The last few days we spent remembering the great monk who had done a magnificent job to change the image of India in the eyes of the Western world. The famous, ‘Brother and Sisters of America’ speech delivered at Chicago some 125 years ago at the world conference of religion presented a new face of Hinduism and India which in the eyes of the West was, till then, nothing but all about saffron-clad sanyasis and flute-playing snake charmers. As we reminisce about Swami Vivekananda and his ideas, and rightly so, we need to introspect how far or near we have been in understanding him. Particularly, his views on Hinduism, religion and nationalism. Swamiji’s lessons were largely directed to the youth on whose spirit and strength he reposed a lot of faith. It is not without reason that we celebrate his birth day as The National Youth Day. As we realise that India is world’s youngest nation in terms of the number of youths in its population, there is need to demystify and direct his ideas to the overwhelmingly large young populace of this country on whose shoulders rests the future development. Almost two decades into the 21st century, we have to think seriously how best to realise the potential of this young India. This is not about dos and don’ts. It is about the attributes like dreams and realities, efforts and direction, knowledge and information. Dreams are created and realities are what we make of those dreams. It is the effort and direction that lends this realisability to those dreams. And knowledge and information are the tools of the present century that help in this effort. However, it is the subtle difference between those three pairs of attributes that must be understood first. Dreams, sometimes, are planted by smart operators through information that cloud the vision of reality. There is need to guard against this. Mark Zuckerberg, the man who created Facebook has realised that his Facebook is facing some challenges that need to be met. This is what he says: “The world feels anxious and divided and Facebook has a lot of work to do.” It is about protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states or making sure that the time spent on Facebook is time well spent. There are many more things he has said but the crux is the simple truth that Facebook should not become Fakebook. This truth applies to all social media. The most dangerous aspect is that a large section of our youth is hooked to the social media to the extent of addiction and takes the posts as gospel truth. It is this addiction that acts as speed breakers to the path of development. When the surreal is taken as real, things go awry. The creativity and ingenuity is gradually getting flooded in the onslaught of the spurious information that is taken as knowledge. Vivekananda had laid great emphasis on right knowledge. What is this right knowledge and how it can be attained can be summed up in the words of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: “Only two kind of people can attain self-knowledge; those who are not encumbered at all with learning. That is, whose minds are not crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing. Pursue knowledge endlessly.”
The writer is a Professor of Management at IIT (ISM), Dhanbad. He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com