In Search of Gandhi

FRANK OPINIONS/ FRANK KRISHNER

In Search of Gandhi

The famous Ajanta caves in Maharashtra are worth a visit, but a few kilometres away, there’s a fascinating quiet place called Jalgaon. Here, located in a property called the Jain Hills, is a phenomenon that has already found echoes in distant north Bihar. But first, a story:

It was 1985. A farsighted industrialist wanted to set up a factory to manufacture resin, the raw material for PVC pipes. It was the ‘license raj’. So he needed a licence. The file arrived in New Delhi. The project was  accepted. All it needed was one crucial signature, that of the minister. The minister called the businessman to Delhi to discuss the deal. The ‘cost’ of the signature was 5 crore rupees. The man said that all his life he had accomplished everything on merit, and he had never paid a single rupee as bribe. He told the minister that if there was merit in the proposal , then there was no reason to pay the bribe. The signature never went on the file. Fifteen days later, a license was granted to a competitor. The man who refused to pay a bribe was Bhavarlal H. Jain, whose group became the undisputed king of PVC pipes a decade later.

This Gandhian industrialist, now chairperson of the largest irrigation systems manufacturing group in India, that has gifted the world one of the most amazing tributes to the Mahatma, the first ever dedicated multimedia Museum named ‘Gandhi Teerth’.

A walk through the museum takes about three hours. On entry, the visitor is handed an electronic gadget with a set of headphones. The guest can choose to receive the narration in Hindi or English. In the first gallery, ‘Wants and Needs’, the guest is confronted with a touch screen  and asked to make an ‘avatar’ of himself- to choose the house, clothes, and lifestyle he wants from a set of visuals. The next exhibit shows his face (recorded by the camera) and along with it his lifestyle and the how ‘cost-effective’ it is for Mother Earth. This is the first of eleven stages of the ‘Gandhi Pilgrimage’:  the childhood, influences, student life, journey to England, then India, then South Africa, then the return to India and Champaran and so on. Each gallery has surprises, experiences and new learning opportunities. Mahatma Gandhi’s school leaving results, for instance, is an eye opener. He didn’t even make it to forty percent! Paintings, sculptures, replicas of lifestyle items, actual artefacts used by Gandhi, and audio-visual magic that transports you to the sights and sounds of the late 19^th and early 20^th century: it’s an experience to remember and cherish.

But that’s not all. Before you leave, witness the work being done across India by different ‘Gandhians in action’, people using their skills and knowledge to make India’s villages work.

GANDHI 'EXAMINATION' FOR PRISONERS BY GRF

Gandhi Research Foundation, founded by Padmashree Bhavarlal Jain, (the industrialist in the story) is an international academic and research organisation that doesn’t limit itself to armchair philosophy. It is actively involved in helping surrounding villages grow organic crops, adopt water harvesting, improve the condition of their schools, and aspire to a better economic status through small income generation measures that will be linked to viable marketing strategies.

In Bihar, Bhavarlal Jain, through the Gandhi Research Foundation, has offered technical support to the Gandhi Shodh Sansthan in a sleepy undiscovered corner of West Champaran. Every week, scores of school kids from neighbouring schools go to this ordinary looking building to experience Gandhiji and admire replicas and material made possible by the GRF. They also learn to spin thread on a charkha. This is not all.

Several young people between the ages of 21 and 32 are already making their way to Bhitiharwa. They are educated, articulate achievers from across India, with one vision: to develop an environment friendly, humane, responsible and Gandhian approach to rural development in one of Bihar’s most backward districts.

Mahatma Gandhi, on 20 November 1917, had established his second basic school at Bhitiharwa. His development work was based on education, sanitation, and health. In his autobiography, he expressed his regret that his work in Champaran was left unfinished, because of the lack of committed local volunteers. It is just possible, that 95 years on, the youngsters of Bihar will rise to the occasion and by 2017, Champaran will show signs of a vibrant ‘gram swaraj’.

 

Author: Frank Krishner

Strengthening Values in Education

In ancient times, education considered the privilege of the priests and the ruling classes. The ability to read, writer and cipher ensured their dominance over the labouring classes and the peasants. The industrial revolution, and in particular the invention of the rotary printing press catalysed the downward dissemination of literacy.

Henry Steele Commager, said “Progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.” The need to spread the ‘light’ of education to the great-unwashed as a ‘fundamental right’ is not unconnected with basic capitalism and the need to expand markets and create wants.

The ‘values’ transmitted to early students were essentially ruling class values. The art of warfare, diplomacy, knowledge of epics that invariably extolled the virtues of the priests and the warriors. The ‘Public School’ in England, and the “Private School’ in America existed to prepare a privileged ruling class. The Missionary Schools which mushroomed from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries , were basically vehicles to ‘teach the natives their rightful place in society’ which basically served to grease the wheels of colonialism.

Today , we have a Constitution that declares us all equal.
But the education curricula prepared for the so-called ‘non-formal’ centres or primary schools serving communities of Musahars, Chamars, Bhuiyans, and other marginal castes and tribes, shows an absence of respect for their values and customs.
How many lessons are drawn from their own reality, their folk-lore, their customs? Yet we talk of ‘mainstreaming’ the backward communities.

In our text-books, is there a single text which lauds the work of Dashrath Manjhi? How many passages are drawn from the writings of Dalit authors? How many passages laud the dignity of labour? In our Language papers, do we ever have our children write an essay on “One day as a brick-layer” or “The contribution of scavengers to the health of our city”?

Do we praise equality, but teach inequality? Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, cleaned latrines. He broomed human excreta in an era where untouchability reigned supreme. He was upper caste and upper class. He taught equality and the dignity of labour by cleaning latrines. Gandhiji set an example in the teaching of values.

Let Parents and teachers live the values they teach. Global warming should be combined with a personal conservation of electricity. Can you teach cleanliness if you yourself throw garbage on to the street? Discipline should be taught by your own adherence to traffic rules, bank rules, standing in queues, waiting your turn.

Parents and teachers should live their values, educational values will automatically be strengthened.