Abstract

The study Lodha parents perception towards access to formal education of children is a study of Sabarpalli hamlet of Dhaharpur village of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. The study aims to find whether the Lodha parents, both whose children are studying in primary and secondary schools in the village and in neighbouring villages and those whose children have dropped-out, perceive formal education as a medium for socio-economic betterment of the community as a whole. Lodhas are one of the three Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) of West Bengal and have a literacy level that is lowest in the state. The ethnographic study of a duration of 28 days tried to bring out the various aspects of Lodha life apart from the research objectives of the study which aim to bring out parents perception towards formal education, their role in accessing formal education and their apathy (if any) towards formal education. Conducting exploratory research, sample of 10 parents were selected out of a hamlet which has a population of 103 in 42 households. Both participatory and non-participatory approaches were used and data was collected through in-depth interviews conducted with the respondents and general observation during the stay. The study found that the Lodha parents do not have any apathy towards formal education for both their boys and girls, However, they view formal education as only a basic necessity to enlarge their worldview and to survive in the modern world. But, they do not view it as a window to livelihood due to widespread corruption in getting a job, money for which they can’t arrange. The major obstacle for accessing education after Class VIII is money which compels many Lodha parents to withdraw their children from school after education becomes charged. Prevalence of child marriage among Lodha girls is also a deterrent for accessing formal education as soon as they attain puberty. The inter-tribe and tribe-caste dynamics in the village is marked by conflict and employee-employer relations respectively. The political views of the Lodhas are based on the benefits they attained during the Left Front regime including land, employment and social upliftment to a certain extent. Not many researches have been conducted on the Lodhas and very few on the Lodha perspective towards formal education that is being thrusted upon them by the Bengali bhadralok through a top-to-bottom approach. However, this study may not be treated as an addition to the subaltern studies as the researcher himself is a Bengali bhadralok and can never truly bring out the real stories of the Lodhas until a Lodha researcher him/herself decides to speak for themselves.

Introduction

The tumultuous history of the Lodhas has a profound effect on their present state of mind and perception towards issues they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. The enactment of the Criminal Tribes Act in 1871 by the British Raj in the Bengal presidency changed the lives of the forest-dependent Lodhas forever. The foreign rulers had made them the ‘born-criminals’ who found no amnesty in the colonial law (Bhowmick, 1963). This made the Lodhas committing crimes for a living. However, with the end of the British rule resulting in the independence of India and subsequent change of Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 to Habitual Offenders Act in 1952, the situation minorly improved for the former ‘Criminal Tribes’, now denoted as the ‘Habitual Offenders’ (Bates, 1995).

In 2008, the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNSNT) of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment recommended extension of reservations in educational institutions and jobs accorded to the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes to the Denotified Tribes and Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic tribes. They also urged to extend the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 to the above mentioned peoples. This came after the National Human Rights Commission, in February 2004, recommended the repeal of the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952 and the United Nations Committee for Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recommended the same in 2007, which was duly implemented by the state. Several state governments have initiated schemes and taken several other steps for the upliftment of the communities (Ghatak, 2011). The Lodhas may have, along with other tribes, got some benefits of the land reforms of 1979-85 initiated by the Left Front but that did not bring any phenomenal change in their overall socio-economic scenario.

In Sabarpalli hamlet of Dhaharpur village, the parents perception towards formal education only a state provision that is to be accessed as a basic duty and not necessarily leading to livelihood due to prevalent corruption in the system and their inability to arrange for the money to get in the system shows the major gap that the Indian state has not been able to bridge even 68 years after independence. The poorest of the poor peoples of the state — the denotified communities — still have to depend on the agrarian structure which makes them the service providers to the upper strata because of non-implementation of whatever less state welfare schemes due to the systemic discrimination and neglect by the ruling peoples due to social and political reasons.

Though the state provided education is being widely accessed by the Lodha tribe but only individual successes do not lead to upliftment of the entire community if the individual is unwilling to bring rest of the people up according to his/her strengths. The state-provided education is at best creating semi-literate labour working in the fields as farm labourers and marginal farmers. Only the better-offs can take benefits of the state education after Class VIII. Accordingly, most of the Lodhas feel that education is a costly affair for them to pursue even after it is charged and it is better to leave it so that they can earn more for sustaining their families. Such mentalities prevailed in societies deeply entrenched by feudalism.

However, West Bengal claims that feudalism has long been uprooted from its alluvial, laterite and mountain soils due to 34 years of Left Front rule. Had it been so prevalent as the Left claims, then the Lodhas would have diversified their livelihood horizon and ventured into fields where they never got a chance before. Even after the land reforms, the PVTG Lodhas have got very less land even by the standards of West Bengal, where land holdings among the people are lesser as compared to other states of India, mainly due to high population density.

