It is Dr Shrikant's first death anniversary tomorrow. I would like to pay my respects ,to him. I have been wary, given a train of eulogies and obituaries that I have penned over the past year, a prospect that I do not enjoy. I have been uneasy about a note that Dr Shrikant had sent me a few weeks before he died, wanting to discuss it before converting it into an article. Unfortunately we never met after that. It was at first glance undecipherable (even banal) and people close to the dean to whom it was sent were also unable to make much sense out of it (I presume, as none replied). This is an attempt to incorporate the ideas therein, to weave it into this piece that argues that Dr Shrikant imagined the ideal of Vedanta at the heart of SPJIMR. The original note stands appended to this article at the end. Fortunately I will not receive an early morning call from him asking me for my first draft, first thing at 8.00 am, hoping bleary eyed that he minimises his edits!The presumptions and errors in this article if any, would be entirely mine.
A school
is not an organisation but an organism, "a fragile ecosystem and yet a combustible
mixture of impossible ideas, ideals, and people". I am reminded how Tagore
and indeed the Bengali tradition viewed the sacred feminine (or any
institution, even nation) in its dual aspect as mrunmayee as “form” and chinmayee
as an “idea”. So too is the idea of the school. At the heart of a school is apart from its buildings or curricula or timetables, its very
"faculties" that serve to exercise only one great idea and that is "reason". Among the memorable books that emerged from the flower children of the
60s is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig;
where he describes the school or University as a “church of reason”. He used
the classic formulation of the Bible to examine the nature of the church of
reason. When some people complained to a priest about a church building being
converted to a pub, the sagely priest reminded them, the real church was never
in the brick and mortar but in each believer in Christ who constituted the body
of the church, a living organism; the real meaning of the Greek word ekklesias was the “calling forth” the
church or assembly, not a building but a body. The real church however was
always invisible.
"The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage
of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and
which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is
regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally
carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real
University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of
reason itself." Pirsig
Robert, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’
In
imagining a business school our preoccupation with its governance and
administration we often overlook what ends it is supposed to serve; preoccupied
with an instrumental rather than value rationality that focuses on resource
gaps, availability and utilization but not on the ends themselves. We want to
know `how' not the `why'. Man is less limited by his tools but more by his
vision, but like the apocryphal tale of Mullah Nasruddin we search under light
for what we have lost in the darkness. The church of reason can however become
just another large system, a stultifying bureaucracy that presides over
conformity rather than creativity, pushing an incremental agenda and the status
quo often cloaked under an array of initiatives.
Few
schools really further the kind of critical rationality or stimulate creativity
or foster independence in thought and action and those, who do have a simple
idea at its core. Fewer still are those which show the way like the Black
Mountain College (US) shone in its brief 24 year history. The humble Indian ‘lota’ that Charles and Ray Eames found
ubiquitous could inspire the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad. The huddle
of students around a teacher each unaware of their roles inspired Louis Kahn to
design the iconic IIM Ahmedabad. At SPJIMR however Dr Shrikant imagined a
Vedantic heart articulated in varied ways that was both conservative and
traditional and at once liberal and modern. John Fowles an English novelist
observed that the Greek notion of education was best described by the
philosopher Plotinus. He noted that apart from preparing the student for an
economic role in society by training for a livelihood there are three further
aims of education; a civil and social education that helps man to relate to
society, an inward education that is self-revealing, and a synoptic education
that helps the student grasp the complex of human existence. It is telling that
the last three aims of education are enduring and do not change as easily as
the first. Dr Shrikant wanted to bring centrality to these less obvious aims
and make them inform management education in a unique way. To him spirituality
was possibly just a shorthand for these important ends and Vedanta was just its
idiomatic expression. Spirituality to him included, interconnectedness, the cultivation
of an inner life, reflection on meaning making, engaging in the symbolism that
permeates culture, commitment to key values, manifesting the potentiality if not
divinity within man, and accessing the self that is beyond the corporeal
identity. Towards this end he had
experimented in varied ways, first by placing the student as central in value
to the school and I believe this is less obvious than it appears in its
radicalness, in dismissing the curriculum and faculty centric design based on
expertise and specialisation and centralisation of authority. He innovated in
design whether in students owning up the institution through administrative
involvement (ADMAP), kindling a consientization to borrow Freire’s term in
developing a critical awareness of one’s social reality (DOCC and Abhyudaya),
reflecting on religious and spiritual traditions and culture or even entrepreneurship
etc. Much to the chagrin of faculty he was distrustful of classroom as a
vehicle for deep commitment and was willing to be disruptive of its dominance.
