education

by caricature is
not enough

By Kulamarva Balakrishna

Vienna,Tuesday,February 19,2008:May be I need
to elaborate a bit to put my earlier reference to the
late M.T.V.Acharya of Chandamama fame and of course
Amarachitrakatha´s Anant Pai.My friend Prof.Rao
suspects I have developed personal enmity against
Mr.Pai.It is not true.I did not have a chance to know
Mr. Pai personally.Then how can I be blamed to retain
a trace of stain in my perspective of his ?Mr.Pai and the
late Mr.M.T.V.Acharya were taken in perspective
as they were just beginning the public education on
our ancient culture as part of children´s literature
for entertainment.

No problem there.Of the two, Mr.Acharya´s work
was aesthetically a bit qualitatively better than that
of Mr. Anant Pai.Mr.Anant Pai´s work also was meant
for children.But ended up as means of adult education
because of high pressure marketing of our cultural
civilization.Compare the adult education work launched
under the University of Mysore extension programme
initiated by the late M.Visvesvaraya with the results of
Mr.Pai´s popular entertaining child education cartoons.
The difference there is that education does not end with
Alphabetism.Unfortunately,when we look inwards we
find it ended there in our Indian society.It left a stain of
a hollow empty pride and to prove by substantiation
faking became the trend. My frontal assault is against
the false pride and cheating as a success story.The
efforts at learning the core of one´s culture is welcome.
But it should remain continuous.It should be integrative
in perspective instead of leading to a cultural apartheid,
the kind now being suffered by the Jews in Israel.In
today´s world segregation is the problem not solution.
In fact as the late philosopher father of the late Sri
Sriprakasha, the humourist author and former Governor
of Maharashtra,=essential unity= is the soul heart of
religions and cultures.

Just now after almost a hundred years after Tilak´s
writing on Siberian dawn =ushas=, serious scholars have
begun outside India working to link up with Archaeological
findings.Indus Valley civilization, its link to Babylonian
society of the old,the disappearance of river Saraswati,
the desertification that is =registan= becoming Rajasthan
all have historical implications.Just now as I am writing,
the over 25,000 year old Pushkar lake is drying up for
dwindling ground water.Camel urine mass is not enough
to sustain aquatic life including fish.The rare Brahma temple
covered by urine lake was noted by me about a decade
ago.Now alarming reports of mass death of fish and other
aquatic life have begun to emerge.That is history remains
pregnant with change always.Time does not age.Does not
stand still.This is the situation compatible to our concept
of heaven where,no birth,no old age nor death,no hunger
rule.An idea of the ideal.It will take years to have a proper
conceptual architecture of the composite civilization as
propounded by the late Bhagawandas.

I said, I had no personal contact with Anant Pai.Nor the
makers of films based on Hindu mythologies.The marketing
of Pai´s cartoon works went to commercial Sindhis, least
educated on Indian ness but conscious of cash flow.That
was the problem.I have no enmity against Anant Pai nor
India Book house owned by Hargovind family. But
I do not approve our IT boys brag about the teachings
of the cartoons are final.Beginning is not the end.Make no
mistake.Make an integrated view and see the trend of
seeing opposite sex superficially in Indian society.In the
Punjab sex ratio has fallen to 10 male 8 female level.Rude
behaviour against women was unknown in our ancient
culture.Particularly now the wrong idea of the =unknown=
culture and the males and females living in these formerly
distant cultures has increased astronomically.I remember
as I was returning from Khajuraho in 1969 to Allahabad,
young woman asked me if she could accompany me.I said
it was fine with me.We talked on way in the train.At one
point we had to change train. Sitting on the platform I was
writing my diary, and the young woman was making her
own travel notes for the benefit of her boyfriend Victor,
who was touring the Himalayan mountains at the time.
A curious Bhayya came to me and asked if the woman was
related to me. I said to him, she was traveling with me.
He asked what was that I was writing.I said I was writing
a diary.He asked me if he could look at what I was writing
I was reminded of Mr.Sakhlecha, a BJP Minister of Madhya
Pradesh in 1967 barging in my tourist bungalow room in
Indore to see what I was writing. I was writing a novel.
A female character in the novel was named Piloo. He asked
me if Piloo Mody paid me for writing the novel! This is our
Hindu India, forgive me please.It is sociology of undivided
family life bereft of privacy.It is this social psychology that
had promoted the foolish uneducated Hinduist minister and
the Bhayya two years later all the same.

