Episode Transcript
Brendon Orr (00:00)
What happens when a globally respected mathematician becomes one of India's most transformative education reformers? What does it mean to hold a Padma Shri?
four honorary doctorates and pioneer research in harmonic analysis while also being deeply rooted in ancient spiritual traditions and Gandhian philosophy. Today, we're exploring the remarkable life and work of a true polymath whose vision is reshaping the future of higher education across India and beyond.
Professor Dinesh Singh is a mathematician, education reformer, public intellectual, painter, author, and spiritual seeker whose life reads like an intersection of worlds that are rarely brought together. Currently serving as vice chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Higher Education Council, chancellor of KR Mangalam University,
and distinguished university professor at Jindal Global University, Professor Singh's influence on Indian education cannot be overstated. India's National Education Policy 2020, the framework reshaping education for 1.4 billion people, is based entirely on his ideas and reforms developed during his transformative tenure as vice chancellor of the University of Delhi from 2010
to 2015.
But Professor Singh's story goes far deeper than institutional roles and policy frameworks.
His ancestry traces back to the great Muni Bharadwaj of the Ramayana, whose hermitage stood at Prayagraj, the very site of the Kumbh Mela. Born on Buddha Purnima, the Buddha's birthday, in Benares, after a sadhvi on the banks of the Ganga foretold his birth to his mother.
Professor Singh's life has been intimately intertwined with India's sacred geography and spiritual traditions. His father, after earning his doctorate at the Sorbonne, returned to teach at Alabad University just before a great Kumbh Mela, where their home became an impromptu Dharamshala, hosting pilgrims seeking the holy dip.
This deep spiritual grounding infuses Professor Singh's approach to education reform. He founded the Cluster Innovation Center at Delhi University, hailed worldwide for its innovative degree programs. He's now leading visionary projects, including the revolutionary Design Your Degree Program in Jammu and Kashmir, the Internet College, and the College of Startups.
All aimed at liberating higher education from rigid structures and empowering students to chart their own learning paths.
As a mathematician, his pioneering work in harmonic analysis and operator theory is widely cited and taught globally. He served on the scientific advisory committee to the Union Cabinet, been president of the Romano-John Mathematical Society, and holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Houston.
Yet he's equally at home discussing Gandhian philosophy, delivering keynotes across continents, painting, or exploring literature in English, Hindu and Urdu. His recently published book, Twisted Tales, reveals yet another dimension, the storyteller.
Professor Singh's Kumbh Mela experiences, from witnessing what he describes as miracles at the hands of the 150-year-old Devarababa,
To his profound belief that the vanished Saraswati River has returned through the human flow of knowledge and wisdom at the confluence, offer a window into how he sees education itself as a sacred convergence where ancient wisdom and modern innovation meet.
on this episode of Podmasana we'll explore how a mathematician mystic who wrote his first math paper at the age of 17 is re-imagining higher education for the 21st century, why India's education system needed radical reform, and what happens when you approach learning as both a scientific and spiritual practice.
Brendon Orr (04:59)
Part One, Roots and Convergences,
Brendon Orr (05:05)
Dinesh, welcome to Podmasana
Dinesh (05:10)
Thank you.
Brendon Orr (05:12)
Dinesh, your ancestry traces to Muni Bharadwaj. You were born in Banaras after Asadvi foretold your birth. And your life has been intertwined with Prayagraj, the Ganga, and the Kumbh Mela. For listeners who are not familiar with the Kumbh Mela, can you explain what this gathering is?
its significance, scale, and spiritual purpose, and then share how these deep spiritual roots have influenced your approach to mathematics, education, and knowledge itself.
Dinesh (05:47)
So, you know, the Kumbh Mela happens once every 12 years. And the stars are supposed to be aligned in a special way. That's when it happens. And once in every 12 years, the stars align the way they are supposed to be aligned. And it's a huge gathering and it dates back to fairly ancient times. I have no idea how old, but probably quite old.
and it's supposed to be a confluence of humanity infested in spiritual pursuits or even personal liberation and well-being. And it happens at Prayagraj, which has also been known as the city of Allahabad, and it's the confluence of the two great rivers, the Ganga and the Jamuna. And apparently there was a third river known as the Saraswati.
which disappeared at some time. But people believe that the Saraswati was there in earlier times. And this is supposed to be a very auspicious and a very holy happening. This confluence, this spot where it happens, is supposed to be very sanctified, very sanctified place. And so people assemble here and they come from all walks of life.
And they're not just Hindus. I've seen Christians, I've seen Muslims, I've seen people from other faiths who have assembled here. But it's largely a Hindu gathering, essentially a Hindu gathering. And I see a huge number of Hindu saints and yogis and people who are involved in a more or less full-time professional spiritual pursuit.
all assemble there, they pitch their tents, they pitch things there where they can live and spend a month or even two months. The Mela lasts for several weeks. And it's a once in a lifetime experience. For all kinds of reasons, in the last Kumbh Mela, they had lovely aerial photographs and films made.
which I hadn't seen earlier in earlier Melas And that lends a totally new perspective to the whole event and gives you an idea of the magnitude, the scale of the whole thing. And when you walk in the midst of the devotees and the spiritual leaders and others who have pitched their own camps and tents and whatever.
then that gives you another experience and you get to talk to people and it opens up your eyes to India, to humanity and sometimes if you're fortunate to your own inner self. So it can happen and that's one of the reasons why it happens and people go there with many beliefs.
