Impact of Disruption on Indian Higher Education

                     Impact of Disruption on Indian Higher Education

“And if your breath to you is worth saving, then you better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times are a changing.”- Bob Dylan

21^st Century is changing to a distinctly different world order set in motion by technology that reflects the ingenuity and innovativeness of the human mind. The disruption it has brought in its wake is in line with disruptions that had taken place in the past.  The primitive world of hunters and gatherers was disrupted by agricultural revolution which later experienced another disruption after the Industrial revolution of the 19^th Century.  From the last quarter of the 20^th Century we have moved into the world of technology.  We have seen how with every change and every disruption, the world had organized and settled itself into a new  way of life and thus cueing on the past we must now prepare ourselves for the fourth phase of disruption ushered in by technology.

Disruption is usually used as a pejorative term but it is not necessarily so. Disruption is termed as the act of causing disorder or interrupting continuity. But since change is an essential and continuous part of life, interrupting continuity has to be accepted as facilitating change and furthering a movement forward. During periods of transition, disruption is inevitable and unavoidable. If we fear disruption and shy away from taking the requisite steps to march with change, we may be well left behind as the world will not stop moving forward in search of an improved and better world.

Innovation in technology is impacting our lives in a way, no other previous innovation had done. There is no doubt technology has conferred huge benefits on us, making life easier and more comfortable than in the previous eras.  But there is also the creeping fear of its negative fallout as it renders our past skills obsolete and demands learning new skills to work with new and advanced technology. This is because the progress and advancement of technology is so rapid that  yesterday becomes obsolete today and today becomes passe^’ tomorrow. It is exhilarating and challenging to keep pace with technology. Another anxiety about technology is about the increasing employment of robots in our daily life which is likely to result in loss of jobs, as the robots perform many of our manual tasks with greater ease and speed. It is estimated that robots may replace upto 800 million human workers by 2030. But the robots are a boon for doctors while performing remote surgery or surgery where hands cannot easily reach. The new breed of robots include fire fight robots, rehabilitation robots, industrial robots, service robots used in both professional and personal  work to perform tasks. The fear of robots dominating Man has resulted in extensive research being done to realign technology with humanity’s best efforts so that disruption can be turned on its head to bestow greater benefits to Man and society. While there is a growing skepticism about technology and its disruptive role in our daily lives, it does not mean an increase in automation will result in a decline in employment, but  is to be seen rather as a shift in the tasks needed to be done.  Disruption does not result in irrevocable destruction; on the contrary, the phase of disarray and disturbance is temporary and sparks human ingenuity to move forward to a new and an improved phase of life.
 We are aware of how Industrial revolution in the late 19^th century had caused an exodus from the rural areas to urban cities. But contrary to the prevalent concerns of that time, Industrial revolution did not kill agriculture. Even as farmers went in search of new livelihood in the cities, Industrial revolution introduced new farming techniques and improved livestock breeding that led to amplified food production. Even as recently as two decades back, the introduction of computers rendered typewriters obsolete and typists became jobless.  But it was just a matter of time before people trained themselves to work on computers which opened a new avenue for employment.  
Therefore it is axiomatic that we accept disruption as a necessity to move forward and meet it with cheerful optimism before we discuss its impact on higher education and the ways to harness it to yield better and improved results. Disruption as in the past will always prove to be the mother of invention.  
The impact of technology on higher education is phenomenal as it has added a new dimension to teaching. The white and black method of pedagogy, using chalk and blackboard is in use in colleges, where the number of students is limited. Today we see an exponential rise in the numbers of students who seek admission to colleges, post the XII^th Board’s examinations. As per the statistics released in 2014, across the country, tertiary enrollment rates have increased at a compound annual growth rate of 3.5% in the 5 years preceding 2016. Current enrollment stands at 34.58 million, over 15% more than what it was in 2011. This is growing steadily and India will add a million, if not more every year to the rising number of students seeking admission in colleges. As of February 2017, there are 789 universities, 37,204 colleges and 11,443 stand-alone institutions in India, according to the latest statistics from the UGC website. So we cannot expect our institutions to grow further to accommodate 400 million students knocking at the portals of the colleges. And even those who graduate are not career worthy or employable. To speak about loss of jobs in such a scenario sounds anachronistic as the number of jobs in existing colleges will remain the same.

