Former Sadar-e-Riyasat and veteran politician, Dr Karan Singh has stressed that we should not forget the price paid for our Independence.
“Do not forget the price that was paid for Independence. We were not as violent against the British as we were against each other during the partition. There were unbelievable brutalities. You cannot ignore it. You have to let the people know the price paid for Independence of India,” he said while participating in a virtual session of `Ek Mulakat Visesh’ organized by Prabha Khaitan Foundation and presented by Shree Cement.
Dr Karan Singh was engaged in a lively conversation with Mohini Kent Noon, author and founder-chairperson of LILY Against Human Trafficking, which covered a wide range of topics from religion, education, Vedic wisdom, quantum mechanics, Sufism to The Partition.
Responding to a question on the role of religion in society, Karan Singh said, “People spend crores of rupees building mosques, temples and Gurudwaras but interfaith meetings are nobody’s baby. The prototypes of religion we have in our minds are very rigid and the only way you can get over those prototypes is by meeting with each other and talking to each other. Interfaith prayers are very important.”
“I wish we could stress Sufism in India so that the other face of Islam which is becoming something of a prototype which makes you think of Taliban and the fanatical side of Islam. This is very unfortunate. The softer and loving part of Islam is forgotten. Sufi shrines are the essence of Islam,” Singh said.
Referring to the Vedic wisdom and Upanishads and their relevance in the modern world, Karan Singh said, “It seems to me that Noble laureates and post-Einsteinian and post-Heisenbergian quantum mechanics researchers have begun to reflect some of the insights of Upanishads which have the same sort of descriptions which now define what these people are looking into atoms.”
Commenting on the broader education system and the need for Vedic wisdom in our curriculum, Karan Singh said, “Our Constitution forbids us from teaching religion but that does not mean you cannot tell the wonderful morally-uplifting stories of the Upanishads and other religious texts. We need to have an injection of wisdom into the education system. A combination of our ancient wisdom and modern pedagogical methods.”
