What do you mean by Intellectual Curiosity?

Education has been called the technique of transmitting civilization. In order to achieve this function educations enlighten the understanding and enrich the character. The capacity to think clearly and intellectual curiosity are the two marks of a truly educated man.

All our progress in technology has failed to make it possible for men to think. If your education has enabled you to think clearly and freely on the problems which face you and your country, it has been fruitful. If it has not inculcated in you the habit of thinking for yourself, you have to acquire it after you leave college.

The capacity to think clearly should enable the student to judge, select or reject the ideas and ideologies propa­gated by the mass media of communication. It should enable the student to realize that these mass media are in chains. They are in chains to the foolish purposes of commercialism and the narrowing purposes of politics.

A liberal education is a preventive against the unthinking acceptance of the charms spread by the mass media. A student with the ability to think clearly maintains an attitude of reserve towards popular ideologies and is critical of spurious remedies. The validity of a proportion or the correctness of a doctrine does not always depend on the degree or extent of its popularity. In the field of politics and economics it is often found that the less popular ideas or ideologies are sounder, more valid than the more popular ones.

Intellectual curiosity would enable a student-to intensify the process of learning after he has come out of the university. Over the centuries mankind has built up a store-house of art and knowledge. Human life is too short. Even the longest life is too short to pursue knowledge and explore the cultural heritage of India and other countries.

A well-furnished mind is as rare as a well-lived life. Ones should not confine oneself to one’s daily chores only. One should feel the inner joy of the mind searching for knowledge. Nani A Palkhivala advises the students to develop the-habit of reading at least a few pages of a classic every morning before settling down to the drudgery of routine life. Great books of the past replenish and enrich life. The young men and women who are about to face the world will find disappointment and disillusionment in store for them.

What we need the most today is moral leadership founded on courage, intellectual integrity and a sense of values. Today we are surrounded by many persons who are ever willing to compromise and temporize. A man who has the courage never to submit is like a rock in the wilderness of shifting sounds. In India today intellectual integrity is lamentably scarce. Closer contact with the world will reveal that intellectual integrity is a much rarer quality than financial integrity.

An intellectual who chooses to remain silent in the teeth of injustice and unreason is a floral traitor. He lacks integrity. One should possess the courage to support a view he knows is correct but not popular. It is foolish to swim with the tide. A student must acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he will lie more like a well-trained dog than a well-developed man.

A nation cannot live by the gross national product alone. The quality of life is far more important. In a democracy the quality of life is mostly determined by the availability of the basic human rights and civil liberties. Our constitution-makers possessed a great far-sight in guaranteeing the fundamental rights to our people. We are right in our efforts at raising the standard of living of our people. But the standard of life is more significant than the standard of living.

A sense of values will enable a student to find happiness within him self and joy in the most ordinary of things. The cultural heritage of India exhibits the importance of a sense of values. R.W. Emerson observed that the writings of ancient India represent the summit of human thought. The knowledge of our ancient sages was intuitive. The knowledge derived from teachers and books is repetitive, imitative and derivative.

After decades of intensive research, science has come to certain Conclusions which the sages of India had already perceived 4000 years ago. Our Rishis had taught that a supreme, unchanging Spirit pervades the entire universe. The material world can never be explained merely in material terms. All matter is nothing but energy. There are points of contact between the living and the non­living. There is a unity underlying the entire creation. Recent scientific advances illuminate this verity. The farther science advances the closer it comes to Vedanta.

There is a contrast between the character and outlook of the poor in India and the poor in other countries. Talking of the inner strength of the Indian masses Galbraith observed that there is “richness in their poverty”. It is this inner strength this tradition of spiritual values that enables the Indian poor to uphold their dignity in the midst of adversity.

Today there is a definite risk of our losing that dignity, that richness. The times we live in are characterized by a loss of the sense of values. Students today have been bluntly saying that they want jobs, not degrees. They should not forget that problem of poverty and unemployment cannot be solved by aspiration or by slogans. They can be solved only by realistic and pragmatic economic policies which can harness the reservoir of the people’s faith and response, energy and enterprise.