The Department of Science and Technology almost feels compelled to observe the National Science Day. It does not appear to be an inspired act. My senior colleague, Dr Yogesh appears to be their man Friday for all such initiatives. As a person with great energy and enthusiasm, he apparently derives satisfaction in leading such programmes. I doubt if he is paid any remuneration at all. I encourage such involvement and consider that as a contribution of the college in building up an enlightened (prabuddh) society. Feb. 28th, the day, the schools were busy with board exams, apparently. Now it was March, and the financial year was ending. So, something has to be done.
So, Hindu Kanya Public College in the town has been made the host. A few other inter-colleges/schools are taking part. And there are some addresses to the collected school children of 1X to XII grades, less than 100 in all, and most of them are girls. I, too, am invited, though I have serious self-doubt regarding my efficacy, especially in speaking fluently in good Hindi and communicating something worthwhile to the students.
Simultaneously, speech competition and poster competition are going on at the venue. At least one girl spoke very well about the achievements of science.
I asked about the foundation on which our country should function - some students responded 'people', and some others, 'education' - indeed correct. However, as a political economy, it is functioning or meant to function on the basis of its constitution (samvidhaan). A key aspect that we, the people of India, conveniently forget is that. As we move further into the 21st century, it appears that we tend to make religious texts, especially Hindu religious texts (apaurusheya), have greater authority over this text, which is indeed paursheya!
That appears to be increasingly a fact in the India of this region. It is quite common for a government or academic public function to start with the chanting of Vedic mantras. Here itself, on the stage, was a place of honour for the deity Saraswati, with a framed picture prominently placed on the stage, with a lighted lamp and agarbatti around the picture. There is nothing surprising in this. And apparently, all are comfortable with all these!
In such matters, 'Kerala Story' is much more secular, though very many of such stages would be set at a venue owned and platform created by organisations run by religious groups - Christian, Muslim and Hindu. Hardly on any such occasion would you find such prayers or religious veneration, except perhaps at the institutions run by a few religiously oriented organisations (not necessarily fundamentalist) in all three predominant faith groups of the state.
I cited the fundamental duties, which our college handbook provides on its outer pages for easy reference. Of those duties of Art 51 A.(h) reads: to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. There is a constitutional mandate to cultivate a scientific temper and spirit of inquiry. India is said to be a spiritually oriented country and culture. I choose to differ - it is a religious country, and very often the religiosity of the Indians appears to be very materialistic and egocentric - while both these are manifestations of a 'spirit', they don't qualify to be included under what is understood to be 'spiritual'. A spirit of faith need not negate a spirit of inquiry, as the domain of faith still remains beyond those realms explainable by the spirit of inquiry. This horizon could be extended by the effects of inquiry; however, it is less likely that the human mind may get beyond that.
I presented the importance of the six faithful servants of Rudyard Kipling to be deployed adequately to foster this spirit:
I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why, When, And How and Where and Who.
With the thrust given to Revised Bloom's Taxonomy in the second decade of this century, the order of the deployment of these faithful servants is perhaps changed. For the initial phase of learning, those deployed are typically What-Who-When and Where, which woudl correspond generally to what is nowadays referred to as LOTS - Lower Order Thinking Skills - which goes around remembering-recalling, understanding and application; whereas we go to the HOTS - Higher Order Thinking Skills - when we deploy 'How's and Whys' - That is about 'Analysing and Evaluating' the stuff presented. However, what is generally referred to as the top level is 'Creation' and creation demands skills of synergizing or integrating all these aspects in required proportion, and well as 'daring and risk-taking' to ask, beyond the typical sets of questions, 'Why Not', as would the protagonist of the play 'Back to Methuselah' by G.B. Shaw would say: 'You look at things as they are and ask 'Why', I dream of things that never were, and ask 'why not'. That combination of insight into the problems, imagination of a solution, integration of learnings, and daring to think beyond leads one to be an entrepreneur, someone who translates a dream into a useful product - a service, a good, a method - that would render the world a better place for all!
So, science day is an invitation to pose questions - and not to suppress questions and questioning, as would be demonstrated by the school teacher of the Malayalam movie '101 questions' (101 chodyangal).
May the spirit science grow and a culture of questioning flourish!
Jai Hind!
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