A day in my village

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Singh_R-Dhakwa-village.jpg” caption=”Students, parents and teachers for the new school in Dhakwa, India gather to celebrate its opening.
Click here for FULL size. Photo credit:Deborah McIvor”]Rama Singh joined McMaster in 1975 as an assistant biology professor and was recently elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His is the first in a series of first-person accounts we hope to publish on the Daily News to present stories from McMaster's diverse community.

During a recent trip to India, I had the chance to visit a new high school for girls in my village, Dhakwa. A trip to one's birthplace is always exciting but this was especially so as it was the first time that I would be seeing this new school, which I had helped to build. The school is named after Gandhi's wife – Kasturba.

For the building of a school, land donation is a prerequisite to obtain government approval, so my family and I offered our own land. The school is presently being run under a charitable foundation called “Mahatma Gandhi Foundation for Rural and Women's Development”.

It is my long-term plan to raise funds for buildings and slowly convince the villagers, those who can pay, to help pay fees towards the salary of the teachers.

The village has two government-run elementary schools, but until now there has been no high school. In addition, there are two madrasas for Muslim boys and girls that provide religious education. The nearest high school is nearly three kilometres away.

Girls from the village rarely finish high school, as parents make them drop out due to safety concerns. Safety is a big issue in India currently. The primary motive for girls' education is marriage, not employability. There is a saying that these days even a high school graduate in India wants a bride with a university education!

The new high school opened last July (2005), and already has 150 students ranging from grades 1 to 9. Eight female students are already preparing to take their High School Board Exam this year.

The reason for the swell in the student population is due to the mass exodus of students from the two madrasas. As the madrasa students are exposed only to religious education, their mothers decided en masse to move their daughters to the new secular school. The village's population is half Muslim, but unlike the other schools in the village, Muslim students constitute the majority in the new school.

The new school had to face the crisis to quickly find capable teachers, especially for the upper grades. Unemployment among university graduates is rampant, especially in the rural areas, American job outsourcing notwithstanding. Given that it is only a year old, the new school is flourishing.

I arrived in the village one evening this past February and was to visit the school the next day. A large number of villagers gathered in the evening and gave me a detailed description of how the school was built against all odds – opposition from the neighbors, other elementary schools in the village, the nearby high school which is run by the local member of the legislative assembly. (Neighbourhood rivalry is a thriving business in India.)

I was apprised with the details of the next day's arrangements. I had wanted to keep my visit simple, and unlike the visits from the politicians which are costly and turn the village life into a circus, I had requested that the school manager forego the big tent he was thinking of renting as well as the customary and rather excessive amount of flower garlands to which the Indian politicians have become accustomed. The gathering was mostly made of parents, students and teachers and we all sat under the pleasant mild winter sun.

The day finally came. I was taken to the school and found curious students in school uniforms. Approximately 150 men, women, boys and girls stood in segregated groups. The Muslim women, most of whom live under strict purdah (social separation from men particularly in respect of elders) wore black burqua with only their eyes visible. Hindu women wore regular dress. The burqua-clad women stared at me. Children ran around in spite of the teacher's repeated request to for them to sit down, and the men were pushing each other to exchange greetings with me. Since I knew most of the men from the village, I invited them to sit down, and extended the same invitation to the burqua women.

I gave a brief talk about my initial dream of opening a girls' school in the village and about teachers and parental responsibility to make it a success. I made liberal use of cross-cultural school systems and of my experiences in Canada. I spoke about Hindu-Muslim unity, using the school as an example of a successful joint effort. We talked about the possibility of the school being used for adult education, community functions, for a place from which to arrange a regular doctor's visit from the town, etc. It all sounded very good and, while I was careful not to make promises without their involvement, I was concerned about playing with their expectations. Why should they believe me? They had heard such promises from the politicians before.

The maulvis (religious Islamic teachers) were concerned about their madrasas now that the new school had poached their students. They had appealed to the Muslim families in the village to send at least one child per household to the madrasa to allow them both to stay open. I stressed the need for all children to go to school. I made the suggestion that religious schooling, if needed, should be arranged on Sundays. My suggestion must have made sense because I have recently learned that both madrasas have closed.

Afterward, a few of the mothers in burqua slowly approached me and talked about the safety of their daughters. They pressed me to erect a school boundary, hire more watch women, get better furniture. Safety concerns are the single most hindrance in the education of girls in rural India, and many parents accompany them to the schools. I like to think that was the mothers' way of telling me they were very pleased with the new school.