NCERT Memorial Lecture SeriesFirst Zakir Husain Memorial Lecture 2007

BY RADHIKA HERZBERGER

1897-1969

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NCERTMEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

First Zakir Husain Memorial LectureRegional Institute of Education, Mysore

19 January 2007

BY RADHIKA HERZBERGER

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1 More information on NCERT is available at: www.ncert.nic.in

OUR OBJECTIVE

The National Council of Educational Research andTraining (NCERT) is an apex organisation, assisting andadvising the Central and State Governments byundertaking research, survey, development, training, andextension activities for all stages of school and teachereducation1.

One of the objectives of the Council is to act as aclearing-house and disseminator of ideas relating to schooland teacher education. We have initiated the currentMemorial Lecture series in order to fulfil this role and tocommemorate the life and work of great educationalthinkers. Our aim is to strive to raise the level of publicawareness about the seminal contributions made in thefield of education by eminent men and women of India.We expect that such awareness will set off a chain ofdiscourse and discussion. This, we hope, will makeeducation a lively subject of intellectual inquiry whilesimultaneously encouraging a sustained publicengagement with this important domain of national life.

The memorial lecture series will cover public lecturescommemorating the life and work of nine eminent Indianeducational thinkers and practitioners

Title Venue

Mahatma Gandhi Memorial India International Centre (IIC),Lectures New Delhi

Zakir Husain Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lectures Mysore

Gijubhai Badhekha Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lectures Ajmer

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Tagore Memorial Lectures Regional Institute of Education,Bhubaneswar

Mahadevi Verma Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lectures Bhopal

B. M. Pugh Memorial North East Regional Institute ofLectures Education, Shillong

Savitri Phule MemorialLectures Nehru Centre, Worli MumbaiMarjorie Sykes Memorial Egmore Museum, ChennaiLectures

Sri Aurobindo Memorial Indian Institute of SocialLectures Sciences, Kolkata

We will invite men and women of eminence from theacademia and public life to deliver, in English or any otherIndian language these Memorial Lectures. Our intentionis to reach a large audience consisting teachers, students,parents, writers, artists, NGOs, government servants andmembers of local communities in particular.

The lectures will be made available on Compact Discs(CDs) and in the form of printed booklets for widerdissemination. Each booklet will consist of two sections:Section One highlighting the purpose of the memoriallectures and providing a brief sketch of the life and worksof the concerned educational thinker and Section Twogiving the lectures in full along with a brief backgroundof the speaker.

We hope all these lecture series will be of use to ouraudiences as well as the wider public.

ANUPAM AHUJAConvenor

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2 Professor of Education at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Faculty ofEducation, Jamia Millia Islamia. The author wishes to thank Anil Sethiand Anupam Ahuja, both from NCERT for enriching the text and foreagle-eyed editing.3 Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding the Muslim Mind (Delhi, Penguin,2000), pp. 290-291.

SECTIONI

ZAKIR HUSAINCREATING ALTERNATIVE EDUCATIONAL PARADIGMS

Talat Aziz2

On the title page of the life-book of a teacher, what is writtenis not knowledge but the subject of love.

Zakir Husain

As with many other quotations, the above-mentionedwords may sound clichd unless we realize that ZakirHusain, civic nationalist, Gandhian, economist, Presidentof India from 1967 to 1969, above all, a true lover ofchildren, lived it. Take, for instance, a momentous eventin Zakir Husains life, described for us by one of hisbiographers, Rajmohan Gandhi:

One day in 1933 when Zakir Husain was distributing sweets tothe boys who had passed a test in the primary school, a peoncame and whispered to him that his three-year old daughter,Rehana was very ill. Zakir Husain continued to give away thesweets. A little later the peon came again and told him in his earthat Rehana had died. Zakir Husain turned pale but did not stopwhat he was doing. Then the campus bell was rung and everyonelearnt that Dr. Zakir Husains girl had died. Asked afterwardswhy he had not left the school at once, Zakir Husain replied thatthe children were feeling so happy, he did not like to interrupt it.His wife told Mujeeb later that for several days after the eventZakir Husains pillow was wet every morning.3

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It was this love of children and an unflinching interestin their well-being and happiness that led Zakir Husainto make the transition from Economics (a subject in whichhe had been formally trained) to Education to which hecontributed ceaselessly. As Chair of a National Committeeon Nai Talim or Basic Education (as it came to be called),Zakir Husain helped create this alternative Gandhianparadigm and played a significant role in devising itssyllabi. Like many other nationalists, Zakir Husain wasno mere ivory-tower intellectual but an indefatigableinstitution-builder. He presided over Jamia Millia Islamiaand Aligarh Muslim University with distinction. As Vice-Chancellor of these institutions, he served as fund-raiser,accountant, secretary, editor and teacher all rolled intoone for many long years. In the universities too heattempted to implement the credo, learning by doing,and took a keen interest in their Education departments.The true educationalist in him did not allow for adistinction between school-education and the universities.Zakir Husain always viewed education as an organicwhole.

THE EARLY YEARS

None other than his mother sowed the seeds oftruthfulness, self-discipline and universal love formankind in Zakir Husains personality. She played adecisive role in his upbringing, especially after his fatherdied in 1907, when Zakir Husain was only ten years old.In keeping with his family traditions, Zakir Husains earlyeducation in the Quran, Persian and Urdu was carriedout at home. In 1907 he was admitted in Class V to theIslamia High School of Etawah, a residential institutionfounded by Maulvi Bashiruddin.

During his primary education Zakir Husain was underthe care and guidance of Syed Altaf Husain, theHeadmaster of the school, a rare teacher of great virtues,disciplinarian, and strict follower of his own principles.His influence on Zakir Husain was reflected in a paper

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Talib-e-ilm ki Zindagi (Life of a Student) that the latterpresented in the school assembly when he was justthirteen years old. In his presentation, Zakir Husaindescribed the duties of a student, as He [that is, astudent] should propagate education among his illiteratebrothers and should consider the propagation of educationas a part of his own education. He ought to acquireeducation for the sake of education If not educated, heis not a man at all, he cannot do anything worthwhile inthis world. To drive home, his central point Zakir Husainused Persian verses set your goals high, as by that youare rated, not only by the creator, but by those also whoare created. This shows that at the age of thirteen ZakirHusain had a clear understanding of what is educationand what it can do to a person. Zakir Husain continuedhis studies at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College,Aligarh from where he took an M.A. in Economics in 1920.He was appointed a Lecturer in the same year.

All through this period Zakir Husain also had aspiritual guide, Shaikh Hasan Shah, a sufi of the ChishtiSilsila. Hasan Shah had a lasting impact on his disciple.He taught him to cultivate patience and diligence and alife-long love for books.

A DEVELOPING EDUCATIONIST SOME KEY MILESTONES

1920 was a crucial year for Zakir Husain, a sort of turningpoint in his life. This was the year when the Indian NationalCongress and the All India Khilafat Committee joinedhands in launching the Non-Cooperation Movement andGandhiji was touring the country to persuade teachersand students to leave government-administered schoolsand colleges. Zakir Husain who had a good grip overnational and international affairs was keen onunderstanding Gandhijis perspective. He attended oneof his talks wherein Gandhiji urged fellow-countrymen toboycott the British system of education and join the Non-Cooperation Movement. He and his friends persuadedMaulana Mohammad Ali and Gandhiji to address the

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Aligarh students. Though the meeting was not successful,Zakir Husain resigned from the post of lecturer and metHakim Ajmal Khan, Dr. M.A. Ansari, and MaulanaMohammad Ali in Delhi. They proposed to set up aNational Centre of Education for Indian Youth. Thus,Zakir Husain became a pioneer of a new venture andJamia Millia Islamia came into existence on 29th October1920. In 1921 Zakir Husain was appointed as a Lecturerin Economics at the Jamia.

