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MYPLACE 5 May 2014
MYPLACE: FP7-266831 www.fp7-myplace.eu Deliverable 7.1: Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism Page 1 of 57
____________________________________
MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy And Civic Engagement)
Grant agreement no: FP7-266831
WP7: Interpreting Activism (Ethnographies)
Deliverable 7.1: Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism
Extracurricular Activities of a Buddhist School in Ózd
University of Debrecen
Author(s) Flórián Sipos
Field researcher(s) Flórián Sipos
Data analysts Flórián Sipos
Date 10/01/2014
Work Package 7 Interpreting Activism (Ethnographies) Deliverable 7.1 Ethnographic Case Studies of Youth Activism
Dissemination level PU [Public]
WP Leaders Hilary Pilkington, Phil Mizen
Deliverable Date 31 January 2014 Document history
Version Date Comments Created/Modified by
1 27/04/2014 First draft Flórián Sipos
2 02/05/2014 First draft edited Khursheed Wadia 3 05/05/2014 Corrected, second draft Flórián Sipos
4 05/05/2014 Final draft Hilary Pilkington
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Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................. 2
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 3
1.1 The School and the region .................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Political socialisation and schools ..................................................................................... 4
1.3 Reasoning behind the case selection and research goals ................................................. 6
2. Methods .............................................................................................................................. 8
2.1 Fieldwork ........................................................................................................................... 8
2.2 Demographic profile of respondents .............................................................................. 11
2.3 Data analysis ................................................................................................................... 12
3. Key findings ....................................................................................................................... 14
3.1 Ambedkarite Buddhism and the School .......................................................................... 14
3.2 Film Club: the story to 2012 September .......................................................................... 19
3.3 The Alternative 10 Commandments ............................................................................... 23
3.4 Ethnicity and attitudes to political activities, participation ............................................ 32
3.5 Epilogue: The end of the story ........................................................................................ 46
4. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 50
5. Future analysis .................................................................................................................. 52
6. References ........................................................................................................................ 53
7. Appendix 1. The credo of the Jai Bhim Network .............................................................. 56
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1. Introduction
1.1 The School and the region The region, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, is widely known not only for its economic and social
hardship and extremely high unemployment rate (due to the late and post-socialist
deindustrialisation in which the metals industry and mining collapsed) but also for its relatively
high density of Roma population and the unresolved and increasing tension between the Roma
and the majority Hungarian community. According to the 2011 census, 8.5 per cent of the
population of the county self-identified as Roma; in Ózd this rate was even higher at 11 per
cent. However, due to respondents mistrusting such surveys, this number might be even higher
and, especially in the younger segments, it could reach 30 per cent. This is also reflected in the
demographic profile of our MYPLACE Work Package 4 sample where 35 per cent of the
respondents self-identified as Roma. In the county, the rate of those in employment was
alarmingly low at only 33.8 per cent, but in case of Roma people, this figure was only 12.16 per
cent (Census 2011). Besides employment problems, members of the Roma community also face
a wide range of other problems including territorial and educational segregation, discrimination
and open racism. Anti-Roma attitudes and prejudices prevail widely in the local community and
this is also manifested in the high popularity of the national radical Jobbik party which built its
successful campaign mostly on prejudices and scapegoating the Roma community. During the
parliamentary elections of 2010, Jobbik received 27.2 per cent of list votes in Ózd, which was
significantly higher than the average at the national level (16.67 per cent).
The School is a 'second chance school', which aims at providing quality education and special
training programmes for students with multiple disadvantages who dropped out from the
'normal' secondary education system in several localities of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County
(Northeast Hungary), including Ózd. The School follows the teachings of Dr Bhimrao Ramji
Ambedkar, an Indian lawyer, civil rights activist and philosopher who was a close colleague of
Mahatma Gandhi, the first Justice Minister of an independent India and who played a key role
in writing its Constitution. Ambedkar was born in an outcast, 'untouchable' family and, in order
to fight discrimination of the caste system, converted to Buddhism with his almost half a million
Dalit (untouchable) followers on 14 Otober 1956, in Nagpur. He inspired a new international
Buddhist Dalit movement and his life story symbolises fighting discrimination and prejudices in
India.
