Discipline
Doing useful work is the best teacher of discipline. School and college work in boyhood and youth and some useful and suitable occupation in later life re calculated to make us a disciplined nation. We Indians are not yet a properly disciplined people. After so many years of freedom nearly sixty percent of our boys and girls have remained deprived of school and college education. They remain undisciplined during the formative period of their lives. This result in habits of slackness, laziness and idleness. It has been rightly remarked that’s an idle brain is the devil’s workshop’. And a devil’s workshop is the lot of the majority of our boys and girls. Vulgarity, uncontrolled passions, unchecked evil impulses, often criminal habits, absence of all restraint and, in short, complete lack of discipline mark the lives of millions of our neglected boy and girls.
Then we have literally millions of social parasites. The reference is to our army of mendicants, beggars, sadhus, bairagis and other idlers. A good number of these become notorious bad characters and criminals. They live without a conscience and without a character. They are a danger to our national life.
Only about forty percent of our boys and girls are receiving some education. But even that is far from satisfactory. This because the atmosphere in the homes of most of the schools, colleges etc also is not helpful for character-building. Most teachers and heads of educational institutions do not have the personality which inspires respect. The standard of teaching is not generally very high and the textbooks, the curriculum and the examination system are defective. Then there is the fear of unemployment. Juvenile crime has become a common feature of our national life. Unfair means or very poor work enable many students to pass.
Indiscipline also result from unemployment and poor wages or inadequate salaries. Even government servants in despair go wild and become undisciplined. Even the police, doctors and nurses and other orders of services are passing through the crisis of indiscipline.
And, lastly, our system of agriculture which provides livelihood to nearly eighty per cent of our people, does not keep them engaged for many months every year. Our agriculturists need supplementary occupations. Village riots, litigation and other wasteful activities have undermined the character of an alarmingly large number of our people. But agriculture apart, even in industrial centre’s, conditions of life are such as to harm the characters of our laborer’s.
We can become a disciplined people only if and when become life, school and college life, life in fields and factories, life in various services are made worthwhile. Complete over-hauling of our national life in all departments is needed. Lastly, it may be pointed out that discipline is not an enemy of happiness nor of the legitimate pleasures of a balanced an fruitful personal and social life.
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