THE GERMAN INFLUENCE

Another milestone in becoming an educationist was ZakirHusains doctoral studies in Berlin. He had beenpersuaded by his close friend Khwaja Abdul Hameed tochoose Germany for this purpose. It was in Berlin thathe first met Abid Husain and Mohammad Mujeeb, whowere studying in Oxford and came to Berlin in September1923 to work in a printing press. The three formed atroika and worked together for the next twenty-six years.Abid Husain was writing his thesis on the educationalideas of Herbert Spenser, which he submitted in 1925.

The three years spent in Berlin nurtured the teacherand educationist in Zakir Husain. Though his specialsubject was British agrarian policies in India andAgricultural Economics, he was more interested inliterature and education. In particular, he attendedProfessor Edward Sprangers lectures and read his books.Professor Spranger was an outstanding figure in the fieldof Educational and Cultural Philosophy. During his stayin Germany he also cultivated a refined taste in musicand theatre.

Zakir Husain was deeply influenced by Germanthought, particularly, by George Kerschensteinersrevolutionary principles in Education. Kerschensteinerwas critical of bookish schools and had in fact founded aWork-School. He advocated that Head, Heart and Hand,should contribute to the process of education, andeducation in turn should train all these. Kerschensteiner

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believed that an educated person never considers himselfcomplete to strive naturally for education is a trueindicator of a true education. During his stay in BerlinZakir Husain travelled to many places in Germany andvisited important schools where various educationaltheories and methods of teaching were being practised.He also gave lectures on the philosophy of Gandhiji forwhom he had great respect.

CONTRIBUTION TO A GROWING INSTITUTION

Zakir Husains far-reaching academic commitments, goingwell beyond Agricultural Economics, helped him broadenhis vision and develop a firm grasp of Education. He co-authored with Alfred Ehrenfreich a book in German onGandhiji, translated Platos Republic into Urdu, imbibingPlatos reasoning and thoughts during the translation.He fully believed in and practised Platos view that onlyproper education frees one from mental slavery and helpsin the manifestation of creative abilities. This is the onlyway innovativeness and imagination can be nurtured,knowledge, wisdom and civilizations advanced. Hisinterest in education and the Jamia Millia wereinextricably interwoven, compelling him to accept aninvitation to return to the Jamia when the chance camehis way.

Hakim Ajmal Khan and M. A. Ansari visited ZakirSahib in Vienna in 1925. Hakim Sahib persuaded him toreturn to Jamia after completing his education. Hefulfilled his promise in February 1926, inspiring his friendsAbid Husain and Mohammad Mujeeb to work with himat the Jamia. A journey for an educationist as well as aninstitution thus began from Qarol Bagh (Karol Bagh) whereJamia was shifted from Aligarh. Zakir Husain joined Jamiaas its Vice-Chancellor or Shaikhul Jamia at the youngage of twenty-nine.

In 1926 Zakir Husain went to Sabarmati Ashram todiscuss education and the Jamia with Gandhiji. Hereturned from there with a renewed zeal. Gandhiji too

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was satisfied about the future of Jamia being in the handsof a confident and secular Zakir. Gandhijis support forJamia was an asset and later he sent his grandson Rasiklalto Jamia for his education.

If any single educational principle guided Zakir Husainin Jamia for nearly twenty-three years, it was learningby doing. His concept of doing was to a large extentspiritual also. He did not advise, preach or guide hisfellow-workers but drove them to examine their own willpower and further build upon their intelligence andsensitivity. He made Jamia a School of Work where onefound only a minimum use of books and many practicalactivities with educational values. He considered a truework-school to be a place where children acquire thehabit of planning, of considering ways or meansthoroughly before they start work and examine theirachievements critically when they have done what theyset out to do. He introduced the Project Method of learningin schools, as he considered it appropriate for the mentaland social development of children.

An important feature of the Jamia schools was thatthey encouraged teachers to practise the constructivistapproach, something that the NCERTs present-dayNational Curriculum Framework advocates. Zakir Husainhimself taught at primary, secondary and higher classesin Jamia. Being an economist he introduced the conceptof banking through a childrens bank, childrens book-shop and the like at Jamias primary school wherestudents in residential hostels needed to manage theirown money. The school also maintained a small zoo andfarm, which were looked after by children under thesupervision of teachers. Zakir Husain consideredchildhood as the most important period of life for thedevelopment of personality. He observed that childrensnature compels them every moment of their waking lifeto experiment, to break and make things. So at the initialstage all children can be educated through similarpractical activities.

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For Zakir Husain the purpose of education was threefold to develop students faculties, to transmit to themtheir cultural heritage and to awaken in them an innerself. The best way for children to develop their mentalfaculties is to let them think through their hands, toacquire knowledge about things through practical use.Therefore it is essential that practical work be made theinstrument and focus of all mental training and education.Manual work proves to be more effective than books inpromoting mental development. For Zakir Husaineducation was also the transmission of spiritual andcultural values of a nation to its younger generation insuch a way as to make it an integral part of their life. Forthis, the educator has first to realise these values in herselfand then to transmit them to her pupils. Furthermore,he regarded national integration as an essential objectiveof education and urged Indian educationalists to discovereffective means for its attainment.

In 1937 India attained a measure of provincialautonomy and Gandhiji attempted to persuade the newpopular governments of various provinces to adopt naitalim or Basic Education as a national system ofeducation. Zakir Husain agreed with the spirit ofGandhijis Basic Education but was not satisfied withthe mode. At a conference on the subject held at Wardha,he disagreed on several counts with Gandhiji. Aware ofZakir Husains potential, Gandhiji gave him theresponsibility of framing the curriculum for BasicEducation in schools and asked him to do so within amonth. Not only did he accomplish this successfully, healso undertook to train teachers. Thus a new department,Ustadon-ka-Madrasa (Teachers College) was started. Asis evident from the Patel Memorial Lecture, delivered byZakir Husain many years later, he believed that teachersbe trained in the technique of such competentobservations as will enable them to understand theirpupils and direct their educational work in the light ofthis understanding.

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SERVING A NATIONAL CALL

Zakir Husain remained associated, after Independence,with education as with the Jamia and Aligarh. Thepartition of the country had led to the migration of a sizablesection of the Muslim elite to Pakistan. In thecircumstances, Nehru and Maulana Azad persuaded ZakirHusain to accept the Vice-Chancellorship of AligarhMuslim University and provide academic stability to theinstitution in the larger interests of the nation. ZakirHusain served in that capacity for nine years until hebecame the Governor of Bihar. At heart, though, heremained a teacher throughout his life and displayed keeninterest in academic work.

As Vice-President as well as President of India he spokeon a variety of themes including his favourite subjects ofeducation and culture, science education, and sports inschools. He also shared thoughts on Gandhiji, special-needs education, the responsibilities and qualities of goodteachers, education and the status of women, and thesocial responsibilities of the people of India, apart fromaddressing many other matters related to national andworld affairs.

On the occasion of Teachers Day (5 September) 1964,he communicated a message emphasizing that theteachers are responsible not just for themselves but alsofor the whole society. A teacher is the custodian of thehighest values created and cherished by his people.Teachers have a mission and consciousness that they areengaged in the most significant task of building a freepeople. You will have to transform mercenary labour intodedicated service. You will have to rise above thesuffocating dust of uniformed partisanship into the purerregion of impartial objectivity. He urged them not to forcechildren into silently brooding over books, unwillinglyswallowing inassimilable information. He wanted themto be up and about, discovering things for themselves,not being condemned for their bursting energy.

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Zakir Husain breathed his last on 3 May 1969. Inher condolence message Indira Gandhi described ZakirHusain as an unforgettable teacher, a builder and a writerof distinction. He chose the field of education because ofhis great faith in the power of education to mould theindividual and society. He took pride in calling himself ateacher, believing that only through education would thepeople gain a vision of the future while preserving theirold timeless values.

