Dr. R. Subrahmonia Ayyar, the former Dean of the Indian Institute of Technology gave a seminar on Wed, Dec 5, 2003 at the Umass Dartmouth campus, as part of the Indic center monthly seminars series . Dr. Sukalyan Sengupta who is the coordinator introduced the speaker. “You may wonder how a man of science like Dr. R. S. Ayyar chooses to speak on a subject that is closer to philosophy. But in the Indic traditions knowledge is not compartmentalized” said Dr. Sengupta as he introduced Dr.Ayyar who is not only an outstanding structural engineer but also a writer, poet and scholar with a wide-range of interests.

In riveting address that used a logical and scientific approach Dr. Ayyar addressed the question that is often posed to parents by children born and brought up in America. “Is our Indic cultural heritage something that provides added value or is it a burden that we are better off shedding” Mom and dad want me to keep it and I want to shed it is the often heard opinion.

The lecture started with the importance of acquiring knowledge and learning but arduous but proper method for gaining true knowledge. It elaborated the three stages of reception, recall and reconstitution in the process of acquiring knowledge and conversion of the same into practical wisdom, which will help to experiment, elaborate and create new knowledge.

“Knowledge is like the vast stretch of sandy beach and what one can learn at most tantamounts to a handful of those sand grains. Having been thus confounded by the insurmountable volumes of knowledge handed down through heritage and currently growing exponentially, one has to draw a prioritized program of learning and acquiring knowledge which will be of relevance individually and collectively to the society and the humanity at large.”said Ayyar. Ayyar urged people to critical analyze all the information that they receive , be it traditions handed down in the family or news items that come via the cyberspace and then make a decision on what we should and should not use.

“A doubt looms large in the minds of most of us. Many of the dictates and dogmas handed down through heritage seem to be illogical, impractical and irrelevant in today’s context. While the truth imbibed in them is absolute and immortal, most of them are shrouded in cobwebs of superstition and concocted distortion and stories mainly to carry the message to the uneducated masses of those times. A logical person with a critical analytical mind will definitely dust off all these cobwebs of confusion to trace the underlying truth, and when he does that, he is in for a really remarkable revelation.”

He presented a beautiful analogy drawn from modes of transport to assign value to each piece of knowledge one gains. “I take a bullock cart to go from the train station to a remote village to see my aunt. I take an airplane to visit my grandson in America. Can I switch those modes of transport? No. Each mode of transport is valuable in its own place. Similarly each piece of knowledge is extremely valuable. It is for us to understand and use it appropriately” said Ayyar.

The lecture substantiated thorough examples some of the golden principles in our cultural heritage which are of everlasting relevance and hence cannot be discarded. It also highlighted the absolute truths found in our scriptures, which run on parallel lines with many of our modern scientific discoveries and inventions. These included tolerance, duty consciousness, and service mentality.

Realizing the constraints imposed on the younger generation by time and other environmental factors, Ayyar brought forth some of the essential duties emphasized by our tradition and suggested appropriate guidelines for following suitable adaptation of the same even under the modern, modified circumstances and the individual’s social and professional needs. Click here to read the text of the speech.

The Indic Center whose core mission is to bring awareness about Indic traditions to America organizes the seminar series to further this mission. “The Indian community in the New England area is a rich resource for us to draw upon, and we always seem to come upon stellar speakers “says Dr. Balram Singh, the founder director of the center. The Indian faculty and students of UMASS Dartmouth who volunteer their time for this effort primarily run the center. The University provides tremendous support to this effort.

Click here to learn more about the indic center.

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