Jain Spirit 2001 06 No 08

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 27

Jayu Shah: Children overflowing from a classroom in Bihar
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LIFESTYLE
LEARN BY LIVING
Abhay Bang discusses the tremendous educational legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, explaining
how his own life was completely transformed by it
By nature, children are curious
E WAS ASSASSINATED BEFORE I WAS BORN. I NEVER SAW him; and yet, on several occasions in my life I met him. He was no blood relation of mine; but I always felt his presence as if he was my grandfather whose blood flows in my veins.
H
mom s
His influence on my life started even before I was born. My father, Thakurdas Bang in his youth was a lecturer in the college started by one of the associates of the Mahatma. Father lived in Wardha, a small town a few miles away from Gandhi's ashram. He was an economist and wanted to pursue his academic career so he thought of going to the US. He got his passport made, obtained admission and fellowship in the Ohio University. Going abroad for studies was a major event in those days. Father went to see Gandhi to take his blessings before leaving the country.
Gandhi was in his hut in the ashram, seated on a thin bamboo mat on the mud floor, and was writing. My father had been given two minutes to see him. He went near him and bowed in respect. "Bapu, I have been released from jail, and now I am going to America to study economics." The Mahatma looked up. The brown face with the rimmed glasses and a white moustache. He uttered only one sentence. "If you want to study economics don't go to America, go to the villages of India." And he continued his writing.
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Jain Spirit Jain Education International 2010_03
June-August 2001
My father quietly came out of the hut. He tore up his travel papers and the admission letter. Within a few months he went to a village with a group of his students to live like a villager, work in the field and understand the economics of the farmers by living like one. His entire course of life was changed by that one sentence. He continued to work for the social and political reform movements in India. Today, after fifty-five years, he continues the work with the same zeal. On one occasion, when Gandhiji was asked for a message to the people, he said, "What other message? My life is my message." These words deeply influenced my father. He had the moral strength to make such statements because there was hardly any gap between what he said and what he lived. There was no private hidden compartment. He uttered and lived the truth. Many scientists, scholars and philosophers also know and often speak the truth. His magic lay in living it.
On the evening of 30 January 1948, Gandhiji was assassinated. Albert Einstein said: "The generations to come will scarce believe that such a one, in flesh and blood, ever walked on this Earth." I was born as one of that future generation. But I never had any problem in believing that he really existed. I experienced him! I spent my childhood in his ashram where he had actually lived, walked and breathed. He was no longer there but his shadows still lingered. His presence could be felt everywhere.
The school in the ashram in which I studied was started by him. He dreamt of an education system which would generate a new human being. He called it Nayi Taleem - new education! Children should learn to use head, heart and hand to become a whole person that was the first principle. Children learn by actually doing and living - the second principle. Every student should learn a socially useful productive activity and engage in bread labour - the third principle. It is far more important to learn the ethics and