On this day we honour our teachers ( gurus ).
But most teachers in Indian schools, colleges and universities today are arrogant, puffed up phonies and mountebanks, with sterile bookish half baked knowledge, and are not real gurus. They treat their job only as a means to earn money to feed themselves and their families, and have no genuine love for acquiring or dispensing true knowledge.
I had many teachers in school ( the Boys High School, Allahabad ), college ( the Govt Inter College, Allahabad ) and university ( the Allahabad University ). Some of them were good, but the majority were mediocre.
It was after I completed my formal education that I met persons whom I regard my true gurus, and who were intellectually superior to me ( they are all dead now ). I would meet such persons in the Coffee House in Civil Lines, Allahabad and other places, and by cool, patient reasoning, they removed many wrong ideas I had, and clarified many doubts in my mind.
A real guru to my mind was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar ( 1820-1891 )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishwar_Chandra_Vidyasagar
Born in an orthodox Brahmin family in Bengal, and steeped in traditional Sanskrit learning, one would have expected him to have become an arch-conservative and die-hard reactionary. Instead, however, he broke out of his orthodox upbringing and background, and for his times became a revolutionary.
Though outwardly he appeared to be a devout Brahmin who wore a dhoti at knee height, had a traditional tuft of hair, and was well versed in Hindu scriptures and Sanskrit, he fought all his life for the scientific and rational approach and modern education.
While Principal of Sanskrit College, Calcutta, he opposed Prof. Ballantyne, Principal of Sanskrit College, Benares who wanted only Sanskrit to be taught along with Vedanta and Sankhya, and insisted that English (a language he learned on his own without any formal education in it ) should be taught. He realized that English was a window to modern scientific knowledge, without which India could not progress. He called Vedanta and Sankhya false philosophies, though himself an authority in these spiritual schools, and instead advocated the study of Western science, Western philosophies such as those of David Hume and John Stewart Mill, logic and history.
He championed the cause of education, opening school after school in Bengal, and in particular, he advocated women’s education, which at that time was against the traditional notion that women were not suited for education.
He forcefully propagated the idea of widow remarriage, which was then a revolutionary idea, something which even Raja Ram Mohan Roy had not done. At that time many young girls became widows, as medical science was not advanced, and epidemics which killed thousands were commonplace. These young widows were often treated very shabbily, and remarriage was then unthinkable. In his second tract on widow remarriage (1855 ) he impassionately wrote: “Indian menfolk, you are quite willing to burn your dearest daughters in the hellfire of widowhood, but you are not prepared to support widow remarriage and thus emancipate your daughters from living hell. In this country, menfolk are devoid of kindness, justice, sense of good and evil, and only want to cling to blind prejudices. Let women be never again born in such an accursed land.”
In a remarkable letter dated September 7, 1853, to the Secretary, Council of Education, Government of India, Vidyasagar wrote: “It appears to me to be a hopeless task to conciliate the learned folk of India to the acceptance of the advancing sciences of Europe. They are a body of men whose longstanding prejudices are unshakeable. Any idea when brought to their notice, either in the form of a new truth or in the form of expansion of known truths, they will not accept. It is but natural that they will obstinately adhere to their old prejudices. They believe that their Shastras have all emanated from omniscient Rishis, and therefore they cannot but be infallible.”
Vidyasagar was a polymath and is known as the father of modern Bengali alphabets and Bengali prose.
Many gurus were never formal teachers in any educational institution.
One such was the great French revolutionary leader Robespierre ( 1758-1794 ) during the great French Revolution of 1789. When the majority of leaders in the French National Assembly, who were called Girondins ( like Brissot, Vergniaud and Gaudet ), urged a declaration of war on Austria in 1792, Robespierre, almost all alone patiently said in the Jacobin Club that such a declaration would be disastrous for France. He explained that if the Austrian army won, it would enter Paris and slaughter the people there, inluding all the French leaders, but if the French army was victorious, its commander would return and become a dictator in France, and trample on the hard won liberties and rights of the French people.
This capacity of deep thinking, and the refusal to accept something just because others believe in it, is the true mark of a genuine guru.
A similar example is of the great Russian leader Lenin ( 1870-1924 ) who in his well known ‘April Theses’ disagreed with most of his party members who were in favour of supporting the Provisional Government formed in Russia after the overthrow of the Czar in February 1917. Lenin patiently explained that the Provisional Government had close ties with the British and French Governments, which wanted the war against Germany to continue on 2 fronts, and so under the Provisional Government Russia’s war against Germany would continue, and the Russian people would not have peace, despite millions of Russian soldiers being killed.
Many other such examples of genuine gurus can be given. It is to them that we should pay homage on Guru Purnima, not to the phonies who strut around on the stage like peacocks, displaying their shallow, half baked knowledge to the gullible people
Guru Purnima