Technology can solve this problem of the humungous number of students seeking higher education through the establishment of virtual class rooms and e-lessons. Digitization alone can solve this problem of the vast number of young men and women who cannot get admission in the existing institutions. We have to make use of technology in higher education to bring into its fold millions of young people desiring post secondary education. Online education can reach out to a very large number of students and has the capacity to absorb this massive group. It is different from traditional college education and in that sense disruptive of the existing methods of teaching and learning. But the term disruptive technology gains recognition and approbation as it is a welcome fusion of new technology and disruption associated with it.

 Online education in a paradoxical way reverses the current skewed ratio of demand and supply. In traditional classroom, demands are high and supply remains static.  More and more students want to go for higher studies but there is no way to fulfill their aspirations as both the infrastructure and faculty in existing colleges have limited capacity and cannot handle more than what they currently handle. Online education alone can meet the demands by switching to the mode of virtual teaching. The present age encourages virtual teachers and the fear is it will ultimately displace and discourage  young men and women aspiring to be in the traditional teaching profession . The fear is disruption of it makes supply(teachers) in inverse proportion to the demands(students). The second fear is the pedagogical disruption -disturbing the current teaching mode of classroom lectures by switching to digital mode of instruction. While the primary anxiety relates to possible loss of jobs, the second one demands acquiring new skills in pedagogy. Both the fears arise out of an inadequate understanding of these two inter- related problems. The existing colleges (and possibly there may be a few more colleges coming up) will have the same or marginally more requirement of teachers and this number cannot grow any larger to make a vast difference. Even if new colleges are started, teaching jobs will not appreciably increase. The loss of jobs is thus purely notional as college jobs are not frozen by the establishment of online education.

Online instruction or what we identify as digital or virtual learning will need a lot of differently trained teachers with new pedagogical skills. Just as a typist evolved into a computer assistant after acquiring new skills, the classroom lecturers must evolve into digital presenters of those lectures. Even many traditional classroom lecturers employ power point presentation with the help of desktop and laptop computers.

The content of the lectures is also changing. The lecturers cannot now give just facts as these are available to students on the net. The lectures can no longer be bookish as students have access to all the text material on the net. Lectures have to go beyond the text and give students multi dimensional interpretations and approaches to the topics dealt with. The instruction must be in the mode of capsule lectures that give the students an exposure to ideas, concepts and interpretations of texts.  Lecturers must be catalysts in inspiring and motivating students to self study based on the lectures they receive in the class. Technology has in a large measure changed students’ approach to learning. It has made it easy for them to prepare assignments through cut and paste methods without trying to comprehend the subject. The disruptive effect of technology is seen in the weakening and lessening of intellectual challenges that confront the learners. This can be arrested if classroom lectures are in capsule form and in a catalytic mode, sufficient to expose students to new knowledge and perk their interests to learn more on their own.

