Cultural genocide in our hills

To read the article as it appeared in the Times of India, please click on this link
Cultural genocide in our hills
or read the original word document below

Our children speak the language and imbibe the culture that we (and our living room flat TV) pass on to them, the same language and culture that we imbibed from our parents and grandparents. Along with language, each generation passes on knowledge of music, songs, folklore, traditions, religious practices and cuisine generation to generation and are kept alive for posterity.

Cultural genocide at our doorstep

We take this historical passing on of the cultural baton as a matter of routine. No one really gives it much thought. But imagine if our children were taken away from us at a young age of 8 or 9 and injected into a completely different environment where they get insulated from their parents, elders and their original way of life. If they were removed from the tapestry of their original culture and weaved into an alien fabric of life. In a few years they would have forgotten everything of their past and become assimilated into a different culture. Just three hours from Vizag a rich centuries-old “primitive” culture is being lost and we city folks have no clue about it. I talk of the Adivasi people near Araku. What is happening here is a cultural genocide taking place right under our noses. Here is the story.

The Adivasi way of life

The ghats are peppered with small hamlets and villages tucked into the forests. The Adivasis cultivate land, look after their animals and collect non-timber forest produce. They take their produce to the nearest weekly “Santha” every week and sell their produce and livestock there. Despite new roads being laid many villages are not accessible except by foot. It is a hard life. There is plenty of manual work and the produce is just enough to feed the family and generate a few extra rupees to run their household. In spite of all the difficulties these folk will not exchange their lifestyle for anything else.

Leaving home

Small children start their early education in local schools near their homes and study there till 3^rd standard. In a recent phenomenon however, parents, most of who are uneducated themselves prefer to send their children to Integrated Tribal Development Authority (ITDA) run residential schools where the government takes the responsibility to educate, feed, clothe and provide medical care for the children.  The parents hope that by sending them to these schools their children will be able to read and write and build a better future for themselves. With these high expectations they make the long trip, with their meagre belongings, to drop their small kids at the nearest residential school and bid them a tearful goodbye.

A day in their school lives

At school they start their new life. Take a typical girl’s residential school near Araku. It houses, feeds and hopes to teach 500 Adivasi girl children. They have classrooms, dormitories, toilets, a kitchen and dining space. Children wake up at 5.30 am to the sound an insistent bell. Fifty or more children crowd around the few taps to get their bucket of freezing cold water for a toilet visit, teeth brushing and a shivering bath. Then they help each other plat their lice infested hair, put on their uniforms and have some coloured rice that the kitchen staff imaginatively calls “breakfast”. They assemble in the open ground and sing a couple of national songs before trudging off to their classes.

Almost all illiterate

Let us observe the 4^th and 5^th standard classes. Children are sitting on the floor hunched like question marks over a stack of text books used like a makeshift pedestal. A text book is open before them. They are continuously copying the printed icons they see in their text books into a notebook, icons they do not recognize and cannot read. We begin to wonder where their teacher is and are told that there has been no teacher teaching this class for months. An impromptu research shows that they do not know how to read or write any language. Almost all of them are completely illiterate.

Body “pjent” mind gone

A scowling adult comes briskly into the class and takes attendance by reading their roll numbers. Okati! Randu! Mudu! … Iravai Okati! Iravai randu! … And so on.  One would think these children are nameless numbers. With every number the child rises a bit and shouts “pjent!” Then they go back to bent position. The morning passes like that. Occasionally when the students show signs of being human, a senior girl or a teacher from higher classes comes in only to reprimand and intimidate them into submissive silent zombies. We can’t help thinking that they once ran in their fields and chased butterflies, now they are like caged animals displaying signs of stress, pacing around the classroom when they can, tearing pages from their notebooks into little bits and throwing them around.  Some stare vacantly into the distant horizon from their classroom window.

A dreary life

At 12.30 they queue up for lunch. Flee infested dogs surround them. The sullen serving helper slaps a lump of hot rice into their plate followed by a very liquid sambar and a vegetable, most often a potato curry, no surprises there. They sit on a messy floor and eat hurriedly and wash up their plates and head back to class to resume their hunched position till 4.30 pm, when they then take a one-hour break to change out of their uniforms. By 6.00 pm they are served dinner because the mess staff want to go home. Their next meal will be 14 hours away next morning. After dinner they start their “study hour” in their classrooms which involves going back into question mark position over their book till 9 pm. Then they all go to their dormitories, layout their thin, narrow “durries” on the floor and go to sleep all curled up and shivering. Next morning will be another dreary day in their lives.

No play, no love

These kids have not used colour pencils, toys or craft work in school. The school has no playground games for them. Even a ball is hard to find. When they do sing they do so with folded arms and somber faces, the songs are only “desh bhakti” songs delivered in flat emotionless tones. Though they have a rich history of vibrant folk songs they are not sung in school. At home they learnt some craft from others, they helped their mothers, aunts and elder sisters to cook, they saw how farming was done, chased the chicken, cared for their livestock, played and danced with other kids, ran free in their fields and got love from their doting parents and elders. Now every adult addresses them with sharp rebukes and nasty words. On rare occasions a parent or grandparents who have not heard from their wards in a long time come to the school and wait at the gates to speak briefly to their children. They hug, hold hands and talk hurriedly. Parting is sorrowful; the anguish is clear on their faces. At an age when they need love, they are doomed to a dull, drab existence.

Loss of cultural heritage

At school they are taught Telugu, Hindi and English and but cannot read or write in these languages. Languages such as Adivasi Oriya, Kond, Kyui and Valmiki that they spoke at home are not taught in school. Though there are text books in some of their ethnic tongues they are not in the syllabus. Consequently the entire generation of residential students are losing touch with their own beautiful old ethnic languages suited to describe their native living environment. Along with their language they are forgetting their village games, their cuisine, their songs, their farming techniques, their medicinal plants, the flora and fauna of their village, their crafts, and their rituals. At the same time, like a Night Shyamalan genre movie, the villages are emptying themselves of children in the very years when they bring most joy to the community. Modifying the school syllabus, recruiting and motivating adequate teachers for the lower classes are of paramount importance. The school staff and teachers are paid handsomely from our tax and cess money but are reluctant to take on any responsibility. The management system is broken and needs fixing. But that is another story and it will be told.