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MYPLACE 5 May 2014

MYPLACE: FP7-266831 www.fp7-myplace.eu Deliverable 7.1: Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism of 57

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MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy And Civic Engagement)

Grant agreement no: FP7-266831

WP7: Interpreting Activism (Ethnographies)

Deliverable 7.1: Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism

Extracurricular Activities of a Buddhist School in Ózd

University of Debrecen

Author(s) Flórián Sipos

Field researcher(s) Flórián Sipos

Data analysts Flórián Sipos

Date 10/01/2014

Work Package 7 Interpreting Activism (Ethnographies) Deliverable 7.1 Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism

Dissemination level PU [Public]

WP Leaders Hilary Pilkington, Phil Mizen

Deliverable Date 31 January 2014 Document history

Version Date Comments Created/Modified by

1 27/04/2014 First draft Flórián Sipos

2 02/05/2014 First draft edited Khursheed Wadia 3 05/05/2014 Corrected, second draft Flórián Sipos

4 05/05/2014 Final draft Hilary Pilkington

http://www.fp7-myplace.eu/index.php

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Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................. 2

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 3

1.1 The School and the region .................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Political socialisation and schools ..................................................................................... 4

1.3 Reasoning behind the case selection and research goals ................................................. 6

2. Methods .............................................................................................................................. 8

2.1 Fieldwork ........................................................................................................................... 8

2.2 Demographic profile of respondents .............................................................................. 11

2.3 Data analysis ................................................................................................................... 12

3. Key findings ....................................................................................................................... 14

3.1 Ambedkarite Buddhism and the School .......................................................................... 14

3.2 Film Club: the story to 2012 September .......................................................................... 19

3.3 The Alternative 10 Commandments ............................................................................... 23

3.4 Ethnicity and attitudes to political activities, participation ............................................ 32

3.5 Epilogue: The end of the story ........................................................................................ 46

4. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 50

5. Future analysis .................................................................................................................. 52

6. References ........................................................................................................................ 53

7. Appendix 1. The credo of the Jai Bhim Network .............................................................. 56

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1. Introduction

1.1 The School and the region The region, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, is widely known not only for its economic and social

hardship and extremely high unemployment rate (due to the late and post-socialist

deindustrialisation in which the metals industry and mining collapsed) but also for its relatively

high density of Roma population and the unresolved and increasing tension between the Roma

and the majority Hungarian community. According to the 2011 census, 8.5 per cent of the

population of the county self-identified as Roma; in Ózd this rate was even higher at 11 per

cent. However, due to respondents mistrusting such surveys, this number might be even higher

and, especially in the younger segments, it could reach 30 per cent. This is also reflected in the

demographic profile of our MYPLACE Work Package 4 sample where 35 per cent of the

respondents self-identified as Roma. In the county, the rate of those in employment was

alarmingly low at only 33.8 per cent, but in case of Roma people, this figure was only 12.16 per

cent (Census 2011). Besides employment problems, members of the Roma community also face

a wide range of other problems including territorial and educational segregation, discrimination

and open racism. Anti-Roma attitudes and prejudices prevail widely in the local community and

this is also manifested in the high popularity of the national radical Jobbik party which built its

successful campaign mostly on prejudices and scapegoating the Roma community. During the

parliamentary elections of 2010, Jobbik received 27.2 per cent of list votes in Ózd, which was

significantly higher than the average at the national level (16.67 per cent).

The School is a 'second chance school', which aims at providing quality education and special

training programmes for students with multiple disadvantages who dropped out from the

'normal' secondary education system in several localities of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County

(Northeast Hungary), including Ózd. The School follows the teachings of Dr Bhimrao Ramji

Ambedkar, an Indian lawyer, civil rights activist and philosopher who was a close colleague of

Mahatma Gandhi, the first Justice Minister of an independent India and who played a key role

in writing its Constitution. Ambedkar was born in an outcast, 'untouchable' family and, in order

to fight discrimination of the caste system, converted to Buddhism with his almost half a million

Dalit (untouchable) followers on 14 Otober 1956, in Nagpur. He inspired a new international

Buddhist Dalit movement and his life story symbolises fighting discrimination and prejudices in

India.

The special character of this school lies in the fact that it is maintained by a member

organisation of an international Triratna Buddhist Order and Community, the Jai Bhim Buddhist

Congregation and its students are mostly (almost exclusively) of Roma origin. This combination

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makes it unique in the Hungarian educational system. Other similar, second chance schools

providing special training programmes for drop-out students usually endeavour to establish a

professionally-designed and equipped modern building with dormitories and wide range of

facilities. However, this School followed another strategy; it built a more decentralised

structure. Practically, it functions as a network of small educational facilities in the middle of

the segregated Roma enclaves; and they actively take part in local community life, organise

activities, do social and community work. The centre is situated in the extremely poor Roma

ghetto of a little village next to Kazincbarcika, but the school has also established other

premises – mainly in rented rooms – in the region. At the beginning of the fieldwork, there

were altogether three of them, one in the MYPLACE research site Ózd and two others in

Alsózsolca and Sáta.

1.2 Political socialisation and schools In the research on Hungarian political socialisation, there is a consensus that the Hungarian

education system is not prepared for the transmission of democratic values effectively and fails

to prepare young people for active, democratic citizenship but enhances the reproduction of

apolitical and anti-political attitudes in society. This is especially true if compared to Western

European countries, for instance Germany, where student council, teacher-student and parent-

school relationships, history and civic education, and experimental learning successfully

promote political participation and social inclusion (Szabó 2004: 553-4; 2010: 79-81). These

studies on political socialisation, in Hungary, mostly follow the approach of Percheron (1974,

1971) who described political socialisation as a long process, an interaction between society

and the individual, which may take place in various forms – not necessarily linked to manifest

political contents, and where various agencies play a role in it. Percheron also distinguishes

between the means through which political socialisation can take place: technically learned

knowledge and norms, socialisation through experience, and the acquisition of symbolic codes

(Percheron 1971). The present study is also adapted to this tradition.

Research on the political socialisation of Hungarian youth revealed various aspects of the failure

of the Hungarian education system to transmit democratic values. First, after the system

change in 1989, a counter-reaction to the state-socialist period prevailed when schools had to

actively take part in ideological indoctrination. In the new political context, in which ideological

pressure ceased and party politics were banned from education establishments, teachers and

especially history teachers were not sure about their role in political education anymore and

avoidance attitudes mostly motivated their behaviour. Since they identified politics with party

politics, they refused to take part in civic socialisation too. On the other hand, teacher-training

materials do not pay attention to civic culture, autonomy and extracurricular or informal

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activities. Furthermore, teachers do not even exploit the limited resources that are available

(Csákó 2009:157; Szabó 2010).

Second, the relationship to the past, nation and historical traumas are still unsolved issues.

There is no consensus in society about problematic events and controversial periods of the

recent past, such as the Trianon Treaty in which Hungary lost the majority of its territories after

the First World War; Hungary's role in the Second World War and the systematic massacre of

Jewish and Roma people; the revolution of 1956; the state socialist period and the system

change in 1989. In public discourse, completely opposing interpretations of these events can be

found and schools fail to prepare young people in dealing with them. Since these historical

questions remain open, their interpretations are mostly dependent on those of the history

teachers and other agents of socialisation. Therefore, there is a greater chance that these

interpretations fail to create a consensus or that they do not support democratic, inclusive civic

socialisation (Szabó 2010: 83).

Third, another obstacle against successfully transmitting democratic values lies in the

undemocratic practices of schools in which students cannot experience democratic

participation and communication and thus, according to Percheron's concept (1971), cannot

validate the learned knowledge, the learned democratic norms and cannot be socialised

through practice. Quantitative research has shown that in 2005, 85-90 per cent of student

councils did not have the autonomy that is granted in law and that they are mostly structured

by hierarchical student-teacher relations. For instance, only 20-30 per cent of the students

confirmed that student council leaders were elected through secret ballot. The election of

student representatives and decision-making and communicative mechanisms are generally

anti-democratic practices that also contribute to the low reputation of these bodies (Csípő et al.

2004; Csákó 2009:173-178).

Fourth, while non-formal socialisation agents, such as family, media, peer groups or personal

networks, play a key role in shaping civic culture in Hungary, civil society organisations play only

a marginal role in it though it would offer an opportunity for experiencing democratic decision

making and participation in public processes. This is partly due to the fact that NGOs are usually

dominated by political parties and that this sector is under-developed in terms of size, interest

representative power and production of public goods and services, especially if compared to

those in western European nations (Kovách 2012; Nárai 2004)

Fifth, inter-ethnic conflicts, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia are prevailing problems

against which formal and especially informal pedagogical tools are not available or not used. In

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case of certain problems such as anti-Roma attitudes or antisemitism, there is also an absence

of the social consensus which would be necessary for successfully tackling them. In schools,

national socialisation is more dominant than civic socialisation and has become mostly

independent from civic socialisation. In history and civic culture classes and through historical

commemorations, an image of the nation is transmitted which is based on ethnicity and

language; a concept which is not an integrative one but which contributes to the prejudices

against ethnic minority groups (Szabó 2004: 555–556).

Since those reference points which are necessary for political orientation were not provided by

schools, family, civil organisations or other social experiences, a socialisation vacuum appeared

which was gradually filled by such agents as political parties, churches, peer groups, media,

Internet (especially social media) whose main topics of concern became part of a national

thematic. As Szabó argues (2010), a fragmented socialisation model well describes the post-

socialist period which is characterised by weak interconnections between the various agents of

socialisation and the lack of long-term policies for the transmission of democratic values and

civic culture. In this crisis of socialisation, young people are orientated politically with the

support of other agents but civic values remain marginal in this process (Szabó 2006, 2010).

1.3 Reasoning behind the case selection and research goals In October 2011, in the framework of preparations for selecting research sites for the present

project, an expert interview was conducted with the one of the senior management team of

the school who informed the Hungarian MYPLACE team about the efforts and activities of the

school which promised a unique and interesting case for observing active political participation.

The School, following the axiom frequently attributed to Ambedkar ('Educate, agitate,

organise!') consciously struggles to educate active citizens. In this interview several forms of

pedagogical methods and activities were mentioned for the transmission of critical reading

skills and civic participation; for instance, teachers consciously brought public issues to classes,

provoked debates, organised extra-curricular activities, built cooperation with various NGOs

and watchdog organisations, organised training for the student council, media clubs and family

history research clubs. She also informed us that the school takes part in Amnesty

International's Human Rights Friendly School Project which aims at taking human rights to the

centre of the learning experience and empowering young people for active citizenship.

During the course of this research, students of the Ózd centre of the School who participate in

extracurricular activities linked to public issues were observed closely by the researcher. This

observation was driven by the hypothesis that engaged and purposeful political socialisation,

through pedagogically sound methodology, can lead to active civic participation even in the

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most disadvantaged circumstances. The other goal of this research was observing, how young

people from a minority background reacted to exclusion and prejudices in Ózd and whether

that constituted a motivation for their activities.

However, it should be noted here that this report is not an evaluation of the school itself. It

does not focus on the pedagogical plan of the school, the quality of the education or the

teaching going on in the classrooms. The goal was to gain insight into how the young people

acted when they were given the opportunity to organise themselves relatively independently

from the inevitably hierarchical school structure. Therefore, the activities observed were those

of the media club of the Ózd centre of the school and this was later extended to observing the

training sessions of the student council, excursions and other political activities such as a

demonstration in Budapest.

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2. Methods

2.1 Fieldwork As mentioned above, contact with the School started in October 2011, when a preliminary

interview was conducted with the member of senior management team of the school

responsible for the teaching programme of the school (hereafter Anna1). Negotiations with the

School started in the summer of 2012 with the prospect of starting the fieldwork in September

at the start of the autumn term. The leaders of the School were open to the researcher’s

initiative from the very start. Besides their general open-ness, they were motivated by the

opportunity to publicising the school: 'we know what we are doing is unprecedented and it is

good if more people can learn abut it' (Anna). On the other hand, they felt that bringing more

external connections to their students was important since their students came from a highly

segregated environment and therefore had a very limited positive influence from 'outside'

(Field diary, 19 October, 2012). The positive reception to this research in itself reveals much

about the special character of the school. Other researchers have reported that schools

frequently refuse to take part in empirical research if it is about political issues (Csákó, 2009).

