Where I got it frightfully wrong at St Stephen's: Valson Thampu

So long as I was only a teacher, my religious orientation did not matter. But, it began to perplex me in my role as principal. Experiences proved, day after day, that I had to re-think some of my assumptions and revise my understanding of how and why people act the way they do.

The reward of working in passionate engagement is the margin it affords to critique oneself, to correct and deepen one’s understanding and to emerge wiser from the dust and tumble of who one was.

Religious orientation ingrained in me the dogma that impulses, being dangerous, need to be kept under bit and bridle. Consistent - meaning, predictable - moral conduct required impulses to be mastered; "mastery" here meant a virtual elimination of impulses.

But there was a problem: I was inwardly sceptical with this view of the matter. It went quite against the grain of my nature in the best of moments. Also, it tended to smother spontaneity, which disquieted me. The worst was that inhibiting my impulses tended to strengthen the conservative streak in me.

Ironically, I was all along criticised for being too conservative; whereas the fact was that I was struggling continually against its ascendancy.

An avalanche of turbulent experiences during my tenure as Principal made me confront this dilemma, the substance of which could be of public interest.

Individual actions stem from three sources: (i) impulses (ii) desires, and (iii) rational decisions. 

Collective actions issuing from indoctrination belongs to the impulsive category, though the place of the individual is taken by the collective.

Desires pertain to rewards. In respect of work, it pertains to remuneration or any other kind of reward. Rational actions are guided by the individual's need to harmonise one's actions with what is perceived as good sense or public good.

Impulses are notoriously ambivalent, holding the scope for good and evil. As Sigmund Freud pointed out, in the dark underworld of human nature prowls Thanatos, the death instinct.

We come to regret many of our impulsive actions. The social cost of impulsive action stems from the fact that one's impulses are acutely personal. Others may not understand or endorse such initiatives. What cannot be understood, disquiets people. This makes one’s colleagues restless. 

Yet, the scope for significant and enterprising action - as against trudging along the beaten track - dwells mostly in the domain of the impulsive.

Suppressing one’s instincts in toto, may seem a safe option; but is a sterile and self-defeating one. By doing so, we disown not only disruptive possibilities, but also the scope for creativity and originality.

Our society is largely organised in terms of desire, and apologetically of rationality. This has exalted routine as our de facto religion. Desire is ego-centric, and driven only by expectations of reward. It allows no margin for selflessness, heroism or idealism. Rationality becomes, in such a matrix, manipulative intelligence.

What needs to be done - and this is where I failed - is the reorientation of institutional life not away from impulses, but towards healthy, creative and idealistic impulses.

To illustrate: there is a world of difference between a desire-driven teacher and one who has an impulse for teaching. Or, one who merely desires recognition and one who is driven impulsively towards it. Or, one who becomes a teacher to earn a livelihood and one who takes to teaching to discover herself and to celebrate its treasures for the enrichment of a society. 

The exclusion of the impulsive from institutional life - which is the reigning dogma of our times - has banished vitality and passion from this domain. It has stigmatised the personal stamp at work and promoted a mechanical pursuit of work, perceived as day-to-day drudgery. It has abolished fulfilment from the work we do. 

The outcome of shackling impulses - good and bad alike - is the tyranny of desire. As a teacher, for instance, I may desire better pay and reduced hours of work. I may desire a four-day week and an increase in the already obese list of holidays. None of these belongs to the domain of impulses.

I will not desire distinction as an inspiring teacher, unless I am inclined impulsively to teaching which, for that reason, drives my professional life from the depth of my being. This is conspicuously missing from the sphere of education today, with disastrous consequences for everyone involved. What we have lost over a period of time, as a result, is the air of vitality from the teaching-learning milieu.

Today, after having seen it all, I would take my stand assuredly on the side of impulses, though not in an indiscriminate fashion. The dilemma is this: functioning in the public sphere necessitates recalibrating one’s instincts. Yet, what are most vital and valuable in a person, his signature potentialities, lie encased in the instinctual. It should not be exiled summarily from any sphere of human activity. The extent to which a society respects this gnarled truth is a measure of its openness to what is original and out-of-the box.

Human nature is a mixture of good and evil. Impulses, likewise. Hence the need to educate human will to distinguish between noble and constructive impulses from those that are disruptive and self-denigrating.

Also, the need to inculcate the discipline to choose the former, rather than the latter. This is basic to education as human resource development.