He reminded faculty to focus on outcome rather than activity, of learning
rather than teaching often insisting that real learning was outside the class
room.
What kind
of overarching values did he imagine that Vedanta would offer in designing a synoptic
education, let alone a business school? I must admit that I never asked myself
that question when he was alive and am embarrassed that I do so now. In doing
so I would not be dismissive of Vedanta as being antiquated or anachronistic in
such an endeavour but in the spirit of enquiry push it to its logical limit.
For in our learning we must bear an open mind that despite the differences in
the epistemology of science, religion, philosophy and spirituality (whether of
empiricism - perception and inference or revelation), we need to discern that
the quest for wisdom is synoptic though the quest for knowledge often narrows
the field and whittles its utility to questions of meaning and purpose. We need
all those ways of thinking though we need to understand the limitations and the
difficulty in reconciling the disparate values and approaches. While we
champion all those ways of knowing, we make our hearts choose that which might
lead us to fulfilment however we conceive of it.
If we
discard the chaff of the conservative ideology that Advaita Vedanta often
cloaks itself under, i.e. the world of ochre robed sannyasis affiliated to antiquated Sanskrit texts and institutions,
we might discover anew its key ideals. The most relevant way to sum up the
principal proposition of Vedanta is that the self and the “other” are in
essence identical, what is real is a unity, and all sense of separateness or
individuality is an appearance. It follows that its first corollary would be
that of radical egalitarianism despite the reality of social stratification of
caste and class. The second is that what we give others is what we give
ourselves; in other words an ideal of service and the consecration of all work that
places duties before rights as a commitment to excellence unto the greater
order of nature (as also a relinquishment of agency without renouncing
responsibility). The way to approach the real would be an enquiry into one’s
own self not just as ‘know thyself’ (i.e. not restricted to self-mastery) but
in discovering that at the heart of all knowing is not an object but the very
subject i.e. “Being” (an identity of the knower and the known); this
ontological principle is non-dual consciousness, a grand unity (Tawhid in the Islamic sense) not just an
aesthetic principle but that which undergirds all existence. It is in this
simple idea of “Being” that Vedanta weaves its final unity amidst the diversity
and disparateness in space and time; that is simultaneously personal, immanent
and transcendent in reconciling the individual and the cosmos. It is here that
we might even borrow the words of the Christ in a non-religious way that
asserts “Being” that “(‘I am’) the way the truth and the life” amidst the
welter of change (or ‘Becoming’). Further in its radicalness Vedanta takes the
Buddhist notion of two levels of reality to assert that the life of action is
not to be eschewed but embraced, seized from the cloister and foisted in the
agora. Vedanta’s assertion of the divinity of each (within, if you like) places
faith back in the individual, and exhorts him to manifest that divinity. Its
ethical vision put the responsibility back to the individual rather than assert
any institutional or textual authority or injunctions. Thus capitalist impulses
are not frowned upon and its incentives are viewed not as personal reward but
as a stewardship or trustee to surpluses. I am aware that it isn’t easy to
translate these ideals into the design of institutions. It needs a well-founded
conviction to start with to even attempt such an endeavour and Dr Shrikant was
stubbornly so. Vedanta does not really need the varied cosmology of allied
religious beliefs e.g. reincarnation and such eschatologies or even the other
worldliness and renunciation associated with spirituality. Vedanta is not
religion though it has its roots in faith. The faith Vedanta demands is a
provisional hypothesis to begin the process of enquiry and proceeds with doubt.
