Learning undeniably builds one’s intelligence. Learning is difficult, and real scholarship is rare. As we undergo studies, we ourselves ask, when will I get done with it: assignments, exams, dissertations, presentation and so on. And we dismiss any further learning, saying, learning is only for the most intelligent and strongest. But history proves otherwise. People who have stayed with something long enough, arrives—it is true with education too.
Think of Charles Darwin. He was not considered a brilliant student. His own father fed up of him, once seems to have said, he cares for nothing but hitting stray dogs and catching rats. Darwin himself has said that his teachers and father considered him to be 'a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. And yet, this ordinary boy developed the habit of noticing. He watched. He asked questions no one else thought to ask. He kept writing down what he noticed as a boy. And He gave the evolutionary world one of its most path-braking book, Author of On the Origin of Species; and one of its most resilient idea, “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.” First and foremost, never stop learning; learning gives us tools to adapt to the changing times.
Learning is difficult. Let me present to you two outstanding women who fought and weathered through to achieve what they did—Virginia Woolf and Marie Curie. Though one was in London and the other in Warsaw, Poland, they were more or less contemporaries, living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Virginia Woolf, recognising the historical discrimination and silence of women, and denied equality of education with her brother, in her book titled, A Room of Her Own, established that for a woman to read, learn, and to write she must have a room of her own and some money. That in many senses, both physical and mental, is important and imperative.
Marie Curie, who did pioneering research into radioactivity and discovered radium, was denied entry to the University of Warsaw simply because she was a woman. And the issue was intersectional; they were also under Russian authorities. She learned by candlelight, in hiding, in defiance. She went on to win not one but two Nobel Prizes—in two different fields: Physics and Chemistry—and remains the only person in history to have done so. Biographers talk of one thing that Marie Curie had and which was never quenched—hunger for learning. Though a room of one’s own, and money is important, what is more important is hunger for learning.
Having spent years here in college building that intelligence: attending lectures, writing exams, wrestling with concepts, reading books, doing research, etc., you have being learning and constructing, layer by layer, a mind that can navigate the world, adapt to newer times. Here is where our learning meets the other, and for it intelligence that we build sitting in a cubicle alone is not enough. It never has been. Learning builds intelligence; learning together shapes character. It is education with character.
Learning together matters, not just as a method, but also as a moral and social necessity. When you sit beside someone who thinks differently, who comes from a different family, a different faith, a different experience of the world, and you are forced to work toward the same goal, something happens. You begin to see that your way of seeing is not the only way, that your certainty is one perspective among many. And as a real scholar you begin to accept, include, and change. That is the beginning of character.
Secondly, as we graduate, perhaps we may not need to work to continue out lives, for our parents may have accumulated enough. Even if your parents have enough money accumulated for seven generations, I personally believe you must still find an employment and work. Nothing transforms you like work does. Consider any civilisation, community, society, family or individual who have transformed themselves, its undeniably through education and work –hard work. A lazy society or individual reaches nowhere.
As we come to the close of the academic year, looking at the certificates that you hold, you know that you have the intelligence; you have built it layer by layer. Now go—and let the world see your character, and honest work.
From the speech given at the graduation ceremony 2026 in IIPR, Bangalore.
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