SARASWATHI
– GODDESS OF GYAN
Tomorrow,
we are celebrating Saraswathi Puja. Saraswathi is worshipped as “Goddess of
Gyan “. Nowadays, we are teaching our children that she is a “Goddess of
Education “. This is mainly due to transformation of society and perception of
the society about education. We reduced the value of education from path to
knowledge to path to livelihood. We are more bothered about comfortable and
well settled life. Accordingly, knowledge and Gyan have taken a back seat and success
in examinations and interviews are a priority. Education is a steppingstone to
reach the ultimate aim of Gyan (Much more than knowledge perceived by us). Due
to this we are making our gods also into stones rather than the knowing the
real purpose behind Bhakti and worship.
In our
locality, one religious teacher was explaining the meaning of all familiar
story of Tiger and Cow. One person in the crowd raised a doubt whether tiger
will agree for cow to leave to feed her calf even if it begs for it. The
teacher did not mock at him. Instead, he appreciated the person for being
attentive and thinking about the story rather than listening, agreeing and
simply ignoring the moral. Then the teacher asked him whether he is believing
that tiger and cow will actually speak, talk and negotiate with each other when
they come face to face. If he believes that, then believing other things is
very easy. The essence of that answer is if you start questioning from the
beginning to end, you will understand the triviality of this questioning and
the main aim of the importance of speaking the truth. That is why Indian
philosophy never discouraged questioning and in fact all Upanishads are the
results of debate between different people of all genders, castes and professionals.
Nobel Laurette Amartya Sen also writes
in his famous book “Argumentative Indian” that in India an atheist is born the
day god is born and no Galileo was ever poisoned in India like western
countries for questioning the traditional beliefs. At the same time, we should
not start debating whether this Sri Lanka or Ram Setu or Kurukshetra are same
as described in great epics Ramayana and
Mahabharat. Instead of that we should try to understand the messages they
convey to the whole world.
Another
great interpretation of education and gyan are explained by the two verses
written by great telugu poet Pothana in Bhagavatham . These verses are conveyed
through Prahlad to his father Hiranyakasipa when he was asked by him how the
learning is going on in grukul and what
he learnt. For the first question he answers that he was taught well by gurus
and he read many shastras and apart from that he read many things and in one
sentence he read all the intricacies in learning. For the second question he
answers that hands,legs,eyes,mind,head,ears,the tongue which are used for the
service and praise of god are only can be called as such. The first one is
education and second one is gyan and the synthesis of both only can create a
scientistlike Kalam or Jagadish Chandra Bose or a politician like A B Vajpayee
or P V Narasimha Rao or an industrialst like N R Narayana Murthy or Ratan Tata
or a bureaucrat like T N Seshan and a judge like P N Bhagawathi