The preparation of digital lessons skill requires both writing and vocal skills. Those with good Masters and Doctoral degrees have enough knowledge to impart. But they have to be trained to write lessons innovatively and creatively to help students study and understand them on their own. The writing and presenting of video capsules is the new pedagogy teachers have to be trained in. The approach should be interdisciplinary.  For example a lecture on War literature or War poetry cannot be wholesome if textual interpretation is alone done. This has to be complemented by reference to history of the World Wars, the rise of nationalism in Europe, the sociological factors that gave rise to Nazi carnage,  religious skepticism in the late 19^th and 20^th century, the rise of new philosophical concepts like  existentialism and the psychology of men and women affected by war. This amounts to academic collectivism where the lessons are prepared by scholars and professors of different disciplines such as history, philosophy, political science, psychology and religion besides Literature to write that would help students get the right perspective of the works of the War period. War poetry is just one tenth of a semester’s course. To write lessons in a holistic way for a full course will involve a large number of teachers from different disciplines. Preparing video lessons is a different art. Unless one knows how to use the audio and video medium, the lectures will remain print material and therefore inadequate for a wholesome understanding of the topics / subjects discussed. Online courses can become ideal and can be best described as Educated Democracy where the means of production of learning material is collectively done by academics in a democratic manner

 Again in a vast multi lingual, multi cultural and multi religious country like ours, education has to cater to students of different regions speaking different languages. While the study material is prepared, it has to be not only in English and Hindi, but in multiple languages. The video capsules have to be made similarly in many Indian languages.  This again requires a large number of teachers to write the course material in different languages and prepare the video capsules.  The course material uploaded on the website has to move on a graded scale so that it is easy for students to progress from simple to complex theories and analyses. It is not like preparing a small unit that suffices for everyday lecture, where every lecture is a step by step building towards the completion of the course syllabus. What is attempted in our structured classroom is to thread the parts into a whole. In the digital learning, the process is on a reverse gear. The teacher has to keep the whole in perspective and from the whole, slice the parts that together reflect the whole. The writing of digital lesson is a to and fro process – from the whole to the parts and from the parts to the whole. In the traditional classroom the part is in the whole; in the digital classroom the whole is in the parts. The student is thus enabled to go through the study material without losing sight of the perspective. If the perspective is always in the front, the reading of the lessons becomes less problematic.

 Writing lessons is different from classroom teaching and requires a different orientation. Since this is a new pedagogy, it is of cardinal importance to train teachers in the art of writing digital lessons and use of multimedia technology.. Digitization that is seen as a disruption to traditional teaching, helps teachers to be innovative, creative and imaginative in their role as virtual teachers.

 The third factor of disruption( after the anxiety about loss of jobs and the need for acquiring new skills in pedagogy)  relates to infrastructure , which in the case of virtual centres  will be distinct from college complexes. The digital lessons are available on the computers and therefore desktops/laptops , net connectivity and uninterrupted power supply must  be ensured. Keeping the large number of students in rural and tribal areas, study centres must be opened in every taluk in every district. These centres must have large rooms with desk top computers where the students assemble and go through the lessons. At fixed hours, the digital teacher appears on the big screens in these rooms for students to interact with him/her.  The Q&A sessions between the student and the teacher, facilitated both by e-chat and SKYPE is a double bonus for the student as the digital lessons are complemented by face to face interaction with the teachers. A time table should be drawn and given to the students about fixed times when digital classes will be held in different disciplines. The nodal centre must be in the capital cities of each state where teachers through satellite receive questions and give answers that are projected on the big screens in the halls.

 Such a process obviates one other problem relating to the learner. The student is not alone in his room sitting before the computer.. One of the anxieties about online learning which one notices in the Open University system and MOOC is the student remains isolated from the world and left alone to study. S/he is denied the wholesomeness of college life and loses out on companionship, mutual discussions and debates, cooperative learning and the thrill and pleasures of campus life.  By establishing online centres on the lines of SWAYAM(Study Webs of Active –Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) they meet halfway the expectations of the youth to enjoy participatory learning in the company of other students. Just as the campus libraries are open for long hours through the day, the students should have at all times access to computers and digital lessons at the centres. The flexibility of time, the flexibility in the duration of the course and the flexibility in selecting the course without the rigours of admission, complemented by digital class hours at fixed times make the digital learning both formal and informal.