Dr Shrikant’s attempt to translate the above into an institutional design was heroic,
though not entirely without flaws. It must also be stated that his assertion of
a civilizational ethos owes its inspiration to his studies of Toynbee, was not
religious nor sectarian in orientation nor was it any Hindu revivalist
imagining. He drew as much from a liberal tradition as much from Vedanta. The academic
liberal left is suspicious of any hint of religion or tradition and at times suffer
from the same intolerance and dogmatism that they accuse others of in an
intellectual snobbery. They champion a diversity of voices but are keen to
curate which voices to include or are relevant, assuming that Marx and Freud
(or Derrida) exhaust the possible lenses. While the margins and subalterns need
inclusion and attention, one cannot view the entire middle ground and its
mainstream traditions with suspicion and delegitimize it. Some might argue that
I am reading more than I ought to into his initiatives and might accuse me of
being an apologist if not revisionist and some might be unforgiving of his
personal foibles, errors and quirks to see the larger picture. In a final irony
I believe that there was more of Munshiji in Dr Shrikant than anyone else on
the campus who espoused such values, though I believe was unnoticed,
unacknowledged; and today Munshiji’s legacy is itself beleaguered.
How do
institutions balance the varied tensions between preserving the existing order
and creating a new one? How do they transfuse new life giving energies by
examining their ends than just their means? I believe that if we truly examine
the ends with courage and conviction we would design our curricula very
differently and look at the kind of people we need as faculty differently. When
the student is our end and not the means to perpetuate our institutions what
would emerge is a new way of education. The way to honour Dr Shrikant is to
ensure that SPJIMR remains true to his vision and healthy in its identity. It
would be stretch to claim that it metaphorically bears the marks of the real
church viz. “unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity”. It is my belief
that Vedantic ‘Idealism’ is its source of identity and basis for
differentiation, something that might miss our attention, in our quotidian
cares of institutional governance; even when other imitators claim to be more
SP Jain than SP Jain. I am aware that critics might point out that this might
be a bold if not egregious claim for a business school, but then their solutions
would be built on identities that are only too common, vague, conformist and
probably effete. Whether or not Vedanta can be so deployed, the ideas they hold
are surely life giving waters that run perennially, whether they inform our
cultivation of an inner life, or helps us contribute to the world at large. I
believe that was the message that Dr Shrikant wanted to bring our attention to.
On his first death anniversary I pray that his vision remains undimmed and
lends us the light it once shone to inspire SPJIMR and all of us.
I offer Dr
Shrikant’s letter that he had sent me weeks before his exit appended below.
Despite the fragmentary points, it reveals his preoccupations in his hours of
solitude with the ideals stated above. I have only rearranged his ideas; his is
the merit of having made them concrete.
Dr. MLS 22/9/15
Dear Srinivas,
Tejal has typed out from somewhat
hurriedly written note early this morning , thoughts which cross my mind when I
was thinking about writing a paper u, synthesis the points made by different
swamijis for practicing for practical pointers for intelligent living,
including Vedanta principles
Basic Argument
Science
|
Philosophy
|
Religion
|
Spirituality
|
|
Utility
|
||||
Created By
|
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Strengths
|
||||
Weaknesses
|
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Characteristics
|
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Affect society & Culture
|
· Cosmic v/s
Individual, in context of living individual
· Increase
materialistic, Well Being, Less Physical, arduous work, more leisure, boring,
Independent v/s Conformist, Family of one, ease & variety , sense & ego
gratification, greed, hypocrisy & showmanship, jealousy, divorces,
addiction, morality, self-centeredness, Ends/Means, Discipline
· Toynbee
· Bondage
& Freedom
· Investigate
the Inner life
· Love,
service, hard wired
· Command
v/s control
· Distributive
justice & Logic
· Duty
v/s Right
· Contribution
v/s consumption
· Support
der efforts, Marketing Efforts
· Human
Being – God Like
· Unwelcome
thrust Value system – or program of expansion (Gita – Vedanta)
Examples:
· Taj v/s
Oberoi
· Infosys –
2nd company
· Satyam –
Enron
· Rockefeller
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