A predominant belief is that if you bathe during those auspicious days at the point where the two rivers meet, it's called the Sangam or ⁓ a kind of unification point, then it's supposed to absolve you of all your sins and it's supposed to enlighten you and give you spiritual strength and so on and so forth. So essentially that is the Kumbh Mela. But if you sort of...
put your ear to the ground, then you will come across deeper meanings, deeper experiences, deeper influences. And that happens when you are patient and you spend a great deal of time, then you can get much that will benefit you.
Brendon Orr (09:39)
Dinesh, describe witnessing what you call a miracle at the hands of Devraha Baba during the 1982 Arduvkumbha and meeting Ma Anand Maiyi. What did these encounters with realized beings teach you that your formal education and mathematics and at Imperial College London could not?
Dinesh (10:02)
That's a very interesting question. So let me tell you something. It isn't that mathematics doesn't lead you along the same paths or experiences as what I experienced to some extent with the great spiritual seers like Devraha Baba or Ma Anandamayi.
But you know, you have to really evolve and be adept at mathematics and be immersed in it really like a yogi immerses himself in his pursuit of the truth or union with God. And then it begins to dawn on you. So let me tell you what I'm trying to draw as a parallel here. So first of all, let me also candidly admit that
By no stretch of imagination do I consider myself a yogi or a seeker in that sense or a spiritually evolved person. I'm very much a learner and very much full of flaws. So lest anybody get that impression. Let's get that out of the way. Two, when I went over there,
I went and Devra Baba would never mingle with the crowds where they were all supposed to be there for the great bath. His own machan or what is called an elevated wooden platform would be on the river. It would be actually pitched. So there would be these tilts. I think they were made of bamboo.
and that would elevate his platform at about 15-20 feet above the water and he would be perched there away from the gathering. So you had to trudge a great deal to get to him and he was a very evolved person but he was someone who wouldn't wear any clothes, nothing. And he was very old. So our first president of the republic
Dr. Rajendra Prasad has mentioned Devraha Baba in his autobiography. And this autobiography itself was written sometime in the 40s, 1940s of the last century. And Dr. Rajendra Prasad records that at that time the Baba was more than a hundred years old. And so you can understand where we are headed with this. He was an evolved yogi. Apparently he was a master at
yogic practices of the physical kind and also the other kind. And I witnessed this because my first encounter in the Artukum was when I went in the middle of the night. It was actually just after midnight. And I was told that that's a good time to go because then there will be less of a crowd there.
and he used to essentially shun these large gatherings and stay a little distant and he would be there each year. It isn't that he had gone there for the kumbh. At that time of the year, he would always visit Prayagwach. So I went there and when I went there, he was not in his machan, that elevated platform. He was actually, I could see a head in the middle of the night. There was a dim light somewhere and you could see a head bobbing above water.
And he was actually taking his midnight stroll in the water. is in, in the month of January, early January, I think, or maybe late December, but around that time really cold. And he was walking in that water with his head barely above water, taking what people said was his midnight stroll in the water. And he wasn't wearing anything. And this is an old man.
Brendon Orr (13:39)
You
Dinesh (13:45)
very very old, you could tell he is old by looking at him. So obviously something is going on there that in itself shakes you a little bit. And the other thing that I noticed was and then I began to notice this on other occasions with other people like that is that in the presence of such a person, your mind begins to sort of become still and your
Brendon Orr (13:45)
Mmm.
For sure.
Dinesh (14:10)
So I may have had some queries and those desires tend to fade away. And I had gone there with my father who had already visited him a few times earlier over the last two, three years. He was very fond of my father. So that was very fortunate for me. He used to call my father one of his foremost disciples, though my father was himself a mathematician and a vice chancellor that's president of a university and all that.
But, Ebraha Baba was very fond of my father. So that allowed me this privilege of being there with a person that he liked. And he could read my mind, Brendon. I didn't ask him or mention anything, but I could see that he could read my mind. And he was at a distance when he began to speak to me, he came out of the water finally and went up...
ascended his platform and then from there he looked down upon me and I must have been about 30 feet away from him. But there was no sound, it was pretty much a still night and there weren't too many people around. So he began to converse with me and my father and all the things that were in my mind never came out in their physical form. He just read my mind.
and he gave me answers. That is something I had heard about, read about, and I'll tell you how. So in the late 70s, I happened to get pretty acquainted with one of India's leading politicians of the time. His name was Morarji Desai, who then went on to become prime minister of India, who was very adept at yoga.
And Muradji was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He had fought for freedom, had been to prison many times, and he was quite an upright, honest, and morally evolved person. I was again fortunate that I had access to him even when he became Prime Minister. He was fond of me again because of my father. He took a liking to me.
and he would grant me access or send for me even as prime minister if I was not there for something or the other. And I would take liberties with him but leave that aside for the time being. He was supposed to be a stern man otherwise. But I was allowed liberties. But the thing that he told me at that time, and I remember these discussions very well,
He had mentioned that he had once gone to have an audience with a very evolved person spiritually. A man who was really evolved in the sense that probably had already attained Nirvana. A man called Raman Maharshi, a great saint. And he said when he had gone to see Maharshi, he had some questions in his mind. But he said when he was ushered into the presence of the Maharshi, and this was well before he became Prime Minister,
I think at that time he must have been Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Bombay state as it was called in those days. So he was fairly prominent but from the Maharshi it made no difference. He said when he was ushered into the presence of the Maharshi, his mind became still. The desire to ask questions just vanished. And he said, he told me he was just happy sitting in his presence. But then he told me,
that the Maharshi of his own accord answered his questions one by one. Now that's really a miracle because how does that happen? And I was aware of this, but I had never thought ever that such a thing might happen with me. And it happened with me and Devraha Baba.
