Empowerment
Dalits and English
Kancha Ilaiah
The democratic nation proved that the fears of lower castes were
wrong. They enrolled into regional language education in a big way.
One bright morning in 1960, when I was about eight, a newly appointed
single teacher came to my house. My mother had already cleaned our
courtyard called 'vaakili' and was sprinkling the dung water all
around the courtyard. I was about to assist my elder brother in
untying the cattle and go along with them for grazing. The teacher
asked my mother to send me and my elder brother, who was about 10, to
school. What she told him shocks every one of us in retrospect: "Ayyaa
— if we send our children to school to read and write devil Saraswathi
will kill them. That devil wants only brahmins and baniyas to be in
that business."
For centuries the so called goddess of education was against the dalit
learning, reading and writing in any language. She was the goddess of
education of only the high castes — mainly of the brahmins and
baniayas. But the lower castes, who were denied of education treated
her as a devil that would kill their children if they go to school.
The notion that she kills us was so deep that my grandmother fought
with my mother for she was terrified of our imminent death, after I
and my brother — not my sisters in any case — were sent to school. She
used to pray Pochamma — our village goddess — that she should protect
us from Saraswathi. Within a few months after we were sent to school
my grandmother died of a future shock that we would not survive at
all.
The democratic nation proved that those fears of lower castes were
wrong. They got into regional language education in a big way. The
goddess of Sanskrit education was adopted by lower castes as their
goddess of regional language education too. Several school teachers
across the country — many of them were OBC teachers — installed
Saraswathi photo even in government schools, ignoring the fact there
could be a muslim or a christian or any other minority students in the
schools.
It is a known fact that there were several hindu teachers who made
humiliating remarks about muslims and christians that they do not have
goddess of education like Saraswathi and hence inferior in educational
values. Saraswathi Shishumandirs have cropped up all over the country.
In the '70s and '80s the aggressive ownership of 'matru bhasha'
(mother tongue) theory and adoption of Saraswathi as goddess of Indian
education had acquired a nationalist overtone. So militant was that
nationalism that any opposition to installing Saraswathi's portrait in
the schools and colleges would only invite fist blows.
The right wing student organisations started installing her portrait
in the university departments. The regional language departments made
Saraswathi an educational-cultural symbol. Unmindful of the secular
constitution of the nation even the university teachers — mainly of
regional language departments sporting a visible saffron tilak on the
forehead, began to treat others who operate outside that cultural norm
as inferior.
A walking goddess
With the increase of women teachers in schools, colleges and
universities Saraswathi was made almost a walking goddess in the
nation. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Guru Nanak whose life though revolved
around education to all humans never appeared on the nationalist map
of education.
While the majority OBCs, some dalits and tribals began to worship
Saraswathi in regional educational centres — of course on the real
pooja day the priest talked to her only in Sankrit, in spite of the
fact, that under her sharp and well decorated nose that language died
to a point no return, except that soliloquous priest nobody
understands the slokas, she has become goddess of all Indian
languages.
While the historical backwards were enjoying their new status of
proximity to mythical Saraswathi, the living Saraswathi in the company
of her cousin Laxmi shifted her real operative base to the other
world, called colonial English world. The backward class people of
India, as of now, have no entry so far.
The recent decision of the Central government to introduce English
teaching from class one in all government schools will enable all the
lower castes of India are going to enter into a new phase of English
education. Though this method of English teaching does not take the
dalit-bahujan and minority community children to the level of convent
educated upper castes, it makes a new beginning of dreaming for
egalitarian education in future.
English education is the key for adopting the modernist approach
suitable to the globalised India. The upper castes have handled the
contradiction between English and their native culture quite
carefully. But when it comes to teaching English to the lower castes
they have been proposing a theory that English will destroy the
'culture of the soil'. Having realised the importance of English the
Central government has taken a right decision.
However, the next stage should be moving towards total abolition of
the gap between the private English medium schools and the government
schools in terms of both infrastructure and teaching methods. Even
about the language both the public and private schools must be brought
under two language formula of teaching 50 per cent syllabus in English
and the other half of the syllabus in the regional language across the
country.
(The writer is associated with the Maulana Azad National University, Hyderabad)
------------------------------------
----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/
PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com
TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/
Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
No comments:
Post a Comment