educating for inequality: the experiences of india’s “indigenous” citizens

8/8/2019 Educating for Inequality: The Experiences of Indias Indigenous Citizens

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Educating for Inequality:

The Experiences of Indias

Indigenous Citizens

Nandini SUNDAR

This report deals with the contradictions and dilemmas concerning

education faced by adivasis, the preferred local term for indigenous

people, in central India.1 Adivasis constitute some 84 million people,

making up over eight percent of Indias population. The adivasi are offi-

cially known as scheduled tribes (ST), since under Article 342 of the

Indian constitution, these communities are listed in government sched-

ules or lists for the purpose of affirmative action. Many of them also

inhabit areas of India which are meant to enjoy a degree of constitutional

autonomy.2

Literacy rates among the scheduled tribes are abysmally low

compared to the national average, despite some improvement between

1991 and 2001 (see Table 1). While education has been an important

avenue for mobility among some sections of the dalits or formeruntouchables (officially, scheduled castes or SC), adivasis, the other

main disadvantaged social grouping in India for which the constitution

provides affirmative action in education and government employment,

have not fared as well (see Xaxa 2001; Mohanty 2006). As Xaxa argues,

Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology, Delhi University, and co-editor of

Contributions to Indian Sociology. Her publications include Subalterns and

Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar (2nd ed. Oxford University

Press, 2007), and Branching Out: Joint Forest Management in India (Oxford

University Press, 2001). Her e-mail address is: [email protected]

Asian Anthropology, Vol. 9 (2010)

Published by The Chinese University Press


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118 Nandini SUNDAR

this is because the central concern for adivasi movements has been

control over natural resources and land in the areas which they inhabit,

rather than upward mobility within the caste system as in the dalit case;adivasis face a language problem unlike dalits; and adivasis lack the

individualist ethic which is intrinsic to educational systems based on

ranking and competition. Finally, unlike dalits, whose educational aspi-

rations are inspired by their leader, Dr. Ambedkar, adivasis lack a role

model in education (Xaxa 2001). While statues to Dr. Ambedkar invari-

ably show him with pen, glasses and a copy of the Indian Constitution

which he was primarily responsible for drafting (see Jaoul 2006), adivasi

heroes like Birsa Munda are more likely to be pictured with bow and

arrow, indicating a tradition of valiant resistance against the state rather

than co-optation through the educational system.

Table 1. Literacy rates, in percentages

2001 1991

Rural female ST 32.4 16.0

Rural female non SC/ST 50.2 35.4

Rural male ST 57.4 38.5

Rural male non SC/ST 74.3 63.4

Source: National Focus Group on Problems of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST)

Children, based on Census of India 1991 and 2001 (NCERT 2007: 32).3

Without denying the importance of functional literacy and educa-

tional attainment for adivasis, this report is an effort to problematize the

effects of formal education in terms of adivasi identity and future citi-

zenship. In advanced capitalist countries, whereas sociological and

educational debates over the politics of identity and difference came

temporally after questions of access and equality of opportunity (Brown

et al. 1997:13), in contemporary India, identity and access to education

are often closely related. One consequence of the failure of state provi-

sion is the increase in the number of private schools. While many of

these are purely commercial, two major players in the educational scene

are the Catholic Church and the Hindu chauvinist organization, the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Thus the promise of a more

meaningful common citizenship held out by higher literacy levels is

diminished by increasing class and sectarian differences (see also Jeffery

et al. 2002).




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Educating for Inequality 119

In this report, I show how the promise of formal education comes at

the cost of cultural identity and local knowledge for adivasis, even while

recognizing that in all cases, educational processes are fundamentallycultural processes (Luykx 1999: xxxiii). While the encounter with an

alien education system was acutely experienced by upper-caste Indians in

colonial India, faced with Macaulays dictum that a single shelf of a

good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and

Arabia (Zastoupil and Moir 1999: 161173), there is little recognition of

the fact that adivasis, dalits and subaltern groups face a similar obliteration

of their own identities at the hands of the Indian education system today.

Across the world, the introduction of standardized schooling systems

has involved a certain loss of vernacular knowledge (Kelly and Altbach

1978; Luykx 1999; Weber 1976). However, this co-exists today with a

new recognition of the importance of indigenous knowledge (Agrawal

2002; Ellen 2000). In India, one of the focus areas taken up by the

National Knowledge Commission set up in 2005 to enable the develop-

ment of India as a knowledge-based economy was traditional knowl-

edge. Arguing that principled commercialization of our cultural,

creative and legacy practices has the potential of generating employment

for at least 100 million people, the commission lists a number ofaspects of traditional knowledge, many of which refer to tribal prac-

tices in medicine, art and agriculture.4

Thus scheduled tribes are recognized as possessing traditional

knowledge of a kind that is not only useful to them, but has implications

for national growth and sustainable development. However, other aspects

of government policy towards adivasis systematically denigrate any

knowledge that they possess, let alone adopting their path as the educa-

tional or developmental model for others. The large-scale displacementfrom their homes to make way for dams and industries,5 and the growing

deforestation and degradation of environmental resources, reduce the

habitat in which indigenous knowledge survives. Equally importantly,

contrary to the idea that education brings enlightenment, the formal

schooling system transforms social relations which are relatively equal

in the direction of greater patriarchy and hierarchy. In the absence of

other factors that affirm cultural pride in adivasi identity, there is a

serious danger that education will become a means for individual alien-

ation from the adivasi community.

