This month, we were asked to weigh in on whether we need to talk more
about racism in education. I find myself itching to limit the entire post to
one word: yes. It feels so obvious, so desperately apt. Instead, without trying
to substitute racism for casteism, or suggesting that they're interchangeable, I'm
going to use this space to, among other things, talk about the equivalence
there exists between the structuring principles of race and caste, and how this
affects the education system in India. I have to start, however, by going back
to an idea I started playing with a few posts ago: an education that does not
equip one to challenge the inequalities hardwired into the world we've created is
no education at all. Education is political: if it does not challenge status
quo, it reinforces it.
Who gets to study is no longer a question we ask in India - at least on
paper, everyone does. With the passage of the RTE Act (Right of Children to
Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009), education is now a fundamental right
for all children in India between the ages of 6 and 14. Where do they get to
study, though? For how long? How far must they travel to access the nearest
school or college? How many teachers actually show up at aforesaid school or
college? What are their qualifications (and no, I don't mean merely degrees:
everyone knows there are several ways to acquire these pieces of paper)? Is the
school in question guilty of upholding caste norms in its seating arrangements/access
to amenities/treatment of students, regardless of whether we're talking about
rural or urban settings (because, increasingly, the contours of both ideas -
though especially 'rural' as a category - are being renegotiated, in sometimes contentious
ways)? These are the questions which ought to animate and inform public
discourse and policy decisions about the education system. Instead, the current
right-wing hegemons appear interested only in rewriting history altogether -
renaming roads[1],
cities, schools and other institutions; recasting ancillary figures on the
far-right like Deendayal Upadhyay as important 'national' figures[2], while suggesting
travesties like the fact that Emperor Akbar did *not* win a battle we know he
did[3]; suggesting that the RSS
had a role to play in India's Independence movement (mpppfffftt - it's tough to
not snigger at the thought of this bizarre inversion of historical facts) - all
so as to recast Hindutva as a principle foundational to the idea of India. News
flash: it simply wasn't.
India is rabidly racist - one has only to think of the horrendous
treatment we mete out to students from elsewhere, particularly ones from African
nations[4] - but how could we
possibly not be? Any nation that can stomach the principle of caste, which is the
most brutal 'classification' of human beings based on birth anywhere in the world,
cannot help but differentiate, and
differentiate repeatedly, on the basis of every parameter society can construct
in a desperate and insular bid to separate 'us' from 'them'.
Source: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/04/22/they-say-were-dirty/denying-education-indias-marginalized
Despite outlawing "untouchability", often written off by caste
apologists as the only thing wrong with the caste system; as the aberration of
what was once a just system predicated merely on the division of labour (and
not labourers, as Babasaheb sharply reminds us), India has never rid herself of
the scourge that is caste itself. The RTE might make it so that the children of
manual scavengers - the erstwhile 'untouchables' - may now attend a primary
school alongside their so-called 'forward caste' peers. But once there, if
they're made to (as Babasaheb himself was) sit-eat-drink separately from the
other children[5],
how is anything ever going to change? "Segregation, humiliation, and
violence,"[6]
as Harsh Mander writes: these are the lot of Dalit children who dare to imagine
that they can avail themselves of an education.
Nothing short of critical pedagogical interventions which would overhaul
what we consider to be the very purpose of our educational system, and the
resources to channel these interventions into more meaningful curricular
design, can help us change these terms of engagement. The system is broken (although
I don't think there was ever a time when it wasn't; education has always, in
some shape or form, been the preserve of a few - the Brahmins along the caste
axis; the elite when it comes to class - and has been responsible for ossifying
instead of challenging class/caste divisions). Any wonder then that it can only
churn out broken people like ourselves?
[1] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/renaming-aurangzeb-road-after-apj-abdul-kalam/article7604307.ece
[2] https://qz.com/876218/pandit-deendayal-upadhyaya-the-forgotten-right-wing-hero-whose-legacy-narendra-modi-is-trying-to-revive/
[3] Read
more here, in case this absurdity passed you by: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/maharana-pratap-not-akbar-won-battle-of-haldighati-rajasthan-history-book/1/1010616.html
[4]
This is only the most recent incident in a long, long list of ignominies: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/attack-on-african-students-greater-noida-xenophobia-nigerian-students-envoys/1/919276.html
[5] https://www.videovolunteers.org/caste-discrimination-keeps-dalit-children-at-bay-from-schools/
[6] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/harsh-mander-on-how-dalit-children-continue-to-bear-the-brunt-of-untouchability/article7923873.ece