Brendon Orr (17:51)
For sure. ⁓
Dinesh (18:04)
Later, much later, when I had gone back to Delhi and I was living in Delhi those days while my parents were at Allahabad.
Again, something happened which is really miraculous and I dare not narrate it because your listeners are bound to believe that I am faking. But it was amazing. It was really amazing. I was scheduled to visit my parents at Allahabad for a weekend. Now for us, a weekend really meant in those days just one Sunday.
Saturday was a working day for me. I was teaching in the college, St. Stephen's College of the University of Delhi. But what I would do is I would take leave on Saturday and then visit Allahabad on Friday night, come back on Monday morning. On this occasion when I was supposed to go, I had my rail ticket which in those days was very difficult to obtain if you needed a reservation.
and I went and applied for leave after purchasing my ticket and then the administrative staff told me I had run out of leave and I just one more day left before departure and I was in a bit of a quandary. I didn't know what to do and I prayed to Baba and a couple of hours later I was passing by the administrative office and outside that office on the wall was a notice board.
And I saw a fresh notice had been posted that Saturday had been declared a holiday. And so I merely went with my ticket and came back. I'm just narrating one of these experiences. There many that happened both with my father and I, but I thought this would be pretty interesting. And this is exactly how it happened. Many people will say this was just a coincidence, but because other things also happened, Brendon
Brendon Orr (19:39)
Mmm.
Dinesh (20:01)
I cannot believe that these are coincidences. happens, as you said, Ganesh responds. So somewhere, when you mention these sincere thoughts or when you utter these thoughts in your mind also, somewhere the ether records them and they reach the right spot and they come back to affect you.
Brendon Orr (20:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, those are great experiences. thanks for sharing. And Dinesh, in your Kumbh Mela article, you propose that the vanished Saraswati River has returned as the flow of humanity, bringing learning, knowledge, wisdom, and spirituality to the confluence. This is a beautiful metaphor. Can you expand on this idea a little bit? What does it reveal about how you understand knowledge transmission?
Dinesh (20:51)
So you know, knowledge comes to you through all kinds of experiences, all kinds of experiences. So I have found in my own pursuit as a mathematician that it isn't that you just acquire mathematical knowledge simply by reading a book or talking to a person or listening to a lecture.
Sometimes it comes to you in a flash when you're least expecting it or not even thinking about it. And that is something that for that you have to be tuned into these things. let me very quickly tell you what I meant. So when I was a doctoral student at the Imperial College, I had been struggling with a problem for my thesis for about five or six months.
And I hadn't made much headway and I was really immersed in it. And then around Christmas, I decided to let go and sort of ease my mind a little bit. But now realize this, Brendon I was already immersed in the problem for months on end. And then on Christmas Eve, I went to attend this Christmas party. I must have come back at about between one and two in the morning.
And then I entered my rooms and it was my habit in those days to not immediately go to bed every time I came back and tried to sleep. So I would sort of lie in my bed and think things about the day. And while I was just thinking about the party and this and that, a thought just flashed by and I knew that I had solved my problem.
And I was so excited, I got out of bed, sat at my desk and worked out the details by hand. And when I was convinced that I had actually solved the problem and I looked out the window and it was morning and I didn't even realize it. Now, something like that.
happens at the Kumbh in different areas, not mathematics. But if you are immersed and if you are sitting or being in in or if you're in the company of the right kind of people, these things come to you of their own accord if you are well prepared in advance. So you sort of trained for this in some ways. It's like a gymnast.
who doesn't just go and perform his or her exercises on the equipment that's available there, has done much training before that so that the person is ready to do what the person does in exactly the same way. If you have mulled or thought much about these things, are more or less immersed in it, then this knowledge comes to you in many ways. Just sitting with the person.
watching a conversation with that person and someone else or otherwise. So I remember that when I was at Devraha Baba, a well-known surgeon, this was on another occasion but during the Kumbh, the earth Kumbh, a well-known surgeon came to visit him and the surgeon sought enlightenment through Baba and Baba told him, look, I am not
narrating exactly as it happened, but I'm giving you the essence of what happened, what transpired. Devah Raha Baba told him, just be a good surgeon. Do that well and everything else will follow.
Brendon Orr (24:22)
Mm.
Dinesh (24:37)
That's the essence of what Baba told him. And that was a lesson for me, a learning, and I've kept that with me my whole life. I've tried to be a good mathematician and it has helped me in a thousand ways. As a human being, as a mathematician, as a husband, the father, it's helped me in many ways. So that's learning, knowledge, experience that happens only in that first hand sense.
Brendon Orr (24:59)
Yeah.
Dinesh (25:05)
So to my mind, the Saraswati is the goddess of learning, wisdom. And you see, so this confluence that happens between the two rivers is also, this third element is to my mind, the river of humanity that comes there with all these things that come to you. You have to bathe in that. You have to take a dip into that. And that will also give you enormous spiritual enlightenment.
Brendon Orr (25:06)
you
So Dinesh, you've pioneered work in harmonic analysis and operator theory, highly abstract mathematical fields, while also being deeply immersed in Gandhian philosophy and spiritual traditions. Do you see these as separate domains or is there a deeper connection between mathematical thinking and spiritual inquiry?
Dinesh (26:02)
⁓ again, Brendon, these are very wise questions. I don't know if I can give appropriate answers, but I like the questions. you know, there is a school of philosophy in India, an ancient school called the Bahuda philosophy. So what essentially it says is, ekam sat vitra bahuda vadanti. In other words, there is one truth, but the wise say it in many ways or the wise strive for it in many ways.
