Address to the Alumni of Lalaji Memorial Omega International School, 3 June 2013, Chennai, India
My dear young ladies and gentlemen,
To say that I am pleased to see you all would be an understatement. When we started the Omega School, eight years back I think, apart from the aspirations of others involved in the process who wanted to turn out top level students and so on and so forth, my aspiration, which I did not voice, was to produce excellent human beings with aspiration not ambition as their guiding light, who would be future citizens of India well-equipped with the strength of the heart, with the courage of the heart, to participate in what is mundanely called ‘A New India’, in the making of a new India which would be free – morally free, intellectually free – where you would all be able to voice, without concern for safety, the need for truth, honesty, openness in either public or private administration – in fact, to create a society of which our people have been talking for centuries – the so-called Ram Rajya – but which has never been achieved over 3000 years, 4000 years.
When you watch serials like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, you find out how much dishonesty, untruth, lies – what in Hindi you call chhal [deception] and kapat [duplicity] – have pervaded public life, whether under monarchies or under the different systems of political administration. In fact, I don’t see any India, if you look to the past, where there was honesty and truth, except for the rishis preaching it, for the Upanishads which enshrined it, and for the very few who were in jungles and in mountains practising austerity and tapas [penance] free of political and other influences to practise a true life in their own personal life and nothing more. They were unable to influence society because they were far away from society. In fact, they had renounced the society and became recluses in forests, in mountain caves, in isolation. And, of course, history does not record what they achieved except what we call personal emancipation.
So, in those days, I mean in all the past centuries that we have seen, there were the few who preached the truth and practised it – and there were the many who perhaps knew the truth but did not practise it, where ambition was there, where anxiety to amass more and more was there, where dishonesty pervaded public life – whether it was in commercial industry or in government. So, though I hate to say it, I feel that Indian life has always been what I would like to call a stinking lie. Satyam vada [speak the truth] – never done. Dharmam chara [be righteous] – never done. Ideals! You see great rishis who were killed, murdered by kings. You have seen emperors fighting for more and more territory – chhal and kapat ruling their lives.
So, if at all we see a new India emerging with you boys and girls participating in that renaissance, as I would like to call it, it would be something in the history of India very new, never achieved before – not in the life of the great rishis, not in the life of the great emperors, not in the Vedic age, but in Kaliyuga, where brave hearts and minds will contribute to such a renaissance, and where history will record that after tens of thousands of years of a public life which was wanting in every aspect of truth, of culture, of openness, “Behold! There is a new India created by young men and women of this age which is supposed to be full of corruption, of misery in public life, private life, of fear.” I don’t see anybody today who is not afraid.
You go to register a piece of land, you have to pay bribes. You go for an application form, you have to give money to obtain it. You go for admission – you have to pay hefty bribes, whether it is engineering or medical or whatever. What happened? Where is the India that is great? I frequently refer to a book written by an Oxford Professor, A.L. Basham, which impressed me very much when I read it about sixty years ago. I think the title was The Wonder That Was India or something like that. He is full of praise for India and its culture, its background. But twenty years later he comes back to India and finds, under a superficial veneer of so-called culture and civilisation, there is nothing but corruption: mental corruption, moral corruption, every aspect of corruption. And, in fact, in the preface to his book, the second time he wrote, he said he was sorely disappointed with what he saw, and he was almost recanting what he had written about India in that book. I would like you all to read that book, if you ever have access to it in libraries. The Wonder That Was India, Professor A.L. Basham – B-A-S-H-A-M. Please note it down and try to get a copy of it and read it when you have leisure.
So, you see, great men from western countries have admired us, have admired our culture, the way of life, simplicity. But then, when you penetrate a little deeper, it is all muck, and many were disappointed, and many wrote about it, much to my regret. People like me sorrowed that this is the way things are going – that people who admired us are saying, “I was wrong. I have nothing to admire here. It is worse than any other place.” And of course, if you read the newspapers and you see the corruption index, and you find you are number three out of a list of seventy-eight – almost near the top – I don’t know, I mean, sometimes I wonder what we are doing, living here.
We say it is wonderful to be born in this country which has so much hope for us. But hopes remain hopes; aspirations are shattered. People are disillusioned by the time they come to their thirties, and the rest of life is just spent in a misery of – what should I call – not guilt, but sorrow that things are as they are, and nothing is ever going to change. Nobody thinks that India will change. I always tell them that India is not responsible. It is Indians who are responsible. “Bharat Mera Mahaan” [My India is great] – when we sing it in our every Independence Day, I say, what is mahaan [great] about Bharat? The very people who are singing it, holding up flags – the epitome of corruption, of lies!
