Vision of Education of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Dayana

Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta (Paul, Dr S.) at his ancestral home at 3 Gourmohan Mukherjee Street in Calcutta, on 12 January 1863 during the Makar Sankranti festival. [Badrinath, Chaturvedi] Swami Vivekananda and Swami Dayanand, were great thinker and reformer of India propounds his philosophy of education which mainly emphasize on .man-making. It constitutes as one of the very missions of their life. Vivekananda finds mankind gradually being reduced to the status of a machine due to the tremendous emphasis on the scientific as well as mechanical ways of life. In his vision this mainly is leading mankind to pass through the stage of a crisis. It results into the ignorance of the fundamental principles of civilization. The atmosphere is being pervaded by the constant conflict of ideals, manners and habits. He was revolutionary in the field of education and touched every aspect of it. His ideas on various aspects of education are more relevant and are needed more today than probably during his life time. Although Vivekananda did not write a book on education, he contributed valuable thoughts on the subject of education that are relevant and viable today. He had firm moorings in oriental culture, yet he had the broadness to welcome all that is worth borrowing from the west (Ghosal, 2012).

• Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.

• The training by which the current and expression of will is brought under control and become fruitful is called education.

• Education may be described as a development of faculty, not an accumulation of words, or, as a training of individuals to will rightly and efficiently.

• Real education is that which enables one to stand on his own legs.

• If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library.

• We must have life building, man making, and character making assimilation of ideas.

An importance of the Swami’s definition of education is the expression ‘already in man’. This refers to a human being’s potential, which is the range of the abilities and talents, known or unknown that is born with. ‘Potential’ speaks of the possibility of awakening something that is lying dormant (Prabhananda, 2003).

Swami Dayananda Saraswati was born in Manjakkudi, a small village on the banks of the river Kaveri in Tamil Nadu. His parents, Gopala Iyer and Balambal, named him Natarajan. His date of birth is given as August 15, 1930. He is the eldest of four values. Swamiji gave spirituality and culture a pre- eminent role. Spirituality was needed for the growth and expansion of an individual’s personality. “Nurturing is the spiritual awareness and aspirations of our people is the only sure remedy that Swami Vivekananda prescribes for our national malady” (Lakshmikumari .2012-January, p.46.). Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s religious philosophy is characterized by religious fundamentalism, anti-other attitude and militancy. In Dayananda we have the first stirrings of Hindu fundamentalism in modern India. Unfortunately, this aspect often goes camouflaged under the aura of his greatness as a champion of Hinduism and a social reformer. Anyone familiar with the ‘Indian Renaissance’ of the 19th century will immediately be reminded of the ‘luminous’ figure of Swami Dayananda Saraswati the Hindu social reformer and the founder of the Arya Samaj (‘Noble Society’). He is considered as the ‘first Hindu’ in the nineteenth century to study and discuss other religions (i.e. non-Vedic faiths). In fact, some twenty years prior to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, in which Swami Vivekananda participated; Dayananda organized a conference in Delhi and invited representatives from all religions. In this, he was well ahead of the other thinkers of the time. Dayananda (originally known as Mulasankar) was born in a Brahmin family at Tankara, in Gujarat in 1824, and was raised up as an orthodox Saivite. He spent fifteen years as a wandering monk in search of personal salvation. In 1860 he met Swami Vrijananda of Mathura, a great Vedic scholar and grammarian who became his teacher and mentor. It was Swami Vrijananda who drew the attention of his pupil to the degenerated state of Hinduism. In addition, he implanted in him a great veneration for the ancient Vedas as the true source of pure Hinduism. For the rest of his life Dayananda taught in almost all parts of India on the exclusive truth of the Vedas. He also founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, which loomed large on the intellectual and social scene of late nineteenth

Anyone familiar with the ‘Indian Renaissance’ of the 19th century will immediately be reminded of the ‘luminous’ figure of Swami Dayananda Saraswati the Hindu social reformer and the founder of the Arya Samaj (‘Noble Society’). He is considered as the ‘first Hindu’ in the nineteenth century to study and discuss other religions (i.e. non-Vedic faiths). In fact, some twenty years prior to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, in which Swami Vivekananda participated, Dayananda organised a conference in Delhi and invited representatives from all religions. In

In order to understand the attitude of Dayananda Saraswati towards other religions, it is necessary that we examine his ideological foundations. Dayananda emphatically affirmed that the Vedic religion is the only true faith revealed by God. This view is so central to his religious philosophy that one cannot understand his attitude towards other religions without it. Satyartha Prakash first appeared in 1875 in Hindi. It consisted of eleven chapters and in the first ten a complete statement of his ideas on various subjects are presented. The eleventh chapter which runs to a quarter of the book, is devoted to a critique of Hinduism, dealing with idol worship, miracles, pilgrimages, holy men, sects, Puranas, etc. Towards the end of his life he thoroughly revised this edition and added three more chapters dealing with Carvaka, Buddhism and Jainism which are religions of Indian origin, and Christianity and Islam which, according to him, are foreign faiths. This edition was published in 1884, though its proof reading was finished before Dayananda's death in 1883. A comparative study of the two editions revels that Dayananda radically changed some of his earlier ideas during the last years of his life2. Thus the revised edition contains more ‘systematic’ and fully developed ideas than the previous one with a criticism of all the major religions of India. This is also the work accepted by the Arya Samaj as the authorised edition.

Vivekananda points out that the defect of the present-day education is that it has no definite goal to pursue. A sculptor has a clear idea about what he wants to shape out of the marble block; similarly, a painter knows what he is going to paint. But a teacher, he says, has no clear idea about the goal of his teaching. Swamiji attempts to establish, through his words and deeds, that the end of all education is man making. He prepares the scheme of this man-making education in the light of his over-all philosophy of Vedanta. Swami Dayananda Saraswati is one of the greatest teachers and practitioners of the Vedanta, and Founder of a movement for societal transformation through service – Seva. He is committed to bring about transformation at a grass root level to create confident and contributing young Indians.

1 See A. SHARMA, “Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Vedic Authority”, 188. 2 See J.T.F.JORDENS, Dayananda Sarasvati, 92-126; 249-269.

an indigenous form of education. “It is depicted that Vivekananda as his prophet. He proclaimed that the one main reason behind the success of swadeshi movement was the spirit of Vivekananda which stood behind it” (Neelakandan.2012- March, p.36).

1. A. SHARMA, “Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Vedic Authority”, 188. 2. See D.SARASWATI, Autobiography, 11-45, 67-83. 3. For a list of his works see D.SARASWATI, Autobiography, 84-89. See also J.T.F.JORDENS, Dayananda Sarasvati, 345-347. 4. The first edition of Satyartha Prakash was published in 1875 followed by an enlarged second edition in 1884. We refer to the English translation of the latter edition by Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya entitled The Light of Truth, Allahabad, 1956. 5. We refer to the edition by Ghasi Ram (1925). 6. We refer to the edition by Y.Mimamshak (1955). 7. J.T.F.JORDENS, Dayananda Sarasvati, 92-126; 249-269. 8. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 283-284,288,849. 9. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 385. 10. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 385,387-388. 11. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 284,391. 12. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 385,387-389. 13. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 281,288. 14. D.SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 508. 15. D. SARASWATI, Satyartha Prakash, 551-552. 16. Prabhananda, Swami (2003): Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Prospects, Vol. XXXIII, No. – 2, June 2003, pp. 231 – 245, UNESCO, Paris. 18 Neelakandan, Aravindan. (2012- March). Yuva Bharati,p. 36.