The material for this article is drawn from nineteen years (19902009)

of fragmentary observation of schools in the Bastar district of




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120 Nandini SUNDAR

Chhattisgarh state as well as more specific research I did in 20012002

on schools in the Jashpur district of Chhattisgarh (see Map 1). I have

also drawn on writings by other scholars on adivasi schooling elsewherein central India, such as in Orissa or Andhra Pradesh. I regret that I have

not looked into educational processes in the northeast of India, as that

would have provided a useful foil.

Map 1. Chhattisgarh State, India




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122 Nandini SUNDAR

non-adivasis in regions across the country (PROBE 1999), but there are

also some issues which are relatively specific to adivasi areas. These

include the language gap between students and teachers who do notspeak any of the local languages (dalit children do not face a similar

language barrier), blatant discrimination or at the very least unequal

treatment by teachers as compared to non-adivasis or upper-caste

students, and general condescension which makes the educational expe-

rience particularly alienating. Adivasis are blamed for their own lack of

educational progress, such as in the following extract from the Class IX

Social Studies Textbook in Gujarat, chapter 9 under the heading Problems

of the Country and their solutions:

There is very poor socio economic development among the scheduled castes

and scheduled tribes in India, although they constitute part of the total

population. They have not been suitably placed in our social order; therefore,

even after independence they are still backward and poor. Of course, their

ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith are to be blamed for lack of progress

because they still fail to realise the importance of education in life. (reproduced

in Patel et al. 2002: 246)

Contrary to this view, studies have shown there is a great desire foreducation among both adivasis and dalits. A study as far back as 1977,

of nine villages in Utnur Taluk (Andhra Pradesh) quoted in Furer-

Haimendorf (1982: 133) noted that while a greater number of non

adivasis sent their children to school compared to adivasis in the same

villages, 98.46% of adivasis thought education was a good thing

compared to only 76.3% among non-adivasis. Adivasis were often more

interested in education than non-adivasis because they knew it was their

only option for advancement, but did not send their children to schooleither because of poverty or because the schooling process made their

children feel inferior, or as Nanda shows (1994: 173), schooling, as

practiced, was seen by the parents as a waste of time. A study by Ranjit

Tigga in 19911992, comparing the background of children who went to

two Jesuit schools in then Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh, Loyola and

Prakash, found that while over 80 percent of childrens families were

agriculturists and had incomes under Rs. 10,000 per year, and in the case

of Prakash, 90 percent of parents could not fund the education of their

children, the vast majority of parents (90 percent and 72 percent respec-

tively for Loyola and Prakash) sent their children to school willingly.

The sample was 100 percent adivasi (Tigga 1992).




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In keeping with this trend of blaming the victim, impending

displacement often serves as an excuse for not providing schools and

conversely, the lack of schools in adivasi villages has been cited as ajustification for displacing them. In 2000, the Supreme Court Judgement,

dismissing the petition of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, an anti-dam

movement, stated that:

Residents of villages around Bhakra Nangal dam, Nagarjun Sagar dam,

Tehri, Bhilai Steel Plant, Bokaro... and numerous other developmental sites

are better off than people living in villages in whose vicinity no develop-

mental project came in. It is not fair that tribals and the people in undevel-

oped villages should continue in the same condition without ever enjoying

the fruits of science and technology for better health and have a higher

quality of life style. Should they not be encouraged to seek greener pastures

elsewhere, if they can have access to it, either through their own efforts due

to information exchange or due to outside compulsions. (p. 89).... At the

rehabilitation sites they will have more and better amenities than which they

enjoyed in their tribal hamlets. The gradual assimilation in the main stream

of society will lead to betterment and progress. (Narmada Bachao Andolan

vs. Union of India, Majority Judgement, 2000: 26)

In other words, adivasis in general, and not just their children, are seenas people for whom compulsion must be exercised in their own best

interest. Inevitably, when it comes to children, then, the disciplinary and

civilizing aspects of schooling take precedence over the idea of opening

them up to new intellectual experiences.