So there are different parts, but all of them will eventually lead to that one truth, the absolute truth. So if you were to say pursue just mathematics, it is bound to happen that you will evolve as a human being. This doesn't mean that you become a great saint or whatever, but you'll begin to evolve, you'll become better and better. And that...
eventually gives rise to some enlightenment. And mathematics in any case is heavily aligned with philosophy and spirituality. I'm not an expert in and by the way I'm not even an expert at mathematics as you grow older you know that you know nothing or very little. So I am not claiming to be that but
What little I've understood about our ancient philosophy in India, the Hindu philosophy. If you look at what Sri Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, at one point he tells him that I am neither truth nor untruth. A lot of people find great difficulty in understanding what that means.
People ask me why either something is true or it is not true. You can't be neither truth nor untrue. It's very hard for them to accept. And then I have to take recourse to mathematics. So you have to go to what is known as the work of Kurt Gödel. He was a who finally he was an Eastern European person.
who finally resided at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, a great logician who solved a major problem known as the consistency of the continuum hypothesis. He solved a major part of it. Essentially, Gödel said that if you create a logical system in which certain things are assumed to be satisfied, then he says within that logical system,
Through perfect logic, you can produce statements that are neither true nor false. So I see this huge analogy there. And let me also tell you something else. So, then you begin to understand that eventually it is a matter of faith. ⁓ the consistency of what we assume in mathematics, according to Gödel's cannot really be established within the system itself.
He shows that and some of his followers, I'm not going to get into that part here. So, you know, it's like, why do I do it then? Because it is consistent with my belief system.
That's why I'm not worried about that. It's consistent with my belief system and I then go with it. And let me just sort of bring it down to even more, you know, elementary level in maths. So all of us have done geometry in school, Euclidean geometry. And all of it resides on the concept of a point and a line. But you can't define them.
Every time you define a point, you know that this is not it. Intuitively, I can understand what is a point, and I can represent it by putting a dot, but that dot is never a point. But it allows me to do things that are consistent with the world around me. I can use that concept, build a house, do other things with it, all that using those concepts of geometry, where I know that I really don't know what is a point or a line.
Brendon Orr (30:20)
Mm.
Dinesh (30:21)
In exactly the same way, in the Rig Veda, this is how they describe God. Neeti neeti, not even this and not even this. What it isn't, I can tell you. What it is, I only know inside me. And I use it to the extent to which I understand it. And it helps me. But I can't explain it to you. But what I do is consistent with my intuitive...
Brendon Orr (30:38)
Hmm.
Dinesh (30:50)
belief or leanings and that's good enough. And so it's exactly the way you do geometry. You don't know what a point is or a line is, but intuitively you know that you accept that and then you're able to do many practical things. In a similar way this happens. So I see much alignment between Hindu philosophy and mathematics in that sense. So that also helps you to open your mind a little bit. You also learn to be a little humble.
And you know, there was this famous poet, an Urdu poet. I think this is ascribed to Zock. Many people ascribe it to Ghalib. But it's really Zock who said it. That I have learnt that I have learnt nothing. And it took me a lifetime to learn that.
Brendon Orr (31:42)
Mm.
Dinesh (31:45)
So that's the kind of humbling feeling you begin to acquire as you begin to understand this a little more.
Brendon Orr (31:53)
Yeah. Yeah.
So your father left Benares Hindu University on an educated whim and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and returned to India to teach. How did his unconventional path and your family's intellectual atmosphere shape your own willingness to challenge educational orthodoxy later in life?
Dinesh (32:17)
So let me just do a little bit of correction here, Brendon. So my father did high school in Banaras, not the university. He actually assumed that he will enter the famous Banaras Hindu University for higher studies. And I have no idea because my father was the first person to take formal education in his family for generations. We were feudal people. We owned land.
Brendon Orr (32:26)
Mmm.
Dinesh (32:43)
and we were very modest landlords. nobody ever worked in our family. My father was very different. He loved academics, he loved knowledge, he loved such intellectual pursuits. But his father was a very evolved person, spiritually so evolved that he refused to take part in the so-called Zamindari system that is family practice.
And he told my father at a very young age that it is best that you stay away from these things and pursue your life in a different way. As I could tell, those days with his father, my grandfather, had affected my father profoundly. So when my father pursued his schooling at Banaras, he went to a very good institution. It was famous in those days as Queen's College.
He was fortunate that there some very good teachers over there. I think the principal was an Englishman, but there were lots of Indians who were followers of Gandhi. And they impacted my father greatly. Whatever be the reason, I, because nobody else could have told my father anything, he decided not to go to Banaras Hindu University, but go to Ilhabad University for his studies. And from there he went to Paris, to the Sorbonne.
Took his doctorate with one of the world's leading mathematicians then he returned to India and taught at Allahabad University and that's when the kumbh happened and my mother was there with him then newly married and She used to narrate to me her experiences of the kumbh and you know as a woman of the house Taking care of the house and the family She narrated this thing from her own viewpoint also
that our house was flooded with guests invited and uninvited. We just assumed that we will be hospitable and we were. So for the entire period of the kumbh, our house served as a kind of sarai or inn or a kind of, you know, whatever. the guests would come with many expectations, which included not just housing them and feeding them and all that, but also helping them get a good bath at the kumbh.
a good day. So it was quite a tedious time I can imagine, but also very, very uplifting in many ways. So my mother never complained about it. She just narrated her experiences to me two or three times in the course of my life. And that was something that so my father, Allahabad was also a major intellectual center. Major center.
And at Allahabad University, and those were British days, at Allahabad University he narrated the kind of experiences he had with his teachers. So my father was greatly interested in literature even though he was studying mathematics. So he made friends with many people there who later on became some of India's leading poets, leading philosophers, leading men of literature.
