Teaching Gandhi & Ambedkar: The truths of deliberate ignorance.
Whom should the new India learn about and grow? M.K. Gandhi or Dr. B.R. Ambedkar? Shouldn’t the educators start teaching more of Ambedkar than of Gandhi? Or teach what both the Statesmen have contributed towards the development and future of this country, in an unbiased manner. Or rather continue with what has been taught as history for ages, forgetting and ignoring the often-unsaid parts of Indian history! Deliberately forgetting the true events and continuing appropriating the past and misleading the future as always.
94 years ago, on March 20th, Babasaheb Ambedkar walked to the public water tank/pond with fellow satyagrahis and drank water from a common property resource denied to the Dalit Untouchables. Mahad Satyagraha was a landmark event in the history of India, which can be regarded as the beginning of Dalit movements in the country against inequalities and untouchability. Nowhere in our textbooks have I learnt about the series of events which led to this satyagraha and the events that followed it. Like the way we deliberately forgot the tribal and countryside uprisings and struggles against colonial rule, our history has conveniently forgotten this too. It is high time for educators, especially schoolteachers to stop following the ‘traditional’ history textbooks and stop professing biased knowledge and thus creating generations of misled individuals.
The Gandhi-Ambedkar Debate and even more.
The Gandhi-Ambedkar debate is infamous. But how have we learned about this? What was taught regarding this in our history textbooks? In my high school classes, what we learned was that Ambedkar proposed separate electoral seats for backward classes, but Gandhiji who knew that this would bifurcate the unity of India as a nation, went for an indefinite fast and finally Ambedkar had to sign the Poona Pact repealing this. Is that what really happened? Is that all? Where have we ever taught about the undelivered speech “Annihilation of Caste” by Ambedkar? Where have we ever introduced the nuances of the issue? All we could do was mug up the names, dates and events.
I remember learning about ‘Lal-Pal-Bal’, the legendary trio who stood against the British and their other great contributions in the freedom struggle. But never was I introduced to the other side of Tilak who was firmly standing for communalism and casteism. Nowhere in social studies books did I learn about Jyotirao Phule who worked towards eradicating the caste system and providing education to depressed classes. I remember learning about ‘what is caste system’ but was never taught that “nationalists” like Bal Gangadhar Tilak stood against the abolishment of caste and believed every act towards this as a ‘Rashtriyata’ or Loss of Nationality. I was never able to learn and analyze that this continued in the nationalist movement and later in the next phase of freedom struggle came Gandhi and Ambedkar and the conflict continued.
Mahatma Gandhi: The myth and realities.
Leave aside the Gandhi-Ambedkar debates. It is unfortunate to see how Gandhi is represented in our textbooks as the savior of the Indian freedom struggle, conveniently forgetting who he really was and what he really did. I remember learning about Gandhiji being thrown out of the train in South Africa and from there on he started fighting against the British. Woah. Enough reason to start fighting against the imperialists. But I was never informed that it was not throwing out or racism that infuriated Gandhiji but the act of British treating Indians as equals to Black Africans. The appropriation was very well done, and the fairy tales of life are still being taught in schools in our country.
Nowhere in our history textbooks can we learn that Mahatma Gandhi really worked for the British Army and gave volunteer service during the British war with Dutch settlers in Africa in 1899. Yet the book portrays him as a godly man who professed truth and ahimsa. What was Gandhi’s stance on Caste? Was he even aware of the depth of damage caused by the caste system to the lower castes when he was strongly asking India to learn from its villages? Were we ever taught that the Father of our Nation always stood aside from the heinous caste system and feared that its annihilation would destroy his religion? Instead, all that we learned was about the childhood adventures and experiences of Gandhi and how he started experimenting with his life with truth. Unfortunately, all this was written by him, and we were never asked to go the extra mile or go finding the real story.
Arundhati Roy writes, “Ambedkar’s encounters with humiliation and injustice began from his early childhood. When Gandhi was serving in the South African War, Ambedkar was ten years old, living with his aunt and going to a local government school in Satara.” In school, he was made to sit apart from his classmates so that he would not pollute the classroom. Do any of our textbooks share this history of struggle?
“Caste has nothing to do with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know and do not need to know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is harmful both to spiritual and national growth. Varna and Ashrama are institutions that have nothing to do with castes. The law of Varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It defines not our rights but our duties. It necessarily has reference to callings that are conducive to the welfare of humanity and to no other. It also follows that there is no calling too low and none too high. “writes Gandhi in his letters to Ambedkar. “All are good, lawful and absolutely equal in status. The callings of a Brahmin—spiritual teacher— and a scavenger are equal, and their due performance carries equal merit before God, and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before man. Both were entitled to their livelihood and no more. Indeed, one even traces now in the villages the faint lines of this healthy operation of the law.”
