Planting Humanity's Seeds
By Himanshu Bhatt
New Straits Times - Dec 5, 2004  

(The child's education, in a world besieged by materialism and greed, needs to be profoundly changed for genuine peace to take root, says India's apostle of peace J.P. Vaswani.)

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Six years ago, J.P. Vaswani was awarded the U Thant Award, the annual recognition of the United Nations to honour world personalities in pursuit of peace.  

Conceived in 1982, the award is named after the world body's former secretary-general.  

Previous winners included the likes of Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and Desmond Tutu.  

Unlike any of these others, Vaswani had never been involved in socio-political revolution or cultural uprising. A philanthropist, he had never before been publicised the world over for any dramatic humanitarian work.  

But when the pocket-sized man in plain white robes rose to speak, the audience could not help but get struck by the heartfelt fervour of his message.  

The 86-year old Indian educationist and philosopher has been at the forefront in an unusual mission to make modern folks aware of how they can realistically achieve personal peace and societal harmony.  

And he does so by driving towards the very basic specks in the rushing winds of discontent inundating our modern materialistic world.   "In the US, the Board of Elementary Education issued a report that by the time a student leaves elementary school, the average child would have witnessed 8,000 murders and 18,000 robberies on TV," he said during a recent visit to Malaysia.  

"All these have quite an effect on the minds of children!... The media is full of these sensational things, and they do nothing to educate!"  

Education is at the core of Vaswani's fiery passion to stir communities into becoming conscious about the real roots of societal ills and human despondency.  

"In our education system today, a graduate will say: 'I want to get a good job and career'. But he is thinking only of his own self!... The spirit of sympathy, of compassion, the love of truth is missing from our education.  

"This spirit should be inculcated in the young. We should give an education where knowledge is blended with sympathy, where knowledge is blended with compassion! Instead, there are now so many learned crooks!" says the author of 30 books.  

So moving is Vaswani's appeal that he was once even called to address the UN assembly on the issue of world peace. Britain's House of Commons has since twice invited him to speak on matters such as 'World Without Wars'.  

And he has kept travelling extensively, vigorously attempting to spread his words of awareness around the globe.  

Vaswani is devoted to promoting his idea of education as he is convinced that children are the seeds of humanity.  

"There is little hope in the adult," he laments. "We must begin with the child, with a clean slate."  

And he sees the overwhelming tide of commercialism and negligent media as a huge factor in whipping up discords and conflicts at various levels - the self, the family and the community.  

"Man's knowledge has far surpassed his wisdom... And materialism has made us very selfish. Man is becoming more and more selfish when he needs to be more compassionate.  

"And the blame does not lie in any department save education."  

"But today, education takes only a small part of a nation's budget; defence takes more."  

Vaswani is a scientist by training. His master's thesis on the scattering of x-rays by solids was assessed by India's renowned scientific genius CV Raman.  

In 1962 he stumbled on his life-long calling in education while becoming the principal of the visionary St Mira's College, India's first girls-only college.  

The college had then started out with just 62 students, and has since grown to accommodate more than 5,000. Vaswani served there for 16 years before launching off to initiate a string of charitable and educational ventures that have now crossed the shores of India.  

And his decades of experience have imbued him with a pragmatism that tampers with his fiery passion. "Materialism has come to stay. You cannot reverse the process," he says.  

"But you can turn the face of materialism in the right direction. You can use these very tools to educate the people on their lives."  

Vaswani likes to cite the example of philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The late billionaire steel magnate had apparently questioned himself on how much he realistically needed to spend for his family and person.  

"He then decided that a certain amount of his money belonged to him, and the rest to the people, and he built museums, parks, research labs."  

Aligned to Vaswani's vision of global harmony, is his deep-rooted affection for inter-faith understanding. Though a devout Hindu and a believer in non-violence - he avoids meat, espousing vegetarianism as a healthy lifestyle - he embraces dialogues with other religions.

Vaswani has delivered addresses, including as a keynote speaker, on the grand stage of the biennial World Parliament of Religions. And he is convinced that religious differences have been unduly politicised.  

"Religion? Let us talk of it less. Let us practise it more. It is at the practice that we have failed... Religion should be made real in our daily lives. But now politics comes in and stirs up strife."  

At a press conferences in the US, a reporter once snapped at Vaswani: "You talk of religion, but religion has failed us!"  

Vaswani retorted. "It is not religion that has failed us. We have failed religion!"  

"All religions say that you must love your neighbour as God... What a wonderful world it would be then!"