Few centuries ago, India was called ‘Vishwaguru’ The expression Vishwaguru is a Sanskrit phrase which translates as global teacher, the Guru of World. Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses the phrase in all his speeches globally during his visits to foreign countries such as Germany, Denmark and France, Italy, UK, Japan etc. The Prime Minister expects positive effects in terms of advancing ‘Make in India’ initiatives, free trade agreement discussions, and making India’s positioning in world stronger.

So why does Narendra Modi keep calling India Vishwa Guru? Education in the Indian subcontinent began with teaching of traditional elements such as Indian religions, Indian mathematics, Indian logic at early Hindu and Buddhist centres of learning such as ancient Takshashila (in modern-day Pakistan) and Nalanda (Bihar, India) where those days 10,000-15,000 students studied and most came from other countries.

Travellers from various regions having different climates and cultures began to visit parts of India from early times. To them, India was a land of wonder! The fame of Indian culture, wealth, religions, philosophies, art, architecture, as well as its educational practices had spread far and wide. The education system of ancient times was regarded as a source for the knowledge, traditions and practices that guided and encouraged humanity.

From the time of Rigveda, our ancient education system evolved over the period and focused on the holistic development of the individual by taking care of both the inner and the outer self. The ancient system of education was the education of the Vedas, Brahmanas, Upanishads and Dharmasutras. Some of the great scholars such as Aryabhata and Baudhayan (mathematicians) Panini (philosopher and grammarian) Katyayana (mathematician and grammarian) Patanjali (Yoga), Charaka and Sushruta (medicine and surgery) and many more scholars had made ancient India in true sense Vishwa Guru. 

To add to it, ancient South Indian temples to the finest Mughal ruins, Indian architecture is as old as civilization itself. The earliest traces of recognizable building activity in India can be traced back to the settlements of the Indus Valley. India is home to a myriad of temples, ornamental, and modernistic structures that tell the stories of their era. UNESCO lists 830 World Heritage Sites consists of 40 Indian heritage sites.

Becoming a Vishwaguru again is a sentiment of the present Government’s ambition and there is nothing wrong about it. To rub it off or to believe that India is incapable of pursuing this aspiration is an injustice to our past, present and future too. From our traditional occupation of agricultural to advancements in nuclear and space technology, from ensuring affordable healthcare to setting up world-class educational institutions, from ayurveda to biotechnology, from giant steel plants to becoming an IT power and having the third-biggest start-up ecosystem in the world, what we have achieved in our post-Independence journey is highly creditable.

Our ancient civilisational culture has provided us with a strong philosophical foundation that has several unique features. Our strong spiritual foundation cannot be unwiped. Back in the 17th century, India, a key player in the world economy, was a leading exporter of spices, sugar, textiles, handicrafts, and much more. It was also one of the first countries to adopt a money-based trade.

Education is the most powerful tool to change mindset from an older setting to new one. It has the power to change the way people think and execute. Progressive nations in the world invest in education of teachers and youth to empower a new generation of leaders. Nelson Mandela said that ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ Education is not all about studying to get good marks. It is a medium to discover new things. It helps us understand new concepts; new skills, new meaning, and new vocabulary thus increase our awareness. An educated person has the ability to differentiate between right and wrong. It is the most primary responsibility of a society to educate its citizens.

Our county’s education system needs to be remodelled as per the necessities and ambitions of today’s world, instead of taking it back to the old ages. However, in India the education system has evolved in a completely different manner. Our education emphasizes on rote learning. We don’t train young minds to focus on critical thinking, expressing new ideas and debating and writing critically on any issue. We don’t emphasize on entrepreneurship, instead we motivate students to become clerks with basic understanding of the language and mathematics, to support their administrative system. Today our education system has tuned into only cramming degrees.

We lag behind in the research domain. Our universities and colleges lack a multi-disciplinary approach to stimulate inquiring skills among students. Our education system has failed to develop industry linkages with academia to promote research, it limits the faculty and students to work in this area.

We give too much importance to marks; instead of focusing the evaluation on a three-hour exam, the focus of evaluation should be classroom participation by a student, live projects conducted by them, communication skills and leadership skills and extra-curricular activities. Teachers play the most important role in schools and colleges. They should be given the best of class training. After all, they are shaping the future of the nation, the children.

I conclude my article by saying education is most important for mental, physical and spiritual democracy. India must regain its intellectual leadership and once again emerge as a global hub of learning and innovation. It is possible and it is the destiny of India. And, to do this, we need strong will of the Government, Universities and Industry. Alongside the change in curriculum, businesses have an increasingly key role to play in providing extracurricular support for education. The initial role of universities is to provide education to individuals and basic research. It’s like a Linear Model of Innovations; universities are supposed to provide the research on which industry builds commercial goods. The other interactions take place through the involvement of industry managers and university faculty in both sectors. A university flourishes because of research, and industry grows on research in universities.

We need universities with a core mission of producing the educated population that’s needed to build, run and work for flourishing an economy. Today in India how many universities have been able to connect their activities to society and the nation’s economy? Hope the present Government takes keen interest in regaining the ‘Vishwaguru’ title back for the nation.

