The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) was found­ed in 1952 and one of its main ob­jec­tives was to pro­vide an ed­u­ca­tion to Hin­du chil­dren in a Hin­du en­vi­ron­ment. With­in four short years, 43 pri­ma­ry schools were es­tab­lished in Hin­du-dom­i­nat­ed ar­eas. The con­tin­u­ing suc­cess­es of these schools were not stum­bled up­on or achieved by some di­vine co­in­ci­dence. The SDMS Board had im­me­di­ate­ly set out to work, en­sur­ing that our very back­bone and way of life would be the sub­stra­tum of the run­ning of these schools.

Sanatan Dhar­ma is more than a re­li­gion, it is a way of life. The pre­scribed re­li­gious codes can be found in our Hin­du Scrip­tures. Hin­dus abide by these codes. One of these codes man­dates that we chant ‘mantras’, which are San­skrit words or syl­la­bles which are re­cit­ed to praise God, there­by in­vok­ing spir­i­tu­al en­er­gy or en­light­en­ment. The sin­gle syl­la­ble “OM” is chant­ed by yo­ga dis­ci­ples world­wide, as they ac­cept and be­lieve it to be the ul­ti­mate means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with God.

Mantras, there­fore, form the very ba­sis of Sanatan Dhar­ma. In all Ma­ha Sab­ha schools, stu­dents be­gin the day with the recita­tion of mantras and the singing of bha­jans. Dur­ing the course of the school day, mantras are chant­ed yet again, be­fore and af­ter lunch and at dis­missal. The sec­u­lar and sa­cred must form part of the learn­ing process, and this en­sures that a dis­ci­plined en­vi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed and main­tained through­out the day. This dis­ci­pline is re­spon­si­ble for the aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess­es of our stu­dents.

But the Ma­ha Sab­ha Ed­u­ca­tion Board did not lim­it its man­date with­in the con­fines of our schools. Sanatan Dhar­ma al­so places sig­nif­i­cant em­pha­sis on teach­ers (gu­rus), par­ents and el­ders. Chil­dren were there­fore taught to re­spect them and seek their bless­ings. The board’s man­date had ex­pand­ed to ‘mandirs’ and ‘kuthiyas’ with­in the com­mu­ni­ties. Hence, at the very nu­cle­us of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was the forg­ing of a re­la­tion­ship be­tween our schools and the com­mu­ni­ty with a wider am­bit of stake­hold­ers. The school child was be­ing brought up by a Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

The board knew that our schools could not sur­vive or be sus­tained with­out the in­volve­ment of the par­ents. It en­sured that par­ents played an ac­tive role in en­sur­ing that their chil­dren were in­tro­duced to the tra­di­tions, val­ues and be­liefs that were brought to this land by our fore­fa­thers. To­day, these tra­di­tions have sur­vived notwith­stand­ing bru­tal­ly ram­pant and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices of those op­posed to Hin­du and East In­di­an ide­olo­gies.

The board went a step fur­ther. The in­ter­ac­tion of prin­ci­pals, teach­ers, par­ents and the com­mu­ni­ty was crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing an all-round ed­u­ca­tion for our chil­dren. At the start of the year, prin­ci­pals and teach­ers re­ceived copies of the SDMS’ Hin­du Re­li­gious Cal­en­dar, which iden­ti­fied the dates for re­li­gious ob­ser­vances.

In all schools, re­li­gious oc­ca­sions were ob­served through­out the year with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of teach­ing staff and par­ents. Schools cel­e­brat­ed ‘Phag­wa’ or ‘Holi’ and Ram Leela cel­e­bra­tions every year. In more re­cent times, schools have been giv­en time off for ‘Shiv Raa­tri’ and for ‘Kar­tic Snaan’ so that teach­ing staff, stu­dents and their par­ents can be a part of these aus­pi­cious cel­e­bra­tions to­geth­er with the wider Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

Per­haps the best live il­lus­tra­tion of the board’s in­sights and man­date came to­geth­er in 1985 with the com­mence­ment of the an­nu­al ‘Baal Vikaas’ com­pe­ti­tion. All Hin­du schools were re­quired to par­tic­i­pate, and stu­dents show­cased their knowl­edge and tal­ents in many cat­e­gories. There is, for ex­am­ple, the Ra­mayan Quiz, where stu­dents not just read, but study the Valmi­ki Ra­mayan, and are ex­pect­ed to have a com­mand of the facts as well as the re­li­gious prin­ci­ples set out in this scrip­ture.

The Ra­mayan test piece is a cat­e­go­ry where­by stu­dents sing vers­es from the Ra­mayan in ac­cor­dance with cor­rect me­tre in the Hin­di lan­guage, where­as the Gi­ta Shlo­ka recita­tion is a cat­e­go­ry in which stu­dents sing vers­es from this sa­cred text in San­skrit. Tra­di­tion­al folk songs once be­longed to the old­er wom­en­folk, who would sing these at spe­cial oc­ca­sions, and they would of­ten de­pict cul­tur­al and/or so­cial themes.

To­day, how­ev­er, these songs are pre­served through the Baal Vikaas pro­gramme. Oth­er cat­e­gories of song demon­strate the proud and un­abashed ex­pres­sion of re­li­gious themes.

For the Ma­ha Sab­ha, dis­ci­pline has al­ways been one of the key in­gre­di­ents for the suc­cess of our schools, and this stands in con­trast to many oth­er schools in the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly pub­licly owned ones.

Such dis­ci­pline has been achieved be­cause our prin­ci­pals, teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents all un­der­stand the im­por­tance of in­te­grat­ing var­i­ous as­pects of our re­li­gion in the ed­u­ca­tion process, there­by mak­ing the en­tire Hin­du school ex­pe­ri­ence noth­ing short of up­lift­ing.