The Hindu : Miscellaneous / This Day That Age : dated December 25, 1954: PM's advice to teachers

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Saturday, Dec 25, 2004

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - This Day That Age

dated December 25, 1954: PM's advice to teachers

Prime Minister Nehru has said that the greatest problem facing India was to find a synthesis between scientific and moral values and called upon Indian youth to find an answer to this. Mr. Nehru, who was presiding over the Viswabharati University convocation in Santiniketan on December 24, as Chancellor of the University, said although India had to learn a lot from the West, it must not be a mere copy as problems in India were peculiar to it. He asked Indian universities and students to restore the academic atmosphere and avoid all kinds of conflicts which had become the order of the day. Regretting that students and teachers were always on a war path as if one was the enemy of the other, he said a factory atmosphere was prevailing in the universities and educational institutions where students were going on hartal on the slightest pretext like factory workers. A free India trying to build up from scratch a happy and prosperous life for its people could not afford such an unhealthy atmosphere prevailing in its educational institutions. The ancient relationship between students and teachers, which was akin to the father and son relationship, should be restored. He asked those engaged in education to realise the conflict in human mind in the present machine and atomic age when people were striving for peace. He pointed out that the people of the West had progressed materially, but they were not mentally happy. They had lost all the happiness of a fearless soul. India had to take a lesson from the West in this matter. A new India was in the making. All over the country all the knowledge that science had bestowed upon mankind for material progress was being harnessed. Big factories were being set up, river valley projects costing millions of rupees were being pushed through. Science was being utilised in the fields and factories. But India could not afford to forget the essence of the Indian way of life - the spiritual and moral attainments which had helped them survive the rise and fall of civilisations through the ages. The biggest problem facing the Indian mind today was how to achieve a synthesis between science and moral values.

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