Perfection of Magnificent Idealism
By Karmayogi
It was a privately funded
university, founded by an uneducated wealthy man on financially sound lines. The
founder was not making a profit out of it. It was not like a centre of academic
learning but a huge collection of rural youth seeking degrees. One offshoot of this unacademic adventure was that the
place became a leader of the Freedom Movement of youth. A national
luminary was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the place to raise its status. In its
50 years of existence, he produced few PhDs. On enquiry he was told that the
most brilliant young men there had no reading habits. An idealistic young man
of great courage and vision joined there as the junior-most member. He was
introduced to a student political volunteer.
The student suggested to the teacher that they could together reform the place
into a true academic centre. The university had no graduate constituency. In
one year their combined efforts created that constituency, had this young
teacher elected to the Board of Studies, Academic Council, to the Senate with
12 of his supporters, and to the Syndicate. On top of all this, the teacher
persuaded a local Congress politician, a close friend of the Education
Minister, to get elected to the Board of Selection. Their efforts led to the constitution of a high-power Committee to remove
the uneducated founder and replace him by an educationist. This
affectionate, magnanimous, broadminded teacher, owing to his low social origin
had a marked streak of meanness that valued ONLY social status. As the rule of
life insists, he exhibited it towards his student colleague who was the
inspirer, architect and moving soul of this venerable transformation of the
university, all within one year.
The teacher lost his job, became a professor in a college where his classmate
was the Principal. The teacher lost all his eminent positions when the
university authorities raised the flag of fight. Tired of this relentless
opposition of 12 determined young men, the university offered a seat on the
Syndicate to their representative. That was
the moment when the young student was seeking a difficult admission.
The streak of meanness of this idealist Professor was on its shrewd guard and
he defensively asked the student, ‘‘What are you going to do for
your admission?'' The sensitivity of the student made him refrain
from asking for a favour, knowing full well the Principal of that college was a
close friend of the teacher. As life always acts, the Principal of his own
college, who was indirectly slightly related to the student, volunteered and
got him the admission. The 12 years of idealist work done by the teacher, the
risk he took in his job and life were magnificent. When the management offered
a seat in the Syndicate, by the law of life, it went to the dummy Principal
instead of the idealist professor, as one streak of meanness can cancel a
mountain of idealistic sacrifice.