Today we see a renewed interest in reinventing oureducation system as also in education as a vehicle of socialchange. In perceiving the child as a discoverer andconstructor of knowledge for herself, the NationalCurriculum Framework-2005 offers us a step in the rightdirection. Achieving this lofty objective will indeed be atrue homage to Zakir Husain, a great teacher andeducationist, a humanist par excellence.

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RELIGION, EDUCATION AND PEACERadhika Herzberger

About the SpeakerIt was J. Krishnamurti who drew Dr. Radhika Herzberger toRishi Valley in 1983. Since then she has worked atthe school first as Director of Studies then as Director.J. Krishnamurti established Rishi Valley School in 1931. Thefounders intention was to educate students with a globaloutlook, and a concern for all living things. He firmly rejectedthe notion that education should be a handmaiden of society.

Dr. Radhika is committed to interpreting Krishnamurtiseducational philosophy in the perspective of a modernschool set in rural India. Her concerns have centred ondeveloping a new curriculum, along with supportingtextbooks in the humanities and life sciences. Persuadedby D. D. Kosambi that the understanding of Indias historyrequires an acquaintance with anthropology, she haswritten two small volumes on pre-history for Indian schools,Our Tribal Ancestors and Farmers and Shepherds.Studies of ancient and modern India are planned, as is anoverview of European history for Indian students.

She edited Birds of Rishi Valley and the Regenerationof their Habitats, based on a survey of the bird populationaround the valley by Shri S. Rangaswami. With hercolleagues she is planning to follow up with a series ofpublications on insects and plants of the region.

Dr. Radhikas academic training is in Sanskrit andIndian Studies. She worked with the late Professor B. K.Matilal on ancient Indian philosophy, both at Oxford andat the University of Toronto, where she received herdoctorate. Her study of the development of thought in 5thand 6th century India was published in 1986 by Reidel,and of several scholarly papers on Sanskrit studies, and

SECTIONII

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more recently of numerous essays on conservation andeducation.

She is the current editor of the Krishnamurti FoundationBulletin. She also teaches 19th and 20th century historyto senior students.

Her early experience as part of a family, activelyinvolved with traditional Indian craft and design, has beena formative influence in her work.

I am conscious of the honour in being invited to deliverthe Dr. Zakir Husain Memorial Lecture at one of Indiasleading institutions for educating teachers. Dr. ZakirHusain began life as an educator, deeply interested inthe philosophical dimensions of this noble discipline.There were three concerns that coloured Dr. Husainsthought and which attract me: his concern for children he wrote several celebrated childrens stories; hisengagement with historical conceptions of the idealstate as a young man he translated Platos Republicinto Urdu and Gandhijis Hind Swaraj into German; andhis ideal of a composite culture, with many religiousgroups living side by side in harmony that were embodiedin the university of Jamia Millia Islamia that he set up inNew Delhi. In short, Dr. Zakir Husain saw education aspreparation for creating a peaceful state.

Religion played a central role in Dr. Zakir Husainsvision. In his preface to World Religions and World Peace,he speculated that the answer might lie in combining themajor religious strands.

If the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Buddhasphilosophy of compassion, the Hindu concept ofahimsa and the passion of Islam for obedience to thewill of God can combine, then we shall see generatedthe most potent influence for world peace.

The worlds religions have not by and large lived up toDr. Zakir Husains hopes despite the calamitous futurethreatening life as we know it. Instead of coming togetherin peace, religions have chosen the path of domination;espousing nationalist causes, they have led crusades

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across national boundaries and international ones.Hindus against Muslims in Gujarat; Sinhalese Buddhistsin opposition to Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka; Arab Muslimsin enmity against Israeli Jews in Palestine; hostile Shias,Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq the list is very long.

The worlds religions unanimously talk about peace,but when religion becomes a source of violence the peoplemust take stock of the situation and seize theresponsibility for re-examining its ideals of peace,especially in a country such as India, the majority of whosepopulation is religious. Equally important is the obligationto examine these ideals conjointly with the actual, on theground violence. Of greatest importance is the need toembed the continually renewed ideal of peace into differentaspects of education, into both the implicit and explicitcurriculum of study. It is an educators primaryresponsibility to reconstitute schools in such a way thatpeace becomes an overriding presence within its premises.Indeed if peace is to accompany schooling there has to bean interdependence between the ideals of peace and thereality of violence, the gaps that divide them cancelledout. At this difficult moment in human history, the burdenof carrying out this programme falls on the state, whichdesigns educational policy; on administrators, who wielddirect authority on the ground; on teachers, who exerciseauthority and on students, who stand at the bottom ofthis heavy superstructure.

The need for continually re-examining the notion ofpeace is particularly crucial to the enterprise of educationtoday because the survival of civilisation depends on goodeducation. Current scientific research predicts cataclysmicevents following global warming rising sea levels willgradually inundate coastal cities, wipe out island states,displace millions of people. Social scientists tell us thatviolent conflicts are inevitable in such a scenario. Whichcountry will provide refuge to the Maldives population iftheir island home drowns?

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The full impact of failing natural ecosystems will befelt by the generations that we educate today; it is thereforeonly right that we take measures to avert this grim futurewith intelligence. Human beings are products of cultureas well as nature. To avert tragedy and to live in peacewith each other and with nature, humanity will have todiscover a new balance within itself. The presentgeneration of educators need to cultivate a long vision,and to create a culture that supports nature instead offurther ravaging it.

Other questions relevant to this line of thinking aboutpeace help enlarge the framework for examining theconcept. Are war and peace opposites, and is peace merelythe absence of conflict? Since violence, with roots in greed,turns up in the most insidious forms, globally, locally,systemically, and within the individual self, where doesone begin to address the issue of peace? These arequestions I have inherited from the founder of Rishi ValleySchool where I have worked for almost twenty-five years.In the course of this presentation I will focus on the issuesof war and peace in the context of education. The aim ofeducation at this point in human history, as I see it, is toestablish a culture of peace in schools. For me peacemeans more than the absence of overt violence; I lookupon it as a living presence that demands change andrenewal of the human spirit.

The view that the education of the young is filteredthrough culture dominates current thinking in education.Robin Alexander puts it this way

drawing on the insights initiated by Vygotsky andBruner and consolidated by later cognitive and culturalpsychologists, we have replaced the view of the developingchild as a lone scientist, who learns by interacting withmaterials . . . by one of learning as necessarily as a socialprocess, In this, significant others parents, teachers,peers provide the mediation or intervention which scaffoldsand takes forward the childs understanding (Alexander2006 p.15).

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Jerome Bruner further maintains that educatorsemphasise the central role for narrative, by which hemeans stories, songs, drama, fiction that give cohesionto a culture, and which help individual students find anidentity within that culture. Knowledge, he says, is notsimply thinking and the result of intellectual activity andexperience, it is the internalising of tools that are usedwithin the childs culture (Bruner, 1996).

How one conceives of education, we have finally cometo recognize, is a function of how one conceives of theculture and its aims, professed and otherwise (Bruner1996: ix-x).

Bruners separating out of what a culture professesand what it allows in practice creates spaces for questions,analysis as well as the liberty to shape culture. Given theenvironmental crisis, education will have to createstructures that undo present attitudes to nature andcreate a culture that recognizes and honours humandependence on sound ecological systems. The future ofhumanity depends on teaching coming generations tolisten and learn from nature, on models of growth thatare ecologically sound, on repairing the damage done bytheir forefathers to natural systems. In short, educatorsneed to acknowledge that a radical change is necessaryand that attitudes will have to change, cultures liberatedfrom the violence they implicitly contain. It is certain thatwith the onset of modernity, particular sub-cultures haveto accommodate tenets and norms beyond those that arean organic part of their own history. Universal principles,such as, respect for nature, equal rights for men andwomen are examples of these principles that culturegroups are obliged to uphold. The pertinent questions inthis context remain: whose stories, whose songs andtheatre shall we, in a complex culture like Indias, teach?And what are the cultural practices and values that needto be unlearned? And how is this unlearning to beeffected? Given the vast religious, class and caste dividesin this country, how we in India understand the word

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culture is neither easily described and nor universallyacknowledged.