Lastly one more important problem to factor in is the employability of the courses to be offered. This is a problem common to structured traditional classroom teaching and also digital teaching to make courses that are qualitatively relevant and job worthy in providing the young men and women skills needed for gainful employment.. It is important to identify new courses that are relevant to the present century. In India which is turning more and more towards urbanization, courses on Urban Centres, Sustainability Education, Applied Ethics, Environmental Economics, Agricultural Geography, Human geography, Population Study etc will be in order.

What is important is to have an innovative curriculum that forms the minimum core of modern liberal arts and sciences education. Robotics, Cyber Security, Nursing, Radiation therapy, Bio engineering Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Behavioral Analysis, Community Health etc are the new courses that must be offered online. This seems the most welcome disruption in higher education.

Technology has opened the doors for education to breeze in. The existing number of universities and colleges cannot meet the challenges of the 21C.  The future of 400 million students seeking a bright future for themselves and for the nation lies with the use of technology in imparting education. We need disruptive innovations to propel us to scale higher destinations. This is specially the need for higher education to meet the twin challenges of maximum reach to millions of students and qualitative improvement of education both in terms of employability and relevance for our times.
I conclude this article with lines from Douglas MacArthur, the Chief of Staff of the US army in the 1930s:

“How old do you think you are? You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”

Do we remain young with faith in our ingenuity, with self confidence in our potential to confront disruption and with hope to better our educational standards or do we grow old with doubt in our potential, with fear of disruption and with despair of the future?  Our choice determines our approach to technology and its disruptive benevolence.

Controlled Aggression

                                                     Controlled Aggression

Nearly four weeks have passed since I wrote my last blog. It is not as though nothing happened that called for a response; on the contrary, these weeks have seen a lot of happenings that merited blogging but I chose to remain impervious because I had learnt that my blog was not going to alter the events. Four years into Modi rule, it  is increasingly becoming evident that blog or no blog, expressing one’s views or not expressing made no difference and one has  to come to terms with the almost fatalistic recognition, que sera sera, whatever will, be will be.

Yet during these four weeks, two things stood out in the midst of the daily drama of political slugfest over many contentious issues, chief among them being the annual budget, the reopening of  the case of the mysterious death of Justice Loya in 2014, PNB fraud, Nirva  Modi’s impromptu disappearance besides the prospects of elections in advance of the next year schedule.  The news of the U-19 team winning the world cup in New Zealand and, Kamal Hassan’s(the new kid on the political block) response to the Supreme Court verdict on the sharing of Cauvery waters between Tamilnadu and Karnataka were notable for being free from political bitterness. These two events revived my hope  for  India’s Generation Next which, for me is Gen 19+ ...  For selfish reasons, I have added the dots  after 19+ without signifying  any number, since I do not believe in any kind of ceiling on upper age, rendering people like me as Margdarshis. After all, the older the wine, the greater is its taste.  

The U-19 victory coming on the heels of the senior team’s recent  defeat in South Africa in the test series was for cricket aficionados like me a pleasant  change from the lingering sourness of Indian senior team’s winless returns from foreign soil to agreeable sweetness of the younger team’s win in New Zealand. It was indeed a great victory, showcasing the superiority of the young players and holding out bright prospects for more victories in the coming years.  In fact, U-19 victory seemed to have had a catalytic effect on the seniors who dusted off their  rustiness and won the one day series in South Africa after being winless in the test matches.

U-19 had the good fortune to have Rahul Dravid as its coach- a brilliant and astute player, endowed with cricketing brains, intelligent and wise beyond his years, solid like a wall ( he was nicknamed  ‘wall’ during his playing days for his tenacity to stay in the crease), whose fluency with the bat always  matched his fluency with words. He was to the young team a mentor, friend, counsellor and guide who was a 24x7 coach both on and off the field.

The young team was understandably euphoric at holding the coveted cup that had slipped out of its hands in the previous year. They followed Virat’s style of  punching in the air when they crossed a landmark or jumping on to the players back at the fall of a wicket or making the hi-fi over every big or small success. These gestures are no doubt expressions of excitement and an outlet for the flow of the adrenalin but they have to be limited to the playing area and not be allowed to cross the boundary ropes.

