Vi­jay Ma­haraj

The Baal Vikaas Vi­haar was in­tro­duced in the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Hin­du schools 40 years ago to en­sure the preser­va­tion and trans­fer­ence of Hin­du cul­ture and re­li­gion.

The Baal Vikaas Fes­ti­val caters for all stu­dents in Ma­ha Sab­ha schools, aid­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly over­come all ob­sta­cles as we seek to trans­mit Hin­du cul­ture, re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tion to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

“The an­cient In­di­ans had pre­cise­ly de­signed a most ef­fi­cient psy­cho­log­i­cal mod­el for the in­ter­ac­tive roles of the teacher and the stu­dent—a mod­el that would best fa­cil­i­tate trans­fer­ence of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence from one mind to an­oth­er and en­sures the pro­duc­tive, con­struc­tive use of that learn­ing by the stu­dent.

“The po­si­tion of the teacher was ac­cord­ed a very high sta­tus. With high sta­tus, ac­count­abil­i­ty was al­so de­ter­mined: the teacher had to bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for any sins of his stu­dent”—Dr Shankar Deyal Shar­ma, de­ceased pres­i­dent of In­dia.

The Baal Vikaas Vi­haar Fes­ti­val was of­fi­cial­ly launched on Ju­ly 31st, 1985, with eight schools and 960 par­tic­i­pants. The cham­pi­on was Freeport Hin­du School, which re­ceived the Bhadase Sagan Maraj Tro­phy and medals.

This pro­gramme, which con­sists of chant­i­ng, singing, danc­ing, mu­sic, dra­ma, art, craft and pub­lic speak­ing and per­for­mances, are done in the Hin­di, San­skrit and Eng­lish lan­guages. Chil­dren are al­so taught the ef­fec­tive use of the avail­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies – TV and ra­dio.

In our ef­fort to be self-suf­fi­cient in mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Ma­ha Sab­ha has es­tab­lished a ra­dio sta­tion, Ra­dio Jaagri­ti and a tele­vi­sion sta­tion, TV Jaagri­ti.

The ob­jec­tives of this re­li­gious pro­gramme in schools are six-fold:

• To cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment of re­spect, tol­er­ance and har­mo­ny for stu­dents of all cul­tur­al and re­li­gious be­liefs.

• To com­ple­ment the schools’ cur­ricu­lum and as­sist in the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the child.

• To re­in­force pos­i­tive moral and so­cial val­ues among all the youths.

• To pro­vide an av­enue for pupils with spe­cial skills to work in har­mo­ny.

• To pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the com­mu­ni­ty and school to work to­geth­er.

• To en­cour­age greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in Ra­mayan singing, folk singing, lo­cal clas­si­cal singing, and Hin­di Slokas from the Bhag­vad Gi­ta, etc.

Over the years, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty has utilised ed­u­ca­tion as one of the av­enues for im­prove­ment of the lives of its peo­ple. The SDMS board of man­age­ment, there­fore, has been the for­mal fa­cil­i­ta­tor of the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion’s chil­dren.

In this re­gard, pro­grammes were struc­tured to chal­lenge the child to max­imise his/her po­ten­tial. It has helped to lay a firm foun­da­tion for the chil­dren to re­alise their spir­i­tu­al, moral, so­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic po­ten­tial in a fa­mil­iar, se­cure and lov­ing en­vi­ron­ment with the aware­ness of their Dhar­ma.

The Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts (VA­PA) has been in­tro­duced by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in­to the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem and we em­braced the changes to the cur­ricu­lum.

Our pupils have been in­volved in Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts at the Hin­du schools for over a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry and they have at­tained ex­treme­ly high stan­dards of ex­cel­lence through the Baal Vikaas Vi­haar. These com­po­nents are now be­ing re­flect­ed in the VA­PA pro­gramme. We must em­pha­sise that sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion must be prop­a­gat­ed as an in­te­grat­ed pro­gramme.

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha has al­ways placed an em­pha­sis on aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence as well as the re­li­gious and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of the chil­dren of its schools. As a re­sult, many pro­grammes were de­signed and made avail­able to help schools im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and re­li­gious knowl­edge.

Af­ter re­view­ing the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum and then their own in­ter­nal cur­ricu­lum, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Ed­u­ca­tion board found sub­stan­tial ar­eas that need­ed to be im­proved. Con­se­quent­ly, the SDMS board em­barked on a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme that would en­hance the Na­tion­al Cur­ricu­lum and the board’s ini­tia­tives.

Ex­cel­lence in ed­u­ca­tion at our schools is ac­com­plished in an at­mos­phere of prayer and hu­mil­i­ty. At the SDMS schools, the stu­dents be­gin the day with prayers fol­lowed by in­struc­tions in morals and val­ues. We re­alise that an ed­u­cat­ed per­son who can­not em­pathise and as­sist their peers is in­deed a hand­i­cap in a de­vel­op­ing so­ci­ety as ours. We, there­fore, in­sist that both sec­u­lar and sa­cred ed­u­ca­tion must be taught to chil­dren at­tend­ing our schools.

Ed­u­ca­tion and the search for knowl­edge is one of the ide­olo­gies to which all Hin­dus as­pire. The sec­u­lar and sa­cred knowl­edge must be avail­able to all our chil­dren.