And there were great scientists who taught him, mathematicians and scientists, literally very distinguished people. I think all that had a major impact on him. And then he went on to the Sorbonne, went on to the Sorbonne to get his doctorate in mathematics, did exceptionally well there as a student. His degree was awarded with much accolades. Came back and the kumbh happened and then he moved away.
Very soon after that he moved away to Aligarh. But he was highly evolved in many many ways. Like all humans, he also had his faults, all of us have. But the best part was that he was aware of that and he was also evolved in so many other ways that the faults were nothing in comparison. To me at least, they were nothing in comparison. So he had a huge library.
In addition to his own conversations with me and my siblings and my mother and other guests in the house, and our house was to be constantly full of visitors, painters, artists, scientists, men of literature, women of literature, all of them, made a huge difference to me. So I was very fortunate that I didn't have to exert myself, things that began to happen around me. My father's library also played a big role.
All those things helped me greatly. But very few people believe this, that I did not become a mathematician because of my father really. It happened because of my brother, who was older than me, who is older than me by five years. And an exceptionally smart person, so he lives in the US, has been very well acknowledged as one of the top-notch space engineers at NASA.
and is into retirement now. But he was really smart. And till my seventh grade, I was very indifferent with mathematics, towards mathematics. And I think in the seventh grade or the sixth grade, I scored one out of hundred in my math exam. In the eighth grade, when Euclidean geometry and algebra got introduced,
One day, my brother who was sitting in his own room at his desk, was about dusk, so I could see that the light was fading and his table lamp was on, he was at his desk. I was passing by his room and the door was ajar. He saw me pass by and he beckoned, said, come inside. I went and I was always in awe of him, I loved him dearly, I respected him dearly.
for all kinds of things, not just his intellect. He took care of me also. He taught me almost everything that I learned in those days. And that's one of those occasions. So he called me in and I just consider it just good fortune. So life for me has been a series of these fortunate happenings. So he called me in and he asked me, have they taught you this in class?
Brendon Orr (38:41)
Hmm.
Dinesh (38:45)
It was a problem in geometry, Euclidean geometry. I vaguely recall, I've been so indifferent in the class. I vaguely recall that they had, so he said, you know how it goes. And I did probably, did not give a satisfactory answer. Then he said, look, I'll tell you something magical. And then he showed me a proof of that same geometrical principle through algebra. So you see now, this happy coincidence that I appreciate algebra.
in its application to geometry, so I appreciated geometry also. And that was the night I became a mathematician. So you see, my father wasn't involved in this. In fact, in those days, he did not have too much time for these things. He was busy with many other things. So it was my brother. Later in life, I had many mathematical discussions and even wrote joint papers with my father. So that's when he played a major role.
Brendon Orr (39:17)
Mm.
Brendon Orr (39:40)
Part two, the education revolutionary,
Brendon Orr (39:46)
Dinesh, India's national 2020 education policy is described as being based entirely on your ideas and reforms. That's an extraordinary statement. What were the core insights or principles from your time as vice chancellor at Delhi University that became the foundation for transforming education for 1.4 billion people?
Dinesh (40:14)
So let me just clarify a little bit. ⁓ One, it isn't that when I became Vaisansa, I came up with some ideas. I had been experimenting with education at the cost of my research in mathematics for about, I would say, at least 15 years before that, in many ways, in the formal system and outside the formal system.
Brendon Orr (40:17)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh (40:39)
very enriching and enlightening experiences that had allowed me to develop insights. And then as I began to understand things better and better through these experiences and experiments that I had been running, I also realized that these are eternal truths and in India particularly they had been practiced since time immemorial. So what was it that I had learned finally?
When I became vice-president, it's not that I just woke up suddenly with the day, some sort of enlightenment dawning on me. I had become fairly clear in my mind what is it that we need to do. India had a pretty, sort of, ossified, even though that's a severe term, a pretty ossified system of education that was terribly reliant on the blackboard and notebook and textbook.
not too much connected to the world around us. On the other hand, my own experiments and experiences have taught me that knowledge should always be connected to action. It's a two-way process. Knowledge should lead to action and action should lead to knowledge. And as I understood things better,
I realized that the great ones who have existed for the length of history have all practiced this or even preached it. So first I understood that Mahatma Gandhi thought along those lines. In fact, he was very qualified to talk on education and Gandhi would never pronounce anything on anything until he had experimented and learned firsthand.
So in the matter of education, he had first set up a school in South Africa, which he personally ran. Then when he came to India, he set up a university which runs till today. And then when he moved to his final hermitage in the heart of India at Vardha, he set up a polytechnic for women on its governing body. He installed some of India's leading scientists.
very famous people in the world of science. And then he says, in education, what you do with your hands enters your heart. And the same thing has been said by Ravindranath Thakur, as they say in English, Ravindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate, much earlier, because he had set up a university, which runs till today. And he had said, when he set up the place of learning and wisdom that he did,
Brendon Orr (43:02)
Hmm.
Dinesh (43:21)
that education has moved away from the world, it is confined to the four walls and the blackboard of a classroom. And he lamented that. But the Indian tradition has always been different. And what was the Indian tradition? Before I come to that, let me tell you what is my definition of education. My definition of education, Brendon, is very simple. Each one of us
humans, I believe, is born with a drum beat within us. I call it the drum beat of our soul. And if we are able to hark and recognize this drum beat and then march in the real world in harmony, in step with this drum beat, that's when you begin to get educated. That's all there is to education. So if you look at
Mahatma Gandhi himself. You know, Gandhiji did not have any formal graduate degree after high school. After his matriculation, he qualified to practice as a lawyer, but he did not have a degree.