 Dravid was as delighted as were the boys, his face beaming with pride over their achievement. In the midst of the joyous celebrations, he spoke to them about the need to erect a wall between euphoria on the field and uncontrollable exuberance off the field which he, in a professorial language termed as ‘controlled aggression”.  Aggression on the field is essential as a motivating force. The army on the battlefield marches forward to the battle cry of the commanders. It inspirits them to cast off fear and nervousness and focus on the enemies with the single-minded purpose of destroying them. But once off the battlefield, we see them like any one of us-enjoying life, singing and dancing to the Bollywood numbers and meeting the film stars or cricketeers like Tendulkar and Dhoni and acknowledging their contribution to the glory of India. In their camps, there is no discrimination in the name of caste or class or religion. In their admiration for the Bollywood heroes and heroines and for outstanding sportspersons, we notice their humility and cheer , almost minimizing and even forgetting what they  endure in their unenviable task of guarding the security of the nation. This is what Dravid meant by controlled aggression where aggression and the tempering of aggression have equal space in our lives. The problems that we face today are due to the blurring of the line between aggression and the tempering of it. The newspapers are full of pistol and gun wielding bad characters who shoot at will with no rhyme or reason. Though we are a few years behind US where shooting children in schools has become a frequent occurrence, we are all set to go the American way as evidenced in the recent shooting of a principal by a student, the killing of a young boy by his senior in a prestigious school in the capital, the raping and murdering of young girls by young adolescents who invariably are school drop outs. Road rage is increasingly a common happening, often with fatal results. Acts of aggression have become a daily affair.

Aggression is usually associated with acts of hostility, often leading to abhorrent violence towards weak and innocent people. Alexander Dumas wrote that we should make war with aggression, but aggression has to be used only when it meets with an equal and opposite force of the same degree in a combative field.  Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet advises: “beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

   bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

But all forms of aggression off the battle field,  with the intention to assert and impose one’s arrogant and egoistic superiority, amount to inhumanity. It is one thing to play with aggression to win, but since it is a game, once it is over neither the victor nor the vanquished shall have any use for it.  Dravid’s advice to the young team during their hour of celebration is a lesson for life. It is the absence of control over one’s emotions that turns positive aggression to brutal hostility leading to mindless killings, rape, mad rage snf vengefulness. The Ecclesiastes says:

    There is a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,…
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

 Let us in the modern context add:

There is a time for aggression, there is a place for aggression;

there is a time for celebration, there is a time for moderation.

It is this controlled aggression that Dravid spoke that is reflected in Kamal Hassan’s response to the Supreme Court’s verdict on Cauvery water sharing. While the verdict reduced water to Tamilnadu so as to benefit Bengaluru which is currently experiencing drinking water crisis, the Tamil political parties vied with one another to agitate against the verdict. It is clear that any order from the highest court  pleasse one side and disappoints the other. But those who are disappointed with the verdict agitate and even advocate violence thus making a mockery of the highest court’s judgement. In recent times despite the judgement of the Court with regard to the screening of Padmavat, the defiance by a few states of that order  is a clear indication of frenetic passions overriding rational and legal pronouncements. One can sense the same unease with respect toAyodhya Ram janma Bhoomi verdict likely to be announced in the next few months. Politicians on either side will ignite the passions of their respective groups and precipitate a bloody crisis. None of the politicians will ever ask himself/herself about the rightness of stoking communal fire.

