VISWA MAITHRY GURUKULAM
Alternate Non Formal Education Programme for Tribal Children
From 1978 onwards around ten persons were working in Attappady area in Kerala, Palakkad district, for the protection of human rights and for the promotion of social justice. This was made flesh in the form of Viswa Maithry Gurukulam. This group personalized an egalitarian world view and fought ceaselessly against all types of social evils. On an evaluation of all these involvements, it was realised that the need of the hour is the retribalisation of the whole tribal community which has lost its genuineness. Such retribalisation was initiated through a non formal counter cultural education by the conscious promotion of tribal values, languages, eco-friendly cultivation and awareness in cosmic spirituality. A group of thirty children and youth between the ages of 7-18 from the local Kurumba and Muduga tribes was brought together in the Gurukulam organised at Dhundur on the banks of the perennial river Bhavani.
There are three tribes in the Attappady Hills adjacent to Silent Valley. They are Muduga, Kurumba and Irula. Irulas migrated here from Tamil Nadu in the 18th century. They live separately from the other local tribal groups without inter-dining and intermarriage. Muduga and Kurumba tribals are listed as primitive tribes in government records. Their dialect is a mixture of four languages – Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu; whereas the Irulas speak a dialect that is a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam.
Up to very recently they were subsistence farmers practising shifting cultivation via slash and burn, hunters and food gatherers. Their diet consisted of a variety of wild roots, leaves, fruits, honey, cereals and grains including rice, besides meat and fish. Pulses, maize, millets, paddy and plantains were the main crops grown by them. Land ownership was common. Land did not belong to them, they belonged to the land. Sowing, weeding, harvesting and hunting were all communitarian acts of worship and celebration accompanied by music and dance. And all produce was shared within the community and with whoever is needy. Tribal people are by nature and upbringing egalitarian and communitarian, motherly and feminine, non violent, living in the day, worshipping mother earth and nature friendly. They are not possessive, accumulative or exploitative. They are nature worshippers, animists and ancestor worshippers. Their supreme deity here is the top-most peak called Malleswara, Siva the Eternal Goodness. The Malleswara festival comes in February for a week and is called Siva Ratri.
Each clan within the tribe worships a special deity, which may be a special tree, plant or animal. They are believers in an afterlife and a benevolent God. They have a village administrative system and hierarchy. Their spirituality is one of surrendering to and relying on the bounty of nature and sharing generously what they get from it. Ancestral land is considered their sacred and inalienable habitat. Moving away from ancestral land is painful and equivalent to death of culture and identity.
In post independence India the policy of excluded areas was lifted and mainstream traders, money lenders, miners, migrant farmers and planters, forest contractors and officials, hydro-electric and irrigation dam contractors and workers marched into these areas. In other tribal areas of India this process had taken place during British colonial rule itself. This was followed by large-scale trade interventions, money lending, wage and bonded labour, land alienation, molestation of women, mixed marriages, religious conversions, displacement and cultural erosion. All this ended up in the loss of tribal land, culture, identity, self-respect, language, religion, customs, village cohesion and self-rule, habitat and economic security and the net result was alienation, poverty, debt, slavery, women’s oppression, flesh trade and displacement for most of the hundred odd crore recognized tribals and other 11 crore vagabond (nomadic and semi-nomadic) and denotified ‘criminal tribes’ in India.
In Attappady, both Malayalis and Tamils came from the plains of Kerala and Tamil Nadu as poachers, smugglers, contractors, politicians, bureaucrats, traders, money lenders, settler farmers and planters, mostly from 1956 onwards. The newcomers outnumbered the tribals and tribal-majority Attappady became settler-majority. All the public institutions of service, revenue, law and order are manned and managed by aliens so far as tribals are concerned. And they became totally dependent out-castes in society. When unequal partners enter into a contract or relationship it ends up in the exploitation of the weaker by the stronger. Borrowing money is another way of losing land. Any interaction with settlers often ended up in loss of land, cattle or goats for the tribals. This exploitation went on unhindered up to the 1980s when a prevention of alienation of tribal land law was passed in the state, but it has never been properly enforced to this day. Having no one or even the government to protect the weak tribals they are all reduced to becoming coolies on starvation diet, often having no work. Some of them have become helpers of underworld dons as smugglers, poachers, spurious liquor vendors, ganja cultivators etc. Their very existence has become endangered.
At the time of the starting of Viswa Maithry Gurukulam the literacy rate was 20% for the tribal population. Some 5% of them had completed secondary education. Out of them some 2% had found menial jobs as sweepers etc. 60% to 70% of the children joined the primary schools all run by the settlers. But the situation of total alienation forces at least 50% of the children to drop out from the schools. Viswa Maithry, guided by Father Mani Parampett, started taking care of the education of these drop outs.
Father Mani’s life aim is to work to prevent the aggressive intervention of the competitive greedy individualist mainstream society into the simple, God loving, nature friendly and motherly tribals. In his own words: “I promote the improvement of the tribal habitat, culture, value system, language and life styles more agreeable to the growth of life in abundance and joy.”