India, with its myriad groups competing to assert theirseparate identities, defies an educators intellectualcompass; and so the present top down formalisticapproach that offers abstractions in the form of nationalheroes and modern development successes in competitivecontexts that reward aggression. The official line that Indiastands for unity in diversity may be a truth waiting to beborn, if we educate our children to stand together insolidarity for purposes that serve universal interests whilepreserving differences.

Human societies can come together to solve globalproblems of species depletion, soil erosion, air and waterpollution, and rebuild their relationship to nature, ifknowledge is united with values aimed at restoringecosystems back to health and the task of educationthen is not only to design curricula that are Earth centredbut also to teach students how to unlearn habits andworldviews born of greed and aggression.

My plan is to investigate these connected issues intwo parts I will first describe an educational project inthe interior of south India, guided by the philosophy ofJiddu Krishnamurti. The attempt here will be to illustratethe manner in which one school has promoted a cultureof peace by applying the philosophy of its founder toaddress the complex issues of poverty and ecologicaldegradation that face the local population. The secondsection will contain an exposition of Krishnamurtiseducational philosophy. I will present him as a deepecologist who explored the nature of intelligence andhuman interactions based on this intelligence.

The unusual procedure of placing practice beforetheory flows from features in Krishnamurtis discoursethat escape systematic analysis. Krishnamurti did notpresent his point of view in a clear expository manner. Hehad doubts about philosophys speculative programmes.He was an iconoclastic thinker who fashioned a discourse

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of his own, the chief purpose of which was to challengeboth the intellectual and emotional pre-suppositions ofhis audiences. In Kafkas moving words, his books andtalks served as an ice-axe to break the seas frozeninside our soul. For him, theory and practice wereinterdependent, meant to support each other: peace wasa living spiritual presence, which had its own action. Onemight, following Abhinavaguptas commentary on theDhvanyaloka, describe Krishnamurtis understandingpeace as an aesthetic flavour (santarasa) that hangs overplaces where all life is welcomed, and whose inhabitantsabjure violence, and seek to live a life of dedicated to doingthe right thing.

The role of culture in building identity took several ofour modern religious thinkers into the past. Unlike SwamiVivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, who attempted to createan Indian renaissance through spiritual revival ofHinduism, Krishnamurti distanced himself entirely fromthe nationalistic spirit they had espoused and from thetraditional vocabulary they used. Instead, in an entirelynew departure for a religious thinker, he embracedmodernity its sceptical spirit, its emphasis on everydaylife, and its focus on the individual as opposed to thegroup. Holding on the one hand that the process ofmodernisation was inevitable, he denied on the other thatpermissiveness, nihilism and extreme forms of relativismwere certain to follow in its wake. Krishnamurti soughtto embed his vision of a good human being in the practiceof education.

Rishi Valley School was established by a philosopherof Indian origin who was educated with some pomp andceremony by Annie Besant and her international groupof Theosophists in Europe. Intended for the greatuniversities of Europe, Oxford, Cambridge, or Sorbonne,Krishnamurtis academic record was dotted with failures.By the time he left Europe for America in 1922 he hadforgotten his native Telugu. In 1922, having abandonedhis scholastic career, he crossed the Atlantic and arrived

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at the Western coast of the American subcontinent, inBerkeley. He was dazzled by the place, by its sheer beautyas well as the sense of equality he perceived in theacademic community. It seemed to him that the New Worldhad created a people who transcended all odiousdistinctions of class, race, and gender, so endemic in theOld World. The young mans thoughts travelling to India,he wrote, Oh! For such a University of California to betransplanted to India. If his native country had somethingto give to such a place of learning, it lay in the gift ofbeing able to create the proper religio-scholasticatmosphere.

Not long afterwards this visit to California, the searchfor a place to locate his educational institution ledKrishnamurti to south India, to the little town ofMadanapalle where he was born. Twenty-five kilometresfrom there, in a small valley carved out from the scatteredhills, on the edge of the Mysore Plateau, he located thelandscape where he hoped to lay the foundations of thereligio-scholastic atmosphere he had not found inCalifornia. The place was dry scrubland prone to drought,even famine, inhabited by stonecutters, shepherds andcattle farmers.

Sacred shrines built by these ancient people stoodscattered all over the valley. Under the shade of neemtrees, four thin slabs of stone not more than a foot highare arranged to form a rectangular space that enclosesmother goddess stones; the goddess is propitiated withblood sacrifice of cocks and, during prolonged droughts,with goats.

The goddess Gangamma has a larger whitewashedtemple. The majestic neem tree under which it stood wasdestroyed by a storm a few years ago and replaced by aDurga seated on a lion. Her step-well, so beautifully linedwith dressed stones, remains dry throughout the year.

A classical temple to Krishna situated in the onlytraditional village Thettu gives the valley a hint of classicalantiquity. It was not the temple, however, that drew

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Krishnamurti to Thettu Valley, but a three -hundred-year-old Banyan tree, which dominated the stark scene andthe wooded hills that stood like sentinels at the westernend of the valley. The disjunction between the primevalThettu landscape from the urban vitality of a greatuniversity in the New World could not have been morecomplete.

In the 70 years, since the land was acquired for theschool, the landscape has changed. The track thatencircles the valley, where shepherds drove their flock ofsheep and goat to distant forests, is now broader. It isstill used by herdsmen, descendants of the same people,but also by rattling lorries and buses. A part of this roadis paved. There is a small row of peepal trees on eitherside of the road, but the virgin forests on the hills areslowly disappearing; during the summer monthsgoatherds trim these trees for their flock; local womenhave to walk long distances for fuel. There are many borewells belonging to the school and the more prosperouslandowners. The school and its urban population nowdominate the valley. The Valley telescopes time, modernitymingles with many layers of tradition. As we shall see itrepresents in miniature the layering of cultures, which isa hallmark of social development in the past.

D. D. Kosambi, that doyen of Indian historians, morethan fifty years ago observed that the telescoping of time,in other words, the contemporaneous existence of manystages of human development from the past is a generalbut unique feature of Indias history. According toKosambi, India is a country of long survivals: People ofthe atomic age rub elbows with those of the chalcolithic,he observed as he travelled on the Deccan Queen in theearly fifties from his home in Pune to the Tata Institute ofFundamental Research in Bombay, (now Mumbai) andwent on to prove that the ancient Buddhist caves alongthe Western Ghats followed the migratory patterns setout by older generations of Neolithic tribesmen.

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The school established in 1931, consisted of English-speaking, fee-paying students from Indias successfulmiddle classes. Gordon Pierce, the principal of RishiValley and founder of the Public School Movement inIndia, enlisted Rishi Valley into the elitist body in theFifties. Yet, from the very beginning the Rishi Valleylandscape lacked some fundamental qualifications ofIndian residential public schools. It is not located inthe temperate zone, in hill stations made fashionableduring the colonial period. Though standing at analtitude of 2500 feet, it was an area in Rayalseema,where drought turned the surroundings brown, the baldgranite rocks radiated the suns heat, and villagerswalked with their cows through the school campus.Indias colonial past was nowhere present in thelandscape Krishnamurti chose. And yet the studentswho attended his school were products of severalgenerations that had benefited from the colonialpresence.

The consequences of educating students in an ivorytower oblivious to the worlds suffering remained withKrishnamurti as the schools population in due courseincreased to roughly five hundred inhabitants, studentsborn and bred in the urban centres of India and welleducated teachers from some of the best institutions inthe country. Krishnamurtis talks to students were filledwith sharp portraits of village life meant to challengestudents. Have you ever, he asked them, observed thepoor people, the peasants, the villagers, and donesomething kinddone it spontaneously, naturally, outof your own heart, without waiting to be told what to do?(LA, p. 29).