This is so particularly in the case of denominational schools, which

have a large presence in adivasi areas, with the long-term goal of

harnessing them to their own religious and political agendas. Given the

problems with state provisioning of education, a number of privateschools have emerged to address popular demand. According to NCERT

(2007: 15), there are over 40,000 unrecognized private schools in rural

India. The biggest organized players, however, are Christian missionaries

and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose political front, the

Bharatiya Janata Party, was in power in the central government between

1999 and 2004.6 Organizations like the Ramakrishna Mission or the

Mata Rukmini Devi Sansthan are also encouraged by the government to

work in adivasi areas.7 All of these, regardless of whether or not they

have political ambitions, are interested in uplifting adivasi children,

making the experience of educational social mobility a simultaneous

experience of cultural transformation. On the one hand, these schools




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provide better education than most government schools in the sense of

getting children through exams, but on the other hand, the extra-curric-

ular activities they engage in have significant consequences for adivasiself-understanding.

Figure 1. Children at school in Andhra Pradesh

Language

There are several policy documents and a constitutional provision recog-

nizing that linguistic minorities should be educated in their mother tongue

at primary level.8 However, even adivasi languages like Bhili, Gondi or

Oraon, which are spoken by over a million people (Nambissan 1994:

27472748), are not recognized in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution,

which gives official recognition to a language, and Bodo and Santhali,

which are spoken by 1.2 and 6.5 million people respectively, were added

only in 2003. Correspondingly, there is practically no education in

adivasi languages. Although states in India were organized on linguistic

grounds in the 1950s, in the absence of political power, none of the major

adivasi groups managed to carve out states for themselves. Consequently




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these groups are distributed across state boundaries and the languages

they are taught in are those of the state in which they live, so that even if

they share the same customs and have marriage relations across stateborders, the educated adivasi youth of different states do not develop a

sense of oneness. Coupled with the fact that only 6 percent of primary

teachers are from adivasi communities, and some do not bother to learn

the language even after several years of being posted there (Kundu 1994:

31), the general picture at primary level in adivasi areas is often one of

mutual incomprehension for students and teacher.

In common with stories concerning indigenous peoples education in

Australia and the United States, adivasi children in India have been

punished for talking in their own languages (Saxena and Mahendroo

1993; Kundu 1994: 31). Quite apart from the pedagogic problems this

createssuch as destroying the childs self-esteem and reducing the

possibilities of successful learning in later yearsthe denigration of

adivasi languages amounts to denigration of adivasi worldviews and

knowledge. Although there are 400 adivasi languages in India, several

languages, especially those spoken by small numbers, are dying out.

Even outside the confines of school, educated youth often speak to

each other in the language of the school, perhaps also to mark them-selves off from their uneducated peers. As one adivasi student said to

me, Jyada shikshit hote ja rahen hain to hindi bolte hain (The more

educated we become, the more Hindi we use.) Where Hindi is the

medium of education, adivasi languages are themselves changing to use

more Hindi words, and Hindi grammar.

Even where adivasis are passionate about their own language, they

do not expect schools to teach in them. Indeed, for many adivasi parents,

the main advantage of schooling is that it gives access to the regionallanguages, and enables people to deal with the bureaucracy and non-

adivasis (Grigson 1944: 398; Patwardhan 2000: 82). Tigga (1992) notes

that in his survey 58 percent of both teachers and adivasi parents saw

tribal language as a barrier to their childrens education. On the other

hand, if adivasi languages were given official recognition by the state

and if they were connected to job prospects, there might be more people

who would want education for their children in their own language

(Nambissan 2000: 197). Indeed, wherever adivasis have been politically

mobilized to celebrate adivasi identity, they have been more clear and

open in their demand for education in indigenous languages (Patwardhan

2000; Nambissan 2000: 213). The Communist Party of India (Maoist),




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126 Nandini SUNDAR

or Naxalites as they are popularly known, is a banned organization

which is currently engaged in armed struggle against the Indian state. Its

cadres are drawn primarily from the adivasis and dalits. One of thereasons why the insurgency they lead is so popular across the central

Indian belt is that they have developed indigenous Gondi literature, and

have cultural troupes which perform Gondi songs and dances, which

makes their message accessible to the people.

There is often a problem in determining which language will be

taught in primary schools as the mother tongue, given the fact that

several adivasi communities speaking different languages may inhabit

the same village. Using the local lingua francaSadani or Nagpuri in

Jharkhand, Halbi in Bastar, etc.is one option, but even this will not

fully address the problem. Finding teachers who will teach in the local

language is another problem, unless adivasi teachers are more heavily

recruited. Currently, there is no political will in requiring non-adivasi

teachers to learn adivasi languages.

One positive feature is the emergence of a large literature in some

adivasi languages like Bodo and Santhali. The growing commercial

culture of music videos and low-budget films enabled by digital tech-

nology have led to a proliferation of media in adivasi languages likeNagpuri, Santhali, Mundari, and Halbi. Although the themes remain

modeled on Hindi films, and they are usually of very poor quality,

popular demand has ensured a certain engagement with various vernacu-

lars. Many of these films also incorporate some degree of ethnographic

description. It is possible, then, that where official apathy has failed,

market forces may come in to at least somewhat save adivasi languages.