So it was a different kind of qualification. He had to sit for exams and all that, but it wasn't a university degree. So his only formal education was a matriculation. In fact, Gandhi sought a job in Bombay after he returned and his law practice wasn't going anywhere. So he sought a job as a school, as a teacher of English in a very prominent school in Bombay, which is now called Mumbai. And he was denied. And they said the reason they denied him, and these are Gandhi's own words, that you're not a graduate.
even though he was fairly adept at English. But Gandhi was very fortunate when he was I think eight or nine years of age. He came across, he witnessed this famous play from our mythology called Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra. The King Harishchandra who was a true pursuer of the truth, true votary adherent of the truth.
The story is about how Harishchandra, his metal is tested throughout about his adherence to the truth when he is made to face all kinds of difficulties, all kinds of catastrophic difficulties, but he remains steadfast in his adherence to the truth. That play affected Gandhi immensely. When he came home after the play, he wowed before a mirror that for the rest of his life, he will pursue truth.
Brendon Orr (45:43)
Hmm.
Dinesh (45:52)
like Harish Chandra did, no matter what the price. That is what he had done. He had discovered the drum beat of his soul. And the rest of Gandhi's life, if you think and observe and read carefully, is nothing but an effort to march in step with this drum beat of his soul. That means march in step with his pursuit of the truth. Gandhi has said that for him, truth is God.
And you know Gandhi has these major experiences, I call them mystic experiences. He writes clearly once that on occasion, so it's very rare, but he says on occasion, I've had a chance to get a glimpse of what I call the absolute truth. And when I do, it's effulgence.
is a million times greater than the effulgence of our son. These are mystic experiences of a highly evolved person. So that was his path to his God. And Gandhi had said that this is what will lead you to your path if you find what you believe in and then you adhere to that in complete sincerity and surrender. That's finding the heartbeat of your soul.
And I give many examples like that. know, Michael Faraday, he had no formal education. He had to leave school in the second grade when he must have been what, six, seven years of age.
And he was from a really poor, deprived family. So in his early teens, the family had great trouble finding even good nourishment and food for itself. So he had to perforce the apprentice somewhere to earn his keep. But you know, I am also reminded of Kabir that when God's hand is on you, it's very difficult to harm you. So guess where he gets apprentice? To a book binder.
He could have been a apprentice to a blacksmith or something. No, he is sent to the bookbinder. And the bookbinder is, I think, quite a benevolent person. And Faraday is very diligent with his bookbindings. So those days books used to come for binding. You had to arrange all the pages carefully and align them and then, you know, put the bind on it and so on and so forth. And in the course of that, his curiosity led him to look at what was in there.
And that led him to be attracted towards books on science. That's when he discovered the drum beat of his soul, this adherence to science. And he began to read the books that he was binding on science particularly. And that is how he became the greatest scientist of his time and one of the greatest of all times.
So that's how, so you see he discovers a drum beat like Dandhi, but then he pursues it with complete surrender and sincerity. That's when he started getting educated. So each one of us has a drum beat. I mean, I look at the example of Sachin Chandorkar, one of India's greatest cricketers, a great batsman. And he discovered cricket, I think around the age of 10 or something. And Sachin has no qualification, educational qualification beyond high school.
But did he care? No, he pursued cricket. He had discovered it and he pursued that to the best of his ability. And all the things that a formal education can get you and much more came to Gandhi, came to Faraday, came to Sachin Tendulkar. And who will say that they are not or were not educated people. So I had understood this for various reasons through these examples, my own experiments and experiences.
And so when I became vice chancellor, my thrust was on devising a system that enables young minds to be exposed. How did Faraday find the drum beat of his soul? So he was exposed to books on other things and so on, but the ones on science struck a chord. Then Durga had seen ping pong and other things. Cricket struck a chord. So these are drum beats. Ping pong is also a drum beat that exists in society.
Brendon Orr (50:17)
Mm.
Dinesh (50:18)
Society has a lot of drumbeats around you, so I call the world a university or a learning place. You have to be alert and in tune with all the drumbeats and like two tuning forks, if you bring them together after you've, you know, sort of bang them on the edge of a desk so that they begin to resonate with the frequency, then if they're in harmony, there is great stillness. Otherwise, there's discord. Exactly the same way you find a drumbeat that gives you harmony with your inner drumbeat.
like Tendulkar did with cricket or Gandhi with truth or Faraday with science or Ramanujan with mathematics. And then you will start getting educated by pursuing that. So I exposed in my curriculum right at the beginning when they enter university, I expose the students who largely practical practice based experiences connected to knowledge.
which allowed them to experience and witness many drumbeats. Now I cannot provide every drumbeat, but my hope was to be able to get them to get exposure to drumbeats. And one of them in the first two years will begin to resonate with them inner drumbeat. And then in the next two years, they will specialize in that, evolve through that.
And so it was a project-based experience of learning, not too much on the blackboard. And you will be astounded at the kind of results I began to get through my experiments at the University of Delhi. Undergraduates began to produce research papers, patents, startups, began to enjoy life, and you had to equip them to be sensitive to finding their drumbeats. So we had to give them a certain bunch of skills that are connected to knowledge.
And that's what we had done, which resonated with many things, many institutions and people and thinkers around the globe. And so when the government decided to set up its commission for the education policy, I was consulted. And I'm an official reviewer of the national education policy. And essentially they put for higher education my own ideas at the University of Delhi in a formal system for the policy. That's how it came about.
