SWAMI DAYA-NANDA SARASWATI travellers in India are naturally impressed with the stateliness and beauty of the Taj Mahal, that noble monument of Indian art. There is another building, which is quite likely to escape their notice, being far, far less imposing in point of architectural design and idea, situated some three miles below Hardawar and built on goo acres of redeemed jungle track, that stands as a permanent memorial to the unique services to India of an enthusiastic Hindu reformer. It were sheer sacri lege to compare the two buildings in reference to their artistic pretensions. The institution to which we refer is the Gurukula (literally " seat of learning ") established in 1902, mainly through the efforts of Mahatama Munshi Ram, a successful pleader of Jullundhur, and one of the most prominent members of the vegetarian section of the Arya Samaj. At the moment of writing this Gurukula contains more than 30o students, about forty in the college classes and the remaining in the various forms of the School Department. There are thirteen superintendents and a full complement of most competent teachers, who together with the governor, Mr. Munshi Ram, stand committed to vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. The scholars are admitted to the school when only seven or eight years of age, and must remain on the rolls for sixteen years. Before admission they must take the vows of chastity, obedi ence and poverty and renew these vows ten years later. During this period, the students must be Brahmacharis, i.e., celibates. They can associate with no women and indeed their own relations visit them usually about twice a year, with the permission of the governor and in the presence of one of the superintendents.
The governor draws no salary for his services, and in fact has given away to the school almost the entire earnings of a lifetime and the value of his estate. The teachers, that are distinguished graduates of Indian Universities, are only given maintenance allowance. The staff work in cordial co-operation and in complete loyalty to the governor, who has won their confidence through his winsome manners and selfless devotion to duty. The scholars lead a completely communal life, having all things in common. Even presents and gifts brought by their parents or guardians are equally divided among the scholars. In seasons of sickness, the various students gladly take up nursing by rotation. Till the
age of fourteen, the pupils are exclusively well grounded in Sanskrit and in the central ideas of Hindu philosophy and religion, through the medium of Hindi or Sanskrit. As yet they are not introduced to the culture or ideas of Western civilisation. When this preliminary discipline is over, they are then taught English, the physical sciences, philosophy and economics and related subjects, in accordance with the curriculum of universities on the English model. There is a well-equipped library attached to the Gurukula, as also physical and chemical laboratories. There are industrial and technological classes connected with the school for the benefit of all. Strenuous physical exercise is insisted on as part of the training.
The scholars pay no tuition fees but only a mere pittance for board and residence. They dress in saffron robes of the devotee. The College Board of Control had decided to abolish even these nominal charges with a view to bringing the institution into line with say the ancient Hindu University of Taxila. But paucity of funds, the writer understands, was the only barrier to the proposed abolition.
This remarkable institution, whose promoters rightly believe in religious discipline as the bed-rock of a national system of education, is a living memento to the hero of our present little sketch. It is a unique educational experiment, combining a revived Hindu monasticism with European culture of an advanced type. The main idea is to instil into the impressionable minds of the young the wealth and magnificence of their own religious and cultural heritage, thus trying to avoid the mental disturbance which might otherwise result as the central ideas of western science and philosophy came into violent conflict with crude or animistic religious notions. The school is so situated that the minds of the young are in constant touch with nature, the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas rising in proud and solitary splendour above the lower hills at the foot of the Upper Ganges. The students are thus in com munion with the freshness and varicoloured beauties of nature, as were the Munis and Rishis of ancient India, that were inspired to write the sublime hymns of the Rigveda, long before the dogmas and creeds of a later priest-ridden Hindustan became a clogging material to the flow of soul.