However, because the School had financial problems the fieldwork was delayed. A modification

of the Church Law in 2013 (2013/CXXIII Law) which is based on the new Fundametal Law2

imposed new limits on smaller churches. Based on this, the Hungarian Parliament ceased to

recognise the church status of 300 religious communities, among them the Jai Bhim Buddhist

Congregation and the Methodist Church which actively support Roma communities. Since the

school was maintained by the Jai Bhim Congregation which lost its church status, and a great

part of its special costs (e.g. paying travel costs of commuting teachers and students travel

costs of teachers moving between the various centres, meal costs of students, extracurricular

programmes etc.) were covered by the extra normative funding paid to religious schools, the

very existence of the school was put at risk. The school year started with hardships and

teachers did not receive travel reimbursement for months. Some teachers who commuted from

Budapest decided to leave the school. Finally, an agreement was made with the government

that this school would receive additional and extraordinary support to compensate them for

the loss of their church school status; this could have stabilised the finances of the school but

its Ózd Centre faced further problems.

1 The subjects of observation and interviews are referred to by pseudonyms even if they are senior teachers or leaders of the school. 2 Fundamental Law is the new constitution which was approved by the Hungarian Parliament in 2011 with the support of the FIDESZ and which came into force on 1 January, 2012. This Fundamental Law was criticised by domestic, EU and international organisations.

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Recent changes in education rules (i.e. schools had to keep students in school during the

afternoon for which the School could not rent rooms) accompanied by local political campaigns

against the Roma community contributed to this instablity and resulted in the unforeseen

closure of the media club which will be discussed more in depth later in the report (Section

3.5). The instability experienced by the school had an effect on the fieldwork and occasionally

hindered it; this happened, for instance, when the originally-targeted family history research

club (part of the planned observation schedule) was not launched because its leader, who lived

in Budapest and commuted on a weekly basis to Ózd, left the school, at least partly for financial

reasons. However, it may also be argued that these special circumstances, where the school

struggled for its existence during the fieldwork period, added new elements to the case study

which became even more embedded in interethnic tensions and the local context.

Another special feature of this fieldwork lies in the difficulty experienced by the researcher in

approaching the young people. This can partly be attributed to the ethnic composition of the

observed group; with only a few exceptions, the students of the school and some of the

teachers are of Roma origin. Therefore, the researcher as a Hungarian coming from outside the

school is a double 'outsider'. In addition, this school is a second-chance school which means

that all the students had left their previous school (or sometimes two or three schools) for

some reason and thus they already had many negative experiences with the adult, non-Roma

world, not to mention the general prejudice and widespread racism that they face on a daily

basis. As a result, building a relationship based on trust proved long and difficult. Sometimes,

this mistrust was hidden and manifested only in refused interviews or in the polite answers

given to the researcher, but at other times, it was made quite clear:

The problem is that there are such Hungarians who make their living from Roma

people or from dealing with them or doing business with them. When their money

is good for them, they don't feel revulsion towards them but otherwise they are just

disgusted by them. This is the worst type. Because there are others, who do not

deal with them and are disgusted by them. I can even understand this type. But

those who cooperate with them in certain conditions, when it is in their interest,

but who otherwise are full racists ... what is this? Isn't it disgusting? (Mónika)

This feeling was more predominant in the case of the newly-elected student council where

there were few occasions to meet and this mistrust was only partly solved by time spent

together, including a night spent with them sleeping on the floor, in sleeping bags, in a gym

during a 3-day long training session in Budapest. But in the case of the media group, because

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the majority already had good experiences with 'external' experts working with them, they

welcomed the researcher from the beginning and only one member showed mistrust which

gradually dissolved while working together on a project. But even in their case the recording of

interviews was only possible after over six months.

However, the fact that the school was a second-chance school solved another problem that

researchers of secondary student activities need to face; the respondents were over 18 years of

age and therefore no consent was needed from parents. In the case of the media club, during

filming, researchers frequently visited their families and a good relationship was built with even

with their parents.

The fieldwork covered the school year 2012/2013, though the first interview was carried out in

October 2011 while the last interviews were done in September 2013 and in January 2014, a

follow-up interview was recorded. Altogether 18 field visits were organised with the young

people and recorded in field notes and diaries, Table 1 comprises the days spent in the field.

Table 1. List of field work events

Date Site Activity 19 October, 2012 Ózd First meeting with gatekeeper, Anna. Classes visited in Ózd.

15 November, 2012 Ózd First meeting with the media group, brainstorming about

the project. Classes visited in the afternoon.

13 December, 2012 Ózd Second meeting with the media club. Writing the screenplay

together.

4 February, 2013 Debrecen Meeting with Anna and the leader of the Jai Bhim

Congregation in Debrecen.

21 February, 2013 Sajókaza First student council camp. Training organised by Amnesty

International.

14 March, 2013 Ózd School visit on March 15 celebrations,3 interviews recorded.

20-21 March, 2013 Budapest, Bálint

Ház4

Second student council camp, opening of a photo exhibition

about the school in a Jewish community centre.

14 April, 2013 Debrecen Students' day at the University of Debrecen. Anna gave a

presentation about the school.

20 April, 2013 Ózd Interviews recorded.

24 April, 2013 Ózd Participant observation of the Jobbik demonstration with

teachers and former students of the school.

3 This is a national holiday in Hungarywhen commemotations are held of the Revolution of 1848 which resulted in the independence war of 1848-1849 against the Habsburg Empire. 4 Bálint Ház is a Jewish community centre.

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25 April, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments project.

Interview with a Roma writer recorded by the media club.

24 May, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk,

Hangony

Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments with the

media club.

26 May, 2013 Budapest Demonstration against the educational reform and against

segregation in schools, with the participation of the student

council and the media club.

6 June, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments with the

media club.

12 June, 2013 Ózd Sports day at the school. Interviews recorded.

13 June, 2013 Ózd, Budapest School excursion with all the students of the School.

19 September, 2013 Sajókaza, Ózd,

Farkaslyuk

Visiting the students from Ózd in Sajókaza. Interviews

recorded in Ózd and Farkaslyuk.

3 October, 2013 Alsózsolca Visiting the Alsózsolca Centre of the school. Interviews

recorded.

16 January, 2014 Debrecen-

Sajókaza

Follow-up interview recorded.

As seen in this table, the field work took place at various locations depending on the observed

activity. It included a series of brainstorming sessions about screenplays, in coffee bars in Ózd,

shooting films in minor villages around Ózd, training sessions for student council

representatives in Sajókaza and Budapest, demonstrations in Budapest and Ózd, extracurricular

activities of the school such as participation in the student sports day and in a school excursion

to Budapest. In sum:

16 individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed (the follow-up interview

was only partly transcribed). The interviews varied in length; the longest one was 99

minutes and the shortest 30 minutes; the average length was 62 minutes;

two media club meetings were audio taped;

13 field work diaries were written;

over 100 photos were taken;

over four hours of visual material was videotaped (mostly to do with media club

activities but also school commemorations and student council events).

2.2 Demographic profile of respondents During the fieldwork, a total of 16 interviews were carried out with 12 respondents. The latter

were mostly students of the school; however, school leaders and a social worker were also

interviewed. The demographic profile and the role of the respondents are summarised in Table

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2. A special feature of the group is the relatively high rate of Roma respondents, which is

natural given the profile of the school. Another feature is the high rate of young respondents,

secondary school students, whose family status includes living with a partner, divorced (one of

them had gone through two divorces and is raising two children as a single parent), or living

with parents. In two cases, the parents had passed away or were permanently ill and needed

care. Given that taking part in the activities outlined above requires time and that there were

students who were responsible for younger siblings, it was impossible for some of them to

spend time on extracurricular activities. The interviews and observations revealed that students

in such a situation, especially if they were women, were expected to take responsibility, to 'be

sensible' (Rita) and to settle down.

2.3 Data analysis There was no deviation from the data analysis strategy described in the MYPLCE Qualitative

Data Analysis Handbook. The coding of the primary data was done by the author of this report.

Transcribed and anonymised interviews and the field diaries were imported into an Nvivo 9

database and free coded on two code levels arranged hierarchically. Level 1 nodes were

specific, descriptive codes which were frequently direct quotations or paraphrases of interview

quotations to represent the opinions of the respondents. These nodes were grouped under

second level nodes which were more general; e.g. 'Political activity', 'Media club' or 'Ethnicity,

identity issues'. The Level 1 and Level 2 nodes which emerged in this process served as a basis

for further generalisation in theory-laden concepts.

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Table 2. Demographic profile of respondents.

Pseudo-nym

Role Age Sex Employment Education Ethnicity Family status Residential status

Anna Teacher, leader of media club

35 Female In full-time employment

Completed university Non ethnic

Single Lives independently

Dénes School leader 53 Male In full-time employment

Completed university No data. No data. No data.

Dóra School leader 37 Female In full-time employment

Completed university Roma Divorced/separated Lives independently with own partner/children

Gabi Social worker 24 Female In full-time employment

Completed university Non ethnic

Single No data.

Ildikó Media club member, former student council member

19 Female In full-time education

Currently in general academic secondary education

Roma Married or living with partner

Lives independently with own partner/children

Imre Student council member

18 Male In full-time education


Roma Single Lives at home with parents

István Media club member 19 Male In full-time education




Jakab Former student, who successfully completed secondary school


Currently in post-secondary vocational training



József Student council member



Roma Single Lives at home with parents

Mátyás Media club member 20 Male In full-time education


Mixed heritage

Single Live at home with parents

Rita Student 26 Female In full-time education


Roma Divorced/separated Lives independently with own partner/children

Sándor Student council member



Roma Single Lives at home with other relatives

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3. Key findings

3.1 Ambedkarite Buddhism and the School This section explains how the Buddhist character of the school could be detected in the

activities of the School and how Buddhism influences the ideology that might lie behind its

activities. The aim of this report is not to execute a study of the School itself but to describe and

understand its extracurricular activities. However, a brief explanation of the Buddhist character

of the school seems necessary before turning to the main focus of the research.

Ambedkarite Buddhism is a branch of Buddhist modernism, born in postcolonial India but which

also has diasporas in the West. The founder of the movement, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar,

started his emancipatory project in the 1950s against the highly segregative caste system of

Hinduism in India. Thus, he organised demonstrations, played an important part in writing a

Constitution which banned discrimination and guaranteed wide political rights to the

untouchable Dalits while consciously violating some of the frameworks of Hinduism; for

instance the drinking of water from public reservoirs which was previously prohibited to

untouchables. In 1956, a few weeks before his death, he converted to Buddhism with his

hundreds of thousands of followers. His is respected as one of the most important civil rights

activists of India and his political legacy had an impact not only on modern India but also

became known in Asia and the West. This movement was taken to London in the 1960s by

Sangharakshita (born as Dennis P. E. Lingwood), a British Buddhist monk and teacher who was

in contact with Ambedkar and who, in the 1960s, founded an ecumenical Buddhist community,

the Western Buddhist Order also referred to as Triratna Buddhist Community. This Order is an

international network of Buddhist communities and has its spiritual centre in Birmingham.

One of the reasons why this Indian movement attracted western followers lies in its socially and

politically active character. As a social worker of the school stressed, ‘The Dalit Buddha is not

sitting but is moving; it ceases suffering and not only his own but that of the others.’ (Turay

2013) While traditional Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering and achieve perfection by

discipline, subtleness, passivity or even the destruction of desires and the self, modernist

Buddhisms are more extrovert and put more emphasis on compassion, social engagement and

inclusion. Thus, this tradition of Buddhism can be more easily matched to western thought and

social movements. It was Dr Ambedkar himself who, for instance, tried to reconcile Buddhism

with Marxism in his unfinished work Buddha or Karl Marx or with the principles of the French

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Revolution and made efforts to bring about radical changes in the society and called his own

concept ‘Dhamma-revolution’5 (Subhuti 2010).

The Hungarian Ambedkarite community is the Jai Bhim Community and was founded in 2007.

Sangharakshita’s senior associate and colleague, Dharmachari Subhuti (born as Alex Kennedy)

inspired the Hungarian Jai Bhim Community and regularly visits the School in Sajókaza but

leaders of the Jai Bhim Community also visited Sanangharakshita in Birmingham and made a

study visit to India. The Jai Bhim Community seems to be unique in the western Buddhist

movement in recruiting its members from Roma communities and helping people in an

extremely disadvantageous situation. It is a relatively small and socially active community and

has founded schools, and does social work and community development in the Roma

settlements of the Borsod and Baranya regions.

As the community and the school frequently stress, converting people to Buddhism is not

among their goals and this attitude is clearly reflected in the narratives of the teachers and

students of the school. However, the extent to which students from various teaching centres of

the school are influenced by Buddhism can be highly different. In Sajókaza where the school has

its own modern building, the Buddhist character of the school is unmistakable. It has a

sanctuary and is decorated with Indian motifs. The Jai Bhim Community also organises

community development and charity activities in the small, closed Roma settlement. Thus,

students and even members of the local community can easily be attracted in Sajókaza and this

is reflected in the 2011 Census data. On the other hand, in Ózd, where the classrooms are

rented from other schools, and students come from various districts or settlements, this

character of the school is less prevalent.