Brendon Orr (52:36)
⁓ And Dinesh, you served on the scientific advisory committee to the union cabinet and planning commission steering committees. From that vantage point, what are the biggest challenges facing Indian higher education that policy alone cannot solve? What requires a deeper cultural or philosophical shift?
Dinesh (53:00)
So, know, our biggest challenge is to have enough qualified mentors. I don't even want to call them teachers. I don't like teachers who write on the board, blackboard, or dictate notes so much. They're all part of learning. I'm not running them down. But they can't be the only ways of acquiring knowledge or discovering yourself. And for that, you need good enlightened teachers or what we call mentors.
So India needs to produce a huge bunch of highly qualified human resource in education, which should be in tune with the needs and challenges of the nation. And that can be done if you understand the national education policy. So that is the biggest challenge.
And so, of course, in the scientific advisory committee, the cabinet needs to deal with other issues also, business of science and how it will affect the well-being of the country. Our job would be whenever we met, members of the committee would meet and discuss issues and then have deep discussions and eventually evolve a policy recommendation for the cabinet. Whether the cabinet would adopt or not was up to them, but our job was to make those recommendations.
But in the planning commission, we had to ensure that if we had a clear-cut policy of which way the country needs to go in education and also in science and technology, then with the goals in mind and the challenges that the road ahead would lay before you, you had to provide adequate funding and resources.
So the idea was that these things will work eventually and begin to deliver. And to a large extent, make no mistake, there is much that needs to be done even after this really enlightened policy that the government has. We have many challenges, much has been achieved, but we need to achieve much more.
Brendon Orr (54:56)
Part Three, Integration and Vision,
Brendon Orr (55:02)
Dinesh, you're a mathematician, education reformer, painter, author of short stories, former volleyball player, student of Gandhian philosophy, and fluent in multiple literary traditions. In an age of hyper-specialization,
How do you defend or advocate for this kind of polymathic approach to life and learning?
Dinesh (55:30)
You know, so things like painting, poetry, literature, mathematics, all of them have a very common thread that connects them. This business of creation in poetry or in art or in mathematics,
are very identical. You look at experiences around you in one way or the other, either through a text or a lecture or a visual experience. And make no mistake, mathematics is a very visual discipline. All mathematicians think in terms of pictures, believe me. So, there is a common thread, so it's pretty natural for you to be sensitive towards these things and even, you know, dabble a little bit here or there.
And so that probably is one of the reasons why I like doing these things. Second, it was my father's influence also. Later in life as I grew older and older, while he was around, because of his own interest, was very... Though he didn't paint, but he wrote poetry. He was very fluent, a great orator in Hindi, Sanskrit, French, Urdu.
So that made a big impact on me. And so many times I find myself more or less talking, speaking, thinking along the lines my father used to do. So that made a big difference also to me.
Brendon Orr (56:59)
And you recently published a book called Twisted Tales and that maybe reveals you as a storyteller and you're authoring a new book on education for the 21st century. As someone who deeply admires the American transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, both master essayists and storytellers themselves, what can fiction and narrative teach us about education?
that policy documents and academic papers cannot.
Dinesh (57:33)
⁓ so that's a very profound question. So you know, literature of any kind will always teach you something profound, whether it's fiction or philosophy or a scientific piece. So long as you're willing to lend your ear to it, you have to learn to be sensitive to it.
And so I find that that's a pretty natural thing to do, to be in tune with these things and learn from that. What happens is that most of us, for various reasons, tend to be oblivious or tone deaf or completely, you know, immersed in just a single-minded pursuit. And that's not bad either. But you know, it helps more times than not.
If you sort of, there's a phrase in Hindi, it means is that drink water from several wells or sort of from several rivers or you bathe in several rivers and all those things will help you become a better person. So, it's always nice to be a little open to things. And you know, Gandhi said this exceptionally well. He said, let the
Cultures of all the lands of the world flow through my house, leave my doors and windows open. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any of them. So be anchored. So I honestly believe whatever little I am is really as a mathematician. I'm anchored to that.
But then because I'm a mathematician, I'm alive and aware of other things. know, mathematics ties in very naturally with literature, art. If you look at all the Renaissance painters, they use mathematics all the time in their artwork. And they're really good at being mathematicians of a kind, but they're great painters. Their real pursuit is painting. And that happens in other ways also, if you look at philosophy, it ties up naturally with mathematics.
more or less every science uses mathematics, there's a natural connection. And the scientists come back to help mathematics, even the humanities, so on and so forth. So it's nice to be anchored in something and then allow influences to enrich your anchoring in a very productive way. So that's what I believe is what needs to be done in life also.
Brendon Orr (59:56)
Hmm.
Dinesh (1:00:02)
and people like Emerson, Thoreau, all of them, they were like that. You know, why did I get interested in Emerson and Thoreau? Because of Gandhi. Gandhi writes to Roosevelt seeking help for India's freedom struggle. And in that letter, he talks of the American Transcendentalist, particularly Emerson and Thoreau. And then Gandhi discovered his mission in life by reading Ruskin's Unto This Last. All of them are Transcendentalist members of the Concord movement.
And so I became interested in them and now look here's this funny part, Brendon. When I read up on the Transcendentalists, I read up Emerson, Thoreau and Ruskin and I had no idea that they were profoundly impacted by Hindu philosophy. Emerson introduced Thoreau to the Bhagavad Gita. And Thoreau used to keep it by his bedside. Emerson himself was very well versed in the Gita and the Upanishads.
Brendon Orr (1:00:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dinesh (1:00:59)
So look, this business of the power of an idea. The Upanishads are pre-Christian and the Gita is also pre-Christian. And all of these thoughts transcend the tyrannies of time and geography and go over to your land. They influence Emerson, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists. They come back to affect Gandhi.