The special character of this school lies in the fact that it is maintained by a member
organisation of an international Triratna Buddhist Order and Community, the Jai Bhim Buddhist
Congregation and its students are mostly (almost exclusively) of Roma origin. This combination
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makes it unique in the Hungarian educational system. Other similar, second chance schools
providing special training programmes for drop-out students usually endeavour to establish a
professionally-designed and equipped modern building with dormitories and wide range of
facilities. However, this School followed another strategy; it built a more decentralised
structure. Practically, it functions as a network of small educational facilities in the middle of
the segregated Roma enclaves; and they actively take part in local community life, organise
activities, do social and community work. The centre is situated in the extremely poor Roma
ghetto of a little village next to Kazincbarcika, but the school has also established other
premises – mainly in rented rooms – in the region. At the beginning of the fieldwork, there
were altogether three of them, one in the MYPLACE research site Ózd and two others in
Alsózsolca and Sáta.
1.2 Political socialisation and schools In the research on Hungarian political socialisation, there is a consensus that the Hungarian
education system is not prepared for the transmission of democratic values effectively and fails
to prepare young people for active, democratic citizenship but enhances the reproduction of
apolitical and anti-political attitudes in society. This is especially true if compared to Western
European countries, for instance Germany, where student council, teacher-student and parent-
school relationships, history and civic education, and experimental learning successfully
promote political participation and social inclusion (Szabó 2004: 553-4; 2010: 79-81). These
studies on political socialisation, in Hungary, mostly follow the approach of Percheron (1974,
1971) who described political socialisation as a long process, an interaction between society
and the individual, which may take place in various forms – not necessarily linked to manifest
political contents, and where various agencies play a role in it. Percheron also distinguishes
between the means through which political socialisation can take place: technically learned
knowledge and norms, socialisation through experience, and the acquisition of symbolic codes
(Percheron 1971). The present study is also adapted to this tradition.
Research on the political socialisation of Hungarian youth revealed various aspects of the failure
of the Hungarian education system to transmit democratic values. First, after the system
change in 1989, a counter-reaction to the state-socialist period prevailed when schools had to
actively take part in ideological indoctrination. In the new political context, in which ideological
pressure ceased and party politics were banned from education establishments, teachers and
especially history teachers were not sure about their role in political education anymore and
avoidance attitudes mostly motivated their behaviour. Since they identified politics with party
politics, they refused to take part in civic socialisation too. On the other hand, teacher-training
materials do not pay attention to civic culture, autonomy and extracurricular or informal
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activities. Furthermore, teachers do not even exploit the limited resources that are available
(Csákó 2009:157; Szabó 2010).
Second, the relationship to the past, nation and historical traumas are still unsolved issues.
There is no consensus in society about problematic events and controversial periods of the
recent past, such as the Trianon Treaty in which Hungary lost the majority of its territories after
the First World War; Hungary's role in the Second World War and the systematic massacre of
Jewish and Roma people; the revolution of 1956; the state socialist period and the system
change in 1989. In public discourse, completely opposing interpretations of these events can be
found and schools fail to prepare young people in dealing with them. Since these historical
questions remain open, their interpretations are mostly dependent on those of the history
teachers and other agents of socialisation. Therefore, there is a greater chance that these
interpretations fail to create a consensus or that they do not support democratic, inclusive civic
socialisation (Szabó 2010: 83).
Third, another obstacle against successfully transmitting democratic values lies in the
undemocratic practices of schools in which students cannot experience democratic
participation and communication and thus, according to Percheron's concept (1971), cannot
validate the learned knowledge, the learned democratic norms and cannot be socialised
through practice. Quantitative research has shown that in 2005, 85-90 per cent of student
councils did not have the autonomy that is granted in law and that they are mostly structured
by hierarchical student-teacher relations. For instance, only 20-30 per cent of the students
confirmed that student council leaders were elected through secret ballot. The election of
student representatives and decision-making and communicative mechanisms are generally
anti-democratic practices that also contribute to the low reputation of these bodies (Csípő et al.
2004; Csákó 2009:173-178).
