COMMENTARYEconomic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 19 Discussions and incisive comments by Suresk K Reddy who meticulously read drafts of this commentary helped me bring it to its present form. Disha Nawani (
[email protected]) is with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. North-east Indians and Others Discrimination, Prejudice and Textbooks Disha Nawani School textbooks play a significant part in perpetuating stereotypes and prejudices about tribals, minority communities and other marginalised groups. The north-east states of the country and their people and cultures are very often not mentioned at all. However, the new NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) social science textbooks, besides being pedagogically superior, attempt to grapple with the real lives of people and sensitise and help children to critically engage with issues of diversity, inequality and discrimination. T he lynching and subsequent death of Nido Tania, a college stu- dent from Arunachal Pradesh in New Delhi, and more recently, the vio- lence against six residents of Gurgaon who hailed from the north-east, leading to two of them losing their hearing are among a spate of such incidents which re- peatedly remind us of the deeply divided nature of Indian society. Our society is not just stratified but actively nurtures prejudices. In an effort to understand such behaviour, this article makes a mod- est attempt to locate a significant part of this problem in experiences of our school- ing, especially textbooks. Stereotyping Others It is important to understand the rich- ness of the Indian social fabric and the location and importance of caste, class, region, religion and gender in under- standing it. However, the manner in which our education system is orga ni- sed, the curricula framed, policies formulated and textbooks written often highlights not just the “distinctiveness but separateness” of those who are diffe rently (often disadvantageously) placed. Stereotypes about weak girls, ignorant villagers, shrewd city dwellers and certain lazy, superstitious and dirty caste and community groups are often promoted unabashedly in our homes, propagated by the media and surrepti- tiously reflected in textbooks. Tribals in India find themselves espe- cially targeted as far as misconceptions are concerned. In the eyes of non-tribals, all tribals constitute a homogeneous group and the fact that each tribe is only partly defined by habitat and geography but essentially by social, cultural, lin- guistic and religious distinctiveness is rarely acknowledged. This ignorance is perpetuated to a large extent by our textbooks. For example, while school history textbooks are replete with histories of other civilisations and socie- ties, there is hardly anything on the histo- ry of a large section of our society, espe- cially the north-east. Therefore, it is not surprising that the people of the region feel alienated from the rest of India and the rest of Indians treat them as outsiders. Celebrating Right Values The Preamble to the Constitution, the National Policy of Education 1986 and all other important policy documents reiterate the need to provide an equita- ble, quality education for all children. Unfortunately, however, most of these values, often seen as slogans on school walls or even in the prefaces to school textbooks, remain mere rhetoric and schools continue to be potential sites for inequalities to be perpetuated. Schools thus by no stretch of imagination are “neutral egalitarian spaces” where all children are treated with respect and dignity but sites where their identities are reconfirmed, ensuring the status quo of a hierarchical and unequal society. Inclusion and Diversities Textbooks by virtue of occupying an indispensable position in most Indian classrooms are rarely ever questioned by those who read them and those who use them to teach. Even though the central pegs of our education system are the cur- riculum (even syllabus), pedagogy and examinations, the first is rarely ever seen by teachers, leave alone students. Nor do they really check the syllabus. The only tangible and substantial material that reaches students and teachers is the text- books and because the questions asked in exams often replicate questions given in these books, it becomes the only teaching/ learning resource for everybody. Analyses of school textbooks in differ- ent subjects show the ways in which they either remain silent about knowl- edge, experiences and world views of several communities living in India or blatantly misrepresent and denigrate them. Not just the language but the il- lustrations that the books use reflect prejudiced notions about them. For ex- ample, women are shown as unintelli- gent and meek, men as achievers and intelligent, poor people as inefficient COMMENTARY June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 20 and lazy and the middle class as hard- working and in respectable professions. Hindus are over-represented while other religious communities are portrayed in stereotypical