Pursuing Excellence – MIND Excellence National Indian Youth Convention

Let me give you a little excerpt from the closing of the speech I gave them. Here’s what I said:

“Indianness is a spirit, and it lends itself to a myriad of interpretations – from banal inanities to world-class achievements. But the essence of the spirit is captured in the lyrics of the national anthem of India. It’s beautiful…it says ‘saare jahaan se achcha, Hindustan hamara’. It means, whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you are, be proud to be Indian. The wars of today are won and lost long before a single shot is even fired.

The real power today is economic strength. Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and the like, had been long lost before the advent of the troops even. The troops merely helped to complete the debacle. The mighty Soviet Union with its numerous satellite states fell without a single shot being fired, as did the monolithic Berlin Wall. Whatever happened to the impenetrable Iron Curtain today? The United Nations has been effectively muzzled. NATO has been overshadowed by the EU. And the military might of China and the United States hesitate before economical communities such as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and even before lesser nations like Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and even city states like Hong Kong and Singapore. The point I am making is that today’s world is about economics.

India today is not defined by Kargil (which is Kashmir) or Kanyakumari. It is a consciousness and a concept that spans over 4,000 years. It has permeated this planet; we as Indians are felt but not feared in distant lands stretching from the Pacific Isles to Poland, and from Jamaica to Japan. We have won our victories not in the battle fields of blood and gore, but rather in the minds and hearts of man. Our supposed weapons of assault have been embodied in part, in our music & culture, our creative arts, philosophy and spirituality. It is Yoga and Ayurveda that have permeated the planet today. This heritage is embodied in our spirit. Our key strategic weapon – the oneness of man, as envisioned by Gandhi – is colourless, classless, casteless, creedless, and countryless. The skirmishes have actually begun long ago, as the first Indians left the Motherland to settle in the few corners of the world. Let this battle be engaged, for we shall prevail. This is our millennium! This is India, and therefore, an Indian. “
My point is that being Indian is not a passport. We as Malaysians should be proud of where we come from and what it takes to be an Indian. We have permeated this land for centuries, not just a matter of the last hundred years or so. It appears they are discovering archaeological diggings up in Kedah and different parts of Malaysia which has been the founding of the Cholan empire here. Angkor Wat was built by Indians. Borobudur was built by Indians. The Indian empire stretched all the way down to IndoChina and the Messiahs in the Philippines, all the way down to Jakarta, Bali and further down South. The empires of before were Sri Vijaya, Langkasuka and so on. The Kings of IndoChina were Suryavarman, Rajavarman, these were the names. And if you trace our history back to before that, when the Mohenjodaro-Harappa civilisation in the Indus Valley was still prevalent, it was the Dravidian civilisation. And if one were to look to the Tamil kingdoms around at the time, those were the Pandya kingdoms..Cheran, Pandyan, Cholan. We should be proud of that heritage. We should look towards who we are. Being Tamil is a gift. May I speak a few words in Tamil?

(Translation): Some people say that being born a Tamil is a blessing you receive for having done something good. It is a belief among the older generation that there are many challenges you have to go through, in order to be born a Tamil.

There’s so much about being a Tamil that you can experience, learn and awaken to. Only if you awaken to that, can you move forward in life. You can only move forward in life by drawing from your past, your history, your heritage. Don’t you agree?

I would like to talk to you about what excellence is all about. To become a better person, you first need to have a realisation. This realisation stems from having a dream deep inside your heart. This age that we are in must have been someone’s dream at some point in time. Even the chairs you’re sitting on, this hall, the clothes we are wearing…it is someone’s dream that has been made a reality. So, in order to get here, we must first have a realisation. Being born, eating and sleeping is not enough! I have to be more than who I am, is that not right?
Not everyone was born with a platinum spoon in their mouth. Gandhi was a son of a prime minister, so he had a better life than most. But he chose to abandon that. He chose to go back to his roots, he chose to go down to the lowest, most rudimentary level of living…choosing simplicity to portray his message. His life was his message. He wasn’t even Indian per se. He never took an Indian passport. He left India on a British document to travel to London. And from London, he went to South Africa, where he spent a great portion of his life, where he fought for South African independence. In fact Nelson Mandela puts it beautifully. He said, “You gave us Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. We gave you the Mahatma.”
Gandhi went to South Africa, and in South Africa, Satyagraha was born. In South Africa, many of the things he put into effect in India was born. But what about Gandhi himself? Gandhi is truly global as a person. Gandhi belongs as much to us as to anyone else. We just have to look within us, within our culture, within our roots, our tradition, our heritage, to know who we are. We have centuries of people to look up to, to guide us, be it Gandhi, Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Rabindranath Tagore, and lately even Abdul Kalam, a man who came up from nowhere, with a slight difference. He said to himself, “It’s not enough. What I have is not enough, I need more, I need to find more, I need to be better, just a little bit better tomorrow, than today.” And that’s the pursuit of excellence. A little bit at a time.
It all begins with a passion. You have to build on your thoughts and realisations and use it to set out your plans. What do you need to achieve in life? What is your goal? We all need a goal, don’t we? That thought has to be expanded upon. Hence, thoughts become words, words become deeds and deeds, put into practice daily, become a habit. Habit defines your character, and character decides your destiny. So it’s your character that is going to define who you are. It depends on what you want to achieve in life and how much you’re willing to put in to get there. From daily practice of something, you will see growth. And as you go along continuously progressing, you will achieve success.
There was a little experiment put together by NIIT in Delhi. They had a theory that today’s world is a changing world. There are many different ways of coping with learning. What they did was come up with a concept called ‘hole in the wall’. The NIIT building in Delhi was situated right next to the slums. So, they knocked a hole in the wall towards the slums and the researcher, who is also the MD of the company, chose to put a computer in there to see what the kids from the slums would do. These are illiterate kids, mind you. What’s amazing about this experiment is that these kids came across to the computer and started playing with it, moving the mouse and so on. And in a short period of time, these kids without any literacy, without having any computer knowledge, or academic excellence, managed to get into Disney channel and were playing games. All this within the day. Isn’t that something?
Your kids are going to be in the world of the internet, and you better learn to understand it fast or you’re going to be left out of it. We have to run to catch up. We don’t need to look out for anyone, we don’t need to ask for handouts, we are fine by ourselves. We have two hands, two feet and a great MIND; this is the single most powerful instrument that we have been blessed with. Einstein is supposed to have used about 5 percent of it. So how much are we using? Did the Lord create a brain that was intended to be used only up to two to three percent? Is there a major flaw in creation? Or is it possible that we have not yet learned to tap into the wonders and mystery of this wonderful thing that we call the mind. Please take a few minutes to watch this video of which features the NIIT experiment in Delhi.