Fourth, while non-formal socialisation agents, such as family, media, peer groups or personal
networks, play a key role in shaping civic culture in Hungary, civil society organisations play only
a marginal role in it though it would offer an opportunity for experiencing democratic decision
making and participation in public processes. This is partly due to the fact that NGOs are usually
dominated by political parties and that this sector is under-developed in terms of size, interest
representative power and production of public goods and services, especially if compared to
those in western European nations (Kovách 2012; Nárai 2004)
Fifth, inter-ethnic conflicts, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia are prevailing problems
against which formal and especially informal pedagogical tools are not available or not used. In
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case of certain problems such as anti-Roma attitudes or antisemitism, there is also an absence
of the social consensus which would be necessary for successfully tackling them. In schools,
national socialisation is more dominant than civic socialisation and has become mostly
independent from civic socialisation. In history and civic culture classes and through historical
commemorations, an image of the nation is transmitted which is based on ethnicity and
language; a concept which is not an integrative one but which contributes to the prejudices
against ethnic minority groups (Szabó 2004: 555–556).
Since those reference points which are necessary for political orientation were not provided by
schools, family, civil organisations or other social experiences, a socialisation vacuum appeared
which was gradually filled by such agents as political parties, churches, peer groups, media,
Internet (especially social media) whose main topics of concern became part of a national
thematic. As Szabó argues (2010), a fragmented socialisation model well describes the post-
socialist period which is characterised by weak interconnections between the various agents of
socialisation and the lack of long-term policies for the transmission of democratic values and
civic culture. In this crisis of socialisation, young people are orientated politically with the
support of other agents but civic values remain marginal in this process (Szabó 2006, 2010).
1.3 Reasoning behind the case selection and research goals In October 2011, in the framework of preparations for selecting research sites for the present
project, an expert interview was conducted with the one of the senior management team of
the school who informed the Hungarian MYPLACE team about the efforts and activities of the
school which promised a unique and interesting case for observing active political participation.
The School, following the axiom frequently attributed to Ambedkar ('Educate, agitate,
organise!') consciously struggles to educate active citizens. In this interview several forms of
pedagogical methods and activities were mentioned for the transmission of critical reading
skills and civic participation; for instance, teachers consciously brought public issues to classes,
provoked debates, organised extra-curricular activities, built cooperation with various NGOs
and watchdog organisations, organised training for the student council, media clubs and family
history research clubs. She also informed us that the school takes part in Amnesty
International's Human Rights Friendly School Project which aims at taking human rights to the
centre of the learning experience and empowering young people for active citizenship.
During the course of this research, students of the Ózd centre of the School who participate in
extracurricular activities linked to public issues were observed closely by the researcher. This
observation was driven by the hypothesis that engaged and purposeful political socialisation,
through pedagogically sound methodology, can lead to active civic participation even in the
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most disadvantaged circumstances. The other goal of this research was observing, how young
people from a minority background reacted to exclusion and prejudices in Ózd and whether
that constituted a motivation for their activities.
However, it should be noted here that this report is not an evaluation of the school itself. It
does not focus on the pedagogical plan of the school, the quality of the education or the
teaching going on in the classrooms. The goal was to gain insight into how the young people
acted when they were given the opportunity to organise themselves relatively independently
from the inevitably hierarchical school structure. Therefore, the activities observed were those
of the media club of the Ózd centre of the school and this was later extended to observing the
training sessions of the student council, excursions and other political activities such as a
demonstration in Budapest.
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2. Methods
2.1 Fieldwork As mentioned above, contact with the School started in October 2011, when a preliminary
interview was conducted with the member of senior management team of the school
responsible for the teaching programme of the school (hereafter Anna1). Negotiations with the
School started in the summer of 2012 with the prospect of starting the fieldwork in September
at the start of the autumn term. The leaders of the School were open to the researcher’s
initiative from the very start. Besides their general open-ness, they were motivated by the
opportunity to publicising the school: 'we know what we are doing is unprecedented and it is
good if more people can learn abut it' (Anna). On the other hand, they felt that bringing more
external connections to their students was important since their students came from a highly
segregated environment and therefore had a very limited positive influence from 'outside'
(Field diary, 19 October, 2012). The positive reception to this research in itself reveals much
about the special character of the school. Other researchers have reported that schools
frequently refuse to take part in empirical research if it is about political issues (Csákó, 2009).