Thus there was a creeping fear that the Tamils in frenzy, instigated by one Dravidian party or the other would turn violent over the reduction of Cauvery water and take the agitation beyond the Court.  It is in this context, Kamal Haasan’s mature response to the Cauvery issue merits special recognition. His response has a double effect- safeguard the supremacy of the highest court of the land and promote civic awareness among his people. He said that they should respect the Court’s verdict and take this opportunity to conserve water, as water is a precious commodity. When Arvind Kejriwall issued the new tariff for water consumption in Delhi two years back, he gave the Delhi citizens the option to choose between judicious use of water or pay higher tariff for consuming beyond the ceiling fixed for free water. Most of us opted for the former. I have had no water bill for the last two years. The conservation of water by Delhi citizens with civic awareness has helped Delhi Government to supply water to colonies that had till then a parched existence. Kamal Hassan’s stress on conserving the water and not go in for agitation had its salutary effect both on the people and the political leaders. This is yet another example of controlling aggression through channelizing angry passions towards a constructive way – to conserve water, a precious but an increasingly vanishing commodity  without which we are in fear of parched extinction.

Gen 19 + must salute the two mentors for their invaluable and most pertinent advice for our times:  “ Practise Controlled Aggression.”

Messianic Utopianism

                                                         Messianic Utopianism

I came across this eloquent and weighty phrase ‘Messianic Utopianism’ in an article by the learned Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta as he recounted the best of writings in the year gone by.  I could not root this phrase out of my head as it comforted me against all the heinous happenings of the year that had gone into sunset. I could not join the artificial euphoria of ringing in the new year and ringing out the old with bursting of crackers, cutting of cake, raising a toast to the arrival of annus mirabilis and with induced excitement greeting family and friends on the skype, through the net and over the phone. (The pleasure of those days when one went shop after shop, searching for the best of greeting cards, writing personal notes and signing the cards and the postal addresses and posting them in the mail box are no longer there; on the contrary, such activities are today regarded as antediluvian, time wasting tasks). Wordsworth’s sonnet The World is too much with Us summed up my state on the First of January- one of profound despair but paradoxically and mercifully pressed down by a glimmer of hope that protects humanity from turning into lemmings which follow a course towards suicide or mass destruction. The first four lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet published in 1807- more than two centuries back- seem prophetic as we are today engulfed in our material pursuits that we hardly have any time to appreciate the lovely world of Nature that the Creator has bequeathed to us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The fact is we are out of tune with all that continues to remain beautiful around us. Nothing moves us, nothing excites us, and we have to artificially hype excitement and hysteria over the dawn of a new year. Hence this longing for messianic utopianism kept popping up in my mind. We are as Browning says in his  Bishop Blougram’s Apology

All we have gained then by our unbelief

Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,

For one of faith diversified by doubt:

We called the chess-board white -- we call it black.

We all know utopia is only an intellectual construction as no utopia exists in the world. Utopia is a term to signify our impulse toward some sort of ideal society that embodies a broad framework of values such as righteousness, justice, humaneness and ethicalness – values that lend themselves to implementation in our daily lives. These values when translated in social terms, will mark a period of abundance and fertility, longevity, health and absence of mental illness and physical disease. In Hinduism and Zionism practiced in India and Israel, messianic utopianism is something equivalent to Ram Rajya, an ideal that is desired and practicable, though unattainable.  Even Lord Ram’s efforts at establishing Ram Rajya could not bear fruit as it meant sacrificing his consort Sita in a unjust manner.