roles, clothes and even names. This selective presentation of communities in textbooks thus: • Conveys a generalised, fuzzy and homogenised understanding of the other. • Juxtaposes the other in a way such that it pales in comparison with the “norm” and appears “less adequate”. • Subtly conveys a message that if the other “seeks to belong” then it must adapt to the dominant culture. • Provides fertile ground for misconcep- tions to grow and prejudices to flourish. If one examines the textbooks, partic- ularly social science ones, one rarely comes across any proper, leave alone ad- equate, representation of the diversity of tribal cultures and lives. Some people live in the forest areas. They have their own life style, language, culture and traditions. They have a limited contact with the urban so- ciety. As these people live in jungles and have a unique life style, they are called ‘Adivasis’... The needs of the tribal people are limited. They depend on nature to fulfil their limited needs (Social Science textbook, Class 6, Madhya Pradesh (MP) Rajya Shiksha Kendra, 2013). Questions such as, “give four charac- teristics of the tribal people” also highlight the supposed peculiarities of tribals, as against non-tribals. The way tribals have been presented here, would lead one to imagine that all tribals live in forests only, have limited needs and are entirely dependent on nature. Chapters like, “We Are Proud of Them”, for instance in Ratna Sagar’s “My Big Book of Social Studies” for Class 5, 2007, does not find mention of any north-eastern scholar, artist or activist. Similarly a chap- ter on “Our Festivals” from Class 3 Envi- ronmental Science (EVS) textbook from MP, 2013, is restricted to festivals ranging from Holi, Diwali, Dussehra, Eid, Christ- mas to national festivals. MP incidentally is also home to a large number of tribes, cele- brating a variety of festivals, which do not find representation in generic chapters of this kind. It is another matter that most of these textbooks are also pedagogically weak and present a stilted picture of reality. Festivals bring joy and happiness in our life and teache how to live life. These festivals help us promote goodwill and brotherhood. We should celebrate festivals in such a way that others feel equally happy specially those who are socially and financially weak (sic). Way back in 1993, the Yashpal Commit- tee Report, while analysing the burden on schoolchildren, showed the way in which textbooks totally alienated millions of chil- dren, particularly from rural and tribal contexts, by their skewed representation of an urban, middle class child’s way of life. This was reiterated by the Public Re- port on Basic Education of 1999: In case of tribal children this alienation is severe, since their very existence and iden- tity is portrayed ambiguously and problem- atically. In a textbook for Class 6, questions about ‘where in the state are tigers found? were framed in exactly the same way as ‘where are tribals found?’ No effort was made to even semantically differentiate between where people are found and where people live. No tribal children, and no tribal names, ever appear in the textbooks. While textbooks (both government and private), prepared at the national level, have largely remained silent about depicting diversities in different states, the books prepared by State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) besides emulating books pre- pared by the National Council of Educa- tional Research and Training (NCERT) insert a few local names, festivals and places or have separate chapters on the state’s geography, history and people. For example, English Reader (Class 8, SCERT, Chhattisgarh 2006) talks about Teejan Bai, a Pandavani folk artist from the Paridhan adivasi community of Chhattisgarh. The geography Class 4 textbook published by the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research 2009, has a chapter on “Maharashtra” which men- tions various tribes in the state, the houses they live in, clothes they wear, food they eat and areas of their settle- ment, etc. Similarly, the SCERT, Naga- land developed its textbooks for Classes 1-7 in 2010 with the objective of making them more relevant to the social lives and culture of Naga children. In these books, one can see local names such as Lima Jamir, Moa, Atu, Yanger and Lime- ro, a description of the clothes they wear, the special type of houses they live in and, division of labour in their s ocieties, etc. There are descriptions of cowrie and conch shells which Nagas use in their ornaments and log drums which they used to communicate, etc. They have detailed information on vari- ous tribes living in Nagaland such as the Ao, Lothas, Chakhesang, Pochury and Sumi, Changs, Sangtamas, Yimchun- grus, etc. There are also chapters on fes- tivals celebrated in Nagaland, its flora and fauna, mountains and rivers and Naga history, etc. Textbooks, besides being situated in the readers’ social contexts must also be developmentally appropriate and peda- gogically sound. Most of the state text- books mentioned above