vinit goenka

|| Ya Devi sarva-bhuteshu, Vidya rupen sansthita, namastasye namastasye namastasye namo namah ||

|| Ya Devi sarva-bhuteshu, Vidya rupen sansthita, namastasye namastasye namastasye namo namah ||

What a better day than today to introspect into my country’s contribution to the world’s knowledge. Vasant Panchami celebrated as Saraswati Puja is a symbolism in Hinduism which brings to light the place, knowledge occupies in our culture. And that is of worship. No wonder, India has had been revered by the world as the cradle of human race, the birthplace of human speech & mother of all languages 1. In fact, the world’s greatest scientist of all times, Albert Einstein went on to say, “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”

From time immemorial, India has shared much of her knowledge freely and for free with the world based on which the western world has achieved what they have today & their claims to those. What have we, the inheritors of such vast knowledge done with what we inherited? A question or rather a concern that bothers me very often is, have we really taken the legacy forward of creating our own or have we kept our claim to knowledge neatly preserved in our museums? Unfortunately, the answer is, we have stopped using & encouraging use of our own knowledge.

Ironically, a substantial portion of India’s GDP today is paid as license fees to the US & other developed nations. We also pay dearly for importing defense & healthcare equipments. While the developed countries like US collected the best of the worlds scientists, funded research & created a knowledge economies while Congress ruled India provided the scientists never to come back to our country. It was the period of 1995 to 2005 under NDA, the developed world saw India as the emerging research destination, which too was laid to rest after UPA I took over. Abysmal policy paralysis of UPA I & II coupled with scams, one after the other, irreversibly harmed the environment of indigenous research & development as the bright & talented Indians, scholars, researchers, and entrepreneurs lost hope.

However, I am hopeful. Hopeful to see the India Rabindranath Tagore imagined, a truly independent India.

Today, on this auspicious day of Vasant Panchami, let us pray to our Goddess of knowledge Maa Saraswati & strengthen our resolve to vote for a truly independent India, Rabindranath Tagore’s India, …

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls…

…Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

1. Mark Twain, American author: “India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.”