However, the OBC Bengalis inhabiting the village of the study still own most of the land as was the scenario before the land reforms and their tillers continue to be the poor Lodhas, who used to work as tillers since generations, continue to do so even after the much hyped land reforms. Then what revolution did the ‘Parliamentary democratic reds’(1) bring when the people still are the way they were before and feudalism is kept intact, only to be covered by a bedsheet of ‘progressiveness’ of the people of West Bengal as a whole. The bhadraloks were and are still looking over what the oppressed want for themselves. One of the first works the Soviet Union did was to exile its kulak(2) population to Siberia and Far East so that their lands could be distributed among the real cultivators of the land. Even though the Left Front ruled a state in a democratic set-up, but still the lands distributed the landless has been nominal and the landed gentry managed to keep their assets extent to a great extent. In the case of Dhaharpur, the OBC Bengali Naths managed to retain their dominance of being Bengalis and also higher in the social ladder than the former criminal tribes, who now consider themselves as caste, by the modern phenomenon of ‘sanskritisation’ as put by anthropologist M.N. Srinivas (1952) or even better ‘bhadralokisation’ from their current chotolok status. By bhadralokisation, the author suggests that the dominant peoples in the corridor of powers try to bring about assimilation and uniformity for their ease in governance and here too, the Bengali OBCs have set examples which the Lodhas are more than eager to follow and replicate and finally move up the social ladder.

The Lodhas, however cling to the CPM for the land they got and hold the party responsible for whatever progress they have made in terms of education and development of political consciousness. The Lodhas, like other communities — both marginalised and dominant – have deep understanding of the politics of parliamentary democracy in special reference to the easternstate of West Bengal. Their thoughts about the issues surrounding them as individuals and the village as a community are highly logical and practical. However, they do not see any progress forward just with the help of education and see agriculture as a means to better their economic position vis-a-vis the other tribes — Santhals and Mundas — of the neighbourhood and the dominant OBC Bengalis of the village. A sense of competition works among the Lodhas when it is compared to the Mundas and the Santhals but they do not have any idea how to better their position as compared to the others in social and economic scenarios.

The present state government is acting the way the previous Left Front worked when it came to distribution of state welfare measures to communities or villages who do not support them politically. Either the peoples have to believe in their ideology, and more importantly, vote for them or risk getting sidelined from the linear lenses of the state. The one primary school for a hamlet of the 103 is the only pucca building in the village — apart from the Bengali house build at the end of the village — and the state provides kuccha houses in the Indira Awas Yojana scheme, which was ironically brought to provide cheap pucca dwellings to the poor of the country who cannot afford to build a pucca house. The failure to provide pucca houses to the Lodhas when they can do that to neighbouring Mundas drives home a basic question — Are people just votes in the largest democracy of the world? Does the state have no common practice of equality and just welfare for all peoples of its political boundaries?

The education of Lodhas also saw the rise in progressive thought, which was mainly initiated by the social workers and teachers from the Lodha community, including social worker and researcher Chuni Kotal. The Lodha teachers would travel on bicycle and on foot to spread education among the Lodhas, as they viewed spread of education as the only way to bring their community physically and psychologically out of the criminal tribe framework. And research suggests the teachers of the 80s and 90s still have a lot of influence on the community. However, political will of the Left Front was also needed for the social workers and the teachers to make them reach to the remotest Lodha villages in the entire district. The teachers however, did not follow conscientisation theory (Friere, 1972) but were in the state’s framework.

Hence, the Lodhas of Dhaharpur have perspectives about education as the way the state wants it to be. Bearing the subaltern theory by Gayatri Spivak Chakraborty, the research found that the state has not and will not in the near future let people start writing their own histories and speaking for themselves and not be written and spoken for by others. The Bengalis continue to speak for the Lodha PVTGs and formulating schemes and charting down the benefits they want the Lodhas to avail. The histories written about the Lodha-Sabars are also by the upper caste Bengalis. The teachers of the community, during their social work programmes could have written about the stories of the Lodhas from the bottom-up view but that did not happen. The researcher hopes that someday the term ‘Lodha’ or ‘Sabar’ deconstruct their identity the way they want it to be. That understanding of self would come only when the concept of education that will add to their own self is understood by the Lodhas themselves.

The researcher believes that it is then the Lodhas of Dhaharpur could understand whether they want to continue being as the service provider to the hierarchical better-offs or get a better deal from the state and compel it to formulate policies according to that. The educated Lodhas need to work more for the community and newer generations should forge together associations, NGOs and SHGs working for their betterment. The cultural aspects should get due attention by the state and the community’s culture should be presented at the international events like the ‘Biswa Bangla’ or World Bengal event of the current state government.

Apart from the formal education aspect of research, many researches could be conducted on the Lodhas to study several issues of their lives such as religion, myths and oral traditions and histories and of the language they are slowly dissociating themselves away from. Much more research and action following research is needed for the Lodhas, one of the poorest and most backward communities in the fourth most populous state of the country.

Parents’ Perception

Almost all the parents understand the importance of education irrespective of gender. However, they see education as a necessity to have a broader worldview. Many of the parents, who were themselves illiterate, did not want their children to be like them and hence give emphasis on their education. The illiterate parents’ urge to educate their children is much more than those of the literate parents. The Lodhas say this is a result of the importance of education that was emphasized by the Left Front rule to the downtrodden masses during their 34 years of rule in the state.

