“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 en­sure 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.”

In the Hin­du tra­di­tion, the teacher is revered in a man­ner sim­i­lar to a de­ity. They are con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al guides who dis­pel the dark­ness of ig­no­rance, which is cru­cial for both aca­d­e­m­ic and spir­i­tu­al growth.

The Baal Vikaas Vi­haar was in­tro­duced in the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Hin­du schools years ago to en­sure the preser­va­tion and trans­fer­ence of our cul­ture and re­li­gion. Over the pe­ri­od, we have faced many chal­lenges and have suc­cess­ful­ly over­come all ob­sta­cles as we seek to trans­mit Hin­du cul­ture, re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions to our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

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. The 2026 Baal Vikaas Vi­haar com­mences at the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha head­quar­ters, St Au­gus­tine, on Feb­ru­ary 28th with the Chow­tal Sam­me­lan.

Chow­tal is a form of folk song, pre­dom­i­nant in the North In­dia’s Bho­jpuri re­gion, of­ten re­ferred to as Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic. The mu­sic is ac­com­pa­nied by the dho­lak and jhaal. Lyrics are main­ly de­vo­tion­al, fo­cus­ing on Lord Ra­ma, Kr­ish­na, Rad­ha, Shi­va and Par­vati. Chow­tal is tra­di­tion­al folk singing, in­te­gral to Holi (Phag­wa).

Chil­dren are al­so taught the ef­fec­tive use of avail­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies – TV and ra­dio. In our ef­fort to be self-suf­fi­cient in mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Ma­ha Sab­ha has es­tab­lished a ra­dio sta­tion and a tele­vi­sion sta­tion. Ra­dio/TV Jaagri­ti – “Awak­en­ing,” San­skrit ori­gin.

The ob­jec­tives of this re­li­gious pro­gramme in schools are six­fold:

· 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 stu­dents 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, Hin­di, Slokas from the Bhag­vad Gi­ta, etc.

Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts were in­tro­duced by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in the cur­ricu­lum.

Our stu­dents have been in­volved in Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts at Hin­du schools for many decades and they have at­tained ex­treme­ly high stan­dards of ex­cel­lence through the Baal Vikaas Vi­haar. These com­po­nents are re­flect­ed in the pro­gramme and we be­lieve that our chil­dren are well poised to en­ter this new di­men­sion of holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion.

We must em­pha­sise that sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion must be prop­a­gat­ed as an in­te­grat­ed pro­gramme. All the SDMS schools have at­tained rank­ings in the top per­for­mance bands of “most­ly ef­fec­tive” or “ex­celling.”

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 like ours. We, there­fore, in­sist that both sec­u­lar and sa­cred ed­u­ca­tion must be taught to chil­dren at­tend­ing our schools.

Ed­u­ca­tion and the search for knowl­edge are two of the ide­olo­gies to which all Hin­dus as­pire. The sec­u­lar and sa­cred knowl­edge must be avail­able to all our chil­dren. The Ra­mayan, writ­ten by Tul­si­das, is a must-read/study for our re­li­gious pro­grammes. Chil­dren are test­ed on their knowl­edge of the vers­es.

In Chap­ter 4, Verse 33 of the Bhag­wad Gi­ta, Bhag­waan Shri Kr­ish­na ex­plains to Ar­ju­na:

“Shreyaan dravya­mayaad ya­j­naat, jnaanaya jnah paran­ta­pa

Sar­vam kar­maakhil­am paartha, jnaane parisamaapy­ate

O Ar­ju­na, sac­ri­fice through knowl­edge is su­pe­ri­or to sac­ri­fice per­formed with ma­te­r­i­al things. All ac­tions, with­out ex­cep­tion, cul­mi­nate in knowl­edge.”

Our suc­cess in prop­a­gat­ing our re­li­gion and pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion de­pends on ded­i­cat­ed pun­dits, prin­ci­pals, teach­ers, par­ents and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties who have all worked tire­less­ly to en­sure the very high­est stan­dards of ex­cel­lence. I wish to com­mend all who have con­tributed to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of our chil­dren and I urge them to strive for even greater de­grees of ex­cel­lence.