However, because the School had financial problems the fieldwork was delayed. A modification
of the Church Law in 2013 (2013/CXXIII Law) which is based on the new Fundametal Law2
imposed new limits on smaller churches. Based on this, the Hungarian Parliament ceased to
recognise the church status of 300 religious communities, among them the Jai Bhim Buddhist
Congregation and the Methodist Church which actively support Roma communities. Since the
school was maintained by the Jai Bhim Congregation which lost its church status, and a great
part of its special costs (e.g. paying travel costs of commuting teachers and students travel
costs of teachers moving between the various centres, meal costs of students, extracurricular
programmes etc.) were covered by the extra normative funding paid to religious schools, the
very existence of the school was put at risk. The school year started with hardships and
teachers did not receive travel reimbursement for months. Some teachers who commuted from
Budapest decided to leave the school. Finally, an agreement was made with the government
that this school would receive additional and extraordinary support to compensate them for
the loss of their church school status; this could have stabilised the finances of the school but
its Ózd Centre faced further problems.
1 The subjects of observation and interviews are referred to by pseudonyms even if they are senior teachers or leaders of the school. 2 Fundamental Law is the new constitution which was approved by the Hungarian Parliament in 2011 with the support of the FIDESZ and which came into force on 1 January, 2012. This Fundamental Law was criticised by domestic, EU and international organisations.
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Recent changes in education rules (i.e. schools had to keep students in school during the
afternoon for which the School could not rent rooms) accompanied by local political campaigns
against the Roma community contributed to this instablity and resulted in the unforeseen
closure of the media club which will be discussed more in depth later in the report (Section
3.5). The instability experienced by the school had an effect on the fieldwork and occasionally
hindered it; this happened, for instance, when the originally-targeted family history research
club (part of the planned observation schedule) was not launched because its leader, who lived
in Budapest and commuted on a weekly basis to Ózd, left the school, at least partly for financial
reasons. However, it may also be argued that these special circumstances, where the school
struggled for its existence during the fieldwork period, added new elements to the case study
which became even more embedded in interethnic tensions and the local context.
Another special feature of this fieldwork lies in the difficulty experienced by the researcher in
approaching the young people. This can partly be attributed to the ethnic composition of the
observed group; with only a few exceptions, the students of the school and some of the
teachers are of Roma origin. Therefore, the researcher as a Hungarian coming from outside the
school is a double 'outsider'. In addition, this school is a second-chance school which means
that all the students had left their previous school (or sometimes two or three schools) for
some reason and thus they already had many negative experiences with the adult, non-Roma
world, not to mention the general prejudice and widespread racism that they face on a daily
basis. As a result, building a relationship based on trust proved long and difficult. Sometimes,
this mistrust was hidden and manifested only in refused interviews or in the polite answers
given to the researcher, but at other times, it was made quite clear:
The problem is that there are such Hungarians who make their living from Roma
people or from dealing with them or doing business with them. When their money
is good for them, they don't feel revulsion towards them but otherwise they are just
disgusted by them. This is the worst type. Because there are others, who do not
deal with them and are disgusted by them. I can even understand this type. But
those who cooperate with them in certain conditions, when it is in their interest,
but who otherwise are full racists ... what is this? Isn't it disgusting? (Mónika)
This feeling was more predominant in the case of the newly-elected student council where
there were few occasions to meet and this mistrust was only partly solved by time spent
together, including a night spent with them sleeping on the floor, in sleeping bags, in a gym
during a 3-day long training session in Budapest. But in the case of the media group, because
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the majority already had good experiences with 'external' experts working with them, they
welcomed the researcher from the beginning and only one member showed mistrust which
gradually dissolved while working together on a project. But even in their case the recording of
interviews was only possible after over six months.
However, the fact that the school was a second-chance school solved another problem that
researchers of secondary student activities need to face; the respondents were over 18 years of
age and therefore no consent was needed from parents. In the case of the media club, during
filming, researchers frequently visited their families and a good relationship was built with even
with their parents.
The fieldwork covered the school year 2012/2013, though the first interview was carried out in
October 2011 while the last interviews were done in September 2013 and in January 2014, a
follow-up interview was recorded. Altogether 18 field visits were organised with the young
people and recorded in field notes and diaries, Table 1 comprises the days spent in the field.
Table 1. List of field work events
Date Site Activity 19 October, 2012 Ózd First meeting with gatekeeper, Anna. Classes visited in Ózd.
15 November, 2012 Ózd First meeting with the media group, brainstorming about
the project. Classes visited in the afternoon.
13 December, 2012 Ózd Second meeting with the media club. Writing the screenplay
together.
4 February, 2013 Debrecen Meeting with Anna and the leader of the Jai Bhim
Congregation in Debrecen.
21 February, 2013 Sajókaza First student council camp. Training organised by Amnesty
International.