And then Gandhi's ideas go back and affect Martin Luther King. And then Gandhi and King then go back and inspire Mandela. Do see how this back and forth? This is eternal wisdom that transcends time. And so, know, that's the beauty of these things. So one has to learn to see that there is one truth, the wise say it in many ways.
Brendon Orr (1:01:57)
Hmm. Yeah. And that's a good segue to the next question, Dinesh. As someone deeply committed to Gandhian philosophy in the 21st century, what principles from Gandhi's thought do you see as most relevant to education today? How does nonviolence, self-reliance, or truth-seeking translate into educational practice?
Dinesh (1:02:22)
So, so, Brendon, again, I marvel at your question. So, you know, this happens in many ways. So let me tell you of an experiment I ran and how did it come about? So, know, when Muradjid Desai was prime minister, even then he would get up at four in the morning and spin the spinning wheel, the charkha for an hour. And when he narrated these things to me one day,
I smiled sarcastically and said, you know, these are mechanical things that Gandhi used for the freedom struggle. Why do do them now? And he smiled. And the only thing he said was that until you do it yourself, you will never know why I do it. Years later, when I became vice chancellor,
I had an inner office, I had two offices adjacent to each other interconnected. The inner one was for private discussions with my immediate cabinet and this and that. And I had installed a spinning wheel on my desk. And in my times of crisis or uncertainties, I had begun to spin. I'm not a great person at spinning, but I would spin yarn, no matter how badly, and my mind...
would be stilled and my path would become clear. And Gandhi has said that this is meditation, this is prayer, this is healing. So then within a year or so of becoming White Sunset, I had at the Gandhi Bhavan, so there is a place at the university known as the Gandhi Bhavan or the building of Gandhi. And over there, I...
installed some Gandhian workers who would teach spinning to any student who was willing to learn. And you won't believe what happened after that. These students, and I would go there frequently, these students told me amazing stories. I remember this kid who was consistently standing first in the university in his discipline, but he told me that he was a lost soul.
a completely lost soul. And until he came to the Gandhi Bhavan and began to practice the Charkha. And then he said, you know, I have discovered myself. And I met this girl who said she was suffering from acute depression. She said nothing had helped, no medicines, no counseling, nothing. And then she said, two months of spinning the Charkha and my depression is gone.
Brendon Orr (1:04:53)
Mmm.
Dinesh (1:04:54)
Those experiences are amazing. So that's one integral part of being a good learner. But Gandhi's ideas were very clear and they're in complete harmony with the Indian tradition. The Mimamsa School of Philosophy says categorically, knowledge without action is meaningless. And Gandhi is forever saying that combine education with action. What you do with your hands will enter your heart.
So that is what we really pick up from Gandhi or Tagore or even from the Upanishads. They're full of these learnings. So they are in complete harmony with each other over the ages, all these great thinkers in India. And even outside, if you look at, as I said, Faraday, even Newton, all of Newton's ideas in physics come through action.
He was an extremely gifted experimentalist. He was extremely gifted as a craft person with his hands. So was Einstein. Very few people know this. Einstein was really gifted with the use of his hands and he put his knowledge to action and his action led to knowledge. So his father used to run an electromagnetic goods factory.
Father fell in, Einstein had already taken his PhD but could not get a job. So he began to manage the factory and so he was at the shop floor dealing with electromagnets and all those things in practical ways. And he did a pretty good job of it and decided to check up his career as a physicist and just manage the factory. But his father recovered and came back. So then he had to go back into the big bad world to look for a job. And then, know, Einstein in the course of all this,
has more than 50 inventions and patents to his credit. He was that good with his hands. He invented the world's first automatic camera. He invented the world's first safe modern refrigerator. Can you believe that? This is a man who does general relativity. All this comes from his practical experiences. And that is true of Faraday. That is true of all the great ones, not just in science, even in art, literature. I've seen the weavers of the Native American weavers of Canada.
and the weavers of Andhra Pradesh in India, huge similarities in their evolutionary thought and spiritual poetry. Amazing! Because they use their hands. So this business of knowledge and action, must go hand in hand. That's what Gandhi teaches us.
Brendon Orr (1:07:19)
So looking ahead, Dinesh, you're in your 70s, but leading multiple visionary projects simultaneously. What's driving you at this stage of life? What do you most want to accomplish in reshaping higher education? And what wisdom from your spiritual practice sustains you in this work?
Dinesh (1:07:43)
So first of all, you know, I'm a married man, married for many years and make no mistake, I know exactly where wisdom lies in my family. So I have no pretensions to being wise. Yes, but certainly I'm wiser today than what I was yesterday. And that has helped me. Once I recognize that, then all these experiences and the fact that now we have a marvelous national education policy in place.
One of my chief desires is to make sure that the policy is implemented at the ground level in exactly the way it is intended to be. And I hope and pray that we succeed in that. All of us who want to do this, not just me. And hopefully that will help my country to become a better place. Make no mistake, I mean the country has made progress all the time, but this can give us a great impetus.
I also pursue mathematics all the time. I mean, that gives me peace of mind. It also gives me spiritual stability and I love doing mathematics. So I'm very active as a mathematical researcher for my own satisfaction.
And I write short stories. ⁓
Brendon Orr (1:08:58)
Well, Dinesh, this has been a wonderful experience ⁓ having you on Podmasana.
Dinesh (1:09:07)
Thank you. I really enjoyed this Brendon and you asked very good questions and are a very patient, enlightened listener also.
