On August 31, 1837, while delivering a lecture titled “The American scholar” at Harvard University, R.W. Emerson said, “Character is higher than intellect.” Whenever I see highly educated people undertaking highly corrupt practices in my surroundings, a pang arises in my mind. It is incomprehensible why people who are intellectually so rich, are extremely poor in the domain of morality and why these people cannot comprehend the significance of the above message.
In this era of tough competition, each desires to be very intelligent, but this should not be at the cost of morality. Alas! This is happening widely and its acceptability is increasing with each passing day. In his book Asian Drama, Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal writes that the problem of India is not that the corruption is increasing here rapidly. Rather, the issue is that it is being accepted and even being glorified. This approach is akin to that in which a large section of people feel pride in asking for or giving dowry rather than condemning this social blot.
The irony of the post-modern world is that on the one hand, we are advancing very fast in the field of knowledge and technology, while on the other, in the domain of morality, we are moving towards the opposite side. The fascinating consumerism has converted human beings into mere commodities. So, it compelled A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to say that we have guided missiles but misguided human beings.
The National Education Policy, 2020 has tried to address this paradoxical nature of human progress at the initial level. There can be a debate that moral values can be taught (Socrates) or not (Rabindranath Tagore), but no one can deny that for a holistic growth of a person, intelligence and moral conscience are equally essential. We all know that the destiny of a nation is shaped in its classrooms. It means that what and how we teach in classrooms determine the thinking pattern of students. And these students shape the future of a nation through their knowledge and actions. Classrooms are temples of learning. So, if knowledge is imparted there with the right spirit and methodology, then many problems will be sorted out.
In my school days, I have read a story. The essence of that story is, a hungry and poor person will steal a few kilograms of foodgrains from a deserted goods train but a highly intellectual person, devoid of moral values, will rob the entire train. Regarding this pernicious attitude of an educated person, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote at the age of just 19, in his college magazine, titled The Purpose of Education, “Education which stops with efficiency may prove to be the greatest menace to society... Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”
Some “smart” people believe that these types of ideas are utopian and that they hardly have any relevance in the “practical world”. This may be true in a very limited context akin to salt in a curry. But when you justify each of your wrong deeds on the basis of this practicality, then you make everything fishy. We must admit that there are so many people living in this practical world, who have struck a fine balance between their intellectuality and morality, and did not compromise their integrity even in extreme adversity. These few people are the real “trend-setters” or “torch-bearers” who did something substantial for society despite all hardships and obstacles. Other people are just a part of the crowd, mere spectators irrespective of their intellectual acumen or financial status.
Education makes us intelligent and self-confident but knowledge without character, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, is a “social evil” (October 22, 1925, Young India). We all know that the crisis of the present society is not mere ignorance, or natural resources, but the distortion of the value system. We have witnessed it during the second wave of COVID-19, in which not only human beings but humanity too died. So, we have to remember that the status of morality will always be higher than accumulation of money or mere intelligence. One cannot deny this reality by labelling it as “blank idealism”.
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