14 March, 2013 Ózd School visit on March 15 celebrations,3 interviews recorded.
20-21 March, 2013 Budapest, Bálint
Ház4
Second student council camp, opening of a photo exhibition
about the school in a Jewish community centre.
14 April, 2013 Debrecen Students' day at the University of Debrecen. Anna gave a
presentation about the school.
20 April, 2013 Ózd Interviews recorded.
24 April, 2013 Ózd Participant observation of the Jobbik demonstration with
teachers and former students of the school.
3 This is a national holiday in Hungarywhen commemotations are held of the Revolution of 1848 which resulted in the independence war of 1848-1849 against the Habsburg Empire. 4 Bálint Ház is a Jewish community centre.
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25 April, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments project.
Interview with a Roma writer recorded by the media club.
24 May, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk,
Hangony
Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments with the
media club.
26 May, 2013 Budapest Demonstration against the educational reform and against
segregation in schools, with the participation of the student
council and the media club.
6 June, 2013 Ózd, Farkaslyuk Shooting scenes of the Alternative Commandments with the
media club.
12 June, 2013 Ózd Sports day at the school. Interviews recorded.
13 June, 2013 Ózd, Budapest School excursion with all the students of the School.
19 September, 2013 Sajókaza, Ózd,
Farkaslyuk
Visiting the students from Ózd in Sajókaza. Interviews
recorded in Ózd and Farkaslyuk.
3 October, 2013 Alsózsolca Visiting the Alsózsolca Centre of the school. Interviews
recorded.
16 January, 2014 Debrecen-
Sajókaza
Follow-up interview recorded.
As seen in this table, the field work took place at various locations depending on the observed
activity. It included a series of brainstorming sessions about screenplays, in coffee bars in Ózd,
shooting films in minor villages around Ózd, training sessions for student council
representatives in Sajókaza and Budapest, demonstrations in Budapest and Ózd, extracurricular
activities of the school such as participation in the student sports day and in a school excursion
to Budapest. In sum:
16 individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed (the follow-up interview
was only partly transcribed). The interviews varied in length; the longest one was 99
minutes and the shortest 30 minutes; the average length was 62 minutes;
two media club meetings were audio taped;
13 field work diaries were written;
over 100 photos were taken;
over four hours of visual material was videotaped (mostly to do with media club
activities but also school commemorations and student council events).
2.2 Demographic profile of respondents During the fieldwork, a total of 16 interviews were carried out with 12 respondents. The latter
were mostly students of the school; however, school leaders and a social worker were also
interviewed. The demographic profile and the role of the respondents are summarised in Table
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2. A special feature of the group is the relatively high rate of Roma respondents, which is
natural given the profile of the school. Another feature is the high rate of young respondents,
secondary school students, whose family status includes living with a partner, divorced (one of
them had gone through two divorces and is raising two children as a single parent), or living
with parents. In two cases, the parents had passed away or were permanently ill and needed
care. Given that taking part in the activities outlined above requires time and that there were
students who were responsible for younger siblings, it was impossible for some of them to
spend time on extracurricular activities. The interviews and observations revealed that students
in such a situation, especially if they were women, were expected to take responsibility, to 'be
sensible' (Rita) and to settle down.
2.3 Data analysis There was no deviation from the data analysis strategy described in the MYPLCE Qualitative
Data Analysis Handbook. The coding of the primary data was done by the author of this report.
Transcribed and anonymised interviews and the field diaries were imported into an Nvivo 9
database and free coded on two code levels arranged hierarchically. Level 1 nodes were
specific, descriptive codes which were frequently direct quotations or paraphrases of interview
quotations to represent the opinions of the respondents. These nodes were grouped under
second level nodes which were more general; e.g. 'Political activity', 'Media club' or 'Ethnicity,
identity issues'. The Level 1 and Level 2 nodes which emerged in this process served as a basis
for further generalisation in theory-laden concepts.
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Table 2. Demographic profile of respondents.
Pseudo-nym
Role Age Sex Employment Education Ethnicity Family status Residential status
Anna Teacher, leader of media club
35 Female In full-time employment
Completed university Non ethnic
Single Lives independently
Dénes School leader 53 Male In full-time employment
Completed university No data. No data. No data.
Dóra School leader 37 Female In full-time employment
Completed university Roma Divorced/separated Lives independently with own partner/children
Gabi Social worker 24 Female In full-time employment
Completed university Non ethnic
Single No data.
