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Devadasi Children in Schools
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december 14, 2013 vol xlviII no 50 EPW Economic & Political Weekly4
LETTERS
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Personal Experience of Discrimination
I know the pains of being excluded. In the mid-day meal scheme in our
school we (dalit children) were made to sit away from the Reddy and backward class children. Our only task was to collect fi rewood for making the upma. We were not even allowed to go any-where near the cooking place. Our class-mates used to call us in derogatory terms like “Areeh!!”, whereas we had to call them by their proper names only. For in-stance, a Reddy girl’s name is Meenakshi, we had to call her Meenakshamma, whereas she would call me Neelagaa (my name is Neelaiah). My elementary schoolteacher was a brahmin. He was a very good teacher, but he would never address the issue of social exclusion in the school.
My father was a bonded labourer. My father’s landlord’s son, Surendra, was my classmate. That fellow used to always say in the class that I was his servant’s son (“Neelagaadu is our Jeetagani Koduku”). I was a bright student in my class. But that merit never helped me to come out of caste oppression. During those days I was the only dalit to fi nish class 6 and go beyond, whereas my dalit friends had to become school dropouts. From the primary school I went to a Christian boarding home where caste inequality was not present, but in the school we were looked down upon by the non-hostel students.
For my college, I studied in the Babu Jagjeevan Ram College, Hyderabad where there was no issue of caste exclusion, thanks largely to the late Raja Narsimha, our college’s chairman, who was very strict in these matters and would not allow any discrimination. When I entered the university for my postgraduation, I saw a list of gold medallists in the department. There was not even a single dalit name on the list over so many years. That day I decided that I must get the gold medal, not for my sake but for the pride of my community. I always used to be fi rst in the class. However, in the university, I missed my gold medal just because I am a dalit. There was
competition between me and one domi-nant caste man for the gold medal and our casteist professors saw to it that I do not get the gold medal. Had I got that medal I would have settled down as a university teacher myself and one day become a professor. But, looking back, I realise that I would have lost this great opportunity of working with my com-munity to address all forms of untouch-ability practices, stop dedication of our daughters and sisters as devadasis and fi ght for accessing the entitlements of the oppressed and exploited dalits.
My thanks to EPW for carrying the article “What It Means To Be a Dalit or Tribal Child in Our Schools: A Synthesis of a Six-State Qualitative Study” (2 No-vember 2013) by Vimala Ramachandran and Taramani Naorem.
Jyothi NeelaiahHyderabad
Comment on the website
Devadasi Children in Schools
I want to congratulate Vimala Rama-chandran and Taramani Naorem for
their EPW article “What It Means to Be a Dalit or Tribal Child in Our Schools” (2 November 2013) which has addressed a very important issue.
In this context of discrimination faced by children in schools, I would like to bring it to the notice of EPW readers the discrimination faced by children of devadasis in schools. There are around one million devadasis in India; about 90% from the dalit communities and lower segments of the backward classes. Compared to about two decades ago when I started working with my sisters and daughters (devadasis) in Andhra Pradesh, presently most of the devadasis realise the importance of education for their children, especially the girl child’s education. Every year the government comes up with mass-enrolment campaigns in schools for non-schoolgoing children and school dropouts. We participate in this campaign with great interest and get our children (devadasi children) admitted in schools.
However, problems start right from the admission itself. First thing the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 14, 2013 vol xlviII no 50 5
LETTERS
Web ExclusivesThe following articles have been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives section of the EPW website. They have not been published in the print edition.
(1) Glimpses from the Past: Export Strategy for the Take-off (1963) – Manmohan Singh
(2) The Transformation of Charitable Hospitals – Madhurima Nundy
(3) Release of Bt-Brinjal in Bangladesh: A Threat to the Region – Tushar Chakraborty
Articles posted before 7 December 2013 remain available in the Web Exclusives section.
school authorities insist on is the father’s name. Though we try to educate them about the devadasi system, they never like to listen to us. This is a very embar-rassing situation for both the mother and particularly the child. There have been instances where the insensitive teachers asked the child “How have you been born without a father?”. The Govern-ment of Andhra Pradesh has published government order number 139 empha-sising that only the mother’s name is needed during admission of children in schools. Unfortunately, this order remains a piece of paper and has not percolated to the local administrations of the schools.
