An Indian Teacher's Dilemma

Every year, when bright students come to me for advice and recommendation letters for them to pursue their careers abroad, I'm stuck with a debilitating dilemma, which I'm sure, is not unfamiliar to teachers all over India.

India is a wounded civilisation that is emerging from centuries of oppression, and grappling with collective trauma. The challenges it faces are immense and we require the brightest of minds working endlessly to make even small collective improvements. There is still life left in its civilisational roots, and it takes enormous care and nurture for these roots to grow back into the magnificent tree that it once was.

India needs bright minds, and bright minds are likely to be consumed by its challenges, with little or no traces left of their individuality.

On the other hand, moving abroad to a more developed country does wonders for these bright minds for developing their individuality. They get exposed to new cultures, new experiences, greater wealth, greater power, etc. However, none of these are likely to add much value to address the challenges that India is facing.

My Western, liberal education tells me that individual liberty is the basis for all free societies and development. Any society in which the individual cannot express their individuality is not free, and hence it is not only rational, but also moral, for individuals to seek greener pastures where they can grow and express their individuality.

As a teacher operating in the same hermeneutic echo chamber, no doubt, I would have implicitly endorsed and repeated those values to my students.

However, the values of dharma or sustainability that we learnt at home, teaches us something slightly different. It says that every individual is essentially a complex system of being, who themselves become components of a much larger and even more complex system of being, called the human society. And the basis for all free societies is to maximise the sustainability of all systems of being -- be they the individual, or the collective. Freedom in the dharmic sense, is hence, a multivariate optimisation problem. Individuals have to sustain their system of being, while at the same time, they are also responsible for helping sustain the collective system of being.

Promoting individuality by encouraging migration to greener pastures, greatly impedes the sustainability of the collective system of being. Individuals, by their mere presence can contribute greatly towards affective benefits of others around them. The mere presence of people we care about being in our vicinity gives us hope, strength and gumption to take on life's challenges for yet another day.

Of course, every student who wishes to go abroad, says that they are going to come back soon and they are only trying to "expand their horizons". But data tells us otherwise.

It is very rare for expat Indians to return to India after their studies. Their studies would have created some debt, which forces them to look for jobs after their studies. By which time, they would be married and having kids. And so on.

But more insidious is not these rational decisions that drives them to grow their roots elsewhere. The real scary and insidious elements are the narratives their minds (subconsciously) build to justify for themselves emotionally, that they are doing the right thing.

We are not rational beings who are emotional. We are emotional beings who are rational. Our system of being is largely driven by our emotional connects. And the decision to break away from one's emotional roots and settle down in a different country and culture is a decision fraught with trauma.

Our system of being -- the system that strives to keep us alive, quickly jumps into action and builds defences to justify the rational decision. Hence, people who decide to settle abroad end up with extra hate and resentment about their Indian roots. Indian culture, Indian values, Indian worldview, everything becomes the evil incarnate, which kept them oppressed in creepy ways, and which they have escaped to find a refuge in their new home.

The specific trajectory of each expat would be different -- but the broad template of experience that they go through is somewhat like the above. And I know that when I write a reference letter to a bright student who can solve complex math problems and write great code, they are actually diving headlong into an existential crisis, in a few years time. Not every one emerges out of existential crises, stronger. Most of them are scarred and traumatised for life.

So am I really helping them when I encourage them to expand their horizons? Can't they expand their horizons using the Internet and with the myriad exchange programs that exist to bring people of different cultures together? Do they have to essentially uproot themselves in their quest for their individuality?

On the other hand, if I discourage them, will I be hurting them emotionally? If I convince them to put their minds for work in India and they end up struggling and getting consumed by its problems, without being able to express their individuality, did I not fail the trust they had in me?

The dilemma continues...

Comments

Muddled Soul said…
Sir, you seem to be a Dvaiti (deducing from your arguments).
Do study the socio-cultural context in which the sage Vidyaranya developed the Dvaita philosophy. The Oneness of Advaita, which was the most popular philosophy at that time, had apparently lulled people into inaction and nihilism. People were unwilling to fight against foreign invaders, by arguing that Brahman is everywhere. Vidyaranya argued that despite the Oneness of everything, we still need to work towards our sustainability. He argued for example, if everything is One, then why do we feel hunger and why do we need to eat at all? The Dvaita school of thought, directly went into the formation of one of the most powerful empires in south India, the Vijayanagar empire, which successfully repelled foreign invaders for several centuries.

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