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Knowledge: Fluid Cultures, Frozen Structures

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Knowledge: Fluid Cultures, Frozen Structures Knowledge: Fluid Cultures, Frozen Structures KAPILA VATSYA YAN Professor B. L. Mungekar, distinguished development wherever he was? As I sit in the Rajya Sabha, I cannot economist, former Member of the Planning Commission help remembering each day, almost every day, how with and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay; a lifting of the pencil he would silence any attempt at Founder President of Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Social disruption. ShriJawaharlal Nehru's tribute to him on the and Economic Change, and Chairman of the Indian occasion of his demitting the office of Vice-President and Institute of Advanced Study, Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, is an eloquent testimony· He had said: 'You treated us like school children and we Professor Peter Ronald deSouza, Director of the Indian obeyed!' Institute of Advanced Study, who has brought fresh sea air to the Himalayas. His engagement with 'unpacking I puzzles of democracy' is of vital importance not only to political scientists but to all citizens of ~dia; and Let me begin with some personal memories. One day- it should have been sometime in the 40s -a Distinguished members of the audience, tall man stood in the balcony of my mother's flat in Connaught Place. That was home to many political Thank you for inviting me to deliver the Fourteenth figures- Aruna Asaf Ali, Bishamber Nath Pande, Achyut Radhakrishnan Memorial lecture. To have an occasion Patwardhan, and others. They moved in and out, to pay tribute to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and to express specially during the 1942 Movement. For us, it was not deep appreciation for the work of the Institute is a rare anything unusual to see a special person. However, here privilege. I am honoured. was a tall man standing in the balcony looking out as if I am somewhat hesitant to address this audience not waiting for someone. My mother ran in and said, "Kapila, only because we are situated in the India International I think this is Dr. Radhakrishnan! Go and speak to him. Centre, but also because many present here are long­ He should come in rather than stand in the balcony." standing friends. Some of them belong to my gen~ration. Without a moment's hesitation I went and looked up to We have been participators and witnesses to the transition him, as I have done ever since, and said, "Sir, are you not from a colonial to an independent India. We are also Dr. Radhakrishnan? Why don't you come in? Are you inheritors of the vision and aspirations of those who waiting for someone?" He said, "I am waiting for my played a seminal role in the shaping of the nation state. daughter-in-law to take me home from the doctor (the In what words do I pay tribute to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, doctor, our neighbour, was an eye specialist). But she universally acknowledged as a universal man, a hasn't arrived, and I cannot get home, because I have no philosopher-statesman, who brought dignity and lustre money." He came in, and since that moment until the Kapila Vatsyayan is an authority on education, culture and the arts. Currently Chairperson, IIC-Asia Project, India International Centre and Trustee, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, she is a former Secretary, Department of Arts, Government of India, and former Academic Director of the IGNCA. She is a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha and author of over twenty books on art, aesthetics and culture, including The Cultural Heritage of India, Vol. VII, Part 1 (Editor) and Aesthetic Theo1'ies and Forms in Indian Tradition (Editor). This is the text of the 14th Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture delivered by Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan for the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, at India International Centre, New Delhi on 19th March 2010. 2 Summerhill: liAS Review moment of his final illness in Girija, on what is today stressed the need for spiritual renewal. He said, "A called Radhakrishnan Salai in Chennai, there was a deep spiritual renewal is necessary, if the world is to be saved. bond of affection and communication. To this Guru tulaya, A new purpose must coordinate our Education, our I pay my pranams. Science and our Culture, make them integral elements of a worldview, which should inspire all our activities. The Qu'ran says: 'Verily, God will not change the conditions Dr. Radhakrishnan and UNESCO of men till they change what is in themselves."'3 Alas, There are other memories. Dr. Radhakrishnan had the world does not seem anywhere near ready or aspiring already made his presence felt in UNESCO. He