Akabar and Birbal

Once Emperor Akabar asked his ministers what punishment he should mete out to someone who happened to pull his beard.

One of the courtiers replied, “Your Majesty, it'd be the most serious crime so a severe sentence is necessary.

Another minister said that he should be hanged without delay and then similar replies came from the rest of them.

At last, the king referred the matter to Birbal, the wisest of his ministers, who said, “Your Majesty, you’ll hug and kiss him.

“I must hug the insolent!” echoed the king in surprise. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know well, my Lord. None but your grandson can dare touch Your Majesty’s beard.

Birth and Early Education

The birth rate i.e. the total number of live births per 1,000 of a population in a year, along with mortality and migration rate are used to calculate population growth and another important term is ‘demographic transition’ that explains the relationship between population and economic development. Now it has been found that the western countries have moved from a condition of high birth and death rates, to a condition of low birth and death rates which led to a slow rate of growth of population. This has been the experience of countries going through a process of modernizing economic and social development. 

As far as India is concerned, its people have been reproducing themselves at such a rate that their numbers threaten the ecology. According to the Indian census, carried out in 2011, the population of India was exactly 1.21 billion. This is the second most populous country of the world after China. Early marriages, poverty, illiteracy are certain major factors that lead to the population explosion. Besides, India’s climate plays a great role in rising fertility rates. The burden of school age population in India has already become unbearable. The proportion of children in schools is increasing fast and, vast numbers are still not covered with education facility. The unschooled future India is ready to swell the population wider and to close all the opportunities of development.

Intensive early care and education programs for children have lasting positive effects such as school success, higher graduation rates, lower juvenile crime, decreased need for special education services later, and lower adolescent pregnancy rates. On the contrary, if the children are not cared properly, it can have harmful effects on language, social development, and school performance. It has been observed that toddlers who receive proper child care develop better math skills prior to school entry and have fewer behaviour problems (fighting, arguing, being mean to others) than those who are deprived of it. A good child care and education programme provide a safe nurturing environment that promotes the physical, social, emotional and cognitive development of young children while responding to the needs of families. 

The first four years of life are a period of rapid development of brain structures and function or the development in infancy and early childhood is the most advanced period of child’s development. This is why effective early childhood programs clearly make a difference. Some of these elements can include who a child was raised with, environment, parenting styles, education programs, and even society such as schools or homes. The goal of early childhood education is to facilitate the development of a child's overall abilities and understandings to prepare the child for future endeavors. It is proven that children who begin their education habits early, have an advantage over their peers academic through their education years. 

Thus proper child care and their systematic education is a process of refining the humanity or a process of removing impurities so the nation can be supplied with better citizens for an advanced future society which constructs the shining walls of a glorious part of the world with easy life style and peaceful atmosphere. Terrorism, Maoism, violence, rapes and even the blind growth of population are the side-effects of uneducated society. A country with illiterate citizens is not the country of human beings but a wildlife sanctuary. Considering the importance of early childhood education, profound changes need to be made in the way education is organized, sequenced, and funded and additional efforts are needed to integrate programs. But before that what we must achieve is negative population growth and demographic change.

Unfortunately every party that comes to power boasts to uplift the downtrodden peasants by extending and implementing reservation plans. 70 years have passed since Independence but the condition of the poor and backward is still the same or rather worse. They still dance on the roads completely drunk with their clothes torn. They do not know what decency is, or if there is any role of moral standards and religious convictions in life. Nothing can change them until they are provided with proper course of schooling. 

In fact, governments do nothing but invent different ways of remaining popular with the people who are quite unknown of what is right and wrong. The largest part of Indian nationalists is not aware of the importance of education, nor do they even have a sense to feel the unpleasant effects of population growth. The governments consequently always try to win their support by appealing to their emotion rather than doing something reasonable, for they mainly aim to enjoy power and not to reform the system. The educated people who understand the need of family planning and better education system can do nothing except watching the government do something to improve the situation and the government thinks it is the problem of the people so it is for them to find some solution. The minority has fixed its eyes on the top chairs so it is happy with the increase in their population. The illiterate backward and the reserved classes are tension-free, thinking that government needs votes and so they will after all give them something to eat and drink. Anyway, it is a living hell for those who want to lead a peaceful and civilized life in India.

Babasaheb, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar

I pay tribute to Bharat Ratna Babasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, on his birth anniversary.

Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of America in 1860. Hardly had he been in office for six weeks before eleven southern states seceded from the Union, collectively turning their back on the idea of a single American nation. Lincoln said that he could tolerate slavery as a means of controlling what nearly everyone saw to be an exotic and alien population but what he could not tolerate was dissolution of the Union and asked Congress for 5 lakh soldiers to crush the white rebellion. Large sections of the South were ravaged by violent battles; and the Union nearly collapsed under determined Confederate forces. Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery, but what he really wanted more was to bring whites and blacks together, for he knew that the status of blacks could not be raised until they lived together. Lincoln, however, never meant to invite racial hatred or to separate blacks from whites by asking them to embrace some other religion.

