THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY

THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY

The views expressed in this write-up are largely based on the address, delivered at Moscow University on 18^th June 1956, by the former President of India, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975).

One of the most prominent scholars of the world, Dr.Radhakrishnan had great interest in education, literature, religion and philosophy.   He was an excellent writer and an equally excellent orator.  He often quoted from Sanskrit scriptures to illustrate a point both in his writings and speeches. His style was aphoristic.  It appears from the references cited in his books that he was gifted with a marvelously reliable memory.

According to his address mentioned above, buildings do not make a university.  It is the teachers and the pupils and their pursuit of knowledge which make the soul of a university.       A university is the sanctuary of the intellectual life of a society.  The healthy roots of national life are to be found in the people.  They are the well-springs of national awakening. They are the spirit behind the   revolutionary movements of society.

When we give education, we start a ferment of debate and discussion of first principles. The educate youth voice their thoughts and find fault with things as they are.

A university trains not only professionals but also men and women who think for themselves.  They do not judge everything by the party line.  If a country destroys the initiative, the freedom of its people, it does so at its peril. The loss of its intellectual vigour makes its future bleak. The true development of a country is the development of the spirit of its people.      

6^th January 2020                                        G. R. KANWAL

A Short Dialogue From Shakespeare’s King Lear

       A Short Dialogue From Shakespeare’s King Lear

“Cordelia. We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst. For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; myself could else out-frown falSe Fortune’s frown. Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

Lear. No, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison; we two alone will sing like birds I’ the cage” when thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out; and  take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow like the moon.”

               England’s greatest dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote the tragic play ‘King Lear” in 1605.      

                  Here is a short outline of the play for the purpose of this dialogue. “Lear, 80-year old, King of Britain wishes to retire after many years as ruler, and divides his kingdom among his three daughters. When the moment for the actual distribution of the territory is at hand, he somewhat childishly proposes to make his gifts dependent upon each daughter’s declaration of love for him. The two eldest, Goneril, and Regan, are over-fulsome in their protestations, and the old king is highly pleased. As he turns expectantly to Cordelia, the youngest, to hear what she shall say “to draw a third more opulent than her sisters, he is hurt by her simple and sincere expression of duty and affection. Enraged at her apparent coolness, he casts her off completely, arranges to live with each of her elder sisters in turn, and presents Cordelia dowerless to her sisters.

                        As the plot progresses, the two eldest daughters turn out to be most ungrateful, and cruel to their father. However, the youngest one Cordelia stands by him like a guardian angel.

                          The dialogue quoted above is a little earlier than Cordelia is hanged to death and the broken-hearted father dies trying to revive her. These were his last words:

“Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee? He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes; the good years shall devour them, flesh and fell, ere they shall make us weep; we’ll see ‘em starve first.”              

                                    According to a critic Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent’s tooth: she has struck her father most serpent like upon the very heart: her visage is wolfish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father’s breast; for her husband she is a gilded serpent….She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tiger, not daughters; each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is covered with the fell (skin) of a beast.”

2^nd January 2020                            G.R.KANWAL

  

                                                                                   

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New Year, Tagore and Tennyson

                  New Year, Tagore and Tennyson

            What follows is one poem about New Year published in 1850 by English poet Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and another poem included in Gitanjali (1913) by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

              Both Tennyson and Tagore tell their readers about the obsolete and irrational social, political and moral evils which should vanish from their motherland in the time to come.

                The title of Tennyson’s poem is ‘RING OUR, WILD BELLS’: It reads as follows:

                         Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

                         The flying cloud, the frosty light:

                         The year is dying in the night;

                        Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

                        Ring out the old, ring in the new,

                        Ring happy bells, across the snow

                        The year is going, let him go;

                        Ring out the false, ring in the true.

                        Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more; 

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out false pride and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Tagore’s poem has no title.  It is published at serial number 35 in the anthology of poems/songs entitled Gitanjali for which he was honoured with Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.  All the poems in Gitanjali are addressed to God by one who is closely related to Him as a beloved.      

                        Given below is the full text of the poem:

“WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches it arms towards perfection:

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into

the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought

and action----------

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. “

1^st January 2020                                     G.R.KANWAL

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 

            As the temperature in Delhi fell to 2.4 degrees on 30^th December 2019 and made DelhiItes shiver because such a cold winter had repeated itself after a lapse of 119 years, I was suddenly reminded of a song recited by Amiens, a singer in the play ‘AS YOU LIKE IT’ written by the greatest English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) between the end of 1598 and the middle of 1600.