Can you imagine a society in which arts and humanities do not exist; can you imagine your world without music, art or literature? If religion and philosophy would be absent, the study of history would be nullified, and intellectual debate would never happen. How dry our world would be without passion of humanities. We all give maximum importance to science, math, and technology and consider the arts as a lesser branch of study; we naively discount the value of the humanities and attempt to minimize their importance in education. But, the fact is they are so significant in our daily life.

The humanities are one of the academics disciplines  that study human culture, using techniques that are of significance; these techniques are mostly exploratory. Humanities have a significant historical element as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences. The humanities branch includes ancient civilization, literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, law, linguistics, religion, visual and performing arts such as music and theatre. The humanities are also referred as social sciences.  Scholars in the humanities are described as humanists; this term also describes the philosophical position of humanism.

Humanities education gives insights into how their society is different

Humanities education gives students insights into how their society is different. The world consists of several religions, cultures and races. Educators also list several other benefits to the study of the humanities. Since the humanities involve the gaining of large amounts of information about the world and humanity, it requires that students develop critical thinking skills in order to process and analyze the information. This is a skill that translates into other realms of a student’s life, and it can provide benefits to other areas of study.

Research into the human experience adds to our knowledge about our world. Through the work of humanities scholars, we learn about the values of different cultures, about what goes into making a work of art, about how history is made. Their efforts preserve the great accomplishments of the past; help us understand the world we live in, and give us tools to imagine the future. This has given birth to Futures Studies which is also called futurology and futurism. It is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them.

Today, humanistic knowledge continues to provide the ideal foundation for exploring and understanding the human experience. Investigating a branch of philosophy might get us thinking about ethical questions. Learning another language helps us gain an appreciation for the similarities in different cultures. Contemplating a sculpture makes us think about how an artist’s life affected his/her creative decisions. Reading a book from another region of the world helps us think about the meaning of democracy and its importance for our survival. Listening to a history course helps us understand the past, while at the same time it offers us a clearer picture of the future.

A report commissioned by Oxford University’s Humanities Division found that numbers of Oxford graduates of English, History, Philosophy, Classics and Modern Languages are employed in key economic growth sectors of finance, media, legal services and management. This number rose substantially between 1960 and 1989. By the end of the period, 16-20% was employed in these sectors. It is believed to be the first report of its kind as it evaluates the contribution of the study of the humanities to boost the economy by looking at career paths and mid- and end-career destinations of graduates, rather than the three years immediately after graduation as used by the government’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

The research has involved using the University of Oxford alumni database to examine the employment history of 11,000 Oxford humanities graduates who matriculated between 1960 and 1989 to give full career paths to track, and has also involved focused in-depth interviews with 50 alumni, thereby engaging quantitative and qualitative measures of humanities graduates’ impact on the British economy and society. The head of humanities at the University of Oxford says that it is widely recognized that the humanities have intrinsic value as well as utility in the well-being of the world and it has a great impact and value in any economic crisis.

Mark Edmundson – a renowned Professor of English at University of Virginia says that serious thinkers opt for Humanities to broaden their minds and learn to how to live the rest of their lives. A serious thinker himself, Edmundson has felt firsthand the pressure on colleges to churn out a productive, high-caliber workforce for the future. Through his articles and paper presentations he reminds us that there is more to education than greater productivity. With prose exacting yet expansive, tough-minded yet optimistic, the liberal arts are more important today than ever. Titled as “Why Teach”?  Edmundson’s collected writings on the subject, including several pieces that are new and previously unpublished. What they show, collectively, is that higher learning is not a rut – some staid. It is a necessary remedy for our troubled times. Why Teach? is thus brimming with the wisdom and inspiration that make learning possible. When it comes to choosing a career, we all ask this common question – will humanities help me achieve a desired career in life? It depends on what that career is. Humanities will enable you to advance in writing skills, speaking skills and thinking. And, most importantly it will strengthen your ability to recognize further opportunities to learn. It will give you the ability of researching – to find information and ideas, and the ability to critically distinguish between various sources of ideas. It will help you structure your thoughts coherently and express yourself in ways that are appropriate to the occasion. It will help you build up reading skills which will further give you an ability to understand language and systems of meaning, whether they occur in literal texts, or in other forms. Humanities students learn to read images, culture, and a host of other things, besides written texts. It will make you adaptable – your ability to apply knowledge skills to vide variety of contexts.

And here’s another thing to keep in mind – the humanities today are not the humanities of the past. Sad, but the image that many people have of humanities is of a pursuit that has no relation to practical human concerns. The fact is humanities disciplines are involved in research projects of all sorts, with just about every discipline in the university. Philosophers work with scientists and engineers, historians work with medical professionals, creative writers work with digital media engineers. The fact is every technical and scientific discipline, at some point or other, must help the humanity and hence becomes a humanities discipline! Every scientific advance is an advance for humans, and is meaningful in our history, for the betterment of our lives. Every invention happens within the context of human meaning. Every business trades on human narratives and human desires as expressed through language and symbol. The humanities matter everywhere. This discipline of studies therefore is far from being marginal. It is central to all human life.

In the words of Terry Eagleton – a prominent British literary theorist and critic “The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.” So, guys stop underrating importance of Humanities.