(Hole in the wall’ video is played)

The internet means ‘that which you can do anything’. If you don’t have anything to do, go to the internet. Today’s kids have that advantage. They can access, assess, and look into a whole host of things. Not everyone has access to it, but slowly but surely, it’s coming. But this is the future, and we need to adopt to it. Skill sets are not just about going out there and getting an academic degree, as much as that is still necessary. To me, university is more than just a piece of paper. It’s about an opportunity to network, grow, stand on your feet and develop a whole different set of skills that help you survive later in life. But the piece of paper you get is not always what you use, in the sense of the information that you get. In today’s world, multi-tasking is so much that it becomes absolutely necessary.
For us Indians, we have to understand that outside academic excellences, the world is our oyster. We can learn to be entrepreneurs. We have this mindset that being an entrepreneur is not the right thing to do. The Chinese, whereas, have established a different set of parameters. Right from the beginning, their percentage of the economy is well over half, compared to their population. How do they do this? Is it simply because they come from better homes?
I can show you a child in the streets of Mumbai who can actually speak 11 languages, all self-taught. Take a look at this video for two minutes.

(Video of 13 year old Street vendor is played)

Now do you want to talk about the Indians in this country? If we sit there waiting with our palms open, then we’ll be waiting for a long time. My grandfather used to say, (Translated from Tamil) “If you’re going to work, do it with a clenched fist, not an open palm, or else we’ll be waiting for handouts all the time.” Maybe all we need to do is be pushed a little bit closer, a little bit harder, to who we can really be. That child you saw in the video doesn’t go to school and speaks in 11 different languages. To me it’s a shame, look at the boy, he’s an entrepreneur. If we’re willing to work, we can learn.
We have so much of wealth within us, we don’t have to go out there to seek anything. We just need to know who we are, to read up a little bit more about where we come from. And we have scriptures that put the rest of the world to shame. We have the Vedas, the Upanishads. If you could just read one of these, it’s enough. Everything you want is within our texts and scriptures. In fact, it is the white men who go out there, people like Anthony Robins and Gale Carnegie, who pick up and read these. They learn from the East. The Art of War from Sun Tzu is required reading in every MBA programme throughout the world. We have it as well, something called Arthashastra, written over a thousand years ago by Chanakya. In it, Chanakya describes beautifully every relationship you could have and what you should do, and how you should apply your skill sets.
I will share with you four simple steps from the Arthashastra, which you can use to change knowledge into wisdom. In Sanskrit, the first step is known as Viveka. This means discrimination. If you want to become a great actor, just do that, because the daring, determination, dedication, devotion that is needed, is no different from what is needed to become a great lawyer or doctor. It’s the same patience, perseverance, persistence that takes to be pope, or CEO of a company. The actual direction in which you want to apply all of these skill sets is up to you. No one can dictate that to you. Viveka simply means you discriminate where you want to go.
The second step is Vichara. Investigate, research, analyse where you want to go and how you’re going to get there. And then, there is Nethi. In Sanskrit, Nethi means ‘not this.’ It means that you have tunnel vision. Until Vichara, your mind is open to the world. But once you’ve decided that this is the path I’m going to take, this is what I’m going to be, then you go into a mode of Nethi. If anything else comes in the way, you push it aside, because that’s not what you want. Not this. Not this. Not this. But THIS. And that’s the path you should finally take.
Then, you come to Vairagya. Vairagya doesn’t have an English equivalent. It is charisma, it is detachment, it is being at your peak, being better than you can be. When you hit Vairagya, you hit that magical point where you can stand before a crowd as Martin Luther King did on that hot summer afternoon, and said, “I have a dream today!” If your life needs to change, the change begins now. As in the words of Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see.”