MUMBAI: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday said the education and healthcare systems of the country are being plagued by commodification and commercialisation, underscoring that philanthropic endeavours should not be driven by this philosophy. Speaking at the annual day function of KPB Hinduja College in south Mumbai, Dhankhar said the endowments of some of the universities in the United States run into billions of dollars.
“In the West, anyone walking out of an (academic) institute stands committed to making some fiscal contribution. Quantum is never important,” he said, urging corporates to think in that direction.
Philanthropic endeavours should not be driven by the philosophy of commodification and commercialisation, which he said are plaguing the country’s healthcare and education sectors.
The Vice President called education the most impactful transformative mechanism because “it cuts into inequities, affords a level playing field and fosters genius”.
“Our framers of the Constitution were very wise men. They put education in the concurrent list. Those of you who are not lawyers, by concurrent list means it is a joint concern of the state and the Union,” he said.
He said Sanatan, in an apparent reference to Sanatan Dharma, has been part of India’s civilisational ethos and essence.
Sanatan must be a part of the country’s culture and education because it stands for inclusivity, said Dhankhar, stressing the need to remain well-grounded or rooted in it.
He said that ancient India had glorious institutions like Odantapuri, Takshila, Vikramshila, Somapura, Nalanda, and Vallabhi and scholars came from every nook and corner of the globe to acquire knowledge, give knowledge and share knowledge.
The Vice President said that the ancient Nalanda University housed 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers but was destroyed by Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193.
“(In) 1193 Bakhtiyar Khilji, a reckless destroyer of our culture, our academic institution, the premises were set on fire. For months, fire consumed vast libraries, turning hundreds and thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts on mathematics, medicine, and philosophy to ash,” he said.
This devastation was not merely architectural but represented the systematic erosion of centuries of knowledge, said Dhankhar.
“We must make people aware of our Sanatan values. What vanished in those flames was the living record of ancient Indian thought, creating an intellectual void.
“We have re-arrived at the global stage, We need to reclaim that glory. We have to take a holistic view of education in this country,” the Vice President said.
He said India cannot afford to fall prey to narratives that emanate from sources inimical to the very existence of Bharat. “We have to work to revive intuitions like Nalanda, our intellectual legacy which is essential in realising the goal of Viksit Bharat (Developed India) at 2047,” he said.
Ashok Hinduja, chairman of Hinduja Foundation, urged the government to consider introducing Sanatan principles in education.
