(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist)
Vol. XXXIV
No.
35
August
29,
2010
Rebuild
Nalanda Not to Settle Past Scores
But
to Build Glorious Future:
Yechury
The
following is the text of the speech
delivered by Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) leader in the parliament while
participating in the debate on the NalandaUniversity
Bill, 2010. This bill seeks to establish a central university in
Nalanda
district of Bihar, on the lines of the ancient university which was
founded
there in the 5th century AD and became a renowned centre of learning
for
students from across South Asia.
While inviting
Yechury to speak, the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha requested that
the
time constraints be observed. However after the speech, he is on record
to say,
“The debate was of such a high standard that I forgot to see my watch.”
The
subheadings in the text have been added.
I am
very excited at the prospects of the establishment of such a university
which
is an international project, a project of 16 countries jointly to
establish
this university with a very eminent team of international thinkers,
philosophers,
Nobel Laureates, etc. I am excited at the prospects of this university
being
established, not in terms of settling scores of the past in history,
but in
terms of trying to revive the glory that once was of Nalanda, which is
very
important -- I would want it to be revived -- and not in terms of
saying that
so and so did such and such wrongs, and therefore, I am doing this to
correct
the wrongs of history. I think I am excited at the prospects for the
future; I
am excited at the prospects of what we have contributed in the past,
which
needs to be carried forward for the future. Dr Karan Singh has very correctly said about Bakhtiyar
Khilji's troops and the vandalism they did at Nalanda. This is the
history. The
barbaric nomads and tribes called Huns destroyed the mighty Roman Empire. But these wrongs of history are
not the ones to be
corrected by establishing a University, or, for that matter, a question
that
plagues all of us is that after the 7th century AD, why is Buddhism
thriving only
outside the borders of India.
Why
is it that inside the borders of India you find Buddhist
culture
only in caves, where people were ostracised from the society? Why is
all their
art and literature underground in caves? These are issues of history.
That is
not the project of this university. The project of this university,
from what I
can conceive of it, and I want this to be considered seriously, is what
Nehru
says in Discovery of India on the eve
of independence. How does he describe India? Jawaharlal Nehru
invokes the
very evocative example of the palimpsest. Now, what is the palimpsest?
In
ancient times, before the discovery or invention of paper, the
palimpsest was
either a tablet of stone or a tablet of wood on which every victor
would erase
the past history and write his own version of history. But then, as
Nehru says
in the Discovery of India, "India is an ancient palimpsest on
which
layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet, no
succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written
previously".
CONTINUITY
WITH
A CHANGE
We
are the churning crucible of human civilisation, and that is what these
lands
represented. Various tendencies have come; we have assimilated various
tendencies and on that basis, we have advanced. And today, the BBC
describes,
in its Epic History series, India
as the only continuing civilisation in the history of human
civilisation
anywhere in the world. Dr Karan Singh referred to Raja Raja Cholan's
Thanjavur
temple built in 1002 BC; in 2010, every morning, at the stroke of dawn,
it
opens with the same shlokas that have been read out for over
1008 years.
You have that continuity and you have the change. Nalanda represented
that; it
represented for a millennium, for 800 years or more, from the 6th
century BC to
the 6th century AD,(when Buddhism reigned supreme) the
repository of world's knowledge where the
advent of ideas was continuously taking place. If you go by the
accounts of Huan
Tsang, it was not only a temple of knowledge, but a temple of the
highest
pinnacle of tolerance, and religious tolerance at that, which is
something that
we have to imbibe today. So, today, in restarting the NalandaUniversity,
we should look into the future. And, this is where the issue of
tolerance is
absolutely important. It is not to reclaim that glory -- of course, it
is the
glory; Angkor Vat is a glorious example. But the question is,
those
glories came on the basis of a knowledge. We had the discovery of the
zero
during this period. This millennium was the period of maximum
scientific
advance. It is a different story, why it stopped after the 7th century
AD; why
did we not advance and why did the centre of knowledge move to the
West? These
are issues of intolerance; we will have to make sure that they do not
interfere
in the work of the university. There is a fascinating book written by a
French
intellectual, Charles Seife, The
Biography of a Dangerous Idea. And that dangerous idea was the
zero, which
the Arabs took from us, and the world came to know of them as the Arab
numerical
but, to be fair, the Arabs always gave us the credit for having
discovered it.
