Appeal for grace marks
KAMALA BALACHANDRAN
IT IS that time of the year, once again, when the average age of the devotees at all temples falls sharply. March to June is the exam/results time and youngsters flock to the houses of gods to lobby for divine assistance.
The sight of young boys and girls executing the stipulated number of rounds around the sanctum and praying earnestly with eyes closed would have been amusing if it was not fundamentally wrong.
I wish to tell these kids that examinations are not games of dice and that the best bet to getting good grades lies entirely in the old fashioned preparation. I would also like to assure them that no single result is big enough to seal a person's fate, one way or the other, irrevocably. And most importantly, I would want to warn them that when you appeal for intervention you not only diminish your inner strength, but you also limit your understanding of the divine and miss out the awe of the mystic.
I would want to tell them all these because I know for sure that it is not going to come from their parents or teachers. After all it is they who have instilled the fears in the first place and fanned it with their own insecurity. I personally know of many parents who take their wards, on the eve of a milestone examination, to certain highly rated temples/Swami to procure the blessings.
Worse still, I now hear of many schools having a Saraswathi Puja on the last day of the academic session (a thing that should more appropriately be done on the first day of the commencement of the new learning!) where the students place their pens before the deity. The puja is performed after which the head mistress hands out the `blessed' instruments to individual students. This neo ritual takes irrationality to new depths and makes a mockery of both religion and education.
The foundation of the state lies in the education of its youth. Education should not only empower the youth with a means of livelihood, it should also build character. The purpose of all education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Rote learning
Those are the stated principles of our state too. But in practice, we have an education system that is wholly geared to training the youth for bread winning tasks. Our examination system encourages unthinking rote learning. As if all of this isn't bad enough, we are now establishing a new tradition which erodes the student's self-confidence.
What a comedown it is for a society that, over a hundred years ago, produced a young man who personified the ideal youth and who Rabindranath Tagore declared "had all positive and nothing negative about him."
And to those who hold that the practice is necessary to instil spiritual values in the youth, the words of this young man who touched the core of spirituality are a fitting admonition. "We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind."
Swami Vivekananda's birthday in January has been declared National Youth Day. It would benefit the youth far better if his powerful words of advice were drilled into the hearts and souls of the young.
"We are responsible for what we are," he thundered. "Whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions."
And he said, "I am sure God will pardon a man who will use his reason and cannot believe rather than a man who believes blindly instead of using the faculties He has given. One must reason. The important thing is not to stop questioning."
A feeble justification
A feeble justification one often hears is that the pre-exam prayers are important in that they help to calm the student's nerves. If the student is nervous, it is the duty of the adults to make him realise that he has it within himself to make a success of any situation.
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