If we were to educate students without regard to thepoverty in the Valley we were in danger of falling underthe category of omnivores, as defined by the ecologicalhistorians Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha(Gadgil and Guha, 1995). The classification of Indias

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population into omnivores, ecological systems people andecological refugees is based on the comparativeconsumption patterns and access to resources of theurban and rural elite and the urban and rural poor.Nearly four fifths of the population of India are poor,either ecological people, dependent on natures dwindlingresources or ecological refugees forced out of their ownlocality by the encroaching industrial civilisation. Themajority of our fee-paying students and some of ourteachers and administrators belonged to Gadgil andGuhas first category of omnivores.

The results of the urban-rural divide are best describedin a recently published work by Guha

India is in many ways an economic disaster zone; marked by

high rate of deforestation, species loss, land degradation, and

air and water pollution. The consequences of this abuse have

been chiefly borne by the poor in the countryside peasants,

tribals, fisherfolk, and pastoralists who have seen their

resources snatched away or depleted by powerful economic

interests (Guha, 2006, p. 232).

Narpat Jodhas research in several dryland districtsof the country adds another frame of reference to ourview of surrounding village life. On the basis ofcomparative study of villages with vital commonproperty holdings, he concludes that these sharedresources support between 15-25 percent of income ofthe poorer farmers and shepherds in dry region. Hemakes out a strong case for governments to replenishCommon Property Resources in the countryside, as theyprovide both food security and additional employment.In a joint paper with Anupam Bhatia, the authors mournthe systematic depletion of the commons closelyassociated with the depletion of social capital i.e. thecommunity spirit and actions reflecting reciprocity,trust, shared values, net working and group action(Jodha and Bhatia, 1998).

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The above writers place our location a certainperspective that we had to address if education is to standfor the values of peace with justice. Krishnamurti, whodid not by principle create a blueprint for any of hisschools, leaving the implementation of his visions to theschools location and to the talents of the people runningit, concentrated his thought on the moral dimensionsrelated to schooling. In typically metaphorical fashion hewarned those in charge of the school against the tendencyof an isolated educational institution becoming self-enclosed. Dont be a community, he admonished, Thereis something aggressive and self-centred about them.Instead keep your doors open. A community has to defineitself; self-definitions set up boundaries excluding thosewho fall outside the defined essence. Krishnamurti wantedhis school to keep its `doors open. Closed doors andimpenetrable walls are made up of exclusive ideals, classand caste prejudice. Its structures are held together bycomparison, and the desire to dominate others; greed,envy and a lust to dominate support group consciousness.He made the question, how should we live? central tohis educational enterprise. How should we as individualslive and what should be the schools relations with itsneighbours? these questions moulded the school forthe past several decades.

The realization that the direction Krishnamurti wassetting for his school went against the spirit of the presentage, against parents urge to get the best for their children,against Indias aspirations to become a global player wasall pervasive. The following quotation from a very recentarticulation of this trend, by a blue ribbon educationcommission set up to re-think American education reflectsthe educational policies in several countries, includingour own. There is this growing mismatch, the report saysbetween the demands of the economy and what ourschools are supplying.

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If we continue on our current course, the number of nationsoutpacing us in the education race continues to grow at itsand current rate, the American standard of living will steadilyfall relative to those nations, rich and poor, that are doing abetter job (The New York Times, December 15, 2006).

The pervasive anxiety driving reform was describedearlier this year by the columnist Thomas Friedman:

Computers, fibber-optic cable and the Internet have levelledthe economic playing field, creating a global platform thatmore workers anywhere can now plug into and play on.Capital will now flow faster than ever to tap the mostproductive talent wherever it is located, so every country isscrambling to upgrade its human talent base (New York Times,March 24, 2006).

In such a climate of international competition,governments see investment in education largely as a wayof enhancing the countrys GDP and by individuals ascommanding the best international jobs. Earlier idealsof liberty, equality and fraternity take a back seat in thenations priorities. The aims of education are dictated bythe idea of a knowledge society that caters to theknowledge-based economy towards which nations areracing. This is a business model of education whereknowledge as a commodity is to be traded.

The late Management Guru Peter Drucker predictedmore than a decade ago that in a future world orderknowledge and information would be paramount. Boththe conception of what constitutes knowledge and theyardsticks by which knowledge and values are to bemeasured, will be placed at the disposal of business.

The acquisition and distribution of formal knowledge will cometo occupy the place in the politics of the knowledge societywhich acquisition and distribution of property and income haveoccupied in the two or three centuries which we have come tocall the Age of Capitalism (Drucker, 1994).

Peter Drucker readily acknowledged the dangersinherent in a future where business interests forge theyardsticks of knowledge and its value. How difficult, he

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admits, it will be for the knowledge society to give decentincomes and with them dignity and status to non-knowledge people... After all, he acknowledges, knowledgeworkers will amount to no more than a large minority ofthe workforce. (Ibid)

We, in India, need to pay particular attention to PeterDruckers dismissive remarks about non-knowledgepeople, given that Indias impoverished villages have atradition steeped in culture, in stories, songs, drama,fiction that, in Jerome Bruners words, give cohesion to aculture, and that help individual students find an identitywithin that culture.

India may have the worlds largest illiterate populationbut the poor in India do not lack culture poets like Kabir,Tukaram, Jayadeva and the great epics are not theexclusive preserve of the well educated; they are sung bypoor weavers and itinerant bards; and the shadowpuppeteers of Andhra Pradesh reflect the classical muralpaintings at the Lepakshi temple.Jodha additionallyargues in favour of a critical role of traditional knowledgesystems in the management of forest resources, and theharm produced by marginalization of traditionalknowledge, and imposition of generalized solutions fromabove (Jodha, 1998).

Unfortunately, the pressures of modernisation withits global vision and its lumbering bureaucracies, its drivefor universal standards in elementary schools set to thedrum beat of nationalist ideologies stamp out local, moreancient cultures and, in the process, alienate studentsfrom their ecologically sound wisdom, the complexpatterns of protecting, sharing and conserving naturalresources developed over several hundred generations.

Jodhas point that peasant and shepherd communitiesare not rootless people, but could have a vital role in theunfolding scenario adds yet another dimension to ourthinking about our rural world, and helped structure thedirection of our work.

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is well aware ofproblems in the countryside, the fact that income ratiowithin the urban and rural India has risen from 1:2 atthe time of independence to 1:4 today. (Reported in thefinancial pages of Asian Age, Nov. 18, 2006). In his addressto Cambridge University worked through the consequenceof a policy that has the potential to ignore the basic interestof the majority of Indias population, he stated:

The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. This,coupled with the inability of the public sector to provideadequate and quality services in health and education, andcater to the needs of the poor, is causing resentment andalienation. This is nurturing divisive forces and puttingpressure on the practice of democracy. These are real andpalpable concerns and they cannot be ignored. Ladies andgentlemen, I suggest to you that we address these vitalconcerns by making globalisation an inclusive process. Weneed to work for inclusive globalisation. This calls for a newglobal vision.

The juxtaposition, which finds graduates from the besteducational institutions in the country living side by sidewith ancient but impoverished village settlements,provides a unique opportunity to work through a newglobal vision based on J. Krishnamurtis thought. For astart, our location in a degraded landscape brings to thepeople at Rishi Valley, students and teachers belongingto Indias urban middle classes, the reality of India andpresents a challenge of a long-range agenda forregeneration through education. That agenda has servedto guide our efforts by teaching us to care for the earth,to share our educational resources with our neighbours,to conserve local species of plants, and to help themrebuild green spaces in their villages.

