Father Felix Raj, vice-chancellor of St Xavier’s University, presents a degree certificate to a student during the institute’s convocation at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town on Saturday. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta
St Xavier’s University will include inter-religious studies in its courses so that students learn to respect all religions, vice-chancellor Father Felix Raj said in his convocation address on Saturday.
“The climate that we have in our country, of disturbance and communal violence, St Xavier’s University has taken the initiative of offering a course on inter-religious studies. That will be our focus this year, so we can train students of the university with an inter-religious outlook, so every student who passes the portals of St Xavier’s will also go with a greater appreciation of every religion in the world,” Father Felix Raj said on the occasion of the sixth convocation.
On Saturday, 844 students received their degree certificates at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town.
Govindasamy Viswanathan, the chancellor and founder of Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, who was conferred a DLitt (Honoris Causa), said India was lagging in gross enrolment ratio in higher education and blamed the poor state funding for it.
“As a country, we are lagging in higher education and, particularly, the gross enrolment ratio (GER). The gross enrolment ratio is only 28 per cent. In all the developed countries, it varies from 60 per cent to 100 percent... This means the government has to spend a lot on education which has not been done in the past 70-75 years. Even though committees after committees are recommending that 6 per cent of the GDP should be spent on education, we are hovering around 3 per cent,” he said.
“Unless the state governments and the Union government spend more on education, the poor and the middle class will not have access to higher education.”
Viswanathan flagged concerns about the rising inequality in the country.
Viswanathan said in his address: “We are the fifth largest economy of the world. But when it comes to per capita income... we rank 141 in the world. If this has to be curbed, higher education is necessary... There is so much economic inequality in the country. We have overtaken America in inequality.”
“In America, the top 1 per cent of the population owns 37 per cent wealth of the country. In India, the top 1 per cent owns 50 per cent wealth of the country. In India, the top 10 per cent of the population owns 80 per cent of the wealth which may not be possible in many parts of the world. I hope the government will understand. The political parties must come to understand the situation which will be leading to poor becoming further poor.”
Meghalaya High Court Chief Justice I.P. Mukerji, who graduated from St Xavier’s College in 1985, was the chief guest at the convocation.
Father Felix Raj later told Metro: “The country needs inter-religious dialogue so the understanding among religious people improves. There should not be any hatred. Every religion is good. All colleges and universities should start something like this. Otherwise, religious tension will continue and it will divide the country.”
“Apart from making students academically sound, we need to make them good citizens who will go out with the values of the Constitution, secularism, and respect for the religions,” he said.