One of the school leaders explains:

It is not an aim here at all that they [i.e. the students] are Buddhist. We don’t even

oblige our students to take part in Buddhist religion classes either, if they do not

want. We offer the opportunity, that there is either Catholic or Buddhist religion

class. (Dóra)

Or, as highlighted by a school teacher, they do not want to place their students in such a

situation where they would be in conflict with their own religion:

5 The Dhamma is a key concept of Buddhism and other Indian religions; there is no single western translation of it. It means: laws, characteristics, duties, rights and phenomenon. In Ambedkarite Buddhism, Dhamma moves society to a new, modern stage which is characterised by freedom, equality, and fraternity (Subhuti, 2010).

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Anna: In reality, I believe, it is nice that we do not want them to convert. We do not

push them to Buddhism, therefore, there is no pressure on them that you have to

be like this or think like that. And they cope with it easily and usually when asked

about this issue, they would say that ‘I am Christian, but many things in Buddhism

are very OK.’ They definitely do not want to change religion. In Alsózsolca, our

Methodists are true Methodists indeed but they do not refuse Buddhism. (…) This

year, class 13 is in the Lumbini Room [the Buddhist sanctuary], since there is no

other room left. And there is that Buddha statue. In the first week, I asked [name],

you know, he is deeply religious, ‘it is much better here than being in the Aula [hall],

isn’t it?’ And he answered ‘Well, OK, but you know, I am very religious and there is

that statue.’ And I told him ‘But what did we learn, was Buddha a god?’ ‘Wow, no,

then it is OK!’

Interviewer: How many of your students will convert to Buddhism, what do you

think?

Anna: It is possible that none of them. But if you ask, how many of them will know

more about the world, about themselves and their own soul … For I have seen that

they are meditating and there are some who take this more seriously.

(Anna, 5th interview)

This approach was also repeated in the student’s narratives:

It was something that really touched me in that school, and since then I support

them, that it is a Buddhist school, thus, it represents Buddhism but they never ever

forced us into that religion and let everyone practice his own religion freely. I am

Christian, I believe in Jesus Christ but was never forced to be Buddhist or learn

Buddhism. (Jakab)

Or, another one was even more straightforward:

Interviewer: One of the features of the school is Buddhism. What do you experience

of this?

István: Luckily, nothing. I heard things sometimes, Anna was really into it,

sometimes, she organises meditations. Every morning, there is meditation in a little

room and some students go and meditate with her. (István)

Another student added:

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Interviewer: What do you know about the Jai Bhim Community?

József: [name] was our teacher of religion.

Interviewer: What religion does he teach, Buddhist?

József: Yes. He is a good teacher. He teaches and gives the homework well.

Interviewer: And what is your relation to Buddhism?

József: Nothing.

Interviewer: But the religion class was good, wasn’t it?

József: I liked it, since it was also about Roma people, and it was linked to them. I

liked that class, (…)

Interviewer: And did anyone convert to Buddhism?

József. Nobody. We were not dealing with Buddhism in this form. (József)

Only a relatively small group of the teachers of the school are Buddhist and the students do not

convert to Buddhism and the reason for this is easily understood in that the second-chance

school is maintained by a Buddhist community for the integration of highly disadvantaged,

drop-out students and is not a school for young Buddhist people. Thus it is not a typical

religious school – similarly to Buddhism which is not a ‘typical’ religion either but can be also

approached as a worldview.

From conversations with students, one was able to glean that the story of Ambedkar, the image

of the untouchable who set an example successfully fighting discrimination through learning,

leaving behind the stigma of being an untouchable, and by converting to Buddhism was more

important in the school’s programme than Buddhism as religion. This observation was at least

partly accepted:

Interviewer: Am I far from the truth if I say that the story [of Ambedkar] is more

important here [than the religion], that he is a memory site, a lay story about

identity change?

Anna: There is a little bit more here, not only Ambedkar’s life. There is a Buddhist

religion class, in which we compare, contemplate, read fables. But you definitely see

it correctly; we do not approach Buddhism with our students as a religion but as a

world view. We had a women’s association and they put together a publication that

translated Buddha’s commandments in their own lives. This was the ‘22 points of

the Women’s Association’. They presented, for instance, what shall I do for myself,

or I am responsible for myself, I do not believe in someone else just because he has

power or he is assertive but I believe since I investigated if he was right (Anna).

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Only the interview with a leader of the school revealed the main goal of the School which

distinguishes it from ethnic minority educational programmes, such as that of the Gandhi High

School near Pécs (south western Hungary), which, according to his narrative, is built on a

nationalist basis. In contrary, in Borsod they do not put such a strong emphasis on ethnicity and

preserving cultural heritage as in Pécs but have a different identity programme:

Dénes: The direction of the Dalit movement is not that we want to preserve our

identity but we want to change identity. (…) And this characterises those young

people [i.e. the members of the Jai Bhim Community] who appointed me to this

position. The leaders of the community believe that ‘OK, we are proud of what we

are and don’t forget where we come from, the values we respect, but we look

forward.’

Interviewer: But what does this identity change mean? Changing some elements of

the identity or else?

Dénes: In the case of the Dalits in India, this is a complete change. Since, in the case

of the Dalits, there is no ethnic identity but a caste identity, it is much easier to hate

than the ethnic identity. It is much easier to say that I am not willing to accept that I

can have wife or husband only from my caste. In the case of ethnicity, one would be

less willing to say so than in the case of the detested and suppressed caste. But

many things are of course the same. (Denes)

The respondent also emphasised that this identity change is a deep one which, for instance,

includes rejection of macho-ism, which is the ‘mother language’ of all traditional cultures

(Dénes). Young male members of the community do household work in which they step out

from the milieu ruled by their uncles and grandfathers and which generated conflicts in their

families. In this way, they make a fundamental identity change and these young Roma accept

feminism. However, this ‘identity change’ does not mean that students cease to identify

themselves as Roma; it is not even an option for them. In conversations with them it became

evident that, in their view, ethnicity is an immutable feature not such a thing that can be

changed.

Interviewer: But what does this mean, do they choose another identity or just

replace some elements of it?

Dénes: The latter. They change some values and some elements of it. They do not,

not want to be Roma anymore. This is strong feature of the movement, that ‘we are

Gypsies’, but the sentence ‘we preserve the values of ethnic culture’ they will not

say. Even if we hear it from many places. It is strongly expected in Hungary,

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especially from Roma leaders, that ‘cultural heritage is to be kept’. But they will not

say this.

Interviewer: Why?

Dénes: Presumably because they do not think like this. (…) This identity building

with a Buddhist background in many ways opposes the inherited one, it replaces it.

We strongly believe that these people should be, first, fathers and mothers; second,

they should have an occupation; third, they should appear in whatever civil role, like

fisherman, football player, or member of a church and only somewhere at the end

of the list should their, for instance, mother language play a part. (Dénes)

Thus, the initial presumption on the part of the researcher that ethnic consciousness can be a

basis of political activism at the school needed revision; in the ideology behind this ‘Roma’

school, ethnic identity building and ethnic politics were not the focus to the extent expected,

based on impressions gained about other Roma educational institutions. Buddhism and

especially this human-right oriented and socially active Ambedkarite Buddhism filled this gap,

replaced ethnic-oriented ‘nationalist’ ideology. Nevertheless, experience showed that the

image is more complex, that the school’s educational programme still preserves numerous

features which are signs of an ethnic identity building with positive elements or transmission of

Roma cultural heritage. Roma language is taught as part of the curriculum and topics related to

Roma history are parts of the training material or, in another instance, the Roma anthem is

sung together with the Hungarian one on days of historical commemoration. But it is not the

aim of the school to educate devoted ethnic minority leaders. Rather they make efforts to

educate active citizens.

3.2 Film Club: the story to 2012 September The Film Club was started in Ózd in May 2011 under the leadership of Anna. The club is one of

the numerous voluntary, extracurricular activities offered by the school such as Dance Club,

Family History Club, VJ (Visual Jockey) Club (to learn about visual culture), Debating Club (to

learn to argue for or against a statement), Radio station, etc. These extracurricular activities

play a central role in the pedagogical programme of the School and these exciting experiences

are effective tools by which to motivate students, integrate them or, in some cases, even keep

them in the school;

Many students changed when they were invited into these programmes. They [the

teachers] saw that they are talented but have problems, but they still invited them

into these programmes and the talent could develop there. Some of them were not

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prepared enough but were given the opportunity to work with others and could

develop their talent and catch up with the others. (Jakab)

At the beginning, almost all class members joined and they prepared a project for the film

festival competition called Social Transport. They wrote a screenplay about prejudices and

exclusion with the title ‘Do not judge least you be judged’ and won the prize which was an

opportunity to shoot the film in Budapest with the help of professional directors, technology

and actors. In this short film, members of various groups (Roma, older people, junkies,

skinheads) are represented as victims of exclusion but they also excluded other groups and the

story represented a ‘chain’ of exclusion. This was the first film project of the group.

As Anna described it, this club successfully attracted some problematic students and motivated

them to cooperate. One of them became the informal leader of the group and he helped to

organise the club again in the next academic year. And this also contributed to his better school

performance. In the new school year, 2011/2012, two student groups were merged and it

caused problems in the classroom. ’I realised that I needed to organise extracurricular activities

to keep them’ (Anna). The Club was started again in November 2011 with about 15 members

but some of them were more active than the others. They carried out several projects during

the school year, such as:

’CineFeszt’ Film Festival (Miskolc) – members of the group took part in a

workshop in which they wrote screenplays and prepared short and funny films

during the festival. One of them was a talk show in which a Roma and a non-

Roma guest expressed prejudiced views about each other, which resulted in a

burlesque fight between them. In another one, a father’s story is shown in which

his daughter is kidnapped but he has no money to pay the ransom and makes

usuccessful efforts to collect it (e.g. by being street musician). Finally, the

kidnapped daughter is released because she gets on the nerves of the criminals.

’Lájkold Ózdot!’ (Like Ózd!) project was an answer to the online voting via a news

portal (index.hu) in which they were searching for the most unliveable city of

Hungary and Ózd won. Here, the group prepared interviews with local people

about what they liked in Ózd. The project remained unfinished due to the lack of

technical equipment.

Short films – members of the Club introduce themselves and prepare interviews

in their environment.

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Berlin project– in August was a project where some members of the Club

travelled to Berlin to visit partners working with young Roma people in Neukölln

district and also prepared a short film during this trip.

The Club offered various opportunities including a visit to Berlin, the importance of which can

be understood only by the fact that for the majority of the students visiting Budapest, less than

150 kilometers away, is possible only on school excursions. The topics of these short films told

such stories which reflected their own situation and concerns: e.g. financial problems,

experiences of exclusion, everyday life in Ózd. Albeit in some cases the call for applications

framed and influenced the narratives and topics of these stories, students had wide autonomy

in deciding what to write. According to Anna, the ideas were from the students themselves, and

this is confirmed by observations from the next school year. This proved to be a strong factor in

stabilising club attendance. In another attempt of the school to write a school magazine, the

lack of the autonomy paralysed the activity:

But [the teacher] told them immediately to do an interview with the priest, and the

two girls immediately lost their enthusiasm, and I could never again motivate them.

I told him [the teacher] that it is not good if he tells the kids who they should

prepare interview with. They should find it out for themselves first and they should

do interviews with each other and about cool things and only later can the priest be

involved. (Anna)

Another feature of the club was the decreasing number of participants which seemed an

inevitable process; at the beginning all class members were invited but since it was a voluntary

leisure-time activity, a big part of them gradually dropped out. Between festivals, these

activities mostly meant sitting in a café bar, discussing project plans, or occasionally hanging

around town and doing interviews with passers-by:

Interviewer: And why did the others drop out?

Ildikó: Because they could not put up with waiting for that we go filming. They could

not wait and they were bored of it. (Ildikó)

But there was another factor that contributed to this high drop-out rate. Some key persons had

to leave the club and this is related to the disadvantaged socioeconomic situation of the

students of the school. For instance, one of them lost his parents and became responsible for

his siblings; another one who was the informal leader of the club had to leave the school and go

to work because his family lost their home and got into deep financial crisis. During the

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fieldwork, it also happened on occasion that the family got into a crisis and the student was

expected to go home, ‘settle down’ and behave like an adult – which meant that the girls

should help at home and the boys should go and find work which in this region entailed mostly

atypical forms of employment such as casual work or public sector employment.