Now the same situation arose in India, too, when, with the British declaring the gradual transfer of power to Indians in 1917, the politics became competitive. The process of transferring power was really a question of how it be shared between the three claimants: Indian National Congress led by Nehru and Gandhi, Muslim League by Jinnah and Independent Labour Party formed under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar in August 1936 against the system dominated by Brahmans and the capitalists. Jinnah was adamant about the partition of India; Nehru had the ambition to rule India as a whole; but B. R. Ambedkar, though had a great hatred for the upper castes, did not want to demand for a separate country because he knew that the group of people he was leading will not be able to raise their status without the upper caste people living with them. He chose the third way of reservation to the scheduled caste which was later used as a tool to divide people and ultimately to gain power instead of using it for the real purpose of achieving social justice and equality. However, unlike Lincoln he asked his followers to change their religion and beliefs and preferred to be converted to Buddhism. He thus gave the scheduled caste a new identity and ideology, instilling hatred of the upper caste people in them. Now this community hates Muslims and Kshatriya but they avoid expressing it because they fear they will not tolerate it. Now as far as Brahmins and Baniya are concerned, they are tolerant people, so they target them more blatantly and wage a hate campaign against them quite unknown of the fact that it is they who make India a different country or that without them it would be going like Pakistan or some African country.

Gandhi ji, Nehru and Sardar Patel tried to convince Babasaheb to withdraw the reservation clause arguing that it would one day cause another division of the country. But when Babasaheb refused to do so, they decided to retain a small percentage of Muslim population against which, they thought, the majority would stay united. Finally nothing happened as expected and now India is divided into four main groups of people. Thus the disagreement among them has messed up the entire country.

Anyway, Baba Saheb actually aimed to raise the social status of the lower caste people and not to hurt the people of any other caste in return. Ironically, the SC & ST literature on the internet is coloured with hostility towards Brahmins who are completely unable to play any role in forming a government today. They are now deprived of their dues in India; their children migrate to some other country in search of life by selling their talents and never like to turn back; India is no more their own country, for every group of people hates none but them; everyone is envious of them because they are more proficient than others. Jews were massacred all over the world because they were gifted, adept and others always envied their ability. Now the same thing is happening to Brahmins in India. Germany neglected Einstein, the Jew, but it was America that estimated the might of his mind that ultimately shook the world and made it the super power. Would that they could follow the true path shown by Babasaheb and realize that hatred is not a correct reply!

Let’s remember Baba Saheb on his Birth Anniversary for his great contribution to the country in the form of constructing Indian Constitution, of his efforts for social equality, liberty and stability and of his dreams for a united India. I pay tribute to this towering father! He wanted India to grow not a few to prosper; he wanted to abolish exploitation and atrocity against all of the countrymen and not against a few; he wanted to have a schooled India and not children living on midday meal; he wanted Jammu and Kashmir free of 370; he wanted a safe atmosphere for women, job guarantee to every young man from any caste and community. So today I would not hesitate to condemn the British Agents who did not let his dreams come true and ruled India for a long time by changing his ideals into a tool with which to divide the majority and rule. I also condemn the hate mongering regional parties that have been misusing his ideologies for the sake of acquiring money and power.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay. He wrote The Jungle Book (1894) and was awarded 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature. Since he lived during the Indian freedom struggle, his stories deal with cotemporary India, or rather The Jungle Book is a kind of allegory of British rule in India. As far as, I have observed, Mowgli – just stay and think whether the writer means to say ‘Angli’ – represents the English people living in India and all the animals of the jungle represent the people of India who develop a natural love for the former. Kipling tried to give the readers an idea about how the wolves, the then Indian elites, bring up the small child, Mowgli, and also treat him as their own son. The wolves love Mowgli so much that they do not want him to leave the Jungle i.e. the territory of India. Bagheera, who is the symbol of the leaders in the Congress, loves Mowgli, too. He cannot bear any animal to harm him. Now that Shere Khan (the group of freedom fighters: Shere for Hindu fighters and Khan for Muslim fighters) is determined to kill Mowgli, he persuades Mowgli to leave the Jungle and go back to his native country. While he was leading him to a town (Europe), Baloo, denoting the then industrialists or the exploiters, happen to meet Mowgli on the way. He entices him into staying in the jungle and enjoying the fortune he can make with the help of his innovative techniques. Baloo and Mowgli became great buddies, but as Baloo comes to know that Shere Khan will certainly kill Mowgli, he starts treating Mowgli with indifference so that he take a dislike to him and could be convinced to depart. The fire which Shere Khan calls the flowers of blood stands for the advanced arms possessed by the English people. Mowgli brings a burning torch to do away with Shere Khan but when he sees that it has caused the jungle to burn, he throws it away and takes out Shere Khan with a conventional trick. He helps elephants rescue their young and then uses their might in extinguishing the fire. This way he shows that he can set fire to the jungle and also extinguish it and that all the animals in the jungle love him except for arrogant Shere Khan who has been presented as the antagonist. The book is silent about Mowgli’s leaving the jungle because the writer as a British citizen died in 1936 long before India gained independence in 1947.