It is all up to us to consume whatever Gandhi has written about his view on Caste, but we should never forget the atrocities done on human beings in the name of caste since the birth of Vedas up till now. Anyway, it is all up to us to research our own interest in these issues because none of our textbooks brings up these topics anywhere. The mugging up of appropriated events continues.
The cost of lies.
What does it cost for not teaching and learning a person like Ambedkar and his ideas for a better India? What does it cost for not really understanding and learning the caste system which is still the most devastating hidden apartheid in the 21st century, in a country like India? Yes, the cost is too high. We are creating generations of misled and misinformed citizens who in future evolve into oppressors and the oppressed. The number of crimes against Scheduled Castes (SCTs)/Scheduled Tribes (STs) saw an increase of 7% and 26 % last year. A total of 45,935 cases were registered in total which includes highly increasing rape cases, honor killings, cognizable crimes, etc.
The prevailing untouchability practices and discrimination in workplaces, schools, temples, and even in government institutions shows the withering of us as a society. The caste system in India is often described as the longest surviving social hierarchy, a defining feature of which involves complex stratification of social groups based on ritual purity. As Ambedkar has written, it is practically impossible and ridiculous to compare the caste system in India with the type of discriminations anywhere in the world. The caste system here is so rigid and complex it itself has evolved into a system of graded inequality. It is almost invisible. But it is so strong and omnipresent. This makes it hard to understand and deal with.
The only way to start learning about the caste system is to really start learning about it. Teaching Ambedkar itself is the best way out there. The formal education system has ignored him for ages. It must be the mission of educators who believe in equality to start learning and teaching about the caste system as well as the thoughts of Ambedkar in Indian classrooms. A real deliberate attempt is expected of them. The repercussions of not doing so can be the birth of more ‘not really mahatmas’ and much more counter-history preaching.
What we can do.
The consumers of the caste system always want this heinous system to stay. They are never going to deny its existence or admit their privileges. “I think it is untouchability more than anything else that is responsible for the denial of human rights to this group of people. In fact, untouchability is central to caste. I do not see untouchability as a social evil and to call it a social evil is to trivialize it enormously. It is and has been for a very long time an extremely sophisticated economic and political strategy for ensuring a perpetual pool of demoralized, cheap labor that has no sense of its bargaining power. This forced labor or free labor is not accounted for in the gross domestic product of the Indian economy.” (P Sainath, a writer on developmental issues).
If it was Tilak and Phule once, it became the Gandhi-Ambedkar duo later. In present-day India, the state itself is the proponent of casteism and discrimination. The oppressed classes and minorities are under considerable pressure to keep silent on the atrocities done to them. They are tortured, raped, and killed ruthlessly and the roots of casteism and discrimination in getting stronger and stronger each day.
The majority of the students in our classrooms hail from ‘backward communities’ and other minority groups. Isn’t it pertinent to teach them what they need to learn? They need to learn self-help, self-respect, and self-knowledge. Hence, what is the solution? Educating the educators itself is the first step towards this. Educators need to educate themselves as well as each other and identify the castiest within themselves and understand the nuances of how caste and inequalities are working around them at home, school, and communities. Designing better pedagogies where teachers decide what to teach shall be the next step. Ambedkar always believed in democratic curricula, which should be put together by teachers concerned, in keeping with the demands of the subject and the students. The ideas on education must change from rather learning for the sake of it, to learning because it affects them. Educators should evolve into facilitators rather than instructors of printed words. Let the children understand casteism and inequalities around them. Let them see how patriarchy works and what serious damage it does to them and their fellow beings. Let them understand how complex things are and what role they play in making things better. The focus should be on giving modern education rather than going back to spiritual awakening. Let them choose what they want. All that we as educators need to do is to give them access to unbiased knowledge. Let them learn that along with Dandi march something like Mahad march too happened and there are even more events and personalities who gave their thoughts and blood for the freedom that we enjoy today.
There is no one-way solution for this too. Like Ambedkar always believed, educating the masses is the only way to build a movement. It is up to the informed educators to decide whether to follow the syllabus that mandates to teach the appropriated history and hero-worships or to teach what the children need to learn from a very small age so that they can identify the oppressors and oppressed in as well as around them and thus by trying to replace a birth-based society with a value-based one.