Curriculum and Textbooks

Adivasi children are not only denied their own languages, but also their

own culture and history. The curriculum is usually based on the experi-

ences of urban middle-class Indian children, and the kinds of objects

they refer to are often unlikely to be found in a rural home (see Kundu

1994: 61). Not only is the knowledge and linguistic or cognitive ability

that adivasi children possess ignorede.g. the capacity to compose and

sing spontaneously, to think in riddles and metaphors and their intimate

knowledge of their environmentbut schooling also actively encourages

a sense of inferiority about adivasi cultures, which persists into later life.

Adivasis rarely feature in textbooks, and when they do, it is usually




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in servile positions to upper-caste characters, or as strange and back-

ward exotica (Kundu 1994; Kumar 1989: 71). Nanda quotes from a

second-grade textbook that Bonda children in the state of Orissa aremade to learn:

Bonda life is very strange indeed. They live in tiny huts built of mud. The

entrance to these huts is rather narrow. They enter the huts by bending

forward. For the upliftment of the Bondas, the government has planned

development programmes. Cash loans are being extended to the Bondas for

the purpose of improved agriculture and animal husbandry. There is now a

steady improvement in their condition. Hunting in the forest is no more

their primary occupation. There are changes in their disposition and diet.Now they know how to count cash. (State Board textbook quoted in Nanda

1994: 173)

In a marvelous essay entitled, Learning to be Backward, Krishna

Kumar points out the impossible situation in which such texts place

adivasi children. If children fail to answer questions about adivasi back-

wardness based on readings from the text, they are judged educationally

backward. If they acknowledge that the texts are correct, they accept an

external judgment about their cultural backwardness. Either way, thereis no escaping the label of backwardness. As a social institution, the

school has set up a situation in which the tribal will acquire responses

that match his description in society as a member of a backward

community (Kumar 1989: 68).

While the general problem is with the absence or denigration of

adivasi culture, in RSS schools, there is a more specific problem with

the use of additional textbooks that have a communal slant meant to

promote Hinduism and denigrate other religions. Among private reli-gious schools, only the RSS seems to pose this problem, I have found in

my own research among five schools in the Bastar and Jashpur districts

of Chhattisgarh. In one private school, the principal explained to me that

there was no question of using other than the government-prescribed

textbooks because the students were unwilling to learn more than the

bare minimum. In a Catholic school, while the school has its own text-

books for classes one and two, these do not have any religious content

and are chosen because of their large format and illustrations.

Most of the Vidya Bharati (RSS) schools follow the syllabi and text-

books published by the National Curriculum Framework. But in addi-

tion, Vidya Bharati brings out its own textbooks, which supplement




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and correct the history that is taught in the official books, working by

selective emphasis on certain figures as against others as well as by

crude propaganda against Muslims and Christians. Christian pastors, forinstance, are described as one of the main instruments of colonialism

(Singh 1997: 27), thus strengthening the association in childrens minds

between Indian Christians and anti-national activities and laying the

roots for divisions between Hinduized and Christianized adivasis (for

more discussion of the content of these textbooks, see Sundar 2004).

Hidden Curriculum

In all schools, textbooks are only one instrument for transmitting cultural

messages.

Most of this takes place through the composition of students and

teachers, with both Christian and Hindu schools engaged in some

amount of boundary keeping. For example, in the RSS schools the chil-

dren were predominantly Hindu, while in the Catholic school where I

did research, they were largely Christian. This also takes place through

extra-curricular activities like morning and evening prayers, especially in

those schools which have hostels attached, and through the generalatmosphere of the schools (see Sundar 2004, 2006a, 2006b). The

communicative function of schooling extends much beyond the actual

curricular content, through what Corrigan calls a repertoire of forms

that include space, time and textuality (1990: 160).

The fact that even in regular government schools most teachers are

Hindu influences the manner in which annual days or other school

events are celebrated. When teachers talk about imparting sanskriti

(culture) to adivasi children, they usually have in mind upper-caste, non-adivasi practices, and this is something that is internalized by adivasi

teachers as well. In one scene at examination time in a primary school, I

saw how an examiner asked the children their names. As they called out

each distinctive adivasi name, like Gagru or Aitu or Devli, he ironed

these out to standard Hindu names by adding Ram, like Gagru Ram,

Aitu Ram, Devli Kumari etc. On the other hand, government schools are

not marked by the kind of intense religious exposure that private schools

provide, and beyond one or two pictures on the wall of Hindu gods or

goddesses, there is no strong effort to culturally transform the children.

It is true that children who go to these schools come out thinking, for

example, of the Hindu festivals Diwali and Holi or the Christian festival




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Christmas, as more important than their own festivals because they are

national holidays, but this is as much due to the way the academic

calendar is structured and the wider media as to the specific efforts ofteachers.

By comparison, even in those soft Hindu schools which see them-

selves as secular, ideas of cultural change are so engrained that they

seem synonymous with schooling. Statements like these are common: If

people hadnt come from outside and taught them, how else would they

have progressed? Earlier their parents used to insist they come home

for the seed sowing festivalbut now they dont. The girls have learnt

all ourfestivals.

