Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya Rajat Jayanti Mahotsava

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 185

16
MANU SUBEDAR
[M. J. V. SILVER JUBILEE 1
would beat fast. "Rural uplift ", which has today become a fashionable word to be used from the mouth of the Viceroy downwards, would only become a reality is the Wardha scheme is put into effect. On the political side, it will be the true rebuttal of the charge that Swaraj is being sought for a few at the top but not for all. What is it that we desire to see from the transfer of real power in India from the hands of the Englishmen to the Indian? We would like to see a greater effort done to life up every man and woman and child in India from the backward condition in which he or she is at present, to train him up, to use all his faculties properly, to guarantee that he will be a skilled worker instead of an unskilled one, and generally to raise the average, which has been brought down by the ruthless economic exploitation of India at the hands of the foreigner in the past. For all these purposes I cannot conceive of a weapon more potent and more calculated to secure the biggest results in the shortest time than the Wardha scheme, which is going to do the greatest good to the greatest number, whatever a few self-opinionated and middle-class critics might have to say.
An education which produces drags and parasites whether rich or poor-standa condemned. It not only impairs the productive capacity and efficiency of society, but also cngenders a dangerous and immoral mentality. The scheme is designed to produce * Workers' who will look upon all kinds of useful work-including manual labour, even scavenging--as honourable, and who will be both able and willing to stand on their own feet. Such a close relationship of the work done at school to the work of the community will also enable the children to carry the outlook and attitudes acquired in the school environment into the wider world outside. Thus the new scheme which we are advocating will aim at giving the citizens of the future a keen sense of personal worth, dignity and efficiency, and will strengthen in them the desire for self-improvement and social service in a co-operative community.
In fine, the scheme envisages the idea of a co-operative community, in which the motive of social service will dominate all the activities of children during the plastic years of childhood and youth. Even during the period of school education, they will feel that they are directly and personally co-operating in the great experiment of national education,
Wardha Scheme al Education,
To-day owing to the advent of the Machine Age we are an exploited nation, because we buy machine-made goods. If we also begin machine manufactures we can become an exploiting nation. But until all men and the domestic animals are exploited in the country, we have no right to snatch their living with the help of the machine. We should view education from the standpoint of non-violence, because, I think, Education and Violence are fundamentally opposed to cach other. To begin with I was a revolutionary and believed in violence and corporal punishment; but I am now convinced that true education must be given through non-violence, and this is the central idea in Gandhiji's educational scheme.
-KAKA KALELKER.