Wisdom used compassionately: the Ninash Foundation.

Malhotra, Ashok Kumar

To me, philosophy means, "wisdom used compassionately" to serve humanity. This notion was presented in the Bhagavad-Gita by Krishna as Nishkam Karma, meaning "performing action passionately in the service of others without hankering after the reward." In the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi adopted this doctrine by converting it into a social tool for uplifting the standard of life of the impoverished people of India as well as used it as a political instrument to fight the unjust British rule in India.

For Gandhi, Nishkam Karma meant "serving everybody;" "feeding everyone;" and "educating every individual." Like Gandhi, Vivekananda, who represents the quintessence of the Indian philosophical tradition, used to say that if you cannot find god in a living human child, then it is futile to be searching it in the stone idol in a temple. To experience god or spirituality, one must serve selflessly the downtrodden members of humanity.

At present, there are fifty million underprivileged children in India who are born illiterate, live a life of illiteracy and will die as illiterate because of the limited resources of the present governmental and the private educational institutions, which will be unable to provide them education. How do we impart education to these 50 million children without upsetting the stalwarts of society and the government?

To accomplish this monumental task, I sought the help and assistance of many compassionate people whose energies were not being utilized positively and creatively. In my thirty years of undergraduate teaching, I had heard many professors complaining about the lack of enthusiasm on the part of their undergraduate students to get involved in anything creative or constructive.

Some kept saying to me that American students are spoiled brats, who are given everything and are accustomed to instant satisfaction, they have lost interest in taking their reading, writing, and course work seriously.

These two issues of illiteracy among fifty million impoverished children of India and the need to create a serious interest in education on the part of the undergraduate students in the USA needed some workable solution. I could see the two problems resolving each other, with one becoming a solution for the other. My goal was to provide education to the underprivileged children of India and here in the U.S. I had a group of young men and women as students, who had the potential to accomplish great things if the proper opportunities were provided.

Establishing the Ninash Foundation

The inspiration for establishing the foundation came from my own tragic existential predicament. On one normal day, Nina, my wife of 25 years, went to the doctor for a routine physical examination and to our dismay found out that she had incurable cancer and had six months to live. This news, which came as a terrible shock, arrested our normal life. Since both of us could not believe that she could die in six months, we decided to fight against all medical odds to save her. This we accomplished through the practice of yoga, meditation, reading of books by those who survived this predicament through strict adherence to diet and positive thinking. Though these palliative measures helped Nina to survive for five years, the cancer caught up with her. A month before she died, Nina and I sat down to have our final dialogue. Nina said to me: "Ashok, when I am dead, you will forget me." In my emotional state of love, I gave my gut response to Nina: "You will never be forgotten. Though I cannot build you a Taj Mahal, I will build schools in your memory through the establishment of a charitable foundation." A month latter Nina died and the Ninash Foundation was born by combining the name Nina and the first three letters of my name Ashok.

The seed money for the Ninash Foundation came from selling one of my houses. Other sources of funding were my book royalties, lectures at the rotaries, churches, schools and yoga lessons to students and members of the community, TV and Radio appearances in the USA, India, and Holland as well as sending letters and brochures to members of scholarly societies throughout the world. However, most of the funding came from donations by compassionate students and members of the society.

To achieve the goal of educating some of those fifty million impoverished children of India, I created the SUNY Oneonta "Learn and Serve in India" study abroad program, where undergraduate students from the USA put their "compassionate wisdom" to work by raising funds and building elementary schools for the underprivileged children of India. I worked with various student clubs at the college to raise funds for setting up elementary schools in India for the underprivileged children. These funds could be raised through bake sales, car wash, bowling thon, plays, concerts, as well as through selling T shirts, returning discarded cans and bottles, selling used books and CD's and garage sales etc. Some students raised money for the Ninash Foundation's Indo-International Schools project, whereas others went to India on the SUNY Oneonta" Learn and Serve in India" study abroad program to help build Indo-International Schools for the impoverished children of India. While the students indulged in these altruistic endeavors, they learned to build their own character brick by brick.

The participants of the SUNY Oneonta "Learn and Serve in India" program started the new millennium by offering "a gift of service" to humanity by building and inaugurating the first Indo-International School in January 2000 for the 200 underprivileged children of Dundlod, Rajasthan, India. Moreover, during 2001, the American undergraduate students helped raise money for the Ninash Foundation in order to assist in the building of the second Indo-International School for 208 children of Kuran, Gujarat, an area devastated by the 2001 earthquake. Besides building the elementary school for the underprivileged children, the entire village of Kuran with 200 new houses for a population of 1200 people was reconstructed through the funds raised by the American students. Since the start of the new millennium, the team of the American undergraduate students and the Ninash Foundation has built two Indo-International Schools for more than 400 children belonging to the underprivileged classes.

The successful establishment of the first two schools, offered a boost to the work of the Ninash Foundation, which during 2003, started building the third Indo-International Art Restoration and Culture Preservation School in Mahapura, near Jaipur, Rajasthan. In this vocational school, the children of Mahapura will learn the basic skills of reading writing and arithmetic as well as the art of restoring stained glass windows in ancient castles, monuments and palaces. The learning of this ancient art will provide the children vocational training, which will help them get a job as well as they will be able to contribute to the restoration and preservation of India's cultural heritage.

The Ninash Foundation is raising funds to replicate the Indo-International Schools project in other parts of India. The foundation's goal is to build at least one school a year. With continued support from students, individuals, and organizations, the Ninash Foundation will build elementary schools with village libraries, establish computer and vocational centers, build medical dispensaries as well as give away milk-producing goats to the poorest families of each village. All this will improve the quality of life for some of the world's most impoverished children, one community at a time.

How can you help

You can help the 50 million underprivileged children of India by supporting the drive to raise funds to build one new school each year in a different impoverished area. The goal is to raise a million dollars, the interest from which will help build two schools each year. Your tax-deductible contribution to the Ninash Foundation, a 501[c](3) charitable organization, will directly support the project.

 $2500 will build a classroom in a school;
 $750 will pay the salary of a teacher for a year;
 $500 will buy school supplies for an entire year;
 $400 will buy shoes for 200 children;
 $350 will build a playground for the school;
 $30 will support a child through the entire year;
 $55,000 will help build and operate an entire school for
 200 children on a self-sustaining basis.

(1) East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies acknowledges the permission of Common Ground Conferences of Australia to publish this work by Professor Malhotra.