Celebrate public holidays meaningfully

The purpose of special holidays in memory of great personalities who have been the milestones of our history and culture is to pay tribute to their contributions and inspire the present generation. They are annual reminders to rededicate ourselves to their moral values and cultural legacies.

Although such holidays were celebrated in our educational institutions with reverence and involvement in the early decades after independence, it has receded into background in the recent years. It is uncertain how this unfortunate slide has happened but its impact on the future generations is hugely felt by all right-thinking academicians and educationists.

It is therefore time for a critical review of the ways that the special purpose holidays are being celebrated in educational institutions and suggest curative measures to bring back this moral component to fulfil both individual and institutional social responsibilities.

In this article, I will first provide a general view of time usage on special holidays by the higher education institutions and thereafter suggest curative measures in terms of policy tweaks, responsibilities of the stakeholders and a performance framework for their meaningful celebration.

The Karnataka government has declared many special holidays in memory of Basava, Kanakadasa, Valmiki and Mahaveera to pay tribute to great sons of this soil whose sacrifices, contributions and inspiring messages are relevant through generations, past, present and future. As a student of St Joseph’s college in 1970s, I recall that Nehru’s Discovery of India was prescribed as a non-detailed text.

Similar inspirational measures were also part of other government institutions too. About 50 years ago, in government schools, inspiring quotes from history, freedom struggle, messages of peace and harmony were inscribed on the walls so that the students would enter the school in an ambience of ethical values. When I was a student of National High School, Bangalore, a selected passage from Bhagavad Gita was a part of regular prayer.

In addition, selected quotes of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Vivekananda, and similar practices in other education institutions provided a culture to promote social leadership through moral education. In recent times, however, such institutional social responsibilities seem to have vanished.

On special holidays, colleges/institutions greet visitors with closed doors with no student or staff available except the watchman. If at all held, only the officials in responsible positions and a few of the staff and students from NSS and sports are in attendance.

The icons of sacrifices who have built our democratic and social fabric such as Independence Day, Republic Day, Gandhi Jayanthi and Ambedkar Jayanthi deserve grateful tributes. A small number of institutions and schools have still kept the flame alive, kindling hopes of reinventing the glorious past.

Taking an optimistic note, the indifference need not be interpreted as total absence of appreciation on the part of stakeholders, particularly the youth who lack guidance and awareness. A robust institutional mechanism to galvanise their innate dedication, sincerity and a sense national and cultural pride needs to be put in place.

To inject meaning into celebration of public holidays, one basic requirement is to first bring all the major stakeholders in education – government, institution and the students – to come on the same page. The government as a regulatory stakeholder should provide guidelines, specifying the procedures for celebrating special holidays.

The institutions on their part shall translate these guidelines into live programmes to fulfil the purpose of special holidays. Academic Councils and faculties of universities and autonomous colleges have key roles to play by orienting the Boards of Studies to provide due space for value education in the non-core (non-detailed studies of yester years) component. Arranging invited lectures from eminent scholars and cultural events would seem appropriate.

Essay writing

Organising thematic essay writing and debate competitions by universities with prizes distributed by the vice-chancellors would expand the functional framework in a meaningful way. In such a congenial atmosphere, students would willingly participate to complete the functional loop.

Once we restart inculcating basic ethics/morals at the primary level and re-stabilise it at the secondary level, students can easily walk the other professional dimensions - be it business, research, sports, civil services, public life or any other field on their own.

Building a knowledge society on a robust moral foundation is a fundamental duty of the state. For this purpose, the special purpose holidays need to be taken to the next logical level of affirmative action. In this context, special holidays could be utilised as an interface between the government and the other stakeholders.

The National Education Policy 2020 also emphasises inculcating moral and ethical values as a significant component of the holistic education - “Value-based education should include developing humanistic, ethical, oral and universal human values of truth (satya), peace (shanti), non-violence (ahimsa), righteous conduct (dharma) and love (prem) and citizenship values. Lessons in seva/service and participation in community service programmes will also be considered an integral part of holistic education”.

The key is to attractively depict the central part played by great persons on whose shoulders one can clearly view of the glorious past of our country intertwined with a splendid future at the national and global levels (Einstein revisited). Once this is appropriately accomplished, I am optimistic that the youth who are generally more idealistic would seize the opportunity to create their own stories of success. Ultimately, it is bound to be the success story of the state and the country too.

(The writer is Adviser, Education Reforms, Government of Karnataka, and Chancellor, PES University, Bengaluru)