But those few, who stayed in the group, were indeed motivated. Ildikó and István tried to

revitalise the Club after the summer break. In September 2012, they told Anna that they

wanted to go on with the Club and also tried to motivate others, convinced Mátyás to join and

organised actors also for the scenes of the projects. Mátyás sometimes went to the meetings

after the night shift at Tesco, without sleeping:

Ildikó: I really wanted to act, and I was good at it. (…) I was attracted by both sides

of filming; I like to be on both sides of the camera, in front of it but also behind it.

But I do not want to decide on it yet. Nowadays, in front of the camera, I am shy …

Interviewer: And how did you come to the decision to join the club? How did it

happen?

Ildikó: Uh, it has been going on for very long. I was in Year 10 at that time. Anna told

me that there would be such a thing and I immediately told her that I was in. And I

am in it since then but we started to make films only last year. When we started, we

were many more, 10-15, but they dropped out.

Interviewer: And why did you stay?

Ildikó: Because we were interested in it. (…) I watch really many movies. And when I

see it, I always think about how they could do this, and wow, I want to learn it.

Taking another example, István also emphasised personal motivations for joining, but quite

different ones:

István: Anna told us that there is this Film Club. We had no information about it at

all so we just went there and I was captured by it. The others were interested and

not interested at the same time. Many of them joined just because we will go here

and there and they wanted to join. And I told them to join not only because you

want to travel, but because you are interested in it. And after a while, they did not

come. There was a period when we did not travel, but were just shooting videos in

the town and around it and they did not like it. But we did not give it up, and got

through it.

Interviewer: And what do you like in it?

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István. I don’t know. I like that we create something, that we record something and

see what it evolves into. What can be done out of an awful cut or awful material?

(…)

Interviewer: Would you like to learn media?

István: Those who are in my age know much better these things that we should

already know. We have only one camcorder which is only sometimes with us. (…)

And we have classes in the morning, classes in the afternoon, we have to prepare

for them, it is tough like this. I think that is why many of the others left. (…) I think, it

will be my hobby. Maybe I was attracted by it because I like to direct, that we go

somewhere, we are in something and I decided that you do this and you do that. I

like this in it, that they pay attention to me. And as we have just been in [village

name], they look up to me. Because I have the camera, and I tell them to come, we

record this and that. Maybe I like that they see me doing something not just…

(István)

Even if the topics of the movies are clearly about public issues (discrimination, prejudices,

changing the negative image of Ózd, financial problems and crime), the motivation for young

people to join was more personal: travelling with the club, playing before the camera, doing

creative work with technical tools, making decisions, and giving directions to other people.

3.3 The Alternative 10 Commandments

3.3.1 The design of the project

Besides a shorter but exciting activity which was preparing an interview with a Roma writer in a

nearby village, the whole school year was dedicated to one project on the alternative 10

commandments. The work of the Club was delayed due to the financial problems described in

the introduction and in section 3.5. The first meeting was captured in the field diary notes

below:

The meeting took place in a café in the morning at 10:00. Two participants were

present, but more are expected to come later. (…) The ambiance is open, not a

student-teacher relationship but a much more informal, horizontal, partner-like

one. (…) Anna showed a call for applications on her laptop with the title ‘Sin in the

city’; a screenplay is to be prepared by 30 November. The topic, according to István

and Ildikó, is good: ‘Sin, there is a lot here’. The question is what kind of sins they

know? ‘Insulting old men, or crossing at the red light’ –says István. According to

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Ildikó, it is not a good one, ‘the policemen would not arrest you for this’. Anna then

asked them, ‘what were the major sins?’ ‘Murder’, they answered. They tell horror

stories about brutal murders from Ózd – very similar ones to those frequently

shown by the media and used by Jobbik to demonstrate ‘Gypsy crime’. (…) They are

brainstorming more about types of crime. They speak at length and prominently

about negative experiences with doctors. Doctors do not care about them, always

give the same pill, a kind of paracetamol, or do not prescribe medicines at all and

just suggest ‘to drink a lot of liquid three times a day’. According to them, it is

common for doctors to ask for money from them. For instance, for writing sick

notes. They also mention the case of István, who has serious problems now because

of tattoos or piercings and since it happened due to his own fault, the health

insurance fund does not cover his treatment. Therefore doctors keep asking him for

money for examinations but never give an invoice. The topic is uncomfortable, I do

not ask further details. Or, they also mention that gynaecologists always ask for

money even while the mother is giving birth, and don’t start the birth before they

pay, ‘Since you got it [the baby] in, you can get it out’, they say. (…) Ildikó mentions

suicide which it is also a sin and this comment leads to the question of the

relationship between religion and sins. The idea of dealing with the commandments

was born in this context. ‘It is that you should not steal and things like that, isn’t it?’

asked István. Finally, they decide that they would make up their own set of

commandments taken from their own lives. The brainstorming went on and one

commandment was born after the other... (Fieldwork diary, 15 November, 2012)

At this session, the idea of responding to the call for applications was only an impulse but the

plan to write new commandments and to take them from their own lives was something they

thought of themselves. Only occasionally did Anna influence the process; rather she just helped

to clarify things and encouraged them. She took notes on her laptop to document what was

being said. Finally, they could not stop at 10 commandments. Each scene constituted one or

two (in one case, three) stories illustrating one commandment and at the end of each scene the

commandment itself is written on something (poster, newspaper, etc.) in the background.

These miniature stories are depictions of moral rules that they feel are relevant to their lives.

For instance:

Scene: Interior. Labour room. Daytime.

In the background, a pregnant woman is preparing to give birth, she is suffering.

The doctor and the father are in the front. The doctor is drinking his coffee; the

father has a menu-like list in his hand.

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One moment later.

We see the list: ‘Heart operation: upon agreement; Birth: 50,000; Appendectomy:

40,000; Tonsillectomy: 20,000; Examination: 2,000; Sick note 1 week: 1,000; five

weeks: 5,000. Please, slip it into my pocket!’

The father has a surprised and stupid look on his face. The doctor is standing with a

hypodermic needle in his hand.

Doctor (with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth): ‘If you put it in, you should

get it out!’

One moment later.

On the wall of the labour room, there is a poster with an inscription: ‘Don’t charge

money to heal!’

(Alternative Ten Commandments, Screenplay)

This commandment was filmed on 25 May, 2013. In order to understand how this screenplay

was developed, the filming, based on the field diary, is briefly described. The scene was

recorded in a village medical centre. The actors were recruited by István; he apparently has a

wide network of friends and was able to convince them to take part. A pregnant young girl and

his husband joined in; they enjoyed the situation, indeed, the afternoon was entertaining and

funny. They asked the researcher to play the doctor. This scene was filmed together with the

Introductory scene, in which Moses comes down from the hill with the tablets. ‘I made a

bargain with someone who looks like Jesus; he told me that for 4 litres of wine, he would even

be crucified. But he will do it without it…’ said István. ‘But we need a Moses, not a Jesus…’

replied Anna laughing. The assistant of the general practitioner knew István well, ‘I remember

you, you are…’ and suddenly turned silent. She did not want to mention István’s ‘accident’.

István and Ildikó told us that it was really funny to shoot this scene in the medical centre of this

doctor, because he also actually asks for money for treatment. ‘How surprised he will be when

we present the movie!’ They were hesitating whether or not to make a special edition of the

film for this village so that the doctor was not shocked but finally decided not to do so.

The doctor’s assistant wanted permission from the mayor, so they went to the village, to the

mayor’s office but the group could only reach his secretary, it was mostly István who told her

what was needed. The secretary could not reach the mayor but was helpful and asked

permission from someone else and called the assistant to let the group in for a few minutes.

The assistant was not too friendly and told the group to be really quick because the consulting

hours started in 15 minutes and the doctor would arrive any time. Only after this did they

discover that they had forgotten to bring the white robe and the hypodermic needle to be used

as props for this scene. So they used those of the doctor (without permission), which made the

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atmosphere one of adventure, an illicit action even more. So, the shooting was really quick and

in all about 10 minutes was spent in the consulting room. There were some deviations from the

original plan; for example, the money (borrowed from Anna) was indeed slipped into the

doctor’s pocket and the doctor had to simper contentedly. The camera was held by István who

instructed the actors about what they had to do – for instance, that they should not look into

the camera. Ildikó was responsible for managing the props, but also gave instructions

sometimes.

After this scene, the group went searching for a ‘Jesus’ in the pubs but could not find one.

When searching for him in an ethnically homogeneous, non-Roma street of the village, the

group experienced prejudices from neighbours who at first just watched with suspicion but

later overtly accused the group of coming to steal from the poor and unemployed.

3.3.2 Interpretation of the Commandments

The Commandments in their final form were written down by Anna. The following list of scenes

is based on this screenplay, with a brief summary of each segment:

Introduction: Moses is coming down from a treeless hill with stone tablets in his

hands, the wind is blowing hard. The picture turns black and white, stripes appear,

the picture fades away. In the next moment, a boy and the girl are sitting next to

each other, Ózd can be seen in the background, they are looking at a laptop with

the title on the screen: ‘10 Commandments, Actual’.

1. Do not ask for money to heal patients! (the doctor is asking for money from the

father while the woman is giving birth. The inscription is on a poster on the wall).

2. Do not exhort others to take drugs! (in a disco, a young boy is offered a drug and

sniffs from white powder which is in the shape of the commandment).

3. Do not put anything into your body which does not belong there! (a boy is making

tattoos and takes muscle-building injections in an unhygienic environment.

Meanwhile, pictures of rotten limbs are shown for a minute. The commandment is

on a long air balloon that slowly blows out…).

4. Do not torture your family! (a father is abusing his family in various forms, starting

from listening to music loudly to physically threatening them. The commandment is

on a wall-hanging).

5. Do not torture animals! (an illegal dogfight is shown. The commandment is on a

newspaper next to a dead dog on a dump).

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6. Do not swear! (two women are swearing. The ‘traditional Gypsy’ curses cast on each

other come true, the two women disappear. The commandment is depicted in a

speech bubble and is uttered by a black cat).

7. No racism! (non-Roma students are discriminated against, they cannot go on an

excursion, they are not let into the swimming pool. A teacher is shouting at the

‘Hungarian’ boy. The commandment is written on a vapour-covered window of the

swimming pool by a sad student who is looking inside).

8. Do not abuse your power! (a police car crosses a poor district and a policeman

intimidates a group with his truncheon without reason. In the next scene, poorly-

dressed people are waiting in a queue, in front of an administrative office. Someone

in a suit leaves the office, sits in an expensive car and drives off with exhaust fumes

blowing onto the queuing people. The commandment is etched into the ground, in

the dust.

9. Don’t spoil your and others’ life! (the scene cuts back to the boy and girl on the hill,

with the laptop, the Commandment is on the screen).

Further commandments were also discussed during the meetings but were not included in the

screenplay. ’Don’t pollute your environment!’ should have been the 5th commandment but

was left out most probably by a coincidence; the story was a simple one, people are waiting for

their social benefit payment in front of the office and are throwing rubbish on the floor. There

was also a plan to add a commandment about homeless people but this was not worked out.

As seen above, the commandments and the stories used to visualise them are all taken from

the students’ lives and present the main injustices and dangers that they feel are important in

their everyday life. A great part of the commandments are moral rules that can be regarded as

general ones and not specific to the experiences of Roma people. One of the commandments is

connected to a general risk of modern society, i.e. environmental pollution (Do not pollute your

environment!). Another one was also a general ethical question about protecting animals (Do

not torture animals!) which was a very prevalent theme in the WP5 interviews. Addressing the

issue of homeless people and feeling pity for them was a sign of solidarity, it is not their own

experience – the members of this group have a modest economic situation when compared to

other Roma people but only in that respect, otherwise they have all experienced a deeply

disadvantaged situation. The commandment against the exhortation to drug use and

aggression inside family also represent general, liberal norms about abuse, asymmetric

relations and violent behaviour. These are moral dispositions that are common to this

generation.

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However, the majority of the commandments are motivated by personal experiences which

reflect discrimination experienced and the frustration felt because of it. This frustration is

clearly present in the more general rules such as ‘Do not put anything into your body that does

not belong there!’ and ‘Do not heal for money!’. Both of these are motivated by stories from

their own experiences with the health system and are supported by research data that state

that Roma people do not have access to the same quality of services as the majority population.

Nevertheless, corruption is part and parcel of the Hungarian health care system and affects the

whole of society. However, marginalised and poor Roma people suffer even more from it and

the doctor had to be a non-Roma ‘actor’ in this scenario. In the case of ‘Do not abuse your

power!’, there are two stories and for ‘No racism!’ there are three to demonstrate the problem

and this shows the relative importance of them compared with some of the other

commandments.