Adithyan S
March 2021
Teach for India,Chennai.
https://teachforindiachennai130996299.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/teaching-gandhi-ambedkar-the-truths-of-deliberate-ignorance/
94 years ago, on March 20th, Babasaheb Ambedkar walked to the public water tank/pond with fellow satyagrahis and drank water from a common property resource denied to the Dalit Untouchables. Mahad Satyagraha was a landmark event in the history of India, which can be regarded as the beginning of Dalit movements in the country against inequalities and untouchability. Nowhere in our textbooks have I learnt about the series of events which led to this satyagraha and the events that followed it. Like the way we deliberately forgot the tribal and countryside uprisings and struggles against colonial rule, our history has conveniently forgotten this too. It is high time for educators, especially schoolteachers to stop following the ‘traditional’ history textbooks and stop professing biased knowledge and thus creating generations of misled individuals.
The Gandhi-Ambedkar Debate and even more.
The Gandhi-Ambedkar debate is infamous. But how have we learned about this? What was taught regarding this in our history textbooks? In my high school classes, what we learned was that Ambedkar proposed separate electoral seats for backward classes, but Gandhiji who knew that this would bifurcate the unity of India as a nation, went for an indefinite fast and finally Ambedkar had to sign the Poona Pact repealing this. Is that what really happened? Is that all? Where have we ever taught about the undelivered speech “Annihilation of Caste” by Ambedkar? Where have we ever introduced the nuances of the issue? All we could do was mug up the names, dates and events.
I remember learning about ‘Lal-Pal-Bal’, the legendary trio who stood against the British and their other great contributions in the freedom struggle. But never was I introduced to the other side of Tilak who was firmly standing for communalism and casteism. Nowhere in social studies books did I learn about Jyotirao Phule who worked towards eradicating the caste system and providing education to depressed classes. I remember learning about ‘what is caste system’ but was never taught that “nationalists” like Bal Gangadhar Tilak stood against the abolishment of caste and believed every act towards this as a ‘Rashtriyata’ or Loss of Nationality. I was never able to learn and analyze that this continued in the nationalist movement and later in the next phase of freedom struggle came Gandhi and Ambedkar and the conflict continued.
Mahatma Gandhi: The myth and realities.
Leave aside the Gandhi-Ambedkar debates. It is unfortunate to see how Gandhi is represented in our textbooks as the savior of the Indian freedom struggle, conveniently forgetting who he really was and what he really did. I remember learning about Gandhiji being thrown out of the train in South Africa and from there on he started fighting against the British. Woah. Enough reason to start fighting against the imperialists. But I was never informed that it was not throwing out or racism that infuriated Gandhiji but the act of British treating Indians as equals to Black Africans. The appropriation was very well done, and the fairy tales of life are still being taught in schools in our country.
Nowhere in our history textbooks can we learn that Mahatma Gandhi really worked for the British Army and gave volunteer service during the British war with Dutch settlers in Africa in 1899. Yet the book portrays him as a godly man who professed truth and ahimsa. What was Gandhi’s stance on Caste? Was he even aware of the depth of damage caused by the caste system to the lower castes when he was strongly asking India to learn from its villages? Were we ever taught that the Father of our Nation always stood aside from the heinous caste system and feared that its annihilation would destroy his religion? Instead, all that we learned was about the childhood adventures and experiences of Gandhi and how he started experimenting with his life with truth. Unfortunately, all this was written by him, and we were never asked to go the extra mile or go finding the real story.
Arundhati Roy writes, “Ambedkar’s encounters with humiliation and injustice began from his early childhood. When Gandhi was serving in the South African War, Ambedkar was ten years old, living with his aunt and going to a local government school in Satara.” In school, he was made to sit apart from his classmates so that he would not pollute the classroom. Do any of our textbooks share this history of struggle?
“Caste has nothing to do with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know and do not need to know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is harmful both to spiritual and national growth. Varna and Ashrama are institutions that have nothing to do with castes. The law of Varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It defines not our rights but our duties. It necessarily has reference to callings that are conducive to the welfare of humanity and to no other. It also follows that there is no calling too low and none too high. “writes Gandhi in his letters to Ambedkar. “All are good, lawful and absolutely equal in status. The callings of a Brahmin—spiritual teacher— and a scavenger are equal, and their due performance carries equal merit before God, and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before man. Both were entitled to their livelihood and no more. Indeed, one even traces now in the villages the faint lines of this healthy operation of the law.”
