The programme known as Something Understood as a result of it’s about points we will perceive one thing about, however by no means perceive every part about. Our inspiration was a poem referred to as Prayer by the mystic English poet George Herbert. The poem is an inventory of metaphors for prayer. Herbert ends by saying: “The milky way, the bird of paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood, the land of spices, something understood.”

These metaphors describe what a prayer could also be like or what a prayer might be believed to assist us to do — to be “an engine against the mighty, sinners tower”. They inform us how prayers could make us really feel — “softness and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss”. But they by no means inform us precisely what prayer is, what it does for us, what it makes us really feel as a result of it’s one thing we will’t know precisely about. It is one thing we will solely know one thing about.

This week, newspapers reported the University Grants Commission’s draft norms to permit international universities to arrange campuses in India. Should we’ve got Oxford and Cambridge campuses, and Harvard and Yale campuses, in India? Time and once more, it has been requested whether or not this might recreate the times when India was the Vishwa Guru, the world chief. The nice names of the previous have been quoted as justification for claiming such an exalted educational standing: Nalanda, Takshashila, Vallabhi and Vikramshila. Sometimes the not-so-outstanding file of at this time’s Indian universities is in contrast with the gallantry of time previous, 2,000 to 2,500 years in the past.

In what I examine the potential for members of the highest 500 world universities coming to India, I discovered no proof that we would be capable to recreate the achievements of the previous. I discovered lots to counsel that the current state of affairs made that unlikely to occur. There is the query of demand. Only one high American college has partnered with a lowly graded nation to ascertain a college.

In Britain, high universities are battling to win the academically brightest worldwide college students. They present no want to reverse this pattern and ship their finest college students overseas. This is to not say there is no such thing as a curiosity amongst worldwide college students in coming to India. Still, it’s removed from being a requirement for international schooling at an reasonably priced price. So, reaching considerably cheaper prices will take a whole lot of work.

If India is to be severe in its want to turn out to be the Vishwa Guru quite than competing, and possibly failing to offer cut-rate western schooling, it must relearn what it has to show. Here I come again to Something Understood. The elementary precept of the programme is that crucial questions in life can’t be answered by sure or no. Minds need to be saved open as a result of there’ll at all times be one thing extra to find out about these questions. That’s why Indians needs to be proud to be an argumentative nation. That is why there shouldn’t be any full stops in India.

The views expressed are private