The commandment ‘Do not abuse your power’ expresses frustration felt about the

discriminating practices of the authorities. ‘The first story, policemen intimidating passers-by is

a practice that is a frequent experience of these young Roma people; they live their life

frequently abused by the police. It was also documented once in Budapest at a training session’

(Field diary, 20 March 2013) when a group of Roma student council leaders standing and

smoking peacefully outside a community center called the attention of a police patrol which

stopped and questioned them. Further examples abound; during the second brainstorming

session, István told an even tougher story about being arrested once just for being loud in a

public place and was beaten up by the policemen and locked up in the cell naked for a night

(Field diary, 15 December, 2012). The other story, in which people are standing in a queue in

front of an office while the person from the office leaves, sits into his expensive car and blows

car exhaust smoke on them is an image that represents not only ignorance but also the

contempt of the authorities. But it is also instructive that in the original version, Roma minority

leaders were also mentioned by the group members as typical politicians who ‘make such

decisions above us which only they profit from.’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2013).

‘No racism!’ in the first version was suggested as ‘Do not discriminate others’ and was later

changed to this more concise version. The commandment tells three miniature stories about

school discrimination of which they have wide experience These stories are probably the

strongest and most touching ones of all: non-Roma kids are crying while the others go to school

trip, they are watching from outside while the others are in the swimming pool or teachers are

shouting at them while the others are having good time. In this context, it is clear to everyone

that this happens not to non-Roma but to Roma children. It was suggested by Ildikó to reverse

the roles and show the non-Roma students as the discriminated ones: ‘Let it be the opposite

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way, the white kids discriminated in this scene!’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2015). They also

told other stories during the discussions; for instance, in one of their previous schools there was

a separate toilet for Roma students.

This inverse story telling might be interpreted as symbolic, magic revenge. just as if this time, in

this fictional reality created by them the Roma would be in a dominant position and the

Hungarians would suffer discrimination. But this was perhaps not their main motivation, if it

was their motivation at all. They may have introduced this twist in order not to represent

themselves in a really humiliating situation. A large part of the stories are inspired by Roma

people’s experiences of discrimination and show them in a humiliating situation but if one

reads just the screenplay taken out of its context, one might not link these commandments and

problems to Roma people only: doctors ask for payment from everyone; politicians do not care

about people generally; there is risk of drugs for all young people; animal rights, family abuse,

environmental protection are issues that affect all people. Thus, these problems appear not to

be ethnic group-specific issues. Of course, there is another level of interpretation of the

screenplay, a more ethnicity-oriented reading. For instance, doctors discriminate against Roma

people even more and is not a coincidence that a Roma couple is in a powerless, vulnerable

situation in the baby delivery room. But even if one identifies this situation as a form of

discrimination based on ethnicity, the story is told in a burlesque scene; the father shows a

‘stupid face’ when seeing the ‘menu’. Thus, they keep a distance from this situation. But in the

scene about discrimination, nobody would laugh at a schoolboy who is not let into the

swimming pool or is crying when the bus leaves on a school trip without him. Thus, in this

situation, this inverse narrative is a part of a distancing strategy – similar to representing the

problems in a de-ethnicised or burlesque form in the previous scenes.

This de-ethnicisation is also present in the original wording of the ‘No racism!’ commandment,

i.e. ‘Do not discriminate against others!’. Logically, it stands for ‘Do not discriminate against us,

Roma people’, but there is a reason as to why they formulated this sentence in a more general

way. Not naming victims of prejudice is a frequently described discursive technique of modern

racist language (Van Dijk, 1994) in which speakers try to ‘keep face’, viz. reconciling the

(external) demand for racism-free communication with underlying structures of cognitive

representations. Here, speakers, who are not racist but are victims of racism would also like to

‘keep face’ and hide or at least less emphasise what they really think and how they feel about

these issues; but it is not about with the goal of meeting the requirements of a non-racist way

of speaking but rather that they want to retain their self-esteem. A proud young man or woman

cannot represent himself or herself continuously as a defenceless victim. It is similar to what

Goffmann (1959) described as role-distancing: they do not want to be judged on this negative

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role. This twist of the story shows their twofold and ambivalent efforts, on the one hand, to

express the discrimination that they live through but, on the other hand, to do it in a way that

does not over emphasise their defenceless situation. Pity is definitely not the emotion they

wanted to provoke from the audience.

The last commandment, ‘Do not spoil you own life!’ shows a similar pattern. This should be

interpreted together with the process of how it was developed during the discussion. At the

first meeting, it was suggested as ‘Do not deny yourself!’, which could be interpreted as a

commandment attributing high value to individualism and searching for one’s personal goals,

and identities. However, in this case it has a more ethnic-oriented connotation. In a Roma

context, it would mostly mean ‘Do not deny that you are Roma!’, and it frequently appears in

Roma popular culture. The examples the students brought to this original commandment also

proved the ethnic-oriented meaning without any doubt: ‘[Michael] Jackson made himself white

and his nose fell off’ or ‘The Roma should not be white … Long ago, I wanted to be white but it

is over now.’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2012). But this original commandment during the

discussions was gradually dropped and changed to ‘Do not spoil your life!’ In this case, the

commandment lost its original meaning about attributing value to preserving ethnic identity,

and was extended to a more general, de-ethnicised, and individualised meaning: you are

responsible for your actions. This commandment is clearly a paraphrase of the 3rd vow from

the Confession of the Jai Bhim Community: ‘I take responsibility for my own life’ (Confession,

2007). As demonstrated above in section 3.1, teachers of the school try to transmit values of

Buddhism not in the form of religion but as worldview:

‘We bring a lot of ideas into classes that are concretely parts of Buddhism, but we

let them learn them not as commandments, but to understand it and think about it.

And familiarise with the idea that everybody is responsible for himself. Similarly it

was an important message of the Dalits that there is this hundreds of years old

oppression, there are external conditions, but I am still responsible for myself.’

(Anna)

Therefore, this commandment can be also interpreted as a manifestation of the Buddhist

character and the ideology of the school, a move from an ethnic-oriented worldview to a more

open, individualist, Buddhist or even post-materialist value structure.

The commandment ‘Do not swear!’ is quite different from the others. On the surface it is also a

general moral rule, ‘Do not humiliate or insult others verbally’ and this commandment is the

one that is close to the original biblical commandment about taking the name of the Lord in

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vain – or at least as far as the popular understanding of it is concerned. On the other hand, it

also has a deeper, ethnicity-motivated meaning but this meaning is not motivated by

experiences of discrimination. The way it is illustrated with a story shows the effect of the

romantic (and stereotyped) image of Gypsy witchcraft. Two women are swearing at each other,

but in fact what they are saying to each other are curses and, in this scene, they really invoke

supernatural powers and the curses come true. ‘Have only one tooth, and may even that one

hurt!’, says the first woman and the other touches her mouth in pain. ‘Have a hundred rings but

no fingers!’ and the first woman hides her hands in her pocket. Funny curses like this go on until

they curse each other to death (‘May Peter Doszpotdraw around [your dead body]!’ 6 and ‘If

only you dried on the sheet!’); one of them disappears and only her clothes remain there. Thus,

in this scene they wanted to show Roma people not to harm each other:

István: It happens in many families that they swear at each other, but in the case of

the Gypsies it is different because they believe that it can have an effect on them.

And we want to show that indeed, this swearing is a tough thing and it can be

harmful.

Interviewer: And what do you think, how can it have an effect on other people,

does it really come true?

István: I believe that it really comes true. (István)

However, the feelings they had about how Roma people swear are not only negative, there was

a certain pride in the way they spoke about this during the brainstorming. They cited more than

a dozen curses, all of them laughing, like ‘May a horse lick your naked eye!’ And they also

added: ‘This pertains only to Gypsies. Most of the Hungarians don’t even understand it’ (Field

diary, 15 December, 2012). This story is quite different from the others, since here Roma

people do not appear as the target of discrimination, but in the role of the fearful Gypsy witch

who has power over others and knows supernatural powers which others don’t. Here, although

appearing harmful and represented in a funny, distancing way (even the shooting of the scene

on 24 April, 2013 turned into a comedy), the positive elements of Roma identity are present.

Nevertheless, these ‘positive’ elements are inspired by a 19th century romantic image of the

irrational, wild and superstitious Gypsy which also stigmatises them. Thus, even if

unintentionally, the narrative also tells about a prejudice but this case an interiorised one.

6 Péter Dosztpot was a well-known member of the Hungarian Police and ’drawing around [your dead body]’ refers to crime scenes where outlines of bodies are marked where they lay dead.

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3.4 Ethnicity and attitudes to political activities, participation

3.4.1 Activities in and after school

The School makes conscious and continuous efforts to motivate its students. Based on the

extracurricular and curricular activities of the School that can be linked to politics, it is not an

exaggeration to say that these students have exceptional opportunities to learn active

citizenship.

1. First, the student council is elected through secret ballot, which is not evident in the

majority of the schools.

2. The student council was trained in the framework of an international project run by

Amnesty International; three day long training sessions were organised in Sajókaza,

Budapest and Salgótarján. At the latter one, they were trained with other student

leaders.

3. Occasionally, watchdog organisations give lectures to students on human rights issues.

4. During the period of observation, student leaders and active students were taken to two

demonstrations: the first was a counter-demonstration on 17 October 2012, in Miskolc

organised by the Gypsy Minority Government against a Jobbik demonstration called

‘March for Hungarian Life’; the second was a demonstration in Budapest organised by

the Hallgatói Hálózat (Student Network) against the proposed modification of the

amendment to the Law on Equal Opportunity where the law was criticised for legalising

widespread segregative practices and opening the door to the separation of Roma

students from the mainstream, under the pretext of 'positive discrimination’. This

demonstration was followed by a debate on the issue which was moderated using

Occupy hand signals.

5. Students were invited to visit a session of the Hungarian Parliament, in Budapest, on 20

November 2012 dedicated to issues related to the situation of Roma people in Hungary.

Members of the Film Club and student council leaders also took part in the visit.

6. Extracurricular club meetings are also devoted to public issues: e.g. the Film Club; the

‘Disputa’ Club where students learn and practice argumentation skills; the ‘Globus’

Project, which is dedicated to ecological issues. In previous years a Family History Club

was also successful. Here they collected information about the local Holocaust and

Porrajmos7 and also collected material for family history building. They planned to

restart it in 2012 September but the teacher responsible for it left the school. .

7 Systematic genocide of Roma people during WWII, also referred to as the ’Roma Holocaust’.

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7. In September 2013, a school radio was launched with the participation of an

underground community radio station, the Tilos Rádió.

In addition to these activities, teachers deal with political and social issues and try to empower

students through critical reading skills, especially in history lessons:

What we are doing is developing reading skills. If I show them a HVG8, a Magyar

Nemzet9 or a Heti Válasz10 article, first, they cannot identify the persons, second,

they cannot locate the topic in time and space. Thus, it is difficult to grasp the topic.

(…) That there is one standpoint which belongs to one side and another which

belongs to the other side, which most articles are about. These articles are about

conflicting standpoints, like voting, or terrorism. (…) And I have never seen any

student during my career who was able to do this at high school age. And without

this, one cannot behave as a voting citizen in a democracy. Now we teach these

things to them with our teachers who are also part of this cultural milieu. (…) But

we are doing our best. The most important instruction for teachers is that we do

not do lectures but we work on sources together, we make them understand each

sentence and we answer the questions. And we gain knowledge from the text that

can be useful to know. (Dénes)

For instance, during a history lesson which was observed a teacher showed excerpts from a

HVG article which criticised Géza Jeszenszky, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, for stating

in a university textbook that in Roma families it is acceptable to establish incestuous

relationships:

After her demonstration of the article which she distributed in photocopies, the

reactions were diverse. ‘This is a call against Roma people!’ or ‘Again, we were all

bracketed!’ or just simply ‘Bastard!’ There was a debate on it, one of them accepted

the stereotype: ‘We all know such cases!’ but the majority had arguments to refute

it, for instance: ‘But he was racist to say that!’ or ‘A real Roma would never do that!’