Rishi Valley is more than a school, the founder oncedeclared long ago. In this extended context of RishiValleys relationship with its neighbours the Foundersphilosophy and the needs of a drought area with marginalfarmers and shepherds have converged to create a

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promising model of integrated development throughresource sharing. In this conception, the school is aresource centre for the neighbourhood.

In what follows I shall try to outline a case study of aneducational project that through its 75-year-old existenceworked towards a global vision of an entirely different order.

We have articulated the following aims for educatingteachers and students in our school. These goals derivedfrom Krishnamurtis philosophy, are consonant with thetimes we live in.

! To awaken a sense of responsibility for theenvironment in teachers and students, by makingthem aware of the fragility of their environment.

! To create in students and teachers a sense ofresponsibility for other human beings.

! To urge students to employ the expertise they mightacquire in science to repair the damage done to theenvironment.

! To create a global outlook the environment does notrespect borders.

! To cultivate a sane attitude to Indias past.! To orient students in cooperative learning, rather than

in competition.! To create a sensibility that prizes harmony and

quietude.! To convince students that going against the tide of

history is not impossible.

Following through with these aims and advancingKrishnamurtis long-term perspective into the classroomrequired us to create our own study materials. We neededto create textbooks and worksheets that opened studentssenses to nature, to the inter-connectedness betweenplant and animal life and between nature and humanlivelihoods. It also meant seeking a fuller understandingof Indian culture in the larger context of human concerns.By extension, it meant creating a right relationship withIndias own pluralistic heritage, and cultivating aninformed detachment from the past. In pursuit of some

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of these goals, Rishi Valley is continuing to develop itsown educational materials in the areas of social science,ancient history, mathematics, environmental studies andrural education.

The first major publication in this new series, Birds ofRishi Valley and Renewal of Their Habitats, highlightedmany facets of our new directions in education. The bookdescribes local and migrant birds in relation to the severaldifferent habitats now found on campus. It explains theecology of habitat formation and renewal and it seeks toshow how small scale conservation efforts can make adifference, in the landscape and in the quality of our lives.A new study on insects is now planned.

The social studies texts have overlapping aims: to showthat human beings in travelling from the Stone Age intomodern times, have passed through stages oftechnological development that still characterise survivingcultures in different parts of India. Thus even to relatemeaningfully to the immediate environs of Rishi Valley,students have to learn about an arid region inhabited byshepherds and subsistence farmers, living in patterns thathave existed since Neolithic times. The universals inhuman nature are not neglected. Here, Charles Darwinstheory of human origins is brought in to destroy oldprejudices about race and caste, by teaching that humanbeings have a common descent. The lesson from Darwinis explicitly brought out in the topics about prejudice.

History is becoming a contested field in many nationsof the world. The education scenario in India today reflectsthis frantic search for roots. Our approach seeks insteadto impress on students the fundamental principles of thehistorians methodology, that our knowledge of the pastis never absolute, that new evidence can overturn thebest hypotheses.

Above all we eschew the chauvinism in favour of thevirtues of detachment. In the context of history, thisfaculty, which Krishnamurtis thought shares with ancientideals of life, can play a truly restorative role in situating

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students and teachers firmly in the present. To orientstudents in a broader historical context informed bypresent realities, to free them from false views of the past,is not to strip them of their culture but to enable them tounderstand their present situation with greater clarity.

Following Krishnamurtis insight that observation ofnature has a fundamental role in educational practice, theschool set up an Institute of Bird Studies and NaturalHistory. The Institute has a two-fold agenda: to cultivate aclose study of nature in the students of Rishi Valley and toheighten awareness of our natural heritage on the nationalscene. Nature Studies have become an important activityfor students. They keep track of migrant populations ofbirds, watch out for newcomers and have documented thebreeding biology, for instance, of the Great Horned Owland Brown Fish Owl. Research conducted by students andteachers has revealed the following data: there are 200species of birds in the valley, 50 species of butterflies, somerare like the Blue Mormon; and a variety of reptiles,including the near extinct bridal snake.

To promote a caring attitude towards nature and birdsamong students and residents Rishi Valley was declareda Bird Preserve in July 1991 and since then bird studieshave gained prominence. The oath we took on thatoccasion reads in part underlines our resolve ofpreserving, protecting and enriching the avifaunal wealth,habitat diversity and flora of the Valley as a whole

A love of nature, freedom from the past, and a longvision, the basic virtues embedded in Krishnamurtiseducational philosophy, are necessary if our futurecitizens are to fulfil the constitutional obligationsembodied in Article 51A (g)

It shall be the duty of every citizen to protect and improve thenatural environment including forests, lakes, rivers andwildlife and to have compassion for wild creatures.

It is a Directive Principle in the Indian Constitutionbut for the inhabitants of the Valley it should become acentral tenet.

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RURAL EDUCATION

A new design for village education is being developed atRishi Valley for the past twenty years. The programme isbased on the premise that human welfare demands aregenerated landscape, especially in a country where themajority population lives at subsistence level, and wherethe produce of the earth directly enhances human well-being (Jodha, 2001).

The Satellite Schools RVEC created in the centre ofhamlets around the Valley represent degraded landscapesturned into green public spaces. A typical Satellite Schoolcan host, beside an elementary school, a bal-wadi, adulteducation programmes, puppet shows and theatre. Theschools are linked with each other and with governmentschools through metric melas, where children fromneighbouring schools buy and sell food, weigh themselvesand their parents, compute averages and, in the process,learn to play around with numbers. Doctors from RishiValley take responsibility for student health in theseschools.

It is hoped that the grounds of the school, which areterraced to conserve water and planted with shrubs andtrees, will partially meet part of the food and fodder needsof the village, and provide spaces for conservation of bio-diversity. One day perhaps the grain for mid-day mealscould be grown on the school premises. Our eventual hopeis that these schools will serve as the nucleus for a recoveryof the traditional commons, and the return of socialcapital: a wise use of natural resources that is being lostto a competitive market economy.

The Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Research,located on the Rishi Valley Campus, has created studymaterials suited to the educational needs of the village.A typical village school in India provides one teacher tocater to students belonging to mixed ages and abilitygroups. The method of teaching is textbook-centred, withthe teacher dominating the classroom. Failures haunt

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these schools; most elementary schools count the largestnumbers in their first grade.

These educational materials break down the learningprocess into a sequence of concrete and manageable steps.This collection of cards in elementary mathematics,environmental science and language are graded in waysthat students can easily identify and work through bythemselves or with minimum help from the teacher;students are self-learners; teachers merely facilitators.Respect and tolerance for other cultures, and concern forthe natural environment are values woven into thematerial.

A graphic chart described as the Ladder of Learningin at the centre of the multi-grade programme. The Ladder,in conjunction with the cards, charts the progress of astudent through stages of the learning process. It registersthis progression in a simple visual display that gives thechild a concrete sense of progress. It is a visual metaphorthat has proven to be a very effective motivating factor,as each student clearly sees herself moving onward (andupwards!) through the subject.

The Ladder guides the organisation of classrooms. Itenables teachers to divide the class, not according toability groups but to different organisational principles:fully-teacher Supported, Partly teacher-supported andpeer-supported groups are clubbed separately irrespectiveof their ability. In an arrangement where older studentsand younger students are part of the same group, a greatprinciple adopted by RIVER from J. Krishnamurti Youare both the teacher and the taught, is translated intothe classroom, but in different ways.

It is sometimes thought that the Ladder of Learningis a straightjacket into which all content is inflexiblystrapped. It has occasionally been described as a systemof programmed learning. The confusion that can becleared away by reflecting on the relationship betweengrammatical structures and the use of language; the rulesof language do not impede an individual from speaking

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creatively. The Ladders constraints are no more limitingthan those imposed by grammatical rules on speech both poets and ordinary human beings are able to speakin sentences they have not learnt before.

