“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History and Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
John Adams
A crossover from Mechanical engineer to classical Sanskrit studies is a difficult decision to defend. In general, things do not happen in real life as they do in movies. That palpable difference is, after all, one of the reasons why we love cinema. Our lives do not finish in a neat narrative moment that resolves as it fades to black. We do not, in general, experience our lives as a grand unfolding of plot points that crescendo-culminate in a grandiose happening. Rarely do we have that succinct pointed epiphany.
Yet, in retrospect, I see Ananda Coomaraswamy’s works as the trigger to the changes that followed. In one essay on the state of (British-imposed) Education in India, in particular, he’d written,
“The most crushing indictment of this Education is that it destroys all capacity for the appreciation of Indian culture. Speak to the ordinary graduate on the ideals of the Mahabharata–he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare; talk to him of religious philosophy–you find that he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe a generation ago…not only has he no religion but he is as lacking in philosophy as the average Englishman…talk to him of Indian art–it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him to translate a letter written in his own mother tongue–he does not know it. He is indeed a stranger in his own land.”
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