Ildikó Media club member, former student council member
19 Female In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Married or living with partner
Lives independently with own partner/children
Imre Student council member
18 Male In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Single Lives at home with parents
István Media club member 19 Male In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Married or living with partner
Lives independently with own partner/children
Jakab Former student, who successfully completed secondary school
25 Male In full-time education
Currently in post-secondary vocational training
Roma Married or living with partner
Lives independently with own partner/children
József Student council member
18 Male In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Single Lives at home with parents
Mátyás Media club member 20 Male In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Mixed heritage
Single Live at home with parents
Rita Student 26 Female In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Divorced/separated Lives independently with own partner/children
Sándor Student council member
22 Male In full-time education
Currently in general academic secondary education
Roma Single Lives at home with other relatives
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3. Key findings
3.1 Ambedkarite Buddhism and the School This section explains how the Buddhist character of the school could be detected in the
activities of the School and how Buddhism influences the ideology that might lie behind its
activities. The aim of this report is not to execute a study of the School itself but to describe and
understand its extracurricular activities. However, a brief explanation of the Buddhist character
of the school seems necessary before turning to the main focus of the research.
Ambedkarite Buddhism is a branch of Buddhist modernism, born in postcolonial India but which
also has diasporas in the West. The founder of the movement, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar,
started his emancipatory project in the 1950s against the highly segregative caste system of
Hinduism in India. Thus, he organised demonstrations, played an important part in writing a
Constitution which banned discrimination and guaranteed wide political rights to the
untouchable Dalits while consciously violating some of the frameworks of Hinduism; for
instance the drinking of water from public reservoirs which was previously prohibited to
untouchables. In 1956, a few weeks before his death, he converted to Buddhism with his
hundreds of thousands of followers. His is respected as one of the most important civil rights
activists of India and his political legacy had an impact not only on modern India but also
became known in Asia and the West. This movement was taken to London in the 1960s by
Sangharakshita (born as Dennis P. E. Lingwood), a British Buddhist monk and teacher who was
in contact with Ambedkar and who, in the 1960s, founded an ecumenical Buddhist community,
the Western Buddhist Order also referred to as Triratna Buddhist Community. This Order is an
international network of Buddhist communities and has its spiritual centre in Birmingham.
One of the reasons why this Indian movement attracted western followers lies in its socially and
politically active character. As a social worker of the school stressed, ‘The Dalit Buddha is not
sitting but is moving; it ceases suffering and not only his own but that of the others.’ (Turay
2013) While traditional Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering and achieve perfection by
discipline, subtleness, passivity or even the destruction of desires and the self, modernist
Buddhisms are more extrovert and put more emphasis on compassion, social engagement and
inclusion. Thus, this tradition of Buddhism can be more easily matched to western thought and
social movements. It was Dr Ambedkar himself who, for instance, tried to reconcile Buddhism
with Marxism in his unfinished work Buddha or Karl Marx or with the principles of the French
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Revolution and made efforts to bring about radical changes in the society and called his own
concept ‘Dhamma-revolution’5 (Subhuti 2010).
The Hungarian Ambedkarite community is the Jai Bhim Community and was founded in 2007.
Sangharakshita’s senior associate and colleague, Dharmachari Subhuti (born as Alex Kennedy)
inspired the Hungarian Jai Bhim Community and regularly visits the School in Sajókaza but
leaders of the Jai Bhim Community also visited Sanangharakshita in Birmingham and made a
study visit to India. The Jai Bhim Community seems to be unique in the western Buddhist
movement in recruiting its members from Roma communities and helping people in an
extremely disadvantageous situation. It is a relatively small and socially active community and
has founded schools, and does social work and community development in the Roma
settlements of the Borsod and Baranya regions.
As the community and the school frequently stress, converting people to Buddhism is not
among their goals and this attitude is clearly reflected in the narratives of the teachers and
students of the school. However, the extent to which students from various teaching centres of
the school are influenced by Buddhism can be highly different. In Sajókaza where the school has
its own modern building, the Buddhist character of the school is unmistakable. It has a
sanctuary and is decorated with Indian motifs. The Jai Bhim Community also organises
community development and charity activities in the small, closed Roma settlement. Thus,
students and even members of the local community can easily be attracted in Sajókaza and this
is reflected in the 2011 Census data. On the other hand, in Ózd, where the classrooms are
rented from other schools, and students come from various districts or settlements, this
character of the school is less prevalent.
