Senior Congress leader Karan Singh. (File Photo)
Former Union minister and Congress MP Karan Singh Saturday said that citizens were aware of their fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution but were unmindful of their duties. He was delivering the Arjun Singh Memorial lecture, organised by the Arjun Singh Sadbhavana Foundation and Madhya Pradesh Foundation at Teen Murti Bhawan here.
Those present on the occasion included former PM Manmohan Singh, former chief ministers Digvijaya Singh (MP) and Sheila Dikshit (Delhi), former central ministers Kamal Nath, Mohsina Kidwai and Jyotiraditya Scindia and Vivek Tankha, MP.
Singh said it was time to revisit the education system, integrate rich Indian spiritual values in it and extend infrastructural support for life-long learning. He identified the four pillars of learning as — learning to know (gyanyog), learning to do (karmyog), living together (sahyog) and learning to be.
He said there was an explosion of information. One had to extract knowledge from the vast amount of information and ultimately wisdom from knowledge. He said four Indic religions — Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism — were dialogic. Gita and Upanishads, he pointed out, were all dialogic. These were not revealed, he emphasised.
Singh said knowledge did liberate one from ignorance, poverty, conflict and fanaticism, there was a complete mismatch between the education and learning to do. The plus-two system had failed. There was a need for a fresh view of the education system and setting up of “thousands of ITIs for providing skill training to the youth”. He made light of the unusually high marks scored by students, wondering how could one score 99 per cent in English.
Living together, according to Singh, was central to the Indian civilisation. “How would we be a family if we don’t live together?” he asked. Family values, he said, included extension of mutual courtesy and respect to elders. At the same time, he felt, elders should not be too possessive, wanting to control younger people. He said that next came societal values, including inter-faith relations. India boasted of being host to multiple religions — four of which originated in the country and five came from outside. The last was environmental values.
