Question

6.
advocate NaiTalim

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Answer 1

Explanation:

Nai talim is a philosophy of learning and living. It is a call for decolonizing our minds as it holds open our notions of progress, success, freedom, happiness and well-being for critical interrogation. It is also a compass for creating a new politics, new economics, new spiritualities and new non-violent societies. Therefore, it must be continuously re-calibrated and re-imagined in dialectic conversations with what is happening in the world around us. Narayanbhai Desai once told me that Gandhiji told him that we each need to create our own definitions of nai talim in order to keep it relevant and alive. Indeed, if people can create so many different kinds of toothpastes, then why can’t we create many models of nai talim?

Nai talim is a philosophy of learning and living. It is a call for decolonizing our minds as it holds open our notions of progress, success, freedom, happiness and well-being for critical interrogation. It is also a compass for creating a new politics, new economics, new spiritualities and new non-violent societies. Therefore, it must be continuously re-calibrated and re-imagined in dialectic conversations with what is happening in the world around us. Narayanbhai Desai once told me that Gandhiji told him that we each need to create our own definitions of nai talim in order to keep it relevant and alive. Indeed, if people can create so many different kinds of toothpastes, then why can’t we create many models of nai talim?When conducting a post-mortem on the nai talim experiments of the last century (mainly adopted and spread by the government on a large scale in Gujarat), one can argue that the biggest failure of nai talim schools has been their lack of understanding of Gandhiji’s Hind Swaraj (swaraj literally means rule over the self, but I prefer a more nuanced poetic framing as harmony of our many selves – with our inner world, with our diverse communities, with the natural worlds). They eventually fell into the trap of accepting modern State-corporate-military-industrial development as their central reference point (both intellectually and financially dependent on it). We need to recognize that armies, prisons, factories, and schools are all based on the same basic design of centralizing control. They run on and promote ‘institutionalization’ i.e., the submission of human conscience, wisdom and love to the will and logic of institutions, rules, authorities.