One of the school leaders explains:
It is not an aim here at all that they [i.e. the students] are Buddhist. We don’t even
oblige our students to take part in Buddhist religion classes either, if they do not
want. We offer the opportunity, that there is either Catholic or Buddhist religion
class. (Dóra)
Or, as highlighted by a school teacher, they do not want to place their students in such a
situation where they would be in conflict with their own religion:
5 The Dhamma is a key concept of Buddhism and other Indian religions; there is no single western translation of it. It means: laws, characteristics, duties, rights and phenomenon. In Ambedkarite Buddhism, Dhamma moves society to a new, modern stage which is characterised by freedom, equality, and fraternity (Subhuti, 2010).
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Anna: In reality, I believe, it is nice that we do not want them to convert. We do not
push them to Buddhism, therefore, there is no pressure on them that you have to
be like this or think like that. And they cope with it easily and usually when asked
about this issue, they would say that ‘I am Christian, but many things in Buddhism
are very OK.’ They definitely do not want to change religion. In Alsózsolca, our
Methodists are true Methodists indeed but they do not refuse Buddhism. (…) This
year, class 13 is in the Lumbini Room [the Buddhist sanctuary], since there is no
other room left. And there is that Buddha statue. In the first week, I asked [name],
you know, he is deeply religious, ‘it is much better here than being in the Aula [hall],
isn’t it?’ And he answered ‘Well, OK, but you know, I am very religious and there is
that statue.’ And I told him ‘But what did we learn, was Buddha a god?’ ‘Wow, no,
then it is OK!’
Interviewer: How many of your students will convert to Buddhism, what do you
think?
Anna: It is possible that none of them. But if you ask, how many of them will know
more about the world, about themselves and their own soul … For I have seen that
they are meditating and there are some who take this more seriously.
(Anna, 5th interview)
This approach was also repeated in the student’s narratives:
It was something that really touched me in that school, and since then I support
them, that it is a Buddhist school, thus, it represents Buddhism but they never ever
forced us into that religion and let everyone practice his own religion freely. I am
Christian, I believe in Jesus Christ but was never forced to be Buddhist or learn
Buddhism. (Jakab)
Or, another one was even more straightforward:
Interviewer: One of the features of the school is Buddhism. What do you experience
of this?
István: Luckily, nothing. I heard things sometimes, Anna was really into it,
sometimes, she organises meditations. Every morning, there is meditation in a little
room and some students go and meditate with her. (István)
Another student added:
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Interviewer: What do you know about the Jai Bhim Community?
József: [name] was our teacher of religion.
Interviewer: What religion does he teach, Buddhist?
József: Yes. He is a good teacher. He teaches and gives the homework well.
Interviewer: And what is your relation to Buddhism?
József: Nothing.
Interviewer: But the religion class was good, wasn’t it?
József: I liked it, since it was also about Roma people, and it was linked to them. I
liked that class, (…)
Interviewer: And did anyone convert to Buddhism?
József. Nobody. We were not dealing with Buddhism in this form. (József)
Only a relatively small group of the teachers of the school are Buddhist and the students do not
convert to Buddhism and the reason for this is easily understood in that the second-chance
school is maintained by a Buddhist community for the integration of highly disadvantaged,
drop-out students and is not a school for young Buddhist people. Thus it is not a typical
religious school – similarly to Buddhism which is not a ‘typical’ religion either but can be also
approached as a worldview.
From conversations with students, one was able to glean that the story of Ambedkar, the image
of the untouchable who set an example successfully fighting discrimination through learning,
leaving behind the stigma of being an untouchable, and by converting to Buddhism was more
important in the school’s programme than Buddhism as religion. This observation was at least
partly accepted:
Interviewer: Am I far from the truth if I say that the story [of Ambedkar] is more
important here [than the religion], that he is a memory site, a lay story about
identity change?
Anna: There is a little bit more here, not only Ambedkar’s life. There is a Buddhist
religion class, in which we compare, contemplate, read fables. But you definitely see
it correctly; we do not approach Buddhism with our students as a religion but as a
world view. We had a women’s association and they put together a publication that
translated Buddha’s commandments in their own lives. This was the ‘22 points of
the Women’s Association’. They presented, for instance, what shall I do for myself,
or I am responsible for myself, I do not believe in someone else just because he has
power or he is assertive but I believe since I investigated if he was right (Anna).