In RSS organizations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a front

specifically set up for adivasis whom they call vanvasis (jungle

dwellers), we see the most conscious attempt to turn adivasi children

into Hindus. This is carried out through the schools, but especially

through hostels, where children are trained to hold bhajan mandalis

(musical groupings where Hindu hymns are sung) , shakhas (physical

drills), and other activities when they go home for the long summer

vacations.

The hostels are in much demand and even some Christians apply.Although the surroundings are shabby and food is basic, there is a prolif-

eration of Hindu visual imagery, all of which is part of a carefully

planned design to expose children to Hindu idioms. At the same time,

there is an attempt to integrate vanvasis into the wider Hindu fold, by

appropriating famous adivasi men or women and naming centers after

them. At the pre-school centers, children learn the rudiments of reading,

writing and sanskars (rituals or practices) including learning to greet

people by saying the Sanskritic pranam (a salutation which impliesdeference) instead of their own more egalitarian adivasi salutation johar

(greetings), and singing the Saraswati Vandana, a hymn to the Hindu

Goddess of learning, Saraswati. Not every child understands what they

are chanting, but sustained exposure to these centers inevitably incul-

cates respect for Sanskrit as a language worth knowing, and a belief that

civilization consists in Hindu markers of behavior. More important

than the actual information that children may or may not remember is

the symbolic message transmitted. At the Eklavya khel kud centres for

older youth,9 the RSS teaches the children indigenous games with

names like RamRavan, based on the epic Ramayana battle. The referee

calls out directions in Sanskrit. While local languages are not forbidden




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in RSS schools and hostels, Sanskrit and Hindi are glorified. Like the

Catholics before them, who set hymns to local tunes to attract converts,

the RSS may keep in references to the Singbonga or local gods, butHindu gods like Ram and Krishna inevitably involve pride of place.

Figure 2. Nationalist and religious imagery in a government school in Andhra Pradesh

Much of what the RSS schools are doing was done by the Christian

mission schools earlier, and indeed, it is Christian evangelism which has

served as the conscious model for the RSS (Sundar 2006a, 2006b). Now,

however, the Catholics confine their religious teaching to their own

community. (While evangelists are active in the area, schooling is not

their preferred medium.) Non-Christian children do not have to attend

catechism classes, and can carry out their own prayers or study during

prayer time. For the Catholic children, however, the education is deeply

Christian. The model, overall, is modern Western culturewhen chil-

dren see the fathers who teach them eat with forks and knives, this

becomes something to aspire to.

Each type of school has its own version, then, of what constitutes a

suitable culture for adivasi children to learn, but there is very little




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attempt to find out what adivasi culture itself is, and how it can enrich

the school curriculum.

School Regimens

In all private schools, whether RSS, Christian, or otherwise, the hostel

regime emphasizes discipline and prayer, creating a totalizing and

intense experience. Government schools are far more relaxed. In these

private schools, children normally wake up at 4.30, pray for an hour or

so, then bathe and eat breakfast, and attend classes. They may do some

exercise either in the morning or evening, but are bound to pray again in

the evenings. So much prayer is in sharp contrast to their homes, wherethere is no such practice of daily prayer, and life is far less regimented.

The following two timetables (Table 2) show how regimented and

prayer-filled the school day is:

Table 2. Schools Daily Regimens

Daily Program at an RSS School

Prat: (morning)

4.30: Jagaran Prarthna (morning prayer)

4.304.45: Ekatmata Stotr (meditation)

4.456.00: Surya Namaskar (exercise worshipping the sun god)

6.006.30: Ramayan Path (reading of the Ramayana)

7.009.00: Swadhyay (self study)

9.00: Bhojan (food)

10.304.30: Pathshala (school)

Sayn (evening)

5.006.00 Khel kud, Vyayam (games and exercise)

6.006.45: Kirtan, Bhajan, Aarti (hymns and prayer)

6.458.00 Bhojan (food)

Ratri (night)

8.008.30: Swadhyay (self study)

9.30: Prarthna Deep Nirvan (evening prayer)

Notes: 1. On Sundays, children are given information of national and social

happenings, stories and life histories of famous people.

2. Children must maintain cleanliness in the hostel and its compound.




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132 Nandini SUNDAR

Daily Timetable at a Catholic School

AM

4.45: wake up and wash

5.156.00: Prayer in Church for Catholics (non-Catholics worship

separately in classroom or study)

6.007.15: study in hostel

7.157.30: PT drill

7.308.15: cleaning hostel premises, collecting vegetables from garden

8.158.30: bathing

8.309.15: breakfast (lentils and rice)

9.159.30: religion class (in classroom)

1010.15: assembly prayer

10.15 am4.00 pm: classes (with three short breaks)

PM

4.005.00: hostel high school games

5.005.15: washing up

5.156.00: dinner

6.006.15: church prayer

6.3010.00: study (with two 15 minute recess breaks in between)

10 pm: sleep

In general, both Sarangapani (2001: 2427) and Padel (1995: 224)

point to the way in which the school regimen of timing, discipline, and

hierarchy is alien to children socialized in a world where individuality is

respected from early on, and where parent-child interactions are rela-

tively egalitarian.

