Venue: The Milanee Hall, Bistupur (Near
Women’s College, Jamshedpur)
What
is Adivasi School?
In
fact, it’s an outcome of the age long discussion, debate and refinements of
ideas which consolidate and shape to the society in a particular way. In the
language of adivasis, it is “the thought”, which work in a particular
way and work like a model for the upheaval of the adivasi’s life in an
indigenous manner. Often, there are confusions and ignorance among scholars
about the various characteristics of life of adivasis, consequently the
policies that has been implemented by policymakers in adivasi regions are futile
exercise. Thus before designing and implementing the model in adivasi regions,
one need to know about the various aspects of adivasis’s life in a greater
detail.
The
school of thought is like nourishing the banyan tree for many decades and then
start counting and examining the strength of its roots at which it stands.
Similarly, the concept of Adivasi School has already spread in many directions
with its strong and unique thoughts. Wherever possible, it always put its
strong foot and creates the big auxiliary root to support the main objectives.
Though, we continuously need to plant many more such banyan tree of thought but,
unless we nourish the first one in a productive and efficient way we cannot
plant the new one. At this juncture, we need more scholars to nourish this tree
of wisdom so that the knowledge capital can be generated and used as a unit for
better tomorrow.
Adivasi
School is about deleting the demonic presentation of adivasis from history,
glorifying the nationality of adivasi (that they have proven prior to sepoy
mutiny of 1857), preserving the ecological set up to live with nature so that
devastation like Uttarakhand-2013 can be stopped, and strongly presenting the
indigenous development model suits to them.
Why
Adivasi School?
In
the world of discussion and debate, adivasi issues are one of the most ignored
and marginalized and adivasi points of views are hardly heard with a greater
importance. Though, adivasis are already in the cobweb of the opinions, schools
and models that have been put forth by outsiders without knowing an individual
finger of adivasis which is being pinched by the shoes. So, the basic game
behind this whole conspiracy is, outsider never put their leg in the shoes of
adivasis and never tried to see things through adivasis eyes. Historically, the
dominant civilization is always seen as the superior and rests try to follow
the path travelled by them. To build the dominant civilization (though adivasis
are, but in oral traditions only), the background creation, affirmative writing
for every discipline is very important; irrespective of the heterogeneity.
Recently,
adivasi is one of the most bought and sold product in the market. Though,
adivasi were never the part of caste hierarchy set by Manu in his ‘Manusmriti’,
adivasis were still being dragged and sometimes also pronounced as ‘Ati-shudra’.
Irrespective of many other anthropological concepts, one link, that can be
observed from the mythology called ‘Mahabharata’ was ‘the link of Eklavya’ (son
of Hiranya-dhanu king from Bhil community in central India), where Dronacharya labeled
him as a lower caste for his non- eligibility for getting the education at
gurukul. Later, the glorification of the teacher and pupil relationship
tradition is nothing but, romanticizing the story and which, de facto away
from the fact that’s written in the mythology. Here, the adivasi point of view
states that, even if the link might exist, adivasis never accepted the
imposition of caste hierarchy; consequently they always tried to keep away from
the malware of caste system and took shelter in the forests and lived with
shifting cultivation. When, the adivasis were never in touch with Aryans until
recent forced connection, the question of hierarchy in the society could never
occur.
Latin
American scholar, Grimaldo Rengifo Vasquez states that, “In local indigenous
thinking, living is what gives knowledge, not gathering up a lot of a priori
facts about the nature of things. As they say, ‘To know you have to live’”.
While many of the commentators recognize Western knowledge to be important and
strategically necessary for indigenous communities, they decry the relentless
academic bias in Western thought and the consequences this bias has wreaked on
oral indigenous cultures, alienating indigenous education from culturally
authentic ways of learning, knowing and remembering.
Social
Scientist, Benjamin Barber tells us that, “education is systemic story telling”
(1987, p.22). Education provides us with a narrative that defines our role in
society. The formal education in India attempts to instill in us in a common
set of values, a way of understanding the world and acting in it. But which
story is ours? Who are the “We” that lay claim to the story that defines us as
Indians? Who decides which story or stories will be taught in school, whose
knowledge and preferences count, and what criteria will be used to asses these
preferences?
In
a multicultural society, educational practices must be informed by the many different
narratives that define our diverse cultural heritage. And yet, in most
pluralist societies, where many cultures coexist, educational institutions tend
to promote one story. In the adivasi school perspective, the core values that
lie beneath the surface of cultural patterns that inform different cultures’,
understanding of the world, has largely ignored in our educational agenda. Unfortunately,
assimilation is the only option left with, where multicultural society will
lose the essence of multi and adivasis will finally abandon their ritual and
tradition, whether how rich it is?
At
the outset, the nominal independence that we get in 1947, there were several
plans and special programmes that have been introduced in India for adivasis,
but the real situation of adivasis are still the same. The rights, under 5th
schedule of constitution, PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Area-1996), Forest
Right Act (2006) and Tribal Sub Plan (1974) etc. are meager eyewash and never
been properly designed to provide benefit to the adivasis. In Andhra Pradesh,
the path breaking Samata Judgment of 1997 came from the respective High Court
to curb the illegal mining, but the judgment has never been taken seriously by
the ruler of the other states. The main rationale behind the PESA is to
preserve the tribal population from exploitation with an active involvement of
the Gram Sabha. Under PESA; Gram Sabha (sometimes it is above to Lok Sabha and
Rajya Sabha) has given power under article 243, for self governing by
understanding the traditional rights of indigenous communities over their
natural resources; approval of the development plans and programmes etc.
Similarly, there is Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act, 1989 to save the indigenous communities from exploitation.
Despite this, indigenous communities have many setbacks due to irresponsible
and dishonest bureaucracy and politics.
In
many cases governments gives adivasis rs. 5 a kilo of rice and in return asks
for their land and snatches the livelihoods. At many places the government is
killing adivasis in the name of naxalism and in exchange giving few thousand
rupees in compensation (contract killing). Macaulay designed Indian education
system to produce clerk and now, the education system has further degraded to
the extent that it can hardly produce the clerks. Coincidentally, newspaper
reporting states that, failure rate is more than 55% at higher secondary level
in Jharkhand in 2011, which further deteriorated in 2012-13. Likewise there are
many core issues we need to address and make our academic claim and the ground
stronger.
At
this juncture, scholars need to emphasize the authentic ways of learning, in
life and through communal action, are holistic, ecological, spiritual, and
healing. It is this very form of learning and knowing that the indigenous
movement seeks to revitalize, value, honor, and embed into schools and other
sites of learning, not only for the benefit of their own children, but for the
healing of entire world.
The sub-themes for
the conference are- (1) Adivasi
culture and Education (2) Rights of adivasis and Autonomy (3) Adivasi Society
in the Age of Globalization (4) Adivasi and Science Education (5) Adivasis
history till today (6) Gender Equality among Adivasis (7) Customary Laws (8)
Livelihood of adivasis (9) Education and Development (10) Adivasi Literature.
The
basic idea is that, you are living in the kingdom ruled by the carnivorous lions
and unfortunately, ‘the deer’s history can never be written by lions
unless deer write their own’. Now when the adivasi scholars are being
very vocal in the academic world, merely being object and spectator is offence.
Though, we have already travelled a long way, nourished by few pathfinders but now
need to go for a voyage, where we can expect some more milestones to be set in
the coming future.
Thanks
and Regards,
Jasai
Mardi and Ganesh Manjhi
