Bharat Express Chairman Upendrra Rai Highlights Unconventional Wisdom at Pune Book Festival: Emphasizes the Teaching to Step Back in a World Focused on Moving Forward

The ‘Pune Book Festival,’ held at Fergusson College from December 16 to 24, featured Upendrra Rai, Chairman, MD, and Editor-in-Chief of Bharat Express News Network, in a noteworthy session on Saturday. Rai engaged in a discussion on the pivotal theme of the ‘Role of education in the character-building of man.’

Chairman of Bharat Express said, “It is said that we learn the first school of citizenship and education from our family and grow up from there. Billy Graham was a great civil rights activist, every person living in India would know his words, but very few people would know this thing that Billy Graham said. He said that if money goes away from your life then understand that nothing is lost, if health goes away then understand that you have lost a lot, but if character goes away then understand that you have lost everything. We have known these things since childhood but a Western thinker had said this… I also came to know this much later.”

CMD UpendrraRai said, “There is no mention of this in Valmiki Ramayana, but we all have heard a story in this context at many places. When Ravana lost the battle on the battlefield and was lying on his deathbed, Lord Shri Ram told his brother Lakshman that Ravana had been a great scholar in his life… You should go and listen, learn and understand something from Ravana. The dialogue between Ravana and Lakshman is very inspiring, very good and very unique.”

Referring to the Ravana-Lakshman dialogue, the Chairman of Bharat Express said, “Ravana told Lakshman to tell this – I am greater than you two brothers in knowledge, Brahmin in clan, no one in the three worlds is greater than me in glory…yet I am lying helpless on the battlefield. Do you know why this fate happened to me? When Lakshman did not give any answer, Ravana again said – I am the one who will tell.

There is only one reason for this your brother Ram is of great character and I had fallen from character. “Only this one flaw came into my mind due to which I lost the war and am lying helpless on the battlefield.”

Upendrra Rai said, “Abraham Lincoln also said that if the character is a tree then reputation is its shadow. But how does this character-building take place… In the true sense, the education given to us in colleges and universities… does it play a big role in character building or the things that we learn in the first school of citizenship – family and society, from which we grow up? Come, those things play a big role in character building?”

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CMD of Bharat Express said, “All the education we have, all the things taught in universities, teaches us about race. The race for employment, the race to get ahead, the race to be number one. But there were some unique teachers in this world who taught us to step back. Lao Tzu said that if you want to be ahead then learn the art of being behind, if you want to get wealth then give up the thought of getting wealth. One of his disciples went to him and said, Gurudev, I have been following your words for 20 years and neither did I progress nor did I get any money. Lao Tzu said that you could have gone ahead and you would have also got wealth, but when you stood back, you made it a weapon that because I am standing behind, I have got the license to move ahead. I had told you to leave the thought of it alone…the goddess of wealth would have definitely blessed you but you kept looking back again and again to see when the goddess of wealth would start moving because I had left the thought of wealth.”