Kundu (1994) points out that testing procedures too are based onurban middle-class valuesthe competitiveness and system of rewards

that examinations represent is often culturally anomalous to adivasi chil-

dren, who are brought up in an atmosphere of sharing. In classroom

interactions too, non-adivasi children dominate, even when they are in a

minority, by virtue of their greater social confidence. In one classroom,

two of the boys who were very vocal turned out to be from the local

trader community, and it is they who set the terms of debate. One of

them complained that it was impossible for children these days to go

into medical school as seats were reserved for adivasis and dalits. But

when I pointed out that this would not be a problem for most of the chil-

dren in the class, who were adivasis, they again spoke up, and said but




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we are not. The complaint of the upper-caste children is thus used to

silence the experiences and claims of the rest of the children.

Learning among adivasi children is usually intimately connected tothe work processchildren learn the names and medicinal uses of many

plants and trees while accompanying their parents on foraging trips in

the forest (Sarangapani 2001: 44; personal observations). When children

are away at school, especially when they are sent to residential schools,

they lose connection with this world of labor and their capacity to learn

from it. Nanda describes a walk in the forest with Bonda children in

eastern India. While some children wandered off to explore the forest

and collect edible items, those who had been to the residential school,

kept to the path and were indifferent to their surroundings (Nanda 1994:

177). Parents used to be reluctant to send their children to school

because they lost the capacity to engage in agriculture (Nanda 1994:

173). However, with high unemployment rates, many hostel-returned

adivasi youth have no option but to stick to agriculture or do manual

wage work.

Given such a demeaning educational experience (Kumar 1989: 76)

in a set-up which privileges the visions and meanings of dominant

groups in society and teaches adivasis subservience, it is hardlysurprising that dropout rates among adivasi children are much higher

than those of other students and literacy rates much lower (Nambissan

1994: 2747).

Education in a Time of Counterinsurgency

The logic of using education or the lack thereof, to justify displacement

has also been used in government military operations in central India,where villagers have been herded into camps in a conflict against the

Naxalite Maoist insurgents. In Chhattisgarh since 2005, the government

paramilitary forces in collaboration with civilians whom it has armed

and christened the Salwa Judum (literally purification hunt in Gondi),

euphemistically calling it a peoples movement, has been burning

villages, killing people and raping women, in an effort to isolate the

Maoists through strategic hamletting. Officially 644 villages, comprising

some three hundred thousand people, have been affected by Salwa

Judum, and some 50,000 were forcibly herded into camps. Those who

escaped the regroupinga hundred thousand or somigrated to the

nearby state of Andhra Pradesh.




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134 Nandini SUNDAR

All the children in Dantewada were promoted for the academic year

20052006 because no exams could be held. Curiously, in 2007, while

this mayhem was still on-going, the Dantewada administration receivedthe National Literacy Mission-Unesco award for spreading adult literacy.

In 2007, I visited a Salwa Judum camp on the border of Andhra Pradesh

and Chhattisgarh at Maraigudem. The teacher in charge of the residential

school said that the population in the hostel kept fluctuating because

their parents would bring the children in when conditions were particu-

larly disturbed, and then take them back again when conditions were

more peaceful.

One of the big casualties of this war has been school buildings, in a

region where they were scarce to begin with. The security forces use

schools as military camps because they are the only solid building in the

villages, and in turn the Maoists blast schools to prevent this happening.

They bring in villagers from neighboring villages to destroy the schools,

since they know that people find it hard to break buildings they have

themselves built. In one place, a strong local leader prevailed upon the

Maoists not to destroy the school in his village, but then the paramilitary

forces moved in and children were moved out. In response to a court-

ordered investigation, the National Human Rights Commission recom-mended that the security forces be moved out of schools, but the

Chhattisgarh government has refused to act on this.

But even where the school buildings exist, the government has

moved all the teachers and children from affected zones to camps,

ensuring that if children are not in camp, they have no access to educa-

tion. In 2007, the government also issued directives that the children

would not be allowed to go home for the summer. Ostensibly this was

for their own safety; but it also worked as a way of forcing the parentsto come to the camps if they wanted to be with their children. Most of

the people have now come back from the camps to their villages, but

schools and teachers continue to work only in the camps, and not in the

villages where the majority of children now are. Salwa Judum leaders

refer to teachers as their property: These teachers belong to our

government. We have kept them (teachers) all together in one place.

Those who dont join the Judum will get no school or be allowed to go

to school.

