JNU’s Vice Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar’s following tweet yesterday morning created a debate among twitteratties from the both the sides, about an upcoming webinar in JNU on Leadership Lessons from Ramayana, in partnership w
JNU VC said in his tweet, “About Rama, in 1946, Mahatma Gandhi said: He is one without a second. He alone is great. There is none greater than He. He is timeless, formless, stainless. Such is my Rama. He alone is my Lord and Master. JNU organizes ‘Leadership Lessons from Ramayana’. All from JNU are welcome.”
In another Tweet, the VC informed that JNU will be conducting a webinar on ‘Leadership lessons through Ramayana’ on May 2 and 3 from 4 pm to 6 pm. The webinar will be coordinated by Prof. Santosh Kumar Shukla, JNU and Prof. Mazhar Asif, JNU.
Founder of The Ramayana School, Shantanu Gupta, when contacted, thanked JNU’s VC for his proactive approach, to partner with the school for the Leadership workshop.
The Ramayana School
Talking about The Ramayana School, Shantanu said – The Ramayana School is an endeavor to explore and contextualize the life lessons hidden in Ramayana to the present context. Ramayana School team has meticulously developed various innovative tools, to dive deep into the story, conversations & characters of Ramayana and to translate them in real life learnings for students, families, scholars, educators and entrepreneurs.
When asked about the details of the workshop, Shantanu told, that through various thought experiments and critical thinking tools, they try to work on critical & creative thinking skills of the participants, and in the process, participants develop, thorough understanding of the essence of Valmiki Ramayana. Learning from the leadership lessons from Rama’s journey, “Tracing Rama and Ravana within you” and “Killing the Ravana with you”, Ramayana Hackathon & Ramayana Olympiad Quiz are some of the popular tools among previous participants of the workshop.
When asked about the motivation behind the school, Shantanu told that he is homeschooling his son Abhiram, and around two years back, intrigued by a question by his son, he started engaging with Valmiki Ramayana deeply and being a management graduate, he found various leadership lessons in the wonderful ancient text of Ramayana. Shantanu has done multiple offline and online workshops on the topic, like at Rambhau Prabodhini in Mumbai and at 2nd World Ramayana Conference at Jabalpur.
Shantanu added that The Ramayana School takes a cue from the fact that there is something magical in the thousands of years old biography of Rama, that it finds resonance in the culture of more than 100+ countries and got translated in more than 300 different variants and still counting, beyond the considerations of culture, religion and language. There is a hidden encrypted message in each of the 24000 slokas of Valmiki Ramayana, which can enrich humanity like nothing else.
