How do you help children from disadvantaged families and regions get a decent education? Bring education to children or take children to education? Here are three examples - two current and from within India and one from history and from outside India - to understand the issues at stake.
Nearly four decades ago Sathyanarayanan Mundayoor, a young Malayali working as an income-tax inspector in Mumbai, gave it all up and travelled across the country to Arunachal Pradesh to work as a school teacher. Now 65, fondly known as Uncle Moosa (the pen name he used while writing a children's column), or Uncle Sir in the community he has made his own, he is credited with helping build the Lohit Youth Library Network. Civil Society has featured his story in its annual "Hall of Fame" exercise, which honours those who use their knowledge and innovation to improve neglected lives.
Schools run by the Vivekananda Kendra, for which Uncle Moosa - who has a master's in linguistics - works have libraries but his bit was to place them in the middle of communities so that they become cores around which grow the love of books, education and a sense of being together. It all began nearly two decades ago at Etalin in upper Dibang Valley but has grown in erstwhile Lohit district, now split into three. There are now 13 of them.
The libraries try to do more than just store books. There is storytelling, book reading and staging of skits, and because the idea is to make books a part of children's lives, they sometimes take books home during vacations. The libraries are small, makeshift, some petering out and others taking root and growing. They are helped along by reader activists who are usually girls nearing the end of schooling. Materially they survive on donations made to the Vivekananda Trust in Mysuru but critically, there is an umbilical cord tying them to the communities around them.
The second story, diametrically opposite in its essence from the heartwarming story of Uncle Moosa, was carried by Outlook as a long investigative report. Over a year ago (15 June 2015) 31 young tribal girls were taken from Assam to Gujarat and Punjab by Sangh Parivar organisations to give them education. Their poor parents had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. Affidavits signed by them giving consent were forged; signatures were in English when they were mostly illiterate or did not know English. Not having heard from their children in a year, they are highly distraught and totally uncertain about when they will be able to see their children again.
The whole action breaks a key law, Juvenile Justice Act, meant to prevent trafficking in children, and also a Supreme Court order resulting from investigations into Christian organisations seeking to take children from Assam to Tamil Nadu. Now Sangh Parivar organisations are flouting the same law and court order with impunity.
On the train with the girls reaching New Delhi railway station, the group, on a tipoff, was intercepted by Childline Delhi and the girls taken to Pahargunj police station. However, the group was allowed to proceed on an order from Child Welfare Committee, Surendranagar, Gujarat. In a few days, the Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights termed the action "child trafficking" and against the Juvenile Justice Act. It directed the Assam police and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to restore the children to their parents.
Simultaneously, Gujarat Samachar reported that 20 girls who have been orphaned in the Assam floods have been adopted by Saraswati Sishu Mandir in Halvad. Of course, the girls are not orphans. A team from Childline Patiala visited a home in the city housing 11 of the girls to find it running illegally and the girls there living in poor conditions. The group was threatened and intimidated by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers. Over a year down the line, the 31 girls have still not returned to their families.
Runumi Gogoi, chairperson, Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, says, "If they want to educate the girls…why not undertake this noble cause in Assam? Why do they have to be taken to Punjab and Gujarat? It's even more bewildering how these girls are not able to meet their parents, talk to them, if they are being taken away for education." Theba, father of one of the girls, says, "We only want my daughter to study. Don't the poor have the right to aspire to that without losing their children? How will Sewa Bharati build the rashtra by creating despairing parents like me who will die for not being able to meet their children?"
Now the international precedent - Australia's Stolen Generation. In the late 19th and 20th century, till the sixties, Australian authorities and the church removed mostly mixed race children from their aboriginal families under acts of Parliament. One reason given was child protection; aboriginals were dying out and there was resentment towards mixed race children among them. Every effort was made to make these children under foster care forget their language, culture and identity so that they were properly assimilated and adopted Anglo values.
Led by historians and propelled by aboriginal and white activists, the story began to come out in the latter part of the last century. Artists, musicians and film makers gave poignancy and pathos to the human cost that the practice extracted. Through the eighties, public awareness over the issue grew and several state parliaments passed formal apologies to the aboriginals affected. 26 May 1998 was observed as the first National Sorry Day with over a million people attending reconciliation events across the country. The next year, the federal Parliament passed a motion of "deep and sincere regret over the removal of aboriginal children from their parents." Prime Minister John Howard said the stolen generation represented "the most blemished chapter in the history of this country."
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