Forty percent of the spaces mapped on the Ladder areleft free, for teachers to fill in with the help of local content:songs, riddles, local myths and mothers tales. Puppetryand surveys of local flora and fauna are part of theenrichment routine followed by each school. Local culture,in this way, finds its way into the classroom. The schooldoors remain open, and local potters donate their clayelephants and horses to beautify school grounds.A Mothers Committee takes charge of mid-day meals,hosts metric melas and overseas the teachers work.

A Rural Health Centre has been providing quality primaryhealth care to the villages in the area. The success in theimmediate vicinity has drawn people from as far as onehundred fifty kilo meters away. A unique feature of the centreis nurses trained in each village to monitor that patientscontinue treatment. A volunteer from each of these villagesreceives training from the Health Centre on AIDS awareness.

These multi-grade, multi-level teaching and learningmethodology has become a model for thousands of formaland non-formal schools in several parts of the country.Among the more prominent adaptations of themethodology are the famous Nali Kali experiment in theformal schools of HD Kote block of Mysore Districts andthe Corporation Schools in Chennai. We have just signedan agreement with a UNICEF and Sarva Siksha Abhayan(SSA) supported programme for defining, designing anddeveloping a holistic quality package of essentialinterventions for primary schools, in several states,including Gujarat, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Orissa,Bihar and Jharkhand.

CONSERVATION WORKThe educational work of Rishi Valley is nested in actualpractice water conservation, soil and moisture

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conservation, reforestation, preserving local species ofdomesticated cattle, use of alternative energy are all partof our work that benefits the inhabitants of the valleyand introduces students to an alternative lifestyle.

Water is the Valleys greatest problem. Monsoons areerratic and the few natural streams flow only during themonsoon season and swiftly grow dry. For most of theyear underground water drawn from wells is the onlysource of water. The ground water stood at one hundred-thirty meters below ground level, as a result of too manynew wells being dug by the schools need to bathe andfeed five-hundred inhabitants, maintain its dairy and byfarmers who now grow paddy instead of the rain-fed milletand peanuts.

Serious water harvesting began in the seventies withthe Centre donating its own land for the construction oftwo percolation tanks, and supervising projects financedby the AP government. The two tanks, the first calledLost Lake, situated midway up the hills to the south ofthe campus helped regenerate one hundred-fifty acres ofa once-barren hillside. The other, situated in the valley,services wells three miles downstream and has resultedin a much more prosperous farming community. Fivemore tanks were built more recently in the Valley.

Beginning in 1988, under a grant from the WastelandDevelopment Board, the Centre built small check damsand bunds along the contours of an 800-hectares hillside.This meant persuading villagers to donate labour andallow construction of bunds across their small holdings.Custard Apples, which goats avoid, were planted alongthe bunds to hold in soil. Large nurseries of jamun,tamarind, peepal, red sander and neem saplings wereestablished. Several of these were given away to farmersfrom distant parts, and many others planted on hundredfifty acres of the bald hillside where Lost Lake is located.Over a period of twenty years this barren hillside is nowpart scrubland and part dense forest. For the local villagecommunity the hundred fifty acres hillside means fodder

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for its animal population and fuel wood; the space is akind of insurance against long periods of drought. Thecampus that once consisted of dry lands and scrublands,now boasts of woodlands and several wetlands.

A survey of the flora on campus revealed manyhundred species of plants, several of which have medicinalproperties. Following the survey a flourishing HerbalGarden has been established on six acres of land. Underthe care of an Ayurvedic specialist, it now has two hundredspecies of local bushes and trees that provide medicinalbenefits to the local population. There is a concertedeffort to spread the plants and restore the fast-vanishingknowledge and faith in their healing properties to nearbyvillages, especially among the women.

The Rishi Valley Dairy is engaging in the task ofbreeding Ongole cattle, a domesticated breed famous forthe load carrying capacity of the male. In the currenteconomic climate where breeding is almost entirely aimedat increasing milk yields, the species is near extinction inAndhra Pradesh. We are concerned about the long termimplications of this practice for marginal agriculture whosemainstay is the bull-driven plough.

Mindful of the limited energy resources in the countryand taking advantage of various subsidies from theGovernment of India, Rishi Valley Education Centre hasbuilt a large gobar gas plant in its dairy which servesaround 25% of the schools cooking needs. Solar heatersfor hot water serve several dormitories.

KRISHNAMURTI, THE DEEP ECOLOGIST

Arne Naess the Norwegian philosopher who coined theterm Deep Ecology, distinguishes three types of DeepEcologist in the following

within deep ecology you have those who specialise on aspiritual level, saying you have to change the way you arementally, and others say no, all the problems in deep ecologyare political more or less, you have to go into politics and thethird one just utters ah, wonderful nature, wonderful nature,

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wonderful nature. For Naess himself, . . . ecological scienceconcerned with facts and logic alone, cannot answer ethicalquestions about how we should live. For this we needecological wisdom. Deep ecology seeks to develop this byfocussing on deep experience, deep questioning and deepcommitment (Naess, 1997).

Krishnamurti properly fits Naess first category ofspiritual thinkers. The main thrust of his thought was toawaken human beings from the obstinacy, a descriptionused by the well-known biologist Edward O. Wilson, inwhich they are sunk. Human beings are adapted byDarwinian natural selection, Wilson explains, to short-term decisions and focus on local concerns.Krishnamurtis analysis of the human condition took inthis destructive side of human nature, its incapacity totake a long view, and consider the wider implications ofits own actions. But Krishnamurti tempered thisrecognition with a radiant sense of human possibilities.

According to Wilson, if human consumption patternscontinue at present levels we will by 2100 need four moreplanet Earths to sustain life as we know it. And it isfairly well established that resource scarcity results inviolence. Krishnamurti addresses these issues in hisphilosophy of education.

The aim of education, according to Krishnamurti, isto create good human beings with an awakened sense ofresponsibility. The aim is not primarily to mould theminto slots created by society: professional success, acomfortable homes and a respectable family life. Thesehe dismissed as being narrow, bourgeois and second-hand; as locked into the short-term vision and incapableof resolving the problems that we as a species face. Insteadhe thought education should be dedicated to creating goodhuman beings with a long view.

The three main components of Krishnamurtis conceptof goodness are freedom, intelligence and responsibility.And all three are the outcome of the right kind of learning.Learning, for Krishnamurti, is both a positive faculty and

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a negating capability. Learning is positive because itteaches you about yourself and the world. It is a negatingcapability because it allows the darker impulses that guidehuman nature, greed and violence, to dissolve.

Krishnamurtis response to a student who asks him,How can we know ourselves? helps highlights bothaspects of this faculty. The first step in the process, as heexplains very simply, is to observe as one might in a mirrorthe way you talk, the way you behave, whether you arehard, cruel, rough, patient (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 76).The mirror reveals what one is, but problems take holdwhen one begins to disapprove of what the mirror shows.The mirror says, this is the fact; but you do not like thefact. So, you want to alter it. You start distorting it.(Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 76). Attention is silently watchingwhat the mirror reveals, without the desire to change it.When this silent observation comes into being there isfreedom from anger, envy and the pettiness that cloudsthe mirror. Look, he says, not with your mind but withyour eyes (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 23).

Over and over again, distinguishing what is artificialor socially constructed from what is natural, Krishnamurtidirected students to nature and to the senses. The sensesare tools for cleansing the mind: Just look at the stars,the clear sky, the birds, the shape of the leaves. Watchthe shadow. Watch the bird across the sky. By being withyourself, sitting quietly under a tree, you begin tounderstand the workings of your own mind andthat is as important as going to class (Krishnamurti,1974, p. 47).

Unlearning the emotions of envy, greed, anger andambition is the key that opens the mind to a wider anddeeper reality, away from its narrow, self-centred vision.Unlearning frees the mind from its divisive actions, itstendency to look at others in stereotypical images: Youare not a Russian or an American, you are not Hindu or aMuslim. You are apart from these labels. You are the restof mankind (Krishnamurti, 1987,72-73).