Now, why was it dangerous? Can you conceive, today, of nothingness? It
was
impossible in human civilisation at that point of time to say, there
can also
be a possibility that nothing exists. And what was the counterpart? A
zero
cannot be conceived even today in mathematics, without having the
conception of
the infinite. Infinity and zero go together, as dialectics will tell
you, the
unity of the opposites. And that is the reality! And such discoveries
that were
made from a base like Nalanda is the basis on which we have to advance
to the
future civilisation. So, my request would be, let us not reduce this
university
to settle scores of history. Let us not reduce this university to
restore the
so-called glory of the past; let us build the glory of the future. It
is the
building of the glory of the future that Nalanda must actually
represent. I
think, this is where it becomes very important for us here to talk of
that future.
It is ironic -- I don't want to mention it -- but Bakhtiar Khilji was
the one
who destroyed it. The current chief minister of Bihar
was born in Bakhtiarpur.
He is
the one who is moving the legislation for the resurrection of this
university.
So, history has its own ways. So, let us not try to settle historical
scores;
but, when it comes down to research, I think, that is where some fine
tuning
needs to be done with this bill because we are talking in terms of
establishing
by law of the Indian parliament what is stated as a university that is
‘a
non-State, non-profit, secular and self-governing international
institution’.
ADVENTURE
OF IDEAS
With
the sovereign law of India
establishing such a university, it also goes on to say, ‘we have to
have further
agreements with all these countries on how this university is run’.
These are
all the fine prints which we can go into. But, the conception and the
perception of the university is what actually concerns today. I think,
we have
come to a stage in India where this churning crucible which is called
the
Indian civilisation has a variety and divergence that is unknown and
unconceivable anywhere in the world from the Kashmiriyat to the
Dravidiancivilisation, from the pari
mahal,
which was once in Dr Karan Singh’s kingdom where Dara Shikoh wrote that
famous
treaty called majma-ul-Bahrain, where he was talking of the
synthesis of
Sufism and Upanishads, mingling of the two oceans. The brink at which
we are
today—we were, and we still are—at advancing human thought, human
civilisation
to higher levels. Such is the levels to which, I think, this university
will
have to aim. As Marx said once, before the evolution of capitalism, all
ideological differences were settled in this sphere of religion.
Religion was
the theatre. And that is why when zero was invented, the
complimentarity of the
infinite came up. What is the symbolism that emerged from this
civilisation? If
you have the cosmic dance of Shiva in the Tandav, which the Tao of
Physics (
Fritjof Capra) inscribes it at the CERN
Laboratory in Switzerland today where the Hadron Collider is actually
trying to
find out what has happened at the first collision in the cosmic space,
when
matter as we know today was created. At that laboratory, you have the
Tao of
Physics quoting the cosmic dance of Shiva’s Tandav. India
has donated a statue of Nataraja
that stands at the laboratory’s entrance today. How do you portray
Shiva’s
Tandav today? You always portray Shiva’s Tandav only in a circle which
represents the zero--the infinite of the Tandav and the zero of the
material
world cannot be separated. It is this unity of opposites that
dialectical
materialism tells us, which generates the adventure of ideas. It is
towards
this adventure of ideas that we will have to move.
Therefore,
I think, in the final analysis, we must remember, that we are moving
into a
higher plane of human intellect and civilisation. Remember the final
paragraph
of Swami Vivekananda’s declaration at Chicago.
He says, ‘I take pity from the bottom of my heart on those who believe
in the
destruction of someone else’s religion for the purpose of his own
religion. In
the final analysis it shall be inscribed on the banner of every
religion: assimilation
not destruction.’ I am quoting from my memory; there may be small
mistakes of
comma or full stop. That is the philosophy with which we have advanced
and come
to this stage. Therefore, what is required in the final analysis is
that you
have to get back to the creation of this university—I again go back to
Nehru;
in the first few days after independence when he was delivering the convocation address of the Allahabad
University. This is what he says about a university: “A university
stands for
humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for
the
search of truth. It stands for the onward march of human race towards
even
higher objectives. If the university discharges its duties adequately,
then it
is well with the people and the nation.”
This NalandaUniversity
will have to fulfill these
objectives. I would want this august House, through the adoption of
this bill,
to set up the mechanism internationally where these objectives can be
achieved
and, I think, under the leadership of Dr Amartya Sen, there is a very
eminent
group that has been working out on the dynamics of this. While I fully
agree
with Dr Karan Singh, this is the final point, about the architecture of
the
building. I would like the entire House to join us in trying to build
the
intellectual architecture for this university. The intellectual
architecture,
in the final analysis, is the most important thing. With that
objective, I rise
to support this endeavor, and, I think, this is a very exciting
endeavor that
will take India
into higher planes of civilisation.