However, not many Lodha parents want their children to study beyond Class VIII. The main reason for this is financial inability to send them to senior secondary schools and then colleges. Also, they see education as a very costly affair with few returns and say that whether educated or not, their children have to work in the fields. Education for them does not bring employment opportunities as they have to pay a hefty bribe to get a government job anywhere. Implications of education for other jobs are not very much known to the people.

The Lodha parents did not find any instance of discrimination by the Bengali teachers at the school nor of any instances of untouchability practiced during preparation and serving of mid-day meals. The women who make the mid-day meals at the two schools are of Bhumij caste, which is again a caste born out of inter-marriage between the Aryans and the aborigines. Following the general pattern in rest of Bengal, the Lodha parents send their children at a very tender age of 6 or 7 for private tuition in the village and even a little far from their village. Usually, the mothers drop and pick up the children from private tuition but in some cases, the fathers also go when the mothers are not available or are busy. There is no discrimination based on gender and the parents want both boys and girls to be educated to the level that their outlook grows and develops. They however say that the boys and girls should know how to read and write.

All the facilities provided to the boys are being provided to the girls as well. However, many

girls are married off at the age of 16 or 17. However, if the girls want, they can continue with their education. Girls’ education is being emphasized also because it is the women who spend most of the time with the children and are more involved in teaching them.

Parents’ Role

The Lodha parents play the most vital role in accessing formal education for their children. They use verbal and physical force when necessary to send their children to school if they refuse to attend schools. The Lodha parents, apart from sending their kids to private tuition in the village and in the neighbouring villages, also sit with them in the evening to clear their doubts and make them do the homework given in the school.

The biggest headache for the parents is that they have to leave early for work by 7 or 8 am and the children go to school by 10 am. The mother makes the breakfast and leaves it for the children to eat and leave for school. However, many times the children bunk their schools and play in and around the villages and before the parents reach home, they come back to their respective houses pretending they just came from school. The parents also don’t get to know whether their children went to school or played around. Many of the parents also migrate to Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal and Bhadrak, Cuttack and Balasore districts of neighbouring Odisha to work as farm labourers in the lean months of the year. During this period, either the eldest girl of the house takes care of the younger children or the children are kept with the relatives in other villages, where the children don’t have their names registered in the local school. So, many a times the children miss out on education for a few months.

The provision of compulsory pass till Class VII in the Right to Education is another anathema for the Lodha parents. They say when the children know they won’t fail in any case, they lose the interest to study and then the responsibilities of the parents to make the children study increases manifolds. They, however, also find some good aspects of this rule in the form that due to this rule, many of the children, especially the girl children who earlier wanted to drop out of school after a failure in an examination, cannot give this excuse and drop out. They have to continue education till it is free.

View towards Formal Education

The Lodha parents have no apathy towards formal education and view it as a ‘gift’ of the state. Earlier, extensive adult education programmes were launched by the Left Front government, which selected a few educated Lodha youth volunteers to teach the elders in the evening at the villages. The Lodha parents’ view changed a lot during the Left rule which they view as a ‘golden period’ for the low classes. It is interesting to note that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has successfully created a class consciousness among the Lodha people and preached that education is the main gateway to betterment.

One Lodha woman, who was economically better than the rest because her husband was a truck driver, used to drop and pick up her children from a private English-medium school in the town of Narayangarh, some 5 km from the village, in a scooter which her husband bought for her for this purpose. This shows the growing aspiration of the economically-better Lodhas for better education and they view it as an opportunity and not just a basic necessity as the poorer Lodhas do. The Lodha parents do not view the coming of formal education as an encroachment into the indigenous knowledge of the peoples and hold that the indigenous knowledge of the Lodhas will anyways be transferred from one generation to the other but the formal education must be accessed and learned at the right age. The Lodhas of the hamlet the researcher studied lived in close proximity with the caste society of the OBC Bengalis (Nath caste) and also with Santhals and Mundas as neighbours. However, they do not speak the Lodhi language, which is part of the greater Mundari languages, but speak in Bengali in the Medinipuriya dialect that is spoken by all people in the two Medinipur districts of West Bengal. However, their mother-tongue, the Lodhi does not find place in the school curriculum may be due to the reason that the Lodhas are a very small tribe when compared to the Santhals and the Mundas in the state of West Bengal. Also, another reason behind this state apathy and lack of patronage might be due to the fact that the Lodhas have ‘lost’ their ancient script.

The lack of Lodhi language in school curricula may also be the reason behind the lack of interest of the Lodha students in the Bengali-medium school, which is why many Lodha children bunk schools and play around the village of Dhaharpur when their parents go to work as farm labourers in the fields of the Bengalis. However, this fact should also be considered while discussing this probability is that the Lodhas of Dhaharpur do not speak their original mother-tongue and converse in the Medinipuriya dialect of Bengali like other residents of the districts. So, if the education is not in their language, it should hardly bother them as they do not know their language and have adopted Bengali as their first language.

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End Notes

1. The CPM had accepted parliamentary democracy of India, thus discarding the armed struggle of classical Communism. Hence, they are also termed ‘revisionist’ by the Maoists and armed struggle activists
2. Rich landed farming gentry