The teacher, after making clear that they understood who the author was, did not

intervene. (Field diary, 19 October, 2012)

8 Liberal weekly periodical. 9 Right-wing conservative newspaper. 10 Right-wing weekly periodical.

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Another tool used to motivate them is the special relationship between teachers and students

which, from the start of the observation period, appeared as a kind of partnership. The first

manifestation of this special relationship was that they were on first-name terms which, in the

Hungarian language, includes using a grammar for a familiar form of address. This seems

unprecedented in a school context. But students were told about the school’s financial

problems which they tried to solve in their own way; for instance, by making photocopies for

the class at a local Christian community centre, in order to save the school some money (Field

diary, 19 October, 2012). Trust is regarded as the key component of this relationship:

These students, who come here, for instance in their 9th year, they come from

schools where they were made to feel Gypsy for 8 years. That you are worthless,

you are stupid, you are not able to do this, and they were given a two11 just to let

them go from here to hell. So, it takes a lot of time for them to believe that it is not

true. Everyone is the master of his own fate. That he can achieve something, if he

wants, but for this, they need self-confidence. (…) And if we can convince them that

you are able to do a task, even if it is in a circus programme,12 than you can

convince them that you are able to learn Hungarian language and literature or

Maths. (Dóra)

There is indeed a high level of trust between teachers and students’ ‘Here, we can say anything

to the teachers. We can talk about everything sincerely. In the other school, they did not listen

to me at all …’ (Ildikó). And this is mostly because the teachers and leaders never humiliate the

students or approach them using racist language; they are approached as partners as far as the

framework of education permits:

There is this distance and mistrust in them, but the longer they are our students,

the better experience they have from non-Gypsies. And this [mistrust] can be

applied faster in their relations with totally unknown people as well. But we are

needed for this and the practice that even when they behave badly, we don’t call

them in racist terms. And this [trust] takes months and years to mature, but

whatever a student does, I tell him that you are fool, you are acting against yourself,

I am strict, there are sanctions, but I never humiliate him and destroy his dignity.

None of us do that. (Anna)

11

Pass grade. 12 The Ethnocircus Projectwas one of the extracurricular activities in 2013; a circus visited the school, and provided them with circus skills training. Later some of the students had the opportunity to travel to Turkey to visit the circus.

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Nevertheless, observation and discussion carried out by the researcher with the members the

student council from Ózd showed that the efforts to motivate students did not bring them

closer to formal political activities. Their attitudes to political organisations and institutions

were not fundamentally different from those we observed in the case of the WP5 respondents.

Their image of politicians was the same, i.e. corrupt, privileged persons looking for their own

interests. Only one of the student representatives of Ózd did not exclude the option of being a

politician in the future, but this was clearly because of family influence, not that of the school.

Imre: My brother is a minority leader, or something like that, and he told me to

learn much, take the final exams, and learn something that is good for this, and go

there where he is.

Interviewer: So you would like to be there.

Imre: Yes…

Interviewer: So you would like to work for the minority government. Do you know

what they are doing there, what is this organisation like?

Imre: I think they help Gypsies. And also children, who cannot get to such places…

For I was with them once as a kind of mentor, we took them to the Balaton.13 (Imre)

They occasionally joined demonstrations (especially against the Jobbik Party), signed petitions

or some of them had opinions about public, especially human rights oriented issues and could

clearly articulate their opinions with ease, and this was at least partly a result of the activities

undertaken at school. However, not even the student council was active enough to initiate

activities:

Interviewer: And do you experience from the student council sometimes that they

would collectively represent student interests?

Dénes: Anna knows this better. But I do not experience it and honestly speaking, as

[school leader], I have never been in a situation that I had to reckon with any effort

from them for long time. I don’t remember such a thing. I remember that we had

these camps, and that our students did well there. And it also had good echoes

later. This stabilised the situation of students this case, in their studies and in their

interactions with each other and with their families. It is surely very important what

is going on in the student council, but I see primarily its didactical benefit for the

present. That it complements our efforts in Scinece and Geography lessons. (Dénes)

13 Popular touristic destination, a lake in South West Hungary.

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The quotation above also confirms the researcher’s observations, that there were considerable

efforts invested in the student council, the School organised weekend-long training sessions

and teachers travelled with them in their free time and asked their opinions during these

sessions but the student council was not an actor in the power relations of the school:

Interviewer: Could you tell me, how this election looked like, who nominated you,

or did you want another candidate?

Ildikó: I did not want to be this. It was the class. All of them wanted me. And they

wrote it on papers, who voted for whom, and so I became that. And after it, we

went to such a camp so that we speak about what we want and so an. And we

wanted school radio, and it was achieved, but in this building [i.e. the School rented

rooms from other schools in Ózd]we could not exploit it because they protested

whenever the music was on, so we finished it. (Ildikó)

Thus, their occasional initiatives mostly pertain to leisure activities, such as radio, excursions or

parties. But these were mostly experiences from the previous years and in 2012/2013, the

financial situation of the school was destabilised by the new Church Law which removed the

official church status from the Jai Bhim Community and there was therefore less money for

these activities:

There are always ideas. What they really miss are theatre and movie visits,

excursions. There used to be a lot of them but in the first half of the school year,

nothing. And it caused big emptiness in them. (…) The leaders of the school always

ask their opinions about major changes, decisions that have an effect on school life.

(…) But we are now in the phase of preparing them for these tasks, so that they can

speak about them, to lobby on issues, to argue for something. So that they learn to

organise, to deal with money, to work together, and so on. (Gabi)

The student council and these activities are planned and organised by the teachers and social

workers. They encourage students to express their opinion, they motivate them and try to get

them to take action. Grass-roots initiatives are only rarely undertaken, especially in the Ózd

centre of the school where the students come from an urban environment and have less

contact with each other. This situation together with the passivity into which they are socialised

can provoke various reactions. Some of them, especially in Sajókaza, seem to become more

active. But in Ózd, it could also provoke rejection:

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Mátyás: Once I was at a demonstration, and I felt like a sheep.

Interviewer: Once we were together in Budapest on one, did you feel like a sheep

even there?

Mátyás: Yes, it was then when I felt like a sheep. It was the first demonstration in

my life and I just felt that I was marching after the crowd. People are making noise

to call attention to themselves and we are just marching, marching after the crowd.

I was just like a sheep. I just marched unconsciously. Even if I knew why I was

marching, I was unconscious. I can almost say it was not my decision. (Mátyás)

3.4.2 Ethnicity and politics

During discussion with the students, all of them emphasised that being Roma (or Gypsy, a term

which they used more frequently) is something that is given and can never be changed. ‘Dogs

won’t meow…’ (Sándor). Roma is not perceived as an identity group that can be discarded or

replaced by another ethnic identity, for instance Hungarian. It is seen instead as a group of

people characterised by inherent belonging to the group or even by phenotypical features as

determined by other people. In this, they simply follow the thinking of majority society; there is

no need to ask someone if he/she is Roma or not, it can be decided by others:

I think, not only our students think like this but also the majority of the society. (…)

When I was talking to them about such issues, the answer was always: ‘but you are

brown!’ And they would say about to other that ‘you are as black as the night, you

cannot deny it.’ So, this is such a thing that is given, that they were born with, this is

an existing thing and they think they cannot change it. (Gabi)

Only those, who had mixed heritage and who, because of this, did not have visible features

mentioned the option of being non-Roma in certain situations. This phenomenon, that the

person is marked by his or her physical features which obliges him/her to identify him/herself

with a given group was described by Young (1990) and is prevalent among Roma people in

Hungary (Neményi 2007).

Numerous social psychological theories focus on the conflict between the need for positive self-

image and the experience that the group one belongs to is subject to negative connotations. In

this social psychological tradition starting from Erikson’s study (1968), this crisis is crucial for a

person’s identity development. In Erikson’s view, in order to have a consistent personality and

experience wholeness a young person must feel a continuity between what s/he conceives

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her/himself to be and that which s/he perceives others see in her/him. If s/he fails to develop a

strong, clear sense of identity, s/he remains in the phase of identity confusion and will never be

able to develop an autonomous and creative personality.

Tajfel and Turner (1986) identified three strategies that individuals from discriminated groups

can pursue: individual mobility through which the individual physically or psychologically leaves

the group; social creativity where a group redefines the meaning of membership; and social

competition where the group struggles for a change in the social hierarchy. Crocker and

Luhtanen (1990) emphasised the importance of collective self-esteem in this; their empirical

studies show that members of devalued groups, with low collective self-esteem, opt for the

first strategy, i.e. that of leaving the group while people who have high collective self-esteem

are more likely to react to threats to collective self-esteem by derogating out-groups and

enhancing the in-group. Feagin (1991) postulated four distinct types of responses to

discrimination: withdrawing from the situation of discrimination; ignoring the discrimination

while continuing interaction; verbally challenging discrimination; physically responding to

discrimination.

Neményi recently studied Hungarian Roma adolescents’ identity strategies (2007). In this, she

followed Phinney’s model (1990 and 1992) where three distinct stages of ethnic identity

development are described: first, the unexamined ethnic identity stage which implies little or

no understanding of issues related to ethnicity and where individuals accept the values and

attitudes of the majority culture, including, often, internalised negative views; second, the

ethnic identity exploration stage in which individuals examine the meaning of their ethnic group

membership in relation to the dominant culture; third, the ethnic identity achievement stage in

which individuals have a working knowledge of their ethnic heritage, a clear idea of the

meaning of their ethnic group membership and a commitment to their ethnicity and the role it

plays in their lives. This theory describes the ethnic identity development of adolescents as a

linear, one-dimensional development process, which, in optimal cases, would result in an ideal

status. Neményi has argued that in her interviews with young Hungarian Roma adolescents, the

respondents rehearsed such reactions to humiliation, discrimination or even separation that

could be described mostly in terms of withdrawal or silent recognition of the power relations

determined by the majority. Only in exceptional cases was strong solidarity with or conscious

embracement of Roma identity observed and that too only in cases where a family member or

another influential person could help to strengthen the respondents’ own identity/ies and work

out what it meant to be Roma in Hungary.

The hypothesis that the common experience of exclusion could serve as a catalyst for activism

when combined with active political socialisation was only partly confirmed by the researchers’

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observations in the course of this study. First, the aim of the school is not primarily to train

Roma leaders but rather to transmit general civic skills. The Ambedkarite ideology behind the

school is about identity change and it opposes nationalist- oriented Roma identity construction.

True, there are activities that aim at transmitting a positive definition of Roma identity which

includes, for instance, singing the Roma anthem, teaching Lovari (Roma) language, paying

special attention to the history of Roma people in history classes, or campaigning to modify the

mainstream high school history atlas in a way that it also demonstrates Roma migration and the

Roma and Jewish Holocaust. All these efforts contribute successfully to a deeper understanding

and acceptance of Roma identity and the construction of a personality where ethnicity forms an

integral:

We teach them about the migration of the Roma people, their Indian roots, the

anti-Roma measures of the enlightened absolutism, the reasons and the

consequences of this. Or, we tell them that Áron Gábor14 was Gypsy. (Anna)

But the development of the scene of the last commandment, from ‘Do not deny your [Roma]

self!’ to ‘Do not spoil your own life!’, from the moral obligation to retain one’s ethnic identity to

individual responsibility for one’s actions also reveals how the Ambedkarite ideology has on

influence on the students’ attitudes and activities.

Second, these young people do not have the same attitudes to Roma identity and they do not

all come from the same socioeconomic situation either. Those living in highly segregated,

ethnically homogeneous enclaves have different or greater problems than those who live in or

close to urban centres and who have more contact with the majority population. In this sense,

there was a contrast between the centres in Ózd and Sajókaza which were observed during this

study. The majority of the students at Sajókaza came from the same settlement, a Roma

enclave located, both geographically and socially, out of the village and all potential problems

were concentrated there, including a lack of services, segregation, deep poverty and a lack of

opportunities. In Ózd, students came from diverse districts and a good proportion of them lived

in an urban environment and had more opportunities. This difference did not necessarily mean

better job opportunities since these opportunities mostly encompassed atypical forms of

employment (such as temporary jobs, public work programmes or seasonal agricultural work on

the Great Plain), but rather the difference meant having a different horizon, lifestyle and

cultural background. And this was also reflected in the young people’s political attitudes:

14 Famous cannon smith of the Hungarian Independence War of 1848-1849.

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Their activity also depends on their place of residence. For instance, in Sajókaza

they are involved in these things much more since there are more conflicts that

have a political nature. In Ózd, it cannot be felt so much, but since the [human

rights oriented NGO] was active here, they also know about these things. So, they

are also interested in them and they are more open, but they have a lot of

prejudices, they have distorted information which we want to clarify with them.

(Gabi)

In Ózd, young Roma people are in a daily contact with non-Roma people which makes them

more open and facilitates their integration but they also have more encounters with extremists

and sometimes they need to cope with these:

József: My neighbour is on old woman and she has a son who is in the Jobbik. But

he is my mate. He is not so bad even if he is in the Jobbik.

Interviewer: But he is not Roma is he?

József: No, he isn’t. But he helps me when he is there to visit her mother. He helps

me and I help him and we speak normally.

Interviewer: But why is he from the Jobbik if he has a Roma friend?

József: I don’t know.

