All
round development in man is the end of education. Without spiritual
development a man can not be a complete
human being. Spiritualism is a great
exposure of the awakening of human consciousness to drive a man to know himself
and to have a complete control over
himself. Spiritualism in man bring
self-purification and self-discipline. Spiritualism evolves out of a purified
and serene state of mind that makes a
harmonious balance between inherent needs and diverse attractions. When a man
exceeds himself and thinks beyond
himself, he can conquer the little self and ascend to know the higher self – the supreme
self which is in terms of spiritualism
stands for the real atman. The
practice of non-violence is based on the sound inner practice of
self-purification. ‘ ….the use of the
matchless weapon of Satyagraha which
is a direct corollary of non-violence and truth. …..It is a solvent strong
enough to melt the stoniest heart.’1 The essence of spiritualism in Gandhian
education enlighten the inner self and crushes the essentials moral restraint. ‘ The ascent of the inner spirit
for which Gandhi continually aspires is what serves as the essence of Gandhian
spiritualism. Here is a continual aspirant for enlightenment of the inner
self,-the sacred and serene self-who pays earnest endeavour to move all the
world with his theory and practice or non-violence to be aware of utilizing and
ennobling the qualities of the head and the heart that stand for spiritualism
par excellence.’2
Gandhian spiritualism
allows priority of the heart to
the head , the inner beauty of religion
to mere observance of rites and
rituals. According to Gandhi Brahmacharya
is an opener of the doors and avenues of
spiritualization. A proper
synchronization of body , mind, thought ,word and deed is needed
through spiritual ascent and excellence. He clarifies his view points:
“ I was anxious to observe brhamacharya in thought, word and deed,
and equally anxious to devote the maximum of time to the Satyagraha struggle
and fit myself for it by cultivating purity. I was therefore led to make
further changes and to impose greater restraints upon myself in the matter of
food. The motive for the previous changes had been largely hygienic, but the
new experiments were made from a religious standpoint.”3
The
purity of thought and action is essential for self restraint. Fasting in relation to self- restraint is on
Gandhi’s views:
“
Fasting can help to curb animal passion, only if it is undertaken with a view to self –restraint. Some of my
friends have actually found their animal passion and palate stimulated as an
after effect of fasts. That is to say , fasting is futile unless it is as accompanied
by an incessant longing for self-restraint.”4 It is the teacher who has a very
significant role for the spiritual development of students being a living
example of man of character. Gandhi makes a very clear analysis:
“The
spiritual training of the boys is a much more difficult matter than their
physical and mental training. I relied little on religious books for the
training of the spirit. Of course I believed that every student should be
acquainted with the elements of his own religion and have a general knowledge
of his own scriptures, and therefore, I provided for such knowledge as best as
I could. But that, to my mind, was part of the intellectual training. Long
before I undertook the education of the youngsters of the Tolstoy Farm I had
realized that the training of the spirit was a thing by itself.”
“To
develop the spirit is to build character and to enable one to work towards a
knowledge of God and self-realization. And I held that this was an
essential part of the training of the
young, and that all training without culture of the spirit was of no use, and
might be even harmful.”5 According to Gandhi spiritual education aims at
revelation of Truth and ensures boldness and awareness to a certain sense of
spiritual insight. Spiritual development occurs when pupils themselves are
encouraged through their inner sense disseminate between the right and wrong,
the good and evil, the moral and the immoral, truth and untruth, they will be
able to form within themselves the rightest attitude towards spiritualism.
Gandhi believes, “pupils should know to discriminate between what should be
received and what rejected. It is the duty of teacher to to teach pupils
discrimination. The rishis taught their pupils without books. They only gave
them a few mantras which the pupils treasured in their memories and translated
in practical life.”6
Gandhi
earnestly feels that the present day student has to live in the midst of heap
of books, sufficiently fails to receive the education of the heart and crude
facts of life. Education of the heart is
the education of self realization reveals the ultimate truth, beauty and
goodness and harmonizes body, mind and spirit. Such education enables the child
to have a control over passions and emotions but the modern mind has been
maimed and crippled at the hands of automation and passivity. To him spiritual development of
the child necessitates proper manifestation.
His
views on spiritual development are as follows:
“True
education of the children can only come through a proper exercise and training
of the bodily organs, e.g. hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, etc. In other words,
an intelligent use of the bodily organs in a child provides the best and
quickest way of development of his intellect. But unless the development of mind
and the body goes hand in hand with a corresponding awakening of the soul, the
former alone would prove to be a poor lopsided affair. By spiritual training I
mean education of the heart.”7 The History of human civilization admits that it
is Gandhi and Gandhi alone who has ennobled manual work as the highest
spiritual endeavor in education. He made a balance between intellect and
spirit- the culture of the brain and the culture of hands and feet. It was a
revolutionary approach to education that formulated the concept of Basic
education. Gandhi expressed his views:
“
He (Gandhi) had great regard for what
could be achieved with men’s hands and feet. Indeed he used to say ,’ there is
no point in developing the brain only. One has to develop one’s brain through
one’s hands’. If I were a poet, I would write a beautiful poem on the
possibilities of the five fingers of one’s hand. Today one tends to say that a
person is cultured if he does not use his hands. It is necessary to correct the
concept of culture and spirituality and recognize and embellish the moral and
spiritual equalities of the different occupations of working classes. And that
was for Gandhi completely right. 8.