As a further attempt to capture the children, and wean them away

from Maoist influence in the villages, the government is building 1,000-

seat residential schools. These, however, are next to Salwa Judum camps




19/26


and police stations, ensuring that their education will take place under

the watchful eye of these Salwa Judum leaders. The physical space of

the schools is also restricted, with rooms in narrow lines. The ChiefSecretary (official in charge of the state administration) of Chhattisgarh

actually said to me in a conversation that if schools taught chemistry in

interior villages, the children would only learn to make bombs! Given

that the ruling party in the state is the Bharatiya Janata Party, the polit-

ical front of the RSS, the capture of children in these large schools is

also likely to facilitate the inculcation of an RSS ideology, with the

appointment of pro-RSS teachers and the use of Hindu imagery in these

schools.

Even UNICEF has colluded in the argument that children are better

off in camps, with a UNICEF film made for educational purposes noting

how great it was that these adivasi children who were in Salwa Judum

camps had now learned to brush their teeth with foaming toothpaste. At

a time when these children had lost their homes and in many cases, seen

their relatives or co-villagers killed before their eyes, learning to brush

with toothpaste which they can ill afford, as against their traditional

brush of neem (Azadirachta Indica) twigs, would hardly seem like a big

achievement for either UNICEF or the Indian state. UNICEF tents,meant purely for educational purposes, are used for shooting cover and

to house paramilitary troops, and yet UNICEF has been silent on these

violations.

For the teachers themselves, always reluctant to travel to interior

villages, the Salwa Judum has been a period of pay without work.

Officially, the government claims that it is the Maoists who have driven

teachers and other government staff away, but this is denied by many

villagers. In December 2008, I was shown a threatening letter written inred ink, in a purposely illiterate hand, ostensibly from the Maoists to the

school principal, commanding him to shut his school down within two

weeks or else. On enquiring into the issue in the village concerned, I

learned that it had originated from a disgruntled teacher, upset with the

principals insistence that he come to work on time.

Many teachers, who are either outsiders or educated adivasis who

have become alienated from the poor villagers who comprise the Maoist

base, have been active in the Salwa Judum and made enough money to

become contractors. One Salwa Judum leader I spoke with was a

middle-school teacher, who by his own admission, rarely attended school

or only beech beech mein (in between) whenever he could spare a few




20/26

136 Nandini SUNDAR

hours from his Salwa Judum activities. Following various court cases

against Salwa Judum, the government woke up to the need to signal

accountability. An article in the Indian Express describes the bewilder-ment of one leader, Soyam Mooka, who was served notice:

Swayam Mukka [sic.], a teacher in a school being run by the department

(Tribal Welfare department) is among the frontline leaders of Salwa

Judum, ever since the anti-Naxalite campaign was launched in South Bastar

in June 2005 to isolate the Maoist rebels and to create awareness among the

masses against the Naxalite menace. Like Mukka, a number of other school

teachers of Konta and Bijapur regions are closely associated with the

movement.

The state government, which has been extending support to Salwa Judum

terming it as a spontaneous movement by the locals against bloodshed and

violence in the tribal region, had encouraged these Government employees to

actively participatein the movement during the last three years

Mukka told The Indian Express that he had received a notice from his depart-

ment asking why action should not be taken against him for making political

statements at Salwa Judum meetings and not attending to his duties. The

department knows of my association with Salwa Judum for the last three

years, he added. (John 2008)

Luckily for Soyam Mooka the government was never serious about

implementing the notice against him. These Salwa Judum leaders have

gotten rich on government salaries and contracts, as well as the relief

money they have siphoned off from camps, and it is they, rather than the

government, who effectively run the local administration. Where, then,

is the question of doing anything as mundane as teaching?

If these children had been middle class instead of adivasi, it would

have been inconceivable for anyone to treat their education with such

casual disregard. That a whole generation of children has gone without

schooling (20052010) and that the only option available for children is

no education or education in a camp school under the shadow of the

paramilitary, does not seem to cause the politicians and bureaucrats who

run the state any sleepless nights.

Consequences of SchoolingDismal as this picture sounds in terms of adivasi identity and indigenous

knowledge, the consequences of formal schooling are often considerably




21/26


complex. Even as residential schooling creates a certain educated

adivasi identity that makes it difficult for residential school alumni to

relate to the occupations of their parents (agriculture or the gathering offorest produce), the interaction with children of other castes and villages

that hostels make possible allow new networks or new epistemic

communities (Bayly 1999) to develop. For example, many of the male

youth activists of the Communist Party of India in Bastar came to know

each other in the residential schools, and it is these networks that have

helped them to organize for land rights and in defense of a particular

adivasi identity. Although Christian missionary education often led to an

initial loss of adivasi identity, culture and religion, it is often in the areas

where such education has had a long history that we now see the strong-

est movements for tribal autonomy and identity. Educated adivasis take

the lead in such movements, which in turn creates a demand for the

institutionalization of adivasi languages in schools (Nambissan 2000:

212213; Devalle 1992: 175176). Inevitably, however, the language

they seek to preserve may not be the language as it is actually spoken,

but a more civilized version that follows the structures and written

codes of the dominant languages (Devalle 1992: 177), and the indige-

nous history they seek to promote, one that is heavily inflected bymission accounts of indigenous knowledge. In short, formal education

may both destroy and create indigenous identities and claims to possess

indigenous knowledge.