Interviewer: Haven’t you spoken with him about this?

József: I don’t like to speak about these issues. (József)

These young people live in an environment where they are victims of prejudice racism and

discrimination on a daily basis. And of course, this has an effect on their confidence, their

success or lack of it in their activities and can cause frustration:

Interviewer: What do you think, this movie on the Ten Commandments, could this

change people’s mind? (…)

Mátyás: Look, go to Youtube and type ‘Gypsy’ or ‘Gypsy music’, or type anything in

connection with Gypsies and take a look at the comments below.

Interviewer: What do they write there?

Mátyás: You know it well don’t you? Stinking Gypsies, rotten Gypsies, let all of them

die, let’s go Jobbik, I hope the Jobbik will win. You can read there only these, they

don’t even watch the video, they don’t even know what it is about. It is written

there, there is a Gypsy in it, or they see that he is a Gypsy, and immediately write

‘what does this dirty Gypsy want here?’. And this is the problem. This is why the film

will not take effect. Because they will read the comments after it and these

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comments will be anchored in the people. It will be anchored, they will look a video,

see that there is a Gypsy in it and in the comments, there is Gypsy, Gypsy, Gypsy,

Gypsy this, Gypsy that. And even if there is nothing under the video, and they just

see that there is a Gypsy in it, these things will come up unconsciously. (Mátyás)

The negative attitudes displayed by local populations towards the Roma community and the

readiness of the majority population to resort to segregative practices are also demonstrated

by the MYPLACE WP4 survey data. For instance, 63 per cent of WP4 respondents disagreed

with the statement that ‘Roma, Gypsies and Travellers make a positive contribution to society’,

and of these 34 per cent strongly disagreed. It is worth noting that 30 per cent of the

respondents identified themselves with the Roma minority, so, if we narrow down the sample

to ethnic Hungarian respondents, 73 per cent of the sub-sample disagreed with this statement,

and of these 43.4 per cent strongly disagreed. However, it is also noteworthy that 38.5 per cent

of the Roma respondents similarly disagreed with this positive statement on Roma and of these

13.5 per cent strongly disagreed. This suggests a case of interiorised prejudices which were also

apparent during fieldwork.

The way the young Roma people reacted to the prejudiced views against them was widespread

at local level. The extent to which this can be viewed as normal varies not only between

individuals but also between situations and this was also observed in Wakefield and Hudley’s

study of African American youngsters (2005). One possible reaction is solidarity or even

defensive opposition although this occurred mostly when they were attacked and other

solutions were not available, for instance in the case of the Hungarian Guard marching in their

town or village:

József: Last time, there was a theft in [name of the village], no one knows who

committed it, they have taken only a few things, some sausages and a bacon. One

hundred guardsmen from the Jobbik came, they wanted to kill Gypsies.

Interviewer: Really? When did it happen?

József: I don’t remember, it happened this year, a few months ago. The policemen

came, they just waved and left. Every day, [name of the village] is full of policemen,

every day. They are there on foot, in cars, in every way they can. One cannot move

in [name of the village], there are so many of them. But the Jobbik supporters were

there and they left.

Interviewer: So they left the Jobbik there?

József: That is why I want to be a policeman.

Interviewer: Wow.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


József: Nobody is on the side of the Gypsies.

Interviewer: And did any atrocities happen there?

József: No, nothing. They were just shouting and then left. But we, the Gypsies, also

gathered, I was with them, but actually nothing happened. (…)

Interviewer: Do you know where they were from?

József: No. (…) I know that the old woman who was robbed has all her relatives in

the Guard. All her relatives are from the Jobbik, and they came to her. (József)

As seen above, the strategy applied is not only dependent on the personality and the social

environment but also the situation; the same person needed to follow different strategies in

two real-life situations. In everyday, interpersonal interaction he cooperated with a Jobbik

member (see József’s account on page 35), and called him his friend; however, in another

situation he was at war with them when his group was physically threatened by the guardsmen

marching against them.

Examples of achieved, reflected ethnic identity (Phinney 1990), working knowledge, solidarity

and refusal of the negative prejudices based on commitment to ethnic identity can be

frequently found in this group. One of the most explored viewpoints observed is from a former

student of the school:

I don’t want to use bad words, but I cannot find a decent word about what is going

on in this country on this issue now, and it is flaring up now. This is a scandal and it

is a shame on the country. Disgrace. And we have to live our life in the middle of the

situation in which we hear that ‘because he is Gypsy, because he is Jew, because he

is, let’s say, Romanian or Slovak’. And then I say, stop, my friend! He is a man like

you, and you have no right to condemn him or punish him, there are authorities to

punish him if he committed something. Let’s try to look at him in a different way,

let’s try to help him to catch up. Because there are really a lot of people among the

Roma (…) who want to catch up and live another way of life. They just need help.

And there are a lot of them. Even if they say that the greatest part of them will

never change, and never want to change, there are so many of them who do want!

(Jakab)

This rejection most frequently takes the form of refusing ethnic categorisation:

The problem is that we are all taken the same, we are all bracketed. If one Gypsy

steals, all of them are thieves. But if one Hungarian steals, then do all of them steal?

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It is never the same if a Hungarian steals or a Roma. If a Hungarian steals, it is one

year, but if the Roma steals, it is three years in prison. But I know Hungarians of this

kind too. (…) People are stupid to bracket everyone. There are poor and rich among

the Gypsies, and there are also poor and rich among the Hungarians. (Ildikó)

However, other strategies observed were those of distancing or withdrawal. It was sometimes

observed in conversation situations when negative attitudes towards Roma people or even

interiorised prejudices were expressed. For instance, on one occasion István expressed his

opinion that Gypsies were happy to receive money just for lying in bed. He was told that it was

not true since he worked hard, just like many other Roma, and that most people would be

happy to receive money for lying in bed but he was not convinced. Later, in the interview

situation he repeated the same idea: ‘What are my aims? I would rather say that my dream is

that I lie in bed and receive a lot of money’ (István). But further examples abound; for instance,

when they repeat negative prejudices about Roma people:

Mátyás: If you ask a Gypsy what he thinks about Gypsies, almost half of them would

say that they are doing is really wrong … I cannot explain, you should hear what

they say. I hear it every day.

Interviewer: Gypsies about Gypsies?

Mátyás: Gypsies about Gypsies.

Interviewer: And what would they say? I am really interested in it.

Mátyás: For instance, what my father have said. [Before the interview, his father

had told stories about how public workers are exploited and humiliated]. In the

Gypsy minority government, it is not the situation that they speak kindly to Gypsies.

But they call them all the animal names. A Gypsy about a Gypsy. (…) This is the

situation among the Gypsies, if a Hungarian tells the Gypsies that they are bad like

this or that, all of them revolt, but if there is no Hungarian, then there is also a

Gypsy to tell them that they are bad.

And this was also confirmed by their teachers:

Interviewer: And do you also experience that the students repeat these

statements? One such statement is that they have kids in order to get social

benefits…

Dénes: Yes…

Interviewer: …or the campaign in connection with gypsy crime…

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


Dénes: Yes, yes. We experience this, and this is comprehensible, since they are

exposed to this pressure in their own social environment and we try to exert a

counter-pressure here, but this is not so easy… (Dénes)

Once, the students told me that we are Gypsies, we are like this, we steal. Then I

asked, ‘Do you steal?’ ‘I don’t.’ ‘And you?’ ‘Neither I.’ ‘And you?’ ‘Well, there has

been an example to this’–said the third. We were twenty in the class and fifteen of

them have never stolen anything in their lives. Then I said: ‘What is this sentence

then?’ And they said: ‘The Gypsies are like this. I don’t steal but the Gypsies are like

this.’ It is so deeply embedded in them, what they receive or what is attributed to

them. (Anna)

Sometimes it is manifested in a kind of preference for out-groups:

I am not racist, I do not choose between people, or I would be happy if I could meet

more foreigners, or I could be with Hungarians. That would be really cool. Or even,

how shall I put it, I like Hungarians. More, probably more than the people of my

origin, because I could speak much better with them than I could with those who

are living around me. (Sándor)

Or even in openly negative, prejudiced or even racist views about other Roma groups:

Respondent: I don’t like those from [name of the village].

Interviewer: Yes, you mentioned this, could you tell me more about this?

Respondent: They are humble people. Stinking, black, and wild. I don’t like this kind.

I am also Gypsy, but I would never want to be like them.15

This stereotyping of other groups is not tolerated in the school but was witnessed during a

school trip to Budapest:

We are crossing the City, this is the most exciting part of the excursion. [name of

student] and [name of student] stopped making music and were at the bus window,

just like the rest of them. They wave and shout to passers-by, especially to boys. (…)

They are the most excited when they see a ‘black’, ‘Hello, Brother!’ Everybody is

laughing. There are also racist comments, but, in these cases, teachers stop them:

15 The pseudonym to which this quotation is attributable has been intentionally left out.

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‘Waving and saying hello is allowed, but calling names is not!’ (…) They are not very

kind to Chinese, one of them calls a passer-by ‘rice’! Anna is really angry: ‘Just one

more racist comment and you will be sitting silently till home!’ (Field diary, 13 June,

2013)

Discrimination seems to be contagious, they also stereotype other groups, such as

Chinese, Arabs or Gays, but if we speak about these issues, they can easily become

tolerant, and they recognise that it is no good to stereotype other groups. (Anna)

These attitudes were even manifest in tensions between students from the two centres,

Ózd and Sajókaza. Some of the students from the Ózd centre passed on the prejudices

they had experienced from the majority society to other Roma students coming from a

more disadvantaged situation. Similar patterns were also observed by Neményi (2007).

According to Phinney’s model (1993) of ethnic socialisation, these attitudes can be

described as belonging to the first, undeveloped stage of identity development, the

unexamined one, which implies little or no understanding of issues related to ethnicity,

and where individuals accept the values and attitudes of the majority culture including,

often, internalised negative views. However, the situation is more complex and needs

further study. These reactions were mostly dependent on the situation; so, for example,

the same person could react by showing deep commitment to ethnic identity in one

situation and yet, in another case, might also repeat and pass on the negative attitudes of

majority culture.

Jost (2001) described similar patterns in his theory on system legitimation. He observed

that members of groups with disadvantageous and even extremely disadvantageous

situations might opt to refuse the in-group and prefer the out-group just in order to

preserve the status quo. According to his theory, a number of factors might contribute to

this, for instance the need for cognitive consistency, a belief that the world is just and

everyone gets what is deserved, or ideological dissonance reduction (Jost et al. 2002)

Thus, differences between the young people’s perceptions of Roma identity, sometimes even

conflicts between the groups, and the ideology of the school that does not put the primary

focus on developing such political attitudes that would strongly emphasise Roma (nationalist)

identity building limits the effectiveness of ethnicity as an activating factor. On the one hand, a

common experience of social exclusion, discrimination and segregation can indeed function as

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


a mobilising factor and raise solidarity among students. This could be well observed in the

events connected to the struggle for the existence of the school and the results of this struggle.

3.5 Epilogue: The end of the story Since the very beginning of fieldwork, financial and existential problems cast a shadow on the

work of the school and especially the Ózd centre. In 2012, the Jai Bhim Community lost its

status as a church school due to the amendment of the Law on Religion; therefore, the School

lost the extra support that religious education institutions receive. Due to the specialised

teaching and decentralised structure of the school, this caused serious problems; for instance,

in paying the travel costs of teachers commuting from Budapest or in financing extracurricular

and social activities. Although negotiations were started with the Ministry of National

Resources, through the intervention of the minister, whereby the School finally received some

extra support to compensate its loss of revenue, the problems did not end there.

In Ózd, the School did not have its own building and it rented rooms from two other schools

close to the segregated districts with a high Roma population. During the academic year, both

those schools decided not to rent out classrooms. One of them justified its decision by referring

to a new regulation that obliged schools to keep students in the building and offer them

programmes until 4:00 p.m. . However, the other school simply decided not to rent out their

surplus rooms:

We heard rumours about a deputy mayor going around schools and telling them not

to give us rooms. I have to add that we needed 6 rooms altogether, and this should

not have been a problem in such a town. (…) They would say that the school is our

business, not the interest of the town. There are enough schools without us. (…) We

tried to get a building which has been empty for years now. It was renovated from

EU funds directly for a Roma talent support programme. But the town informed us

that the contracted maintenance period was over and they would like to use it for

touristic purposes. (Anna)

The town council offered to rent two buildings both of which were literally in ruin,, one without

roof, and there was neither time nor money to renovate them by May when school buildings

had to be accredited for the following school year. According to the teachers, the decisions

taken clearly appear to be the result of the negative climate of opinion, in Ózd, against Roma

people and the malevolence of the town council leaders towards them. ‘The mayor is from the

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


FIDESZ Party,16 but his voters are from the extreme right. He tries to convince the supporters of

Jobbik to support him to be elected mayor again’ (Anna). The teachers even mentioned the

positive efforts of the Ministry which were not strong enough to go against the town council

leaders decisions: ‘This is a tough place, leaders have to pursue anti-Roma policy, only through

that can they win the elections’ (Anna).