Conventional schools are teaching a mono-cultural curriculum meant to adjust, train and conform children to be useful in competitive, greedy, consumerist market society. It became urgent to sustain the tribals in their language, culture and in their total habitat through a counter schooling. Viswa Maithry Gurukulam organized an environment for the children to observe, research and learn about themselves, others and nature as a whole so that they live, love, play and enjoy in communion and community. They are helped to realize that only welfare of the whole can ensure true happiness of the individual. Reality is ultimately in process and growth and it can only be diverse. Building and living in harmony is the goal and ultimate goodness. Diversity is truth; harmony is goodness; happiness is beauty. This is the meaning of the Indian maxim: SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDARAM.
Tribal culture, language, lifestyle, names, art and play—all these are least promoted, nay they are considered mean and abhorrent, in conventional schools. In Viswa Maithry Gurukulam tribal children live in the atmosphere of a large tribal family or village. They speak and learn in their language primarily. They play their games, tell their stories, recount their own myths, perform their art and dance and music, wear their native dress, practise their manners and customs, and call each other by their native names. The boys and girls grow together as in a family. They have no teachers; only elders, uncles and aunts. A wide variety of interests and hobbies are promoted. There are no examinations, no competition, no demotion and promotion, no failure and no success. All are offered maximum possible opportunities, exposure and inspiration to observe, to research, meditate, learn and discern.
In the conventional schools children are considered empty vases to be filled with knowledge and information so that they can vomit it out during the examinations. Contrarily, Viswa Maithry (Universal Solidarity) considers the children to be like wells, deep with the waters of creativity. “We help children to draw as much of the water of creativity as possible from one’s own well, more and more inexhaustibly filled with creativity by observation, research, meditation, learning and discernment,” says Fr Mani. We tell the child, “You are your light,” “You are your master.” As said by Sri Buddha, your light is the reflection in your consciousness of observed, researched and meditated Nature with its rhythmic, evolutionary process of growth and change expressed in diversity, harmony and bliss.
Children are given the opportunity to learn various languages, that is, their native language, Malayalam, English, Tamil, and Hindi. Reading, writing and speaking practices are given. They learn mathematics, art, humanities and science besides various systems of music; they learn to play musical instruments, paint and draw. Training is given in tribal agriculture, handicrafts, sewing and embroidery, clay works, bamboo works, tending a kitchen garden, cooking, looking after goats and cattle, pet birds and animals, growing flower gardens, washing and cleanliness, housekeeping and traditional ways, art festivals, drama and public speaking, storytelling, study tours, facing a lot of visitors, participating in T.V. and radio programmes etc.
There is a very important training in martial arts given here besides sports and games. Here it is in Kung-Fu. This is a different improved version of Kerala martial arts called Kalaripayattu, according to its experts. The basic principle of Kalaripayattu, namely BALANCE, SPEED AND VIGILANCE are the same in the cases of Kung Fu and Karate too. What the tribals have lost most in the onslaught of alien cultures of greed, aggression and domination is self-respect and courage. One of the best means to regain them is through practice of martial arts, feels Fr. Mani. This is neither for aggression nor for self-defence but solely for raising the level of self-respect and confidence and achieving courage, the opposite of fear. Courage is the ability to keep steady and normal the heartbeat and pulse rate even in the face of impending threat and danger to one’s own life. Such courage alone will make one more peace-loving and non-violent in its deeper sense. Because fear is the source and the beginning of violence and conflict and tension, courage is the source and beginning of non-violence, peace and relaxation. Tribal parents and relations appreciate most this practice of courage and non violence through martial arts.
The teaching staff’s primary qualification is that they be tribal parents; the secondary qualification is education, care and concern for the tribal community and zeal for the promotion of tribal culture and identity. They are given short courses and coaching in child care, teaching, leadership, socio-cultural analysis, tribal movements etc. All the staff members are experts in agriculture, cooking, animal husbandry, fishing, traditional animal trapping, honey collection, traditional housekeeping and home making etc. They consider the children as their own. The children address them as aunt and uncle (Chinnavva and Chinnappa). They live with them, play with them, work with them, learn with them, eat with them, wash for them, bathe them, dress them, groom them, cook and feed them, care for them in sickness and in sleep. They make sure that the children are always kept neat, well dressed, happy, playful, relaxed and free. They never enforce any external discipline knowing very well that any aggressive disciplining is counter-productive. Children are never punished. They are helped to discern what is good and welcome, and what is not. The staff inspire and instruct the children for self-discipline and there is the least problem of discipline here though there are teenage boys, girls, and small kids too living here.
Through wisdom the children attain self-respect; through self-respect they attain courage and with all these traits the tribal children blossom with innocent warm smiles, the most beautiful flowers on earth. The children in the Gurukulam exercise an analytical capacity developed through self-esteem, attained through wisdom and courage, which mould their entity. Such a moulded child will never be weathered by challenges; he can never be defeated.
The architects of Gurukulam believe that life is a school, experiences are the teachers; nature is the text; sweat and pain are the spirituality. Love experienced through wisdom, revelation, freedom, peace and friendship is divine. This is the dream of Viswa Maithry.
Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu! (Let all in the world be happy!)
Jai Jagat! (Let the universe survive!)
Post Script: Alas, Viswa Maithry Gurukulam has ceased functioning. But its concept has enduring value and will continue to inspire those who would like to involve themselves in meaningful education.
Father Mani can be contacted at the following address:
Fr. Mani Parampett
Viswa Maithry
Kottathara P.O.
Agali, Palakkad district 678 581
Kerala
E-Mail: parampettmani@gmail.com