Vol. VI, Issue 9
Video: Suhas Mehra
Editor’s Note: Today, on September 5, we have a special offering on the occasion of Teachers’ Day. Sri Aurobindo tells us that a teacher works through three ways – Instruction, Example and Influence. In this regard, his own work as a teacher stands out as a shining example and influence for all educators, in fact, for everyone concerned with the education and upbringing of the younger generations.
At Renaissance, as we continue with our exploration of The New Ideal that Sri Aurobindo has given us, with a special focus on highlighting some perspectives relevant to the evolutionary march of our collective lives as societies and cultures, a question that is bound to come for many is — what can I do in terms of working toward this new ideal? What can we — each one of us individually — do for the New India that Sri Aurobindo envisions, India that carries on her timeless Spirit in new forms? I am merely a student, or one of the millions of nameless workers in corporate India, or a bus driver or a painter or a home-maker….what can I contribute?
We feel that such questions were preempted and perfectly addressed by Sri Aurobindo. The remarkable passage featured below is excerpted from the address he gave to the students at the Bengal National College on 23 August 1907.
On this Teacher’s Day, we present a thoughtful visualisation of the essential message of Sri Aurobindo from this address. Make sure to read the description box just below the video to learn more about the special personalities featured in the video.
WATCH
Advice to National College Students
The only piece of advice that I can give you now is—carry out the work, the mission, for which this college was created. I have no doubt that all of you have realised by this time what this mission means. When we established this college, and left other occupations, other chances of life, to devote our lives to this institution, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation, the nucleus, of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its career after this night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness when India will work for the world.[…]
When I come back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with your riches. I wish to see some of you becoming great, great not for your own sakes, not that you may satisfy your own vanity, but great for her, to make India great, to enable her to stand up with head erect among the nations of the earth, as she did in days of yore when the world looked up to her for light.
Even those who will remain poor and obscure, I want to see their very poverty and obscurity devoted to the motherland. There are times in a nation’s history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else is to be directed to that end.
Watch
Sri Aurobindo’s Vision for National Education
Sri Aurobindo Memorial Lecture 2024 at Jadavpur University
(erstwhile Bengal National College)
If you will study, study for her sake; train yourselves body and mind and soul for her service. You will earn your living that you may live for her sake. You will go abroad to foreign lands that you may bring back knowledge with which you may do service to her. Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice.
My last word to you is that if you have sympathy for me, I hope to see it not merely as a personal feeling, but as a sympathy with what I am working for. I want to see this sympathy translated into work so that when in future I shall look upon your career of glorious activity I may have the pride of remembering that I did something to prepare and begin it.
