Guru Dakshina

Guru Dakshina

The death of Babli Ghosh in Bengal and Shanno in Delhi brings in the negligent behavior of the teachers towards the students. This negligence in behavior can be willful or a matter of chance. The history is full of both kinds of incidences where in it had been willful act or a mistake by the teacher.

If we turn the pages of history there were teachers like Dhrona who asked the thumb of Eklavya so that his dearest student Arjuna should remain the Best Warrior. The above is a willful act of a teacher to give a living death to his student. But we still refer Dhrona as a good teacher, why ? We must know that a good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for his students. But despite Arjuna being his favorite student, the same Dhrona stood against his disciple in the war. A teacher who has put in so many efforts to make his student an ideal student then why the same teacher waged a war against his disciple. And that to when the teacher knew that the Dharma is not on the side of his student. When we look back in history the only reason Guru Dhrona stood against Arjuna was because he was to oblige the Kauravas for the debt of the salt. Or in other words Dhrona was getting favors from the Kauravs and having taken the favors in past, he was in not in position to leave them. But Dhrona also taught Arjuna a lesson in life - that there is no one who is his own and that a student has to fight even if he sees his teacher on the opposite side. It was the belief of Guru Dhrona that Arjuna being his best student will be victorious. Infect the success begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth." . But the best lessons can be learnt only with stick of truth.

The current case here appears to be totally different as the teacher Rekha Bhakat had asked her students to memorize a poem at home but Babli told her she had not been able to buy her Bengali book yet. Teacher probably thought that by little punishment the Girl will be more attentive towards her study. It is rare that anyone can conclude that the teacher wanted to kill her student. But the fact remains the student got killed and the teacher has to take the liability of her negligent act. The incident proves that good teachers may be costly, but bad teachers cost more. In case of Shanno, it may have happened that Shanno was too weak to receive the punishment and the teacher was not aware of her health issue. But the fact of the matter is that she also died and the teacher cannot be absolved of her responsibility in the above case as well.

If we look down history a teacher is like a charioteer who takes his warrior towards the right direction. In Mahabharta the success of Arjuna was all written based on directions of Krishna. But can we imagine that if Krishna took Arjuna to various targets himself, without Arjuna understanding about it then both the warrior and the charioteer would have failed. A teacher must teach and not manipulate a student. A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image. If a teacher wants a student like Arjuna then he must build qualities of Krishna. Just throwing dusters on students or giving them punishment will not help students. A teacher must realize that he need not try to fix the students but he must fix himself first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When the students fail, a teacher, too, has failed.

(this article is also available at http://sameersachdeva.blogspot.com/ )