Now we have traveled a lot to reach almost the level seen
in wahabi sand land Saudi Arabia.That is we are, as a reaction
backlash to the developments in Iran and Arabia, rapidly
importing their values into our cultural frame even without
realising what is happening to ourselves.Sad, the frame is
Hindu picture is that of MPBUH or as the late BSV Rao of The
Indian Express would say =Laude ke Bal=.When I was young
and growing up in northern border of Kerala,poor Muslim men
worked for our gardens making a camp at our garden site.Poor
muslim women near our house came to house to chat with
my mother and aunts addressing them =padtyere=.They were
decent,good looking without hiding their body parts too much.
Further south in Kerala Hindu women went about topless.
I remember once visiting my classmate Sharalaya´s house only
a few kilometres away at Madhur.But the elder Mr.Padmanabha
Sharalaya was already a violin playing musical celebrity in Kerala.
He spent most his time in Palghat or Madras.The youngest
Vishveshvara Sharalaya had just learned Tabla instrument.
The atmosphere in his house was that of open Kerala type.
Elaborate dressing up was then considered something indecent
below for the respectable family women.Now the standard in
Kerala happens to be Arabian as else where in the country
especially in Gujarat, where girls ride scooters covering their
head and partial face,both to protect from sandy wind and
modesty!

In my earlier writing concerning Bal Thackeray I have made
clear our classic literature acknowledged the individuality
of women.Individuality and sexualities are inter related.
Unfortunately, our Donal Duck cartoon kinder garten level
educated middle class rich men in youth tend to ignore the
individuality of women.That has led so much misunderstandings
and frustration for example I learn M.V.Kamath´s unhappy
married life led him to ultra Hinduism.He was not like that
before when he worked for The Free Press Journal or PTI.
The late Painter and contemporary of K.K.Hebbar, Sadananda
Bakre´s last leg of life he lived alone being separated from
his German born wife who shared everything until mid 1970s.
There are proportionately higher average of broken marriages
in inter-cultural level today.

The time Europe and America has changed to recognize marriages
of same sex couples.Marriages between opposite sexes have
almost disappeared. You may have noticed the fuss about Carla
Bruni and Sarkozy.Our Chancellor (Prime Minister) Dr.Alfred
Gussenbauer cohabits with Ms.Steiner and together they live
with their teenage daughter.No manyata Sanjay Dutt racket
of for that matter Hemalamalini-Dharmendra acting.What
meaning has such marriages of lies for whose benefit.Late
Pratima Gupta Bedi before becoming Gouri decided to cohabit
without marriage. But later when Pratima became pregnant
Kabir Bedi and she considered the financial security of the
children and decided to marry.Under these sociological
conditions the middle class foreign going Indians getting
married inter-culturally and its result should be viewed.

The New Castle =boy= case only reflected how ill prepared
the young man was for exposure to the new culture. In the
first place, learning law involves changing laws and law making
process.That is best learned within the country.International
law which is a must for foreign service personnel is a specialized
area bound by intergovernmental treaties and obligations and
their interpretation. In my earlier posting I had pointed at
the inadequacy of primary learning by caricatures of culture
as disaster is clearly misunderstood and misconstrued.(end)

Comments: nothing about education
Dear Balakrishna,

I went through your article on education looking
for something on education.

The whole article has your likes and dislikes,
target of your attacks, stink of camel urine, the
Sindhi businessman and Bhayyas, LB of BSVRao,
Sharalayas music, MVKamaths unhappy marriage
and your new Target the new castle boy but little
about education. I have a suspicion that the modern
education is from such articles from seasoned writers
who can fill the pages without any sensible content.
Our school books - even in science- are also like
this they want to tell us everything from Tilak to
Thackeray but little about the world.

I attend lot of condolence meetings these days.
(Of course many of my acquaintances to teachers
are old and die) The meetings are always
autobiography of the speaker and has little to do
with the deceased. Very similarly when Mr. MV
Kamath goes to teach journalism he talks about
his great relation with Gandhi, Nehru, the 42
movement, Kissinger and UNO and is very
successful in putting an entire class to sleep
within minutes. Incidentally Mr. Kamath
received an honorary doctorate from the open
university Mysore last year and this year the
Mangalore University sold their Honorary
Doctorate to five people and may be an ass.
Believe me the university is supposed to be
an educational center. (Incidentally the dalits
and minority communities were properly
represented).

There is some more news too. Mr. lalu Prasad
Yadav has given to Mangalore and Udupi people
a new train- Garib Rath between Kochuveli
and Lokamanya Tilak Terminus. It is air
conditioned bi-weekly for the benefit of the
Garibs and costs about 600 rupees per
passenger.

Warm regards,

KPRao

Thank you Prof.Rao, my point has been made
more clear by you.Education is in selling
honorary and not honorary degrees.Period.I
was not writing about education but about the lack
of it.I hope by Kochuveli is meant Kochi.
All the best
Kulamarva Balakrishna