are densely load- ed with information, conceptually weak and rather simplistic in their assumptions. Meaningful Representation The National Curricular Framework (NCF) 2005 acknowledges the different sociocultural-economic locations that children come from and underscores the need to connect textbooks with them. The National Focus Group Position Paper (2005) on “Problems of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Children” besides recognising the problematic con- ceptualisation and execution of policies meant for such groups acknowledges the curricular and pedagogic challenges confronting the education of tribals and also the insensitivity of non-tribal teach- ers towards children from such groups. The textbooks developed by NCERT post-NCF 2005, make a sincere attempt to meaningfully represent the lives and knowledge systems of communities that are marginalised and that rarely ever find a place in textbooks. Efforts are also being made to present a nuanced under- standing of the actual lives that people lead and challenges they face. A variety of pedagogic aids like illustrations, nar- ratives, storyboards, cartoons, posters, pictures, songs, poems and biographies, etc, are being used to help children make sense of the world that they live in. Reflective in-text and end text questions and exercises do not expect students to locate and reproduce information but encourage them to sensitively and criti- cally reflect on several issues and ideas presented in these textbooks. COMMENTARY Economic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 21 The Social and Political Life (SPL) textbook, NCERT 2006 of Class 6 has chapters on “Understanding Diversity” and “Diversity and Discrimination” whose objective is to enable children to understand and appreciate diversity in its various manifestations. Rather than shying away from discussing prejudices and other contentious issues in society, they acknowledge their presence and support children to deal with them. Sim- ilarly, the textbook for Class 8 has two chapters on “Understanding and Con- fronting Marginalisation”. These books distinguish between the idea of formal equality and that of substantive equality and stress the need to move towards the latter. While the Classes 6 and 7 text- books examine the connections between discrimination and inequality through the childhood experiences of B R Ambedkar and Om Prakash Valmiki, these chapters look more closely at ways in which inequality affects different groups and communities by introducing the concept of marginalisation or exclu- sion from the mainstream and by focus- ing on dalits, adivasis and Muslims. Similarly, in the history textbook for Class 7, NCERT 2007, a chapter on “Tribes, Nomads and Settled Communi- ties”, shows the complexities of different caste-based and tribal-based societies and the relationship of conflict and de- pendence between them, which affects them both. There is also a mention of a north-eastern tribe, albeit not adequate, in this chapter. Likewise, a chapter on “Foods We Eat” in the EVS textbook for Class 3, NCERT 2006 gives a sense of the variety of foods that children living in different parts of India may eat – banana and drumstick flowers, crab, rat, lotus stem, red ants, besides rice and wheat. Most textbooks present the social and political lives of people in a rather sim- plistic, uncomplicated and uniform manner, and do not substantially ad- dress the social diversities or challenges and conflicts confronting people. How- ever, the new NCERT social science text- books besides being pedagogically supe- rior atte mpt to grapple with the real lives of people and sensitise and help children critically engage with issues of diversity, inequality and discrimination. Conclusions While stereotypes and prejudices against people like Nido Tania grow in spaces outside schools as well and need to be addressed at multiple levels, schools shape childrens’ thinking in sig- nificant ways. Illustrations from various textbooks highlight ways in which text- books are likely to affect their percep- tions about others vis-à-vis themselves. While “good” textbooks can facilitate a nuan ced understanding of the social world, a lot also depends on the compe- tence and sensitivity of the teachers to help children in this process. Since schools are the most important institu- tions for imparting formal education in modern societies and textbooks play a critical part in performing this role, it is essential that textbooks prescribed and used in schools are sensitively written and critically examined, so that they do not perpetuate “symbolic violence” against any member of the society. References Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) (1993): Learning without Burden: Re- port of the National Advisory Commission, Government of India, New Delhi. Position Paper on “National Focus Group on Prob- lems of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Children”, (2005), NCERT, New Delhi. PROBE (1999): Public Report on Basic Education in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).