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Krishnamurtis educational philosophy sought touncover the individuals relationship with society andthrough that with nature. He held that human beings,despite being modern, are not really individuals in thetruest sense of that word; they are still driven by socialforces, by the world-view derived from their elders, peers,society at large and the times in which they live. Thesesocial forces are motivated by fear, ambition, and greed.Learning about the influences that direct ones life andshedding the emotions of fear, greed, envy and angerthrough learning about them clears the way forcompassion.

So the moral truths that Krishnamurti sought cameneither packaged as true belief, nor as knowledge andtheories, but were intrinsic to a spontaneously-bornsensitivity to life: Fear shuts out the understanding oflife with all its extraordinary complications, with itsstruggles, its sorrows, its poverty, its riches and beautythe beauty of the birds, and of the sunset on the water.When you are frightened, you are insensitive to all this(Krishnamurti, 1963). Krishnamurti was convinced thatour shortsighted instincts can be overcome and the rightkind of education can show us the way to reclaiming theEarth for future generations.

Edward Wilson recognises that our species destructiveinstincts are unique; they are not shared by other specieswith whom we live on Earth. With Krishnamurti, Wilsonalso recognises that science alone cannot solve theproblem human beings have created. But whereas Wilsoninvokes the lost instinct we share with the whole of life asthe path to salvation Every species, right down tonematode worms, has pretty elaborate behaviour thatleads them to the right habitat at the right time. Shouldntwe find some residue of that instinct in human beings? On some level, it is wired into us to be around nature. Weshould not let that instinct disappear. Krishnamurti putshis faith in the human ability to free the mind from thenegative emotions of greed and violence, as a way of

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unlocking the shackles that bind individuals to self-interest.

Krishnamurtis vision for humanity resonates withthinkers both from Indias ancient and more recent past.

His almost nihilistic radicalism is captured by theBuddhist Nagarjunas tribute to the Buddha in the laststanza of the Mulamadhyamakarika.

I prostrate before the Gautama, who, grounded in compassion,taught the true dharma in order to destroy all opinions (or allpoints of view).

His great passion for nature with Tagores idea ofIndias civilisational values.

Contemporary western civilisation is built of brick and wood.It is rooted in the city. But Indian civilisation has beendistinctive in locating its sources of regeneration, material anintellectual, in the forest, not the city, Indias best ideas havecome where man was in communion with trees and riversand lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the foresthas helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture ofthe forest has fuelled the culture of Indian society. The culturethat has arisen from the forest has been influenced by thediverse processes of renewal of life that are always at playin the forest, varying from species to species, from season toseason, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principleof life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became theprinciple of Indian civilisation.

Not being caged in brick, wood and iron, Indianthinkers were surrounded by and linked to the life of theforest. The living forest was for them their shelter, theirsource of food. The intimate relationship between humanlife and living nature became the source of knowledge.Nature was not dead and inert in this knowledge system.The experience of life in the forest made it adequatelyclear that living nature was the source of light and air, offood and water (Quoted by Vandana Shiva, 1988, p. 55).

Krishnamurtis idea of a school with Open Doors recallGandhis idea of Trusteeship, some of the basic principlesof which were codified under the Mahatmas direction:

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Trusteeship provides a means of transforming the presentcapitalist order of society into an egalitarian one. It gives noquarter to capitalism, but gives the present owning class achance of reforming itself. It is based on the faith that humannature is never beyond redemption (Dantwala, 1986, p. 40).

CONCLUSION

The urgent need of the hour is vividly described by MarkEdwards, who has been following environmental issuesfor close to forty years.

Humanity will have to put aside the deep divisions it hasmaintained for thousands and thousands of years and takepractical steps to solve this problem. The prize will be todeflect military spending, currently one trillion dollars ofglobal taxpayers money a year, to pay to reinvent the modernworld so that it is compatible with nature. This wouldrequire a coalition of those in the peace movement,environmentalists, those who support the campaign againstpoverty and the silent majority. They have to find their voice.Unless they do, a hard rains a-gonna fall (Edwards,2006, p. 8).

If what Peter Drucker predicts is true and the world ismoving towards a knowledge society then knowledge willhave to be harnessed to nurturing the Earth, not savagingit. Krishnamurti suggested this transformation wouldrequire that human beings unlearn the habits of thoughtbred by greed and aggression.

Indian society seemed to develop more by successivereligious transformation than by violence, Kosambiremarks, adding that society failed to develop further formuch the same reason (Kosambi 1956). India might haveemerged as a more homogeneous society in the twentiethcentury, if its mode of development in the ancient worldhad been more like that of European cultures if overtviolence had been an instrument of subduing the culturesof technologically less advanced people.

There was rarely the bitter, violent conflict between the mostprimitive and the most developed elements of society in India

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that one finds in the devastating interaction in the devastatinginteraction of Spanish conquistadors . . . with tribal culturesin South America (Kosambi, 1956, p. 8).

Kosambis attribution of a positive role to religion inIndia is intriguing, coming as it does from a historianwith a Marxist view of history. But then Kosambi was anhistorian for whom the relationship between theory andempirical data was one of interdependence; ideology didnot take precedence over evidence; history he said isthere for those who have the eyes to see it.

Going on to illustrate with multiple examples whichneed not concern us here, Kosambi ended the first chapterof his An Introduction to the Study of Indian History witha quotation from Marx wherein he congratulated thephilosophers foresight into the consequences of Britishcolonial rule for the future of India. The colonial legacyof railways, and machine production, ...a new Indianbureaucracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat, and army. wouldcertainly remake the subcontinent, but would not bringany change the material condition of the people.

Indias cultural pluralism, which began in the ancientworld, was achieved at the cost of hidden violence thatpositioned caste groups into hierarchies, assigning strictlydefined ecological niches to each group. Jati, like species,in this pre-Darwinian enterprise, imitated nature. Thepost-industrial era in Indias history has led the countryinto what Gadgil and Guha describe as a cauldron ofconflicts. Economic and educational policies of the statehave neither levelled the field for all individual citizensnor provided opportunities for advancements to the poor.The cauldron of conflicts is the result of competition andconflict over limited resources. The Indian reality onlyreflects the larger picture in the world where nationscompete over resources and spend their wealth of weaponsof power rather than on servicing the Earth.

The statement is prescient despite the hopes of Indianstatesmen who dreamed of erasing the hierarchicalstructures and hidden violence in Indias ancient societal

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structure when the new constitution adopted afterindependence enshrined the concepts of liberty, equalityand fraternity.

Education based on a spiritual non-divisive philosophyof J. Krishnamurti can play a positive role thatD. D. Kosambi recorded in his historical reconstructionof Indias past. J. Krishnamurti, as the following quotationillustrates, defined the problems of education in a holisticframework.

The world of nature and the world of man are inter-related.Man cannot escape from that. When he destroys nature he isdestroying himself. When he kills another he is killing himself.The enemy is not the other but you. To live in such harmonywith nature, with the world, naturally brings about a differentworld. This is one of the responsibilities of the educator, notmerely to teach mathematics or how to run a computer. Farmore important is to have communion with the world. Theworld may be too large but the world is where he is; that ishis world. And this brings about a natural consideration,affection for others, courtesy and behaviour that is not rough,cruel, vulgar.

The world of nature and the world of man are inter-related.Man cannot escape from that. When he destroys nature heis destroying himself. When he kills another he is killinghimself. The enemy is not the other but you. To live in suchharmony with nature, with the world, naturally brings abouta different world. (Krishnamurti, 1985)

The education project at Rishi Valley demonstratesthat Krishnamurti was more than a visionary; that hiseducational vision can be translated into a reality that isboth relevant to our times and to the future.

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