But this does not alter human desire for a divinely blessed utopian world order and more so now than at any other time, when a unprecedented churning is taking place in our personal, social and political spheres. There is a perceptible change in today’s outlook, attitude, aspiration and wants. Today’s generation is the selfie generation or the self absorbed generation. This in conjunction with the social media have changed the ways people connect, communicate, and relate to the world outside of themselves. Somewhere the mistaken notion that selfie stands as an image for self empowerment has  turned the  inherent selfie narcissism on its head and  affirmed  selfie’s negative values of vanity, self obsession, lack of empathy, fragile self esteem  and a deep need for all time admiration as positive virtues. The plusses of the new age of internet in terms of excellent and swift connectivity have been overtaken by an obsession with Facebook and Twitter resulting in physical and psychic isolation. It is virtual reality that has overtaken factual reality. The mental and personality disorder, the increase in bipolarity, the illusory excitement of being in a crowd where the crowd is no company have changed human relationships that had earlier been bonded by sharing and caring for fellow beings. As the  English poet, Philip Larkin in Vers de Societe^’ writes “All solitude is selfish”. The present day preoccupation with net surfing and twittering or facebooking with selfies has brought a new connectivity sans connectedness. On the political front, President Trump with his no holds barred tweets has devalued and debased language. Though he is no trend setter but  only a follower of many crass tweeters, one dreads the coming of a new age of dark illiteracy that shuns all niceties, politeness, etiquette and civility in the use of language. Political discourse in India has reached a new low that encourages violence in action as much as in words. The newspapers and the news channels headline gruesome violence against women, political murders , juvenile acts of rage and killing, brutal assaults that seem to have the blessings and approval of people in power and acts of terrorism  causing mass destruction. This is not an Indian phenomenon; it is globally seen in the US-North Korea nuclear missile one upmanship, the Dragon’s systematic intrusion into other territories , building its military outposts, the perennial war between IS and the rest of the non Muslim world, the daily firing at LOC between India and Pakistan with mounting fatalities on each side, the solution-less Palestine problem with Israel and last but not the least, the environmental disaster, the thoughtless rampage and plunder of Natural resources resulting in  aggravation of climate changes. All these  never ending conflicts  pit Man against Man and Man against Nature in all spheres of the world.

The silver lining in the midst of the darkness visible is the fact that only a minuscule minority indulges in such heinous acts while the majority wants peaceful co existence transcending all divisions of religion, caste, class and gender. My bonding with messianic utopianism is founded on the strength of this silent majority that believes in humanity. While messianic utopianism is a divine ideal and not an earthly possibility, the only thing left to mankind is to aspire for it. As Robert Browning says: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what's a heaven for?

Let us individually and collectively seek Messianic utopianism in our words and actions. Again to quote Browning “ Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity; /These are its sign and note and character”. Is it difficult to understand that there is only one God who created this world? We call God by many names but no one disputes the truth about one Power, one God,  one Creator. All humanity is one in paying obeisance to that one Power it believes in. It can be Allah or Vishnu or God the Father or  Let each man follow his faith without necessarily expecting everyone to follow him/her. Swami Vivekananada in his famous Chicago speech stated: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea , so O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies , various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee”.

On the social front, there are only two main genders and a cross between them is the third gender. Again it is a ‘given’, bestowed on everyone of us as his/her  gender. Why thendiscriminate one against the other or privilege one gender oer the other? Can anyone of us feel fine and healthy if our one little finger throbs with pain? All parts  of the body have to be free of pain and discomfort to make one feel happy and healthy. Can I be safe if my neighbour’s house is on fire? Can humanity survive if we convert the world into a jungle and fight one against the other on matters that are personal to every individual both as a genetic trait and hereditary acquirement? Let us recall what J.Krishnamurti wrote: “We are second hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclination or tendencies or compelled to accept by circumstances. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us.” Once we understand that we are what we are through our genetic inheritance, we can abstain from frowning upon the rest of humanity for their genetic inheritance.  Man alone among God’s creations is endowed with the reasoning faculty. Do we give it up and allow animal passions to overtake us and  turn this world into a jungle?            

We have to ask ourselves this question: Can we live happily if we assert a new aesthetics of tastelessness over aesthetics of beauty or aesthetics of hate over aesthetics of love, or aesthetics of violence over aesthetics of peace or aesthetics of barbarity over aesthetics of dignity- in short, can we be happy and at peace if we assert aesthetics of inhumanity over aesthetics of humanity? Do we give up looking  for peace, happiness, love and beauty in this world?  If the answer is no, let us aspire for messianic utopianism however distant it may be.