as educationists themselves fail and shirk their responsibility the difficulty is bound to remain. Enthusiastic young men in India are ready to put the blame on our lack of political independence in this country. It is patriotic to feel keenly for independence but it should not be an excuse for educationists to shirk their responsibilities in formulating what they want in clear-cut terms.

Aimlessness in education is defect which is found even in countries which enjoy full political freedom. This is due to lack of a philosophical -ground. England itself can be cited as an example. Professor J. Welton, an Eminent English authority on education, himself states: “There is no longer a universally recognized circle of knowledge constituting a liberal education preparatory to specialist studies, as there was in the middle ages. Nor is there general agreement….as to the end that should be sought by education as a whole.” Mr. Maxwell Garnett, another author, states the same fact more pointedly when he makes the statement: “The most easily observed characteristic of English education at the present time is perhaps its aimlessness.” ⁴

That India enjoys good company in this matter should not blind us to the necessity of making a real beginning in the direction of formulating our own ideas in respect of education. Dyarchy in the thought world can exist even when we have political independence. There is no excuse, therefore, for delay in the initiation of this very important item in our plans for reconstruction, and if some plead absence of independence for delay, they have to be considered as those who shrike their responsibilities.

One difference between England and India in this matter is that India has the advantage of a rich heritage of fundamental educational ideas which are sound. The first task would be to restate these concepts in modern form and bring them in line with the best trends of education thought available to us now. Much that is tacitly implicit has to be made explicit. Ideas that have been expressed in the form of aphorisms have to be elaborated. Terms have to be correlated and made into more standardised expressions so that educational parlance would rid itself of the bane of allegory, allusion and figure of speech and develop a set of terms which, though not scientific in the strictest sense, may lend themselves to be used as such.

Precious indications of the right Philosophy of Indian education are to be found scattered in the ancient writings. Valuable indications about the object and aims of education are found in the Minamsa Sastras and in the Bhagavad Gita. The opening passages of the Taittriya Upanishad, the Dharma Sastras and the Puranas and books like the Gnanavasishta contain, when studied and elaborated, a theory of education that will be found to be sound in the best modern sense. This is a proud claim that we have been making for many decades now but one which we have not seriously tried to substantiate to the present day. It is true that occasional articles appear in some of the Indian magazines from time to time.⁵ If one looks between the lines in such literature, one invariably finds that we are still on the defensive merely. With the impact of Western civilization our own standards became questioned by ourselves and we are still answering half-wakefully the question, “Is India civilized?” forgetting that we have been answering this long enough and that it is now high time that we moved on to the next item on the programme.

A retrospective survey of educational thought in India from the earliest times has to be undertaken first. A national philosophy of education will emerge out of the past when we re-state it in objective terms and relate it to the future of the nation. Prospective considerations have to be given as much importance in the matter as retrospective ones. More and more groups should discuss such questions so that a proper philosophy of national education may emerge out of the systematic thinking of the nation

¹ P.45 Science and Education in the U.S.S.R. A. Pinkevich.
² Opt.Cit, page 51.
³ Cl.P.5, System  of Education Longmans, 1929
⁴ Cf.P.19, Education and world citizenship by J. C. M. Garnett; Cambridge University Press.
⁵ Cl. The Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society for April 1943 contains a learned article on ‘Education in the Veda Age’ by Dr. Kunhan Raja. Such articles have appeared many times in different forms but we have not traveled appreciably beyond taking an apologetic attitude in defending ancient education.