Gandhi
gave emphasis on soul development
through the education of heart and politenessto enable learners to
follow nobler and higher values of life. He advocates for stimulating purity, simplicity , politeness and
dissemination of clear concept of right and wrong, good and evil. Spiritual education will not divert humane
sensibilities towards evil directions. He rightly remarks:
“ we
can not properly control or conquer the sexual passion by turning a blind eye
to it . I am, therefore, strongly in favour of teaching young boys and girls
the significance and right use of their generative organs and in my own way I
have tried to impact this knowledge to young children of both sexes, for whose
training I was sensible. But the sex education that I stand for must have for
its object the conquest and sublimation of the sex passion……it is man’s special
privilege and pride to be gifted with the faculties of head and heart both,
that he is thinking no less than a feeling animal, and to renounce the
sovereignty of reason over the blind instinct is, therefore, to renounce a
man’s estate.9
Gandhi
believes that students should be taught how to lead a desirable, moral and
spiritual life. The most important task of imparting moral and spiritual
education is to be taken up and performed to eliminate ‘sex complex’ right from
the educational Institutions. The soul force in the learners will direct
spiritual awakening to control greed, lust, corruption and sensualism.
“The
conquest of Lust is the highest endeavour of a man’s or a woman’s existence.
And without overcoming lust , man cannot hope to rule over self, there can be
no Swaraj or Ram Raj. Rule of all
without the rule of oneself would prove to be as deceptive and as disappointing
as painted toy mango, charming to look at, but hollow and empty within. Soul
–force comes only through God’s grace and never descends upon a man who is a
slave to lust”.10
Gandhi
an ardent follower of spiritualism sincerely hopes of controlling animal
passion through spiritual excellence. Self –realization can restrain animal
passions and safeguard moral laws and principles. In this connection he opines:
“ It s
wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s act. It is still
worse for a person to indulge in his animal passions and escape the
consequences of his acts. Moral result can only be produced by moral restraints.
11
Basic Education throws light on the spiritual
education for character building and humanizing
lesson. The foundation of right
thinking, right feeling, right doing can be developed through the inculcation
of spiritual lesson of education for character building. Absolute purity of
heart comes through the observance of truth and brahmacharya.
Education
is the manifestation of purity and
perfection. Gandhi moulds education for inner awakening. The learner has to
draw out his inherent spiritual force latent in him to pave the avenues of
self-understanding and self-assessment. But modern education is alarmingly camouflaged due to
lack of spiritual education.
Gandhi highlights manual training in primary
education at wardha conference on 22nd October In 1937 and says, “ I
am convinced that the present system of primary education is not only wasteful,
but is positively harmful….I think the remedy lies in educating them by means
vocational and manual training. I have some experience of myself, having
trained my sons and other children on
Tolstoy Farm in South Africa through some manual training,..”12
The
wholeness of education could be achieved through an insight into manual labour
–‘a practical religion’ of self-help is the inner worth of spiritualism. Gandhi shows us a distinct pattern of
spiritualism through manual work. He remarks,
“I have
been accused of being opposed to literary training. Far from it, I simply want
to show the way in which it should be given.
Takli is a good enough toy to play with. It is no less a toy because it is
a productive one. Whilst the child will be encouraged to spin and help his
parents with agricultural jobs, he will also be made to feel that he does not
belong only to his parents but also to the village and to the country, and that he must make some
return to them. They would make them
self –confident and brave by their playing for their own education by their own
labour. This system is to be common to all Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and
Christians. Why do I not lay any stress on religious education, people ask.
Because I am teaching them practical religion, the religion of self-help.”13
Gandhi
strongly intends to bring about a radical change in the concept of education.
He wants education to be shaped for emancipation of inherent spirit of an
individual through ‘learning by doing’. He emphasizes to reshape education for
right thinking, right feeling and right doing to eliminate passion and enrich
detachment. According to him “the present system of education does not meet the
requirements of the country in any shape or form. English, having been made the
medium of instruction in all the higher branches of learning, has created a permanent bar between the highly
educated few and the uneducated many. The absence of vocational training has
made the educated class almost unfit for productive work and has harmed them
physically.14
Gandhi
advocates education for self-purification through a spiritual manner to bring a
real social revolution. He desired to
create a favorable atmosphere of purity and self-restraint for the harmonious
development of pupil.