It is all up to us to consume whatever Gandhi has written about his view on Caste, but we should never forget the atrocities done on human beings in the name of caste since the birth of Vedas up till now. Anyway, it is all up to us to research our own interest in these issues because none of our textbooks brings up these topics anywhere. The mugging up of appropriated events continues.
The cost of lies.
What does it cost for not teaching and learning a person like Ambedkar and his ideas for a better India? What does it cost for not really understanding and learning the caste system which is still the most devastating hidden apartheid in the 21st century, in a country like India? Yes, the cost is too high. We are creating generations of misled and misinformed citizens who in future evolve into oppressors and the oppressed. The number of crimes against Scheduled Castes (SCTs)/Scheduled Tribes (STs) saw an increase of 7% and 26 % last year. A total of 45,935 cases were registered in total which includes highly increasing rape cases, honor killings, cognizable crimes, etc.
The prevailing untouchability practices and discrimination in workplaces, schools, temples, and even in government institutions shows the withering of us as a society. The caste system in India is often described as the longest surviving social hierarchy, a defining feature of which involves complex stratification of social groups based on ritual purity. As Ambedkar has written, it is practically impossible and ridiculous to compare the caste system in India with the type of discriminations anywhere in the world. The caste system here is so rigid and complex it itself has evolved into a system of graded inequality. It is almost invisible. But it is so strong and omnipresent. This makes it hard to understand and deal with.
The only way to start learning about the caste system is to really start learning about it. Teaching Ambedkar itself is the best way out there. The formal education system has ignored him for ages. It must be the mission of educators who believe in equality to start learning and teaching about the caste system as well as the thoughts of Ambedkar in Indian classrooms. A real deliberate attempt is expected of them. The repercussions of not doing so can be the birth of more ‘not really mahatmas’ and much more counter-history preaching.
What we can do.
The consumers of the caste system always want this heinous system to stay. They are never going to deny its existence or admit their privileges. “I think it is untouchability more than anything else that is responsible for the denial of human rights to this group of people. In fact, untouchability is central to caste. I do not see untouchability as a social evil and to call it a social evil is to trivialize it enormously. It is and has been for a very long time an extremely sophisticated economic and political strategy for ensuring a perpetual pool of demoralized, cheap labor that has no sense of its bargaining power. This forced labor or free labor is not accounted for in the gross domestic product of the Indian economy.” (P Sainath, a writer on developmental issues).
If it was Tilak and Phule once, it became the Gandhi-Ambedkar duo later. In present-day India, the state itself is the proponent of casteism and discrimination. The oppressed classes and minorities are under considerable pressure to keep silent on the atrocities done to them. They are tortured, raped, and killed ruthlessly and the roots of casteism and discrimination in getting stronger and stronger each day.
The majority of the students in our classrooms hail from ‘backward communities’ and other minority groups. Isn’t it pertinent to teach them what they need to learn? They need to learn self-help, self-respect, and self-knowledge. Hence, what is the solution? Educating the educators itself is the first step towards this. Educators need to educate themselves as well as each other and identify the castiest within themselves and understand the nuances of how caste and inequalities are working around them at home, school, and communities. Designing better pedagogies where teachers decide what to teach shall be the next step. Ambedkar always believed in democratic curricula, which should be put together by teachers concerned, in keeping with the demands of the subject and the students. The ideas on education must change from rather learning for the sake of it, to learning because it affects them. Educators should evolve into facilitators rather than instructors of printed words. Let the children understand casteism and inequalities around them. Let them see how patriarchy works and what serious damage it does to them and their fellow beings. Let them understand how complex things are and what role they play in making things better. The focus should be on giving modern education rather than going back to spiritual awakening. Let them choose what they want. All that we as educators need to do is to give them access to unbiased knowledge. Let them learn that along with Dandi march something like Mahad march too happened and there are even more events and personalities who gave their thoughts and blood for the freedom that we enjoy today.
There is no one-way solution for this too. Like Ambedkar always believed, educating the masses is the only way to build a movement. It is up to the informed educators to decide whether to follow the syllabus that mandates to teach the appropriated history and hero-worships or to teach what the children need to learn from a very small age so that they can identify the oppressors and oppressed in as well as around them and thus by trying to replace a birth-based society with a value-based one.
Adithyan S
March 2021
Teach for India,Chennai.
https://teachforindiachennai130996299.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/teaching-gandhi-ambedkar-the-truths-of-deliberate-ignorance/
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