They also frequently mentioned the Jobbik campaigns against Roma initiatives, especially the

‘World Tent’. In May 3013, at a closed session, the city council of Ózd decided to host the

Ethnic and Roma Cultural and Methodological Centre in the town (supported by UNESCO and

EU) which could have given white-collar jobs to hundreds of local people in the region which

suffered extremely high unemployment rates. The local Jobbik organisation launched a

successful campaign against the project, and organised a demonstration on 13 May. Within

two weeks, they had collected enough signatures for a local referendum on the issue. Their

main arguments included ‘may Ózd not become a Gypsy capital’ and that they wanted public

security and work places, not ‘charity from the Union [EU]’ (Kovács 2013). The mayor did not

dare risk a referendum and backed out of the project. Thus Ózd cancelled an investment to the

value of 1.7 billion forints.

But the campaign against the centre had started long before. Students also mentioned other

arguments: ‘There were rumours in the town that hundreds of Roma would be settled here

because of the World Tent and there were already enough Gypsies here, that there was no

need for more’ (Dóra). Students also spoke of even Roma people who were against the project

because they did not want more Roma to be ‘settled’ in Ózd: ‘As I understood, it was said that

they wanted to settle a lot of Gypsy people from Canada to Ózd in the framework of the Gypsy

Tent’ (István). Even Roma people signed the petition:

‘A Gypsy girl came there, very black, and she said that she had already signed the

petition against them coming here. I told her, ‘What is this, you don’t even know

what you are signing’. Another Gypsy woman next to us said: ‘My daughter, signed

it!’. (István)

The decisions not to give classrooms to the school and not to host the cultural centre were

taken within the same period of time and therefore teachers and leaders linked the two things

together:

16 Right-wing governing party of Hungary.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


The intercultural tension is very high. The World Tent project already blew the fuse

because the Jobbik launched a mendacious campaign about what would happen

here. The edging out of our school fits this process. (Anna)

In their experience, the Jobbik was against all initiatives that supported the situation of the

Roma people and the school had no real ally in the region:

In this town, in this micro-region, Nazi ideology has no ideological rival. This is a very

strange situation; in Budapest, whoever we speak to, we feel the ideological

thinking in him that the situation of the Gypsy is a problem and something has to be

done. (…) Even an extreme right-wing partner would accept it [in Budapest].

Because a democratic way of thinking has a substantial presence there. In Ózd,

what we experience is the opposite, even those who identify themselves as people

with humanitarian or a civil rights way of thinking, even those take on the wildest

speeches of Jobbik. This is a very exciting situation that a town becomes the

hostage of such an ideology that has no space in Europe at all. (…) We knew quite

well that we arrived here upwind. This was not a great surprise. But personal

experience is different to knowing about something. When I see that we work with

many Roma minority leaders and none of them is armoured ideologically against

this problem. So, they take on the fascist blah-blahs. Even the Gypsy minority

leaders. This is shocking. (…) It would be nice to have social forces or civic

organisations that stand firm on the ground of human rights. But in Ózd, we have

not met them. It is possible that they are very silent. (…) But if they did not discover

our presence, and nor did we discovered them, I can say that they don’t exist.

(Dénes)

In these interviews, the school appears as a deserted cathedral – an institution that is not

embedded in local society; remains isolated and is condemned to failure. They kept on

negotiating with local government until the very last moment but failed. During the summer,

the Ózd centre of the school was closed. In September, about 40 students decided to travel to

Sajókaza every day to continue their studies but more than a hundred were lost and a huge

number of them dropped out again from the educational system.

There could be other narratives of these events; what is demonstrated here is the viewpoint of

the school and mostly that of the school teachers. In these narratives the local Jobbik started a

campaign against the school, ‘they said it gained too much space’ (Anna), and the leaders of the

town council did not support them either and saw the School as the Ambedkarites’ own

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


business and hence impeded their efforts to find a place to teach. This situation clearly had an

effect on the political activism in the school.

Student council leaders, also from Sajókaza started to organise a demonstration on behalf of

the school. This was a joint initiative and in this the hidden conflicts between the students of

the two centres disappeared. However, this initiative was turned down, the school was

negotiating until the very last moment and probably did not want to provoke the town leaders.

However, the story of the closed school raised solidarity between the two centres:

I was very afraid they would say, here come the bigheads from Ózd and the yokels

from Sajókaza. But nothing, imagine, nothing like that happened! The situation that

they came there from Ózd, having lost their school, was such a message that you

would not believe. That they put such things on the wall that two hearts and

Sajókaza and Ózd written in them, (and Rakaca inbetween, because there are also

students from Rakaca there). (Anna)

In this new situation the film club was disbanded. A new film club was organised in Sajókaza

with a new leader, a documentarist, but Ildikó and István dropped out for family reasons.

Mátyás continued his studies in Sajókaza, but did not join the new club. The project on the

Alternative Ten Commandments was not finished.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


4. Conclusions Observation of the activities of the school confirmed that in contrast to the general trends in

the Hungarian education system, this school made conscious efforts to prepare students for

active citizenship and to oppose mainstream interpretations of events. This is proved by the list

of political and pubic activities undertaken and the practices performed (and observed) during

education and extracurricular activities. In this, the School offered outstanding opportunities

for its students.

Nevertheless, as Percheron has argued, practising democratic knowledge is necessary for

successfully interiorising and validating it. In this, the two observed group somehow had

different opportunities. The Film Club was characterised by horizontal relationships with

teachers and initiatives from students were not only encouraged but the whole scope of

activities was built on their creativity. Thus, they were more motivated, they organised the

group for themselves at the beginning of the school year. Participants also made efforts to

collect resources and recruit more actors and were planning to continue filming even after the

end of the Club.

In the other case, the inner structure of the student council clearly reproduced the relationships

of the classroom. Activities were organised by teachers and had didactical aims, ('It is surely

very important what is going on in the student council, but I see primarily its didactical benefit'

(Dénes)) and some of them were indeed training activities. True, these training activities were

not frontal lectures but used creative and participative tools and teachers encouraged student

representatives to propose activities which partly were accomplished. However, those

proposed rarely moved beyond excursions, parties or student radio. Nevertheless, at the end of

the school year when the students learned that the Ózd centre would probably close, they tried

to organise a demonstration. In this, they could have shown solidarity with each other and

commitment to the school. The fact that it was not supported is informative about the context;

i.e. that democratic representation of interest would not be welcomed by the leaders of the

town council and that negotiations behind closed doors were regarded as more effective in this

situation. But it is to be emphasised again that members of the student council were elected by

secret ballot and they were offered wide-ranging opportunities to learn democratic and

leadership skills. Students in Ózd were not motivated to engage with formal political activities

(let alone one case when a family member was already a minority leader), but discussions with

them revealed that at least some of them had a deeper understanding of democratic processes

and could express their opinions about public issues with greater ease than most of the

respondents in the WP5 interviews.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


Thus, the hypothesis that engaged and purposeful political socialization, with pedagogically

sound methodology, can lead to active civic participation even in the most disadvantaged

circumstances was only partly confirmed. Students had negative opinions about the formal

political sphere and did not want to participate in it. However, they were more active in

activities (e.g. demonstrations, informal discussions on politics, media projects, creative

activities) that were related to ethical issues or minority-related problems. They were more

open and motivated to participate in public activities which were related to leisure.

The other hypothesis, that the experience of exclusion could simulate political participation was

also only partly supported by the researchers’ observations. Group solidarity increased

especially under certain circumstances, for instance when their school was in danger. But it can

be argued that their various and situation-dependent attitudes to ethnicity did not provide a

sound basis for political engagement and collective actions. The experience of the Film Club's

project showed that on the surface the topics were independent from ethnicity and mostly

related to post-material values such as environmental pollution or animal rights. However the

narrative analysis of the scenes themselves revealed the deep wounds of exclusion, prejudice,

and poverty. Throughout this project and fieldwork, strategies used by the young people to

distance themselves from Roma identity were also observed and varied from humorous

representations to interiorised prejudices to applying prejudices to other ethnic and sub-ethnic

groups. These mechanisms in the social-psychological discourse on psychological development

could easily be regarded as signs of an undeveloped, unreflexive stage of identity construction

in which the person is unable to achieve a strong and positive commitment to ethnicity; this

being the only way to develop an active, creative and consistent personality though, this

example also shows the dangers of regarding psychological development as a linear process.

The Ambedkarite strategy is not primarily based on building a strong ethnic identity and

engaging in a discursive battle to change the meaning of it. Besides some efforts to construct a

positive image of ethnicity, it rather tries to change the identity structure in which other

elements – such as Buddhism, (or another religion) for instance, could play a more important

role than the ethnic identity. As Neményi (2007: 96) also argued, surpassing the obligation for

ethnic categorisation can also be a way, and an easier one at that, of self-realisation. This is

especially true in this case where prejudices and racism have extremely strong positions.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


5. Future analysis

The present case offers an opportunity to understand better why 38.5 per cent of the Roma

respondents expressed negative attitudes and prejudices against Roma people in the MYPLACE

quantitative survey. But further analysis of the WP4 data set could reveal more about this issue

and could help answer the question, ‘what are the factors that determine these attitudes?’

The interviews recorded in the fieldwork may be compared to the W5 data set, and this

comparison could reveal to what extent the school was successful in building a committed

approach to ethnicity and stable identity structure.

Comparison with WP2 data could also reveal what effects are produced if a school pays special

attention to memory policy, to the extent that they organise visits to the Holocaust Memorial

Centre (WP2 field site) and also organise Holocaust-related activities (such as history clubs).

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


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7. Appendix 1. The credo of the Jai Bhim Network

‘The credo of Jai Bhim Network is the ”Dauazasj si doj da zminc”, the vows based on

DrBabasaheb Bhim Rao Ramji Ambedkar’s text written in October 1956. Half of the vows is (sic)

unchangedly adopted to our need, but the other half is adjusted according today’s local

context. The first two paragraphs we use, are much older than the rest of the text, for those

originate in the two-thousand-year old Pali Canon. We chose the translation made by Lajos

Erőss in 1906. There are eleven vows (no 1, , 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 17, 18, 19) the meaning of which only

make sense in the social context of India, so we used sentences to suit our life in today’s

Hungary instead.

22 Vows

1. I do not believe something just because it has been passed along and retold for many

generations.

I do not believe something merely because it has become a traditional practice.

I do not believe something simply because it is well-known everywhere.

I do not believe something solely on the grounds of logical reasoning.

I do not believe something merely because it accords with my philosophy.

I do not believe something because it appeals to „common sense”.

I do not believe something just because I like the idea.

I do not believe something because the speaker seems trustworthy.

I do not believe something thinking, „This is what our teacher says”.

2. Kesamuttisuttam.

3. I will take responsibility for my own life.

4. I will not allow to anyone to dominate or control me.

5. I do not believe that the Buddha was the incarnation of God. I believe this to be sheer

madness and false propaganda.

6. I will not work for a bottle of wine. I will be neither a master nor a slave. I will abandon

oppressive social structures.

7. I will live in manner being in harmony with the virtues and teachings of the Awakened One.

8. I will develop myself in every way: in health, education, culture.

9. I believe in equality of human beings.

10. I shall endeavor to establish equality.

11. I shall follow the noble eightfold path of the Awakened One.

12. I shall follow the ten parameters of the Awakened One.

13. I shall have compassion and loving kindness for all living beings and protect them.

14. I shall not steal.

MYPLACE 5 May 2014


15. I shall not tell lies.

16. I shall not commit carnal sins.

17. I shall not get drunk and I shall not take drugs.

18. I appreciate rationalism and the science.

19. I shall endeavor to establish fraternity. I will work for the benefit of others, helping them to

help themselves.

20. I will take the Awakened One, The Doctrine and the Community as my refuge.

21. I feel I am being reborn and that I am entering a new life.

22. I solemnly declare that I shall hereafter lead my life according to the principles of the

Awakened One and his Doctrine.’

(Source: ‘The Credo of Jai Bhim Network is the ”Dauazasj si doj da zminc”’

http://www.jaibhim.hu/the-credo-of-jai-bhim-network/#more-72. Last accessed 24 April,

2014).

http://www.jaibhim.hu/the-credo-of-jai-bhim-network/#more-72

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