Let us all collectively fi ght for elimina-tion of all sorts of discrimination in schools which is a foundation for the future responsible citizens.
Grace Nirmala MallelaComment on the website
Bridging the Gap
With the rising profi le of Indian foreign assistance abroad, its critics
and supporters are debating the domes-tic factors and the role of public opinion in framing this aspect of India’s foreign policy. Critics adopt a high moral ground and ask, how can India pursue its foreign assistance programme abroad when one-fourth of the people in India are still poor? In response to these critics, P S Raghavan, special secretary at the development partnership administration of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), in a public lecture in January this year, pointed out that India’s foreign assist-ance programme is within the ambit of South-South cooperation. It was kick-started at a time when India was at a nascent stage of economic development and that it took off soon after her own independence. Although this debate is not settled yet, public dialogue on the subject has recently started in India, with the EPW also carrying an article by Supriya Roychoudhury “India’s Exter-nal Aid: Lessons and Opportunities” (7 September 2013).
Unlike aid agencies across the world, which aim to raise public awareness about the role of their foreign assistance abroad,
the Indian foreign policy establishment has so far shied away from entering into this public dialogue. After all, gaining public support for their work is a necessary task that all aid administra-tions perform, and they will have to in India too.
All aid agencies compete for public resources with institutions that have a domestic development mandate, and they have a tough time arguing in favour of budgetary allocations that are to be spent abroad on the welfare of non-citizens. In most countries public opinion surveys and research by aid agencies, independent think tanks and civil society organisations, help track public opinion and preferences for their foreign aid budget. This is absent in India. Although the MEA’s budget has been public know ledge and the develop-ment assistance part of it is given in great detail, there has not been much public discussion about it as these issues have not been an immediate concern for the general public.
However, this situation is changing rapidly. In the backdrop of a highly politicised domestic environment in which there is widespread debate regarding the human rights of people of Tamil origin in Sri Lanka, the foreign policy establishment is fi nding itself walking a thin line. Recently, it was caught in a game at two levels; fi rst, whether to demonstrate political solidarity with the Sri Lankan government by attending the Commonwealth Heads of Govern-ment Meeting (CHOGM) and continue to play a constructive role in the rehabili-tation of the people of Tamil origin in Sri Lanka simultaneously, or second, to completely boycott the CHOGM, as expressed in a resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu state assembly, and
demonstrate the same solidarity with the people of Tamil origin on the grounds of human rights.
In the wake of this highly charged domestic environment which posed a foreign policy dilemma, the government’s recent advertisement titled “India’s Assist-ance to Sri Lankan Tamils”, is an effort in the direction of engaging its domestic constituents and giving assurance that the government has been aware of the de-velopmental issues affecting the lives and well-being of the people of Tamil origin in Sri Lanka even before the inter-nal confl ict came to an end. With this advertisement detailing India’s assist-ance to the Sri Lankan Tamils, the belief that India’s foreign assistance policy arena is insulated from the domestic debate has turned on its head and is no longer sacrosanct.
India’s foreign assistance policy to its immediate neighbourhood has always been anchored within its domestic poli-tics and this public dialogue initiated through publishing the advertisement in Tamil Nadu demonstrates the primacy of domestic politics in India’s foreign policy, and development assistance. With all the sensitivities that exist around this issue, it is expected that various questions about Indian assistance to the Sri Lankan Tamils will be raised in the future as well. As public atten-tion increases and public debate grows, the recently established Development Partnership Administration division in the MEA will have to engage with and devote considerable time to anchoring this public dialogue and bridging the gap between India’s domestic politics and its foreign assistance policy.
Pranay SinhaUniversity of Birmingham,UK
LETTERS
december 14, 2013 vol xlviII no 50 EPW Economic & Political Weekly6
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