By Vishwamithra –

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Education is much more than college degrees; it goes beyond what you learn from books and masters, professors and lecturers. It comes from the parents and society; it generates from the depths of one’s intellect; higher learning then begins its steep climb from and within such institutions that have lasted more than centuries, giving birth to great minds, harnessing their phenomenal strengths and shrinking their traditionally weak corners, ultimately producing society-serving men and women who have changed the course of human history.  

One’s interaction with his or her environment, his family and his friends, are all immeasurable sources of education, However, there are some institutions that stand out as beacons of higher learning. They provide not only what is commonly known as higher and more profoundly defined knowledge on specific subjects or specific branches of or sources of knowledge. Such institutions last a long time and those who attend and pass out as modern day graduates or the learned ones in the ancient times, launch themselves into the vast family of human society and serve it beyond one’s immeasurable stretches of imagination, notwithstanding their own susceptibilities.       

Takshashila University, also known as Taxila University, was a such an institution, a renowned ancient center of learning geographically located in present-day Pakistan (ancient India), antedated to the 5th century BC. Its magnificence endured and prospered for several centuries, drawing students from diverse continents, and eventually was destroyed in the 5th century CE. The university was a hub for both religious and secular studies, particularly known for its Buddhism teachings and its comprehensive curriculum. Amongst the greats who attended the great Taxila were, King Pasenadi of Kosala, Jivaka, the personal doctor of Buddha, Chanakya, the Chief Strategist and Advisor to Chandragupta Maurya (Emperor Asoka’s grandfather) of the Mauryan Empire and even Aṅgulimāla, a prominent character in Buddha Charitha (Life of Buddha).

An ancient center for research and profound discoveries made in the vast and varied tale of mankind, Taxila had been an unequaled institution for knowledge, higher learning and deeper engagement in scholarly exercise.

Harvard University, founded in 1636, its alumni, faculty and researchers include, among others, 8 US presidents, 24 heads of state, 31 heads of government, Nobel laureates and Rhodes Scholars. Harvard University, this fountain of knowledge and higher learning, now has become the a ‘bull’s eye’ for Donald Trump’s target practice. By making Harvard his focus of attack, Donald Trump has shown the world how malignant and destructive his intellectually undeveloped mind could be. His mind would have been more akin to Aṅgulimāla‘s atrocious inside, burning for another finger to count his victims. Mediocre minds find their own level- one beneath the ground. For our collective misfortune, there is no Buddha amongst us today.

However, Harvard is not the sole target of Donald Trump and his maniacal Cabinet of Secretaries. The department of Education is to be dissolved. Guidance and financing from the federal level is being withdrawn, leaving education at the hands of State Governmental level politicians and bureaucrats.  One is reminded of the Nazi attacks on German Universities and education. Hitler attempted to guide German higher education along the lines of Nazism and he, in fact, succeeded in doing so. Donald Trump has taken a page from Hitler and all such dictatorial thinkers: never tolerate free thinking and secular rationalizing.

Oxbridge duo in England would have suffered the same ridicule and harsh treatment that Harvard is facing today, had they been in the United States of America. An assault on such storied and prestigious seats of higher learning is an assault on fundamental free and aggressive human thought. Human thought did not reach its pinnacle today by being en-slavishly fragile and clumsy. It did not reach the wondrous heights by cowing down to dictators and half-baked ignoramus men and women such as Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Yet we are here, today and now. How could we arrest this steep spiraling down the ladder of human thought and discovery? And is it possible to throw some spokes amongst the wheels of this radical and naked violation of basic rights?

Ancient Taxila housed some historic reformers; she not only gave intellectual refuge to great minds like Chanakya and Chandragupta, she nursed and nurtured those impeccable minds. Those men went on to reform the then prevailing world and alter the elementary functioning of how their contemporaries thought and performed in their respective fields or professions. When Harvard, one of those modern-day Taxilas, is confronted with one of its gravest dangers, the danger of being extinct, it becomes incumbent upon every intellectual mind to protect it and defend it. Kill Harvard, you will kill free thought, period.

Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Pennsylvania, all these Ivy League seats of greater learning might vanish forever, making the scholarly landscape of America barren and plain and infertile. For the umpteenth time, I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quotation: ‘America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between’. However, such a simplistic description of America is an insult to some of the greatest minds America has produced. Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Barak Obama, Waldorf Emerson and an innumerable number of scholars, politicians and scientific and artistic men and women have embellished the human story, tirelessly and without a pause. Trump would not be even among the footnotes in such a catalog of greats.

But, would Americans open their eyes and ears so that a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion  can be avoided? It is no exaggeration to say these things in such seemingly exaggerated fashion.  What awaits American universities, the premier educational institutions of the American and other international minds is not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. What Devadatta attempted to inflict upon the great teachings of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, the Borgias unholy visitation upon the Papacy, the disgrace that the modern day Jihads trying to desecrate the words of the Quran, failed ultimately. The great liberal minds of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad may have prevailed, at lest for some time, but the relentless assault on free thought and liberty of expression cannot be underestimated, nor could it be ruled out.

Even the ancient Taxila vanished; so could Harvard and Columbia and the rest. But the journey of free man continues and it would do so whatever the obstacles and impediments thrown in its way. Never was this journey easy and effortless; never was it on a bed of roses and lilies; it was always hard, gruesome and yet with utter joy, man chose to tread along, never resting, never having a regret. That ultimately is supreme joy.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com