                The song which is reproduced below points towards the eternal reality:     “That the wind can be unkind and blow strong but it isn’t as cruel as human society.’ 

The text of the song reads as follows:

            “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

            Thou art not so unkind

            As man’s ingratitude;

            Thy tooth is not so keen,

            Because thou art not seen,

            Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! Sing, heigh-ho! Unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

            Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

            This life is most jolly.

            Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

            That dost not bite so nigh

            As benefits forgot:

            Though thou the waters warp,

            Thy sting is not so sharp

            As friend remember’d not.

            Heigh-ho! Sing, heigh-ho! “

              

31^st December 2019                                                        G. R. KANWAL

                               

LOVE – A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO ROY CROFT

          LOVE – A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO ROY CROFT

The poem reproduced herein is attributed to the American poet Roy Croft (1907-1973)0, but according to another account it was actually written by his compatriot Mary Carolyn Davies (b.1888). It is mostly recited as a wedding song or a wedding speech.

Just for the knowledge of the readers, it may be added here that love is not an ordinary emotion. It is an un-extinguishable flame, a very deep passion, fondness, friendship, liking, attachment, affection, adoration or infatuation. Life cannot survive without it. It may take other different forms, but even then it continues to remain a matter of the heart whose beatings keep volatile not only humans but also other animates existing on this earth.

The poem is entitled LOVE and reads as follows:

“I LOVE YOU.

Not only for what you are,

But for what I am

When I am with you.

I love you,

Not only for what

You have made of yourself,

But for what

You are making of me.

I love you

For the part of me

That you bring out;

I love you

For putting your hand

Into my heaped-up hand

And passing over

All foolish, weak things

That you can’t help

Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out

Into the light

All the beautiful belongings

That no one else, had looked

Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you

Are helping me to make

Of the lumber of my life

Not a tavern

But a temple;

Out of the works

Of my every day

Not a reproach

But a song.

I love you

Because you have done

More than any creed

Could have done

To make me good,

And more than any fate

Could have done

To make me happy.

You have done it

Without a touch,

Without a word,

Without a sign.

You have done it

By being yourself.

Perhaps that is what

Being a friend means,

After all. “

26^th December 2019                                                        G.R.KANWAL      

CHRISTMAS EVE WITH A PSALM

CHRISTMAS EVE WITH A PSALM

On this Christmas Eve (24^th December 2019), let us sing a Psalm (sacred song) from the Holy Bible. The psalm selected in this write up is at  No.01 in The Book of Psalms. In all the book comprises 150 Psalms.  

According to Christian history, It was David. described in the Hebrew Bible as the third king of the United Monarch of Israel and Judah who authored the Psalms included in the Bible. He was a young shepherd who gained fame as a musician.

            Even a casual study of these  Psalms shows that they are full of eternal wisdom.  They praise God, describe His attributes, and  also counsel human beings how to live a righteous life to avoid the wrath of God.

             Given below is the text of the 1^st  PSALM .

1.“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of the sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.   

2.But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doth shall prosper.

4. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

5.Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

6. For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. “

24^th December 2019                                                        G. R. KANWAL  

EVENING PRAYER

                EVENING PRAYER

Prayer is not a list of demands addressed by human beings to their type of God Almighty. It should be, rather must be, a ‘Thank You Letter’ for giving you innumerable things in the world In which you live.  It is HE who has given you life and  personal  talents that you regularly employ to pass your days and nights in this beautiful world.

 It is natural that you commit errors, lapses and blunders. There may be even serious moral aberrations crimes and sins. Your duty in such  cases is to seek God’s forgiveness, for He is always merciful to those who repent and promise not to repeat their errant behaviour. 

According English poet laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-92), many things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of. “ What are men better than sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift no hands of prayer for themselves and those who call them friends.

 Given below is an Evening Prayer by the American poet Gabriel H. Charles (1856-1932). Throughout the poem, his attitude is that of sincere penitent. So he prays :

If I have wounded any soul today,

If I have caused one foot to go astray,

If I have walked in my own willful way---

            Good Lord, forgive!

If I have uttered idle words or vain,

If I have turned aside from want or pain,

Lest I myself should suffer through the strain----

            Good Lord, forgive!

If I have craved for joys that are not mine,

If I have let my wayward heart repine,

Dwelling on things of earth, not things divine----

            Good Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse, or hard, or cold,

If I have longed for shelter in Thy Fold,

When Thou hast given me some part to hold----

            Good Lord, forgive!

Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee,

Forgive the secret sins I do not see.

That which I know not, Father, teach Thou me-

            Help me to live.

22 December 2019                                               G. R. KANWAL