Advocates of indigenous knowledge and concerned educators argue

that it is possible to combine formal schooling with a concern for the

preservation of indigenous knowledge, such as the curriculum developed

by the Maori in New Zealand and the Inuit in Canada, which draw on

culture, and use specific learning expectations and local languages (Michie1999; Bartels and Bartels 1995). In India, however, although there have

been some attempts, such as the Dhumkuria school in Bihar, based on

the indigenous dormitory system among Oraons in which children were

taught both local crafts and prepared for state board exams (Toppo

1978), or the attempt by Kundu to use adivasi riddling practices to

develop curriculum, such efforts are still rudimentary. There is also the

danger that unless such efforts are part of a political agenda that is led

by indigenous people themselves, the transmission of indigenous knowl-

edge through schools will amount to no more than the colonial model of

schooling in which crafts and agriculture or hygiene and applied sciences

were seen as the most suitable subjects for native children (Grigson




22/26

138 Nandini SUNDAR

1944; see also Simon 1998). While education was seen as essential in

enabling adivasis to avoid exploitation, it was also felt that too much

literary education would alienate adivasi children from their own culture(Prasad 1994: 276277). As Kelly and Altbach argue, in the absence of

appropriate history and science education, and by denying native chil-

dren skills for anything other than what they had traditionally done, such

schooling represented a basic denial of the colonizeds past and with-

held from them the tools to regain the future (1978: 15).

To conclude, the model for adivasi schooling that we should aspire

to is one where children are enabled both to compete on equal terms in

the world of formal employment and not just at the lowest levels as the

government idea of mainstreaming suggests, as well as to affirm their

adivasi culture, languages and knowledge.

Notes

1. This report was originally delivered as the B. M. Pugh Memorial Lecture

for the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT),

on March 17, 2010, at Shillong, India.

2. There are two types of provisions in the Indian Constitution for indigenous

peoples: area-based (Article 244), which lists scheduled areas, and commu-

nity-based (Article 342), which lists scheduled tribes. Article 244 allows for

two distinct forms of administration. Under the Sixth Schedule, which is

limited to parts of Northeast India, district councils have certain legislative

powers. Under the Fifth Schedule, which applies to nine states of central

India, the government is empowered to make special laws on land alienation

and moneylending, to protect adivasi resources from falling into non-adivasi

hands. While there is a strong overlap between the category of scheduled

tribes and scheduled areas, the fit is imperfect. Some states that have the

most vulnerable adivasi populations, like West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil

Nadu, and Kerala, have no scheduled areas at all, and even in the states

where the Fifth Schedule is in operation, not all areas where adivasis consti-

tute a majority are covered.

3. Central India performs particularly badly in these measures, weighing down

the gains in Northeast India. The NCERT is the Indian-government-run

National Council on Educational Research and Training, charged with

researching education, as well as formulating curriculum and textbooks.

4. In the focus area of traditional knowledge, the National Knowledge

Commission (2010) includes the principles and basic premises that should

govern the documentation and use of our traditional knowledge, that is, our




23/26


creative, cultural and legacy industries: plant-based drug formulations of

which we have over 40,000 that have come to us through the Ayurveda,

Unani, Siddha, Tibetian (all documented) and the non-documented tribal

systems of medicine; traditional agricultural practices of which 4502 have

been documented by the ICAR in a series of volumes, with 86 having been

validated and 38 cross-validated till December 2005.

5. A conservative estimate is that during the last fifty years approximately

21.3 million people have been displaced in India owing to big projects such

as mines, dams, industries, wildlife sanctuaries, and field-firing ranges. Of

these, at least 40 percent or some 8.5 million, are adivasis, an unacceptably

high proportion (Ekka and Asif 2000).

6. As of August 2010, Vidya Bharati, a front of the RSS, had 15,200 schools

across the country (both rural and urban), 7891 informal units such as

single-teacher schools, 3.04 million students and 135,336 teachers (Vidya

Bharati 2010).

7. The Ramakrishna Mission follows the sage Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and

claims to be a breakaway from Hinduism, but the kind of temperance and

Sanskritic cultural attributes it promotes are very different from adivasi

cultures. The Mata Rukmini Devi Sansthan is an organization set up by a

follower of the Sarvodaya movement led by Vinoba Bhave, which believes

in agrarian reform through voluntary abnegation of land by landowners.

8. This section of the report, as well as several others, was taken from an

earlier note on adivasi education I wrote which was replicated verbatim in

NCERT (2007), the report of a focus group of which I was a member.

9. Eklavya was an adivasi youth described in the Indian epic, the Mahabharat,

who wanted to learn with the famous teacher Drona. Drona refused to teach

him and later, when he found how skilled he was, demanded his thumb as

tribute. Naming the centres after Eklavya is thus a significant way of appro-

priating adivasi identity.

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