UNDERSTANDING INDIA THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

India prides her achievement on being the third-largest higher education system in the world after China and America.

- DR. GOURI SANKAR NAG* AND SHRI LAXMIRAM GOPE**

Understanding India or the idea of India as a civilization is a grand idea. Unraveling it is quite uphill because it is not an anachronistic phenomenon. Rather it is a massive historical journey from ancient to middle age, and incessantly in the modern age when we speak of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and revolution in data science the onward march goes on redefining its relations with a society that it has to feed and changing time to cater. As Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech on the occasion of India’s independence made it amply clear. Yet, to unravel the core of Indian thinking we have to delve into spirituality and spiritual philosophy that guided the minds of the young learners in Tapovan-centred education. Like production which consists of land, labour, capital and instruments, education is a quadruple concept comprising of Guru, Sishya, Syllabus and Institution/environment. All these were ideally followed in the models called Nalanda or Vikramshila Bihars. The idea was simple living but high thinking. We wonder that much before the advent of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, how these models became a powerful grid of intellectual flourish much like ancient Greek gymnasium. Yet these seminaries of great learning and intellectual training were not separated from the socio-economic system as Bharatvarsh was known as the land of Rishis and Krishis. It denotes a symbiotic relationship between cognitive fruition and the economic system.