was in for a spiritual renewal. Paris to attend a UNESCO conference in 1949. I was in Another speech of Dr. Radhakrishnan, delivered in London. I received a telephone call - that in those days 1963, at Kabul University, Afghanistan, is significant. was not altogether easy. But I did get a message through Would Dr. Radhakrishnan have an opportunity today to the Indian High Commission that Dr. Radhakrishnan address the Kabul University and be heard with spell­ would like to speak to me. I was as astonished as pleased. bound attention? In this speech, Dr. Radhakrishnan On the other side was his sonorous voice. "What are you addressed all domains of knowledge- science, religion, doing in London? No doubt, wasting your time looking philosophy, culture. His thrust was on the search for at museums and going to operas and symphony concerts! truth. If science is pursuit of truth, then what is truth? he Come over here. You will meet very interesting people­ asked. "Truth is not something you manufacture from Julian Huxley, Jean Paul Sartre. Also you might be of out of the resources of your mind; it is the pursuit of some assistance". I did reach Paris and had an eventful so~et~ing which is extra-mental, which is objective, journey. Anyhow, I found my way to Avenue Kleber. whtch IS there for the human individual to subscribe to". Whether I assisted or not, I learnt, and I have been He addressed the perennial question of the relationship learning ever since about Culture, Education and Science, of the senses, body and mind. He called attention to the and what it is to deliberate on those issues in an scrip~ures, a~d sai~: "When the scriptures declare that international forum. man IS made m the tma?e of God, or an Indian scripture Apart from meeting luminaries, it was the significance says that deha, or ~ody, Is the devalaya, or the dwelling of of Mahatma Gandhi's letter, dated 25.5.1947, to Julian God, they are trymg to tell us that whereas the cosmic Huxley, which has remained in my mind. Gandhiji had happening_s rna~ take p~ace, man is not to regard himself said, "I learnt from my illiterate, but wise mother, that as a mere It~m m a senes of objective happenings". He all rights to be deserved and preserved came from duty ~oncl_ud_ed hts speech by referring to Art. What is Art? well done". Equally significant is his message to the Arh~hc creatwn is something where you feel an UNESCO's Regional Study Conference of Fundamental expenence, and you impregnate that experience with Education held in Nanking, China in 1947. He had said own spiritual intensity, and make it come that "real security and lasting peace cannot be secured, y~ur p~rsonal so long as extreme inequalities in education and culture ah~e- that I~ what art means. In our country, it is said, art IS that whtch transmits to you a sense of the eternal, a exist as they do among the nations of the world."1 Dr. Radhakrishnan' s speeches still ring in my ears, sense w~ich is beyond the merely temporal. A sense of specially these two-one delivered at the Sorbonne somethtng, which is non-temporal in this world, is 4 University in Paris in 1946, and the other in Beirut in 1948. conveyed to you by the achievements of the arts." They assume renewed significance today when the world Dr. Radhakrishnan translated his ideas by conceiving is once again facing the problem of inequity and specific programmes within the mandate of UNESCO. disparities amongst nation-states and within nation­ He was the chief architect of the UNESCO's Major Project states. In the Sorbonne address, he conceded that the III for the Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values. world ha.d bec.ome a. ph_rsical unity, but not a psychological unity. In his VIew, "world unity can only The leaders of that time were striving to bring about a be founded on a sense of world community, and this sense change to ensure a more equitable world. The theme of can only develop from interchange of the treasur f the division between the Western and the Eastern world mind and i~agination between the peoples, and a e:r~e was foremost in their minds both at the intellectual as understandmg of the value of their different cultural and also the social, political and educational spheres. This was artistic traditions. "2 articulated explicitly by Maulana Azad at the UNESCO General Conference held in New Delhi in 1956, of which Speaking at the GeneraJ Conference of UNESCO held he was the President. He said: in Beirut on November 19, 1948, Dr. Radhakrishnan 3 Knowledge: Fluid Cultures, Frozen Structures 1 am fully aware that the historical circumstances, which in the this critiquing in a large measure, I have also to past had created an invidious wall between the West~m and the acknowledge the contribution of the Orientalists- as Eastern worlds have not entirely disappeared.
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