He
remarks, “When Gandhi speaks for truth or non-violence it also encapsulates
this spiritual ascent of man. Let every child grow up in an atmosphere of
purity and self-consciousness, self-restraint and fearlessness. No other
education can replace this objective because no other education can embrace
ardour and adoration , labour and devotion for spiritual erudition that
heightens the inherent and true spirit of religion”15
Spiritual
development enables man to differentiate between good and evil. It is the
awareness that evil can not lead goodness rather it is goodness that gradually
eliminates evil. His spiritual education gave emphasis on the sound foundation
or means to reach the end. He remarks:
“If I
want to cross the ocean, I can do only by means of a vessel; if I were to use a
cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would soon find the bottom. The
means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same
invisible connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed
and the tree. I can not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of
god by laying myself prostrate before satan. If, therefore, anyone to say: ‘I
want to worship God; it does not matter if I do so by means of Satan’, it would
be set down as ignorant folly. We reap exactly as we sow.”16
Holding
goodness under every circumstances is desirable through the continual and
strenuous process of self-purification. According to Gandhi, ‘The spiritual
weapon of self-purification, intangible as it seems, is the most potent means of revolutionizing one’s
environment and loosening external shackles . I works subtly and invisibly, it
is an intense process through it might often seem a weary and long drawn
process; it is the straight way to liberation, the surest and quickest and no
effort can be too great for it. What it requires is faith-an unshackable
mountain like faith that flinches from nothing’
Gandhi
believes that the education of socialism is the education of spiritualism that
teaches the lesson of unity in diversity and purity of thought and action. A
socialistic society provide for an environment of truth and non-violence
through which the crude desire and ill wills can be eliminated. So elimination
of impurity of mind and body is the main task of education. Society is the
great source of spiritual development. Social ills keep the inner sensibilities
inert and inactive and everyone has to fight against these ills and keen to
transform himself from petty interests towards societal national and global
development.
“Gandhi’s
entire approach was thus societal in content. Although Gandhi reposed great
faith in God and believed in the values of spirituality and ethics, his
spirituality, his God and his ethics were all products of the social
reality. ‘Truth is God’ said Gandhi in
later years and indicated that he had found his God in the habitats of the
poor, the daridranarayana. Gandhi’s
position became further clear when he said,in his independence day message to
the country on 15th August ,1947, that ‘ God comes to the poor in
the shape of bread’. Gandhi’s main concern was, therefore, with truth-the
supreme fact of life, one that has accounted for the total global reality of
his times.”
Gandhi
redirects religion towards the best
possible manifestation of spiritualism-the course of love to mankind and a
synchronized manner of simplicity and tolerance. It will teach the lesson of
endearment and glorify the spiritual ascent of man. Tolerance contributes to
the manifestation of religion as a great transcendental force which modifies
the limitations of religious beliefs and faith. Tolerance is an invaluable
component for spiritual insight that can be achieved through the indigenous
pattern of education. The religion that places man as the endless worshiper of
Truth, Beauty and Goodness is the true religion of love for mankind.
The
spiritual education of Gandhi opens the new following parameters:
Spiritual
education is the only education for the advancement of man as a good human
being for the sake of good of all human beings. Education is a unique, unending
and complex process of self-realization
Education through work harmonizes the matter with spirit and creates intrinsic
motivation in students mind
The ultimate goal of education is the
development of soul force. Spiritual education accelerates this inner
development and to achieve this goal
education should be directed towards this end. Gandhian education quickens the
transcendence of humanity and human values Gandhi moulds education to promote
Truth , Beautiful, and Goodness and to safeguard human values like conscience,
love and tolerance. Education with spiritual touch dispels the mists of
ignorance and frees human mind from stress, anxiety, delusions ,
disappointment, despair and depression.
Reference:
1.
R.K. Pradhan and U.R. Rao (compiled) The mind of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford
University Press, London, 1945, p.44
2.
Chakraborty, Mohit. Gandhian Spiritualism. Concept
Publishing Company, New Delhi-110059, p.13.
3.
M. K. Gandhi: An Autobiography, op. cit., p.991
4.
Ibid., p. 406
5.
M. K. Gandhi: Harijan, May 8, 1937.
6.
Anibal del Campo: ‘Application of Truth and
non-violence in Gandhiji’s teaching and work’, Quoted from Truth and Nonviolence:
A Unesco Symposium on Gandhi, Ed. By T.K. Mahadevan, Gandhi Peace Foundation,
New Delhi 1970,pp. 198-199
7.
D.G. Tandulkar: Mahatma, Publications Divisions,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, vol.iv, p. 62.
8.
Ibid.,
pp.62-63
9.
R.K. Prabhu & U. R. Rao (compiled): The mind
of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford University Press, 1945. P. 108.
10. D.G. Tandulkar: op. cit., p.191.
11. Ibid.,
pp. 192-193.
12. D.G. Tandulkar: op. cit., p.197-98.
13. Mohit Chakraborty: Gandhian Spiritualism, Concept
Publishing Company, New Delhi-110059, p. 44.
14. M.K. Gandhi: Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule,
op.cit., pp. 51-52.
15. M.K.
Gandhi: Young India, April 30. 1925.
16. Sugata Das Gupta: Truth and Nonviolence,
Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, 1970, pp. 340-341.
Good information
ReplyDelete