What the brief life of Inder Meghwal tells us

What can one say about the brief life of Inder Meghwal, nine years old? The child was a student in a Rajasthan village school. Last month, he reportedly drank water from a pot reserved for an “upper caste” teacher. His teacher beat him so severely that he died in unbearable pain in hospital days later.

Later stories have variously suggested that there was no separate pot for the teacher’s water; that all the children and adults in the school drank water from the same tank in the school compound; that the child had been fighting with a classmate over a book, which is why he got beaten; that he had already had an ear infection for some time when he was beaten; further, even that there was no discrimination at all in the school where little Inder studied, or indeed in the village itself.

And yet everyone who understands the reality of oppressive social inequities can imagine the truth of what happened within that classroom. For little Inder was a Dalit child.

Last week a case was reported in Tumakuru district, Karnataka where an anganwadi helper had held a burning matchstick to the private parts of a three-year-old child. The child had urinated in his pants. In this case, too, the child was Dalit, from the Korama community.

Later reports added more details: the child’s mother had died of cervical cancer fifteen days previously; the child had been traumatised because of the mother’s illness and death; the parents had been workers in a coffee plantation in Chikmagalur; after the mother’s death, the father had returned home with his two children. Entrusted with their care, the grandmother was bathing the three-year-old child when she found the burn barks on his body.

Violence and cruelty to children

Multiple studies of corporal punishment across decades have described its negative effects on children, from poor self-image and lack of confidence to aggression and delinquency. Both the Right to Education Act, 2009 and the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 expressly prohibit all forms of violence and cruelty to children. Children need to be protected from any kind of physical, mental and psychological harm. The family and the school ought ideally to create an invincible circle of protection around the child.

The conception of childhood as a distinct early stage of human life is now a few centuries old. But even today, not all children are allowed the same ‘length’ of childhood, or even the same experience. Social inequities often persist within the classroom or the anganwadi, mirroring deep inequities in the world outside. In many cases, Dalit and tribal children are not perceived by their teachers as having the same innocence and need for protection as other children. Behaviours that should be regarded as normal for children at different ages — such as jokes, mischievous pranks, or even just fidgeting — often get the Dalit child or the tribal child disproportionately reprimanded or punished. This leads to the children feeling marginalised within the very classroom where they are supposed to feel loved, respected and supported in their learning journey. Eventually, children internalise the feelings of rejection. Some of them “drop out” — which is really a euphemism for being pushed out of school. What leads to this kind of dehumanisation of some children?

Schools were supposed to be part of the democratic project. They were supposed to provide equality of opportunity to learn. They were supposed to spark the social transformation that would reduce inequalities instead of perpetuating them. Why have they fallen short of fulfilling this purpose?

In 1991, in a classic study of the child and the state in India, the American political scientist and India researcher Myron Weiner described the real obstacle to children’s education in the country as being the result of a set of prejudices: the “deeply held beliefs that there is a division between people who work with their minds and rule and people who work with their hands and are ruled, and that education should reinforce rather than break down this division.”

In the three decades since the book’s publication, much progress has been made in terms of important legislation on school education, child rights and child protection. School enrolment has expanded greatly, especially at the primary level. But there is still much work to be done to bridge the social inequities that persist within the classroom.

What education means

Powerful answers to this challenge are to be found in the work of India’s great education philosophers and practitioners — such as Savitribai Phule, the trailblazing educator who dared to teach girls from all castes. Savitribai was so committed to her mission that she would carry a spare sari to change into at school — because she would be pelted with mud and stones along the way by narrow-minded opponents of her pioneering efforts.

For the poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, true education was a liberating process. His educational experiment at Santiniketan was built on this foundational principle. In Tagore’s words, “Education means enabling the mind to find that ultimate truth which emancipates us from the bondage of dust and gives us wealth, not of things but of inner light, not of power but of love. It is a process of enlightenment… It helps in the realization of truth.”

If education is about freedom, we should turn to the words of Gandhi, the greatest leader of the freedom struggle: “By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man — body, mind and spirit.”

Equally, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar emphasised the fundamental role of education for liberation: “Freedom of mind is the real freedom. Freedom of mind is the proof of one’s existence.”

In the words of the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, education must give the child “the opportunity to flower in goodness, so that she/he is rightly related to people, things and ideas, to the whole of life.”

In sum, it is clear that India’s education philosophers favoured alternate new forms of education built on principles of freedom and equality. These perspectives on learning are completely at variance with the paradigm of control and punishment that gets a teacher enraged when a child reaches her hand out for water.

The years before and during school

To begin to change the environment within the school, we must start by focusing on the years before school. Early childhood education should reach out to the most disadvantaged children before they embark on school education. Inclusive early childhood education should support the child’s social and emotional development, equipping them with the creativity, problem-solving and risk-taking skills that will help them to achieve and thrive later in life.

Within school, the place to start is with the everyday things that are supposed to happen at school — children eating the midday meal together, playing together, drinking water together, sitting together for a lesson, doing group work together. Children must learn to work interdependently, sharing their knowledge, abilities and efforts to achieve a common objective. Open-ended activities that draw on a range of skills can facilitate this process. Learning to work together is a valuable 21st century skill. Learning to regard each other as equal is an even more fundamental lesson.

Teachers play a key role in facilitating these processes. They need sensitisation and training in a culturally responsive pedagogy that can create a more equal learning space in the classroom. Teachers must be made aware of the negative impacts of labelling and stereotyping language. Teacher education must include sensitive classroom management practices that avoid shaming or quick-fix punishments, using instead a more empathetic understanding of the varying needs of different students. Language policies within the classroom should also help children whose mother tongue may not be the language of instruction. Everyday teaching practices should not exclude some children while supporting others to achieve.

A third part of the puzzle is the curriculum, which should be updated for 21st century skills. It should be made more relevant to the lives of marginalised children by incorporating and recognising diverse experiences and histories. Inclusive curricula and teaching and learning materials can help to reduce discrimination.

Teacher education should instil affection and respect for children, kindness, patience and the belief that under no circumstances can they ever raise their hand against a child. If violence is about power and control, the classroom should be an environment where power and control are left behind at the door. Learning should itself be an affirming, empowering activity. Violence in the classroom is itself a terrible thing; the only thing worse is when such violence is applied unequally.

Learning to respect and value each other

The steps suggested above require a level of focus on reducing social inequities that is similar to the focus on teaching basic literacy and numeracy. Just as it is essential for children to learn to read and write, they must also learn to respect and value each other. This learning will not only create a more equal classroom, but also build a more humane and equal society.

Finally, a word about the position of the teacher in the education system. Today, the teacher is at the bottom of the vast hierarchy of the education administration. If the teacher feels empowered, if they experience the uplifting feeling of affirmation and trust, only then can they in turn empower the child. If the teacher must create for the child “the opportunity to flower in goodness”, then surely the teacher must also be able to grow and flourish in that same soil.

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta is an IAS officer.