So when I say that I have great expectations from our Omega and its product, the first of them – you are here. I hope you will all understand that you have a great responsibility to not only your own future, for which of course obviously everybody is responsible, but for the future of this country: to bring it back to its pristine glory, if ever it was like that; to realise what the rishis have always said must be there – it is perhaps buried deep in our roots, but has not come up into the foliage, it is not out in the open in the sunshine. So, you must always remember that there is this responsibility which must be in your hearts that, “I am doing things of course for myself, for my family, but very importantly, if not most importantly, for my country.”
So that is what I have to say to all of you today. I remember when I was in school seventy years back, I was an idealist like most young people are. I used to attend Congress meetings. It was before partition, before India became independent, and there was a great deal of fervour. We used to march miles holding the Congress flag. We used to spend hours waiting to see Gandhi or Nehru. We used to go to our college gate, university gate in Banaras, for the unfurling of the flag and then singing Jana Gana Mana [Indian national anthem] almost with tears in our eyes.
That was how children are brought up when they’re young – aspiration full in the heart. And there was no distinction between self and our country, or self and society. “I am a part of that. I may have an independent existence but without the whole, I am nothing.” This was the sort of spirit we had.
My first adventure with truth was a disaster. My chemistry teacher took an English class because the English teacher was absent. And there was a particular word, ‘unanimous’. He was spelling it as ‘anonymous’. I made the mistake of standing up and saying, “Sir, your spelling is wrong.” He glared at me and said, “Don’t teach me English.” I was a fool. Next day I took a copy of my pocket Oxford dictionary and showed him that there are two words, ‘anonymous’ and ‘unanimous’ – and I made an enemy for life!
That is the sort of leadership we have in our schools! Teachers who do not want to be corrected, teachers with whom you cannot have a fair exchange, unlike the USA, where you can sit with your feet up on the desk and talk to your professor who is standing! Full freedom. Here – no!
Therefore we lead a stifled existence in our schools, where from kindergarten “Miss says” means it is the law. And in that situation, in that environment of teaching which is bounded by the corruption of teachers, by their lack of knowledge… in fact, I would go to the extent of saying that very few of them are really prepared for their jobs except to earn money. It was like that; I don’t know what it is today. I hope at least in Omega things are different. Therefore, unless you have freedom there, you cannot have freedom here. When you plant a sapling and put a tight thing around it, how can it grow except in the way it is put?
So we grow up thinking, “My teacher did not tell me the truth. My family did not tell me the truth. Always they were covering up lies, deceits. Wherever you went there was a hush of silence, there is a smile of knowingness, then a new subject” – I am sure you have seen all this. If not, you will. The first problem is not to allow yourselves to be changed by this sort of environment. We are there to change others, not to be changed ourselves. Like a catalyst. A catalyst changes, but it never changes [itself]; it is always there.
So, I hope you will all be catalysts of the future: unafraid, not proud but happy to be there, to have been given an opportunity to stand up and speak, thankful to whatever it is – the spirit of India or the spirit of culture – which gives you this opportunity to be what you are and not what you are meant to be. Remember that you have to be what you are and not what you are meant to be by society. Society may expect you to be so many things: obedient, defiant, lying, colluding in bribery and corruption and all sorts of things. There you are safe, and you get your chunk of the profit, but you will spend sleepless nights worried over what to do if something happens, Whereas if you are truthful, you will live a solid, happy, pleasant, life, content with what you are, knowing that it is contentment that is happiness, not the other way round.
I have not seen contentment in people who have twenty thousand crores, hundred thousand crores, two hundred thousand crores – because they want more and more. On one side, they are terribly afraid: “If this happens?” “If that happens?” Where is their money? Something here, something there!
I had an industry friend, who made in his time, fifty years ago, a few hundred crores in starting up a new industry, and entrusted everything to his nephew – benaami transactions, false documents, all sorts of funny things. He entrusted it to the nephew who controlled this hundred crores of black money that the uncle had earned. And the uncle had given it to the nephew so that he is free from even [tax] raids and things like that. And one day the nephew said, “Ta-ta” and walked out. The uncle said, “Where is my money?” The nephew said, “What money?” This is what happens to most people who cannot keep it but they have to entrust it to others who enjoy it merrily, whether it is in a Swiss bank or wherever.
So, contentment – that is what we have to learn. I must be content with what I am, with what I have, and then I am fearless. Because otherwise, if I am always avaricious and thinking of more and more, I am a servant – not even a master of myself.
So I hope the school has done its duty properly by you all and taught you well, and that Sahaj Marg will polish up your character, your freedom, give you the strength to be what you are, to be independent of all influences and to contribute, as I said, to an emerging India which shall be free, which shall be honest, which shall be in public and private life as it was never before.
So I pray for you all, and thank you for being here. Thank you.
