Peering down the memory lane to a time about five decades ago, a strikingly vivid picture of my last day at Saraswati Shishu Mandir, in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, springs to mind. Before we students left the school premises – the institution at that time taught till class five – each one of us would stand with bowed head before the picture of Ma Saraswati, make a nick on our thumb so a drop of blood flowed, and mark forehead of the Goddess of Knowledge with a tilak of that blood. This was no symbolic event; it was aimed at indelibly instilling Bharatiya sanskar in our tender minds.
First SSM in Gorakhpur
At that time, soon after Independence, there were barely a handful of institutions imparting modern education rooted in Indian ethos. It was eminent social reformer and educationist, Nanaji Deshmukh, who established the first Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Gorakhpur, in 1952, as an institution of holistic learning, where education was integrated with Indian values and moral principles. Nanaji Deshmukh’s goal was to create an educational system which would be the direct answer to Lord Macaulay, who, in 1835, had brought Western education to India through his infamous minute on education. This introduction of the expensive British education, with English as the medium of instruction, effectively shut the doors for many bright young Indian minds.
Indigenous Industries Ruined Macaulay’s words, “We must, at present, do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect,” reflected his narrow-minded colonial contempt for the Indian people. His educational policy was also influenced by decades of evangelical pressures to prove that Indian literature and science were inferior to Western thinking. He went on to say, “A single shelf of good European literature was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
With the deliberate relegation of Indian knowledge to the background by a shockingly prejudiced British Government, even the finest works of Indian scientists, mathematicians and philosophers of the ancient and medieval periods were peremptorily dismissed as utterly mediocre and, therefore, unworthy of inclusion in the curriculum. The new Indian elite that emerged as a result of this new, British- imposed educational system, looked down on their fellow Indians. This created a new class of citizens who considered themselves superior creatures, who served the British interests, and who remained completely alienated from the Indian masses.
Nipping British Education in the Bud
Founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, completely rejected the British educational system. He believed that education should not only impart knowledge, but also aim at building a strong national character, with values rooted in India’s rich culture and history. Dr Hedgewar himself was the product of the Vidyagriha Rashtriya Shala, Yavatmal, a non-colonial school established as an outcome of the Swadeshi Movement and other boycott movements following the Partition of Bengal.
As the vision was spelt out, it was further shaped by Guruji MS Golwalkar, second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS. He stressed the key role that a country’s cultural heritage played in nation-building. He also advocated an educational system that aimed at the “all-round development of the child’s personality”. These views were repeatedly articulated in his many speeches and writings. And so, the seed planted with the setting up of the first Saraswati Shishu Mandir in 1952 has grown, today, in just over seven decades, into a magnificent tree, with over 33 lakh students studying in more than 20,000 schools. With many of these schools providing education up to the senior secondary level, now, under the umbrella of Vidya Bharati, the school education in the country has been revolutionised. Today, Vidya Bharati runs the largest private school network in India, a network that not only covers the entire country, but also represents her cultural and spiritual unity, as embodied in the Sangh’s
postulate of Ekatmata.
Sharing Shivir’s Experience
I remember that when I was studying in Class IV, as a child of nine years, students of our class were taken -under the loving care and supervision of the Acharyas – from Rampur, on a week-long excursion to Lucknow and Ayodhya. That was my first experience of staying in a tented camp (shivir). The thrilling memory of dressing up in impeccably white kurta and churidar pyjama and singing the famous stanzas of Nirala– “Var de Veena Vaadinee Var De…” in a packed-to-capacity auditorium in Lucknow are still vividly etched in my mind.
The Vidya Bharati schools are preparing a generation of Bharatiya citizens infused with the pure passion of patriotism. Following the Sangh’s ethos of acting with a collective spirit and of reaching out to more and more people, Vidya Bharati runs more than a thousand schools in the tribal areas of the North East, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. And it is imparting free education to about twenty thousand tribal students living in urban hostels run by Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra.
The contribution of the alumni of Vidya Bharati schools to India’s cultural renaissance has been emphatic, visible, and enormously positive. As a mantra from the Rig Veda, signifying togetherness, says, “संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं सं वो मनांसि जानताम्। देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे सञ्जानाना उपासते।।,” meaning, “Let us come together, let us speak together, let our minds be of one accord as the gods of old sat together in harmony to worship”, the alumni of Vidya Bharati schools are today a powerful force at the forefront of the country’s journey to becoming Vishwa Guru.