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Only the interview with a leader of the school revealed the main goal of the School which
distinguishes it from ethnic minority educational programmes, such as that of the Gandhi High
School near Pécs (south western Hungary), which, according to his narrative, is built on a
nationalist basis. In contrary, in Borsod they do not put such a strong emphasis on ethnicity and
preserving cultural heritage as in Pécs but have a different identity programme:
Dénes: The direction of the Dalit movement is not that we want to preserve our
identity but we want to change identity. (…) And this characterises those young
people [i.e. the members of the Jai Bhim Community] who appointed me to this
position. The leaders of the community believe that ‘OK, we are proud of what we
are and don’t forget where we come from, the values we respect, but we look
forward.’
Interviewer: But what does this identity change mean? Changing some elements of
the identity or else?
Dénes: In the case of the Dalits in India, this is a complete change. Since, in the case
of the Dalits, there is no ethnic identity but a caste identity, it is much easier to hate
than the ethnic identity. It is much easier to say that I am not willing to accept that I
can have wife or husband only from my caste. In the case of ethnicity, one would be
less willing to say so than in the case of the detested and suppressed caste. But
many things are of course the same. (Denes)
The respondent also emphasised that this identity change is a deep one which, for instance,
includes rejection of macho-ism, which is the ‘mother language’ of all traditional cultures
(Dénes). Young male members of the community do household work in which they step out
from the milieu ruled by their uncles and grandfathers and which generated conflicts in their
families. In this way, they make a fundamental identity change and these young Roma accept
feminism. However, this ‘identity change’ does not mean that students cease to identify
themselves as Roma; it is not even an option for them. In conversations with them it became
evident that, in their view, ethnicity is an immutable feature not such a thing that can be
changed.
Interviewer: But what does this mean, do they choose another identity or just
replace some elements of it?
Dénes: The latter. They change some values and some elements of it. They do not,
not want to be Roma anymore. This is strong feature of the movement, that ‘we are
Gypsies’, but the sentence ‘we preserve the values of ethnic culture’ they will not
say. Even if we hear it from many places. It is strongly expected in Hungary,
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especially from Roma leaders, that ‘cultural heritage is to be kept’. But they will not
say this.
Interviewer: Why?
Dénes: Presumably because they do not think like this. (…) This identity building
with a Buddhist background in many ways opposes the inherited one, it replaces it.
We strongly believe that these people should be, first, fathers and mothers; second,
they should have an occupation; third, they should appear in whatever civil role, like
fisherman, football player, or member of a church and only somewhere at the end
of the list should their, for instance, mother language play a part. (Dénes)
Thus, the initial presumption on the part of the researcher that ethnic consciousness can be a
basis of political activism at the school needed revision; in the ideology behind this ‘Roma’
school, ethnic identity building and ethnic politics were not the focus to the extent expected,
based on impressions gained about other Roma educational institutions. Buddhism and
especially this human-right oriented and socially active Ambedkarite Buddhism filled this gap,
replaced ethnic-oriented ‘nationalist’ ideology. Nevertheless, experience showed that the
image is more complex, that the school’s educational programme still preserves numerous
features which are signs of an ethnic identity building with positive elements or transmission of
Roma cultural heritage. Roma language is taught as part of the curriculum and topics related to
Roma history are parts of the training material or, in another instance, the Roma anthem is
sung together with the Hungarian one on days of historical commemoration. But it is not the
aim of the school to educate devoted ethnic minority leaders. Rather they make efforts to
educate active citizens.
3.2 Film Club: the story to 2012 September The Film Club was started in Ózd in May 2011 under the leadership of Anna. The club is one of
the numerous voluntary, extracurricular activities offered by the school such as Dance Club,
Family History Club, VJ (Visual Jockey) Club (to learn about visual culture), Debating Club (to
learn to argue for or against a statement), Radio station, etc. These extracurricular activities
play a central role in the pedagogical programme of the School and these exciting experiences
are effective tools by which to motivate students, integrate them or, in some cases, even keep
them in the school;
Many students changed when they were invited into these programmes. They [the
teachers] saw that they are talented but have problems, but they still invited them
into these programmes and the talent could develop there. Some of them were not
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prepared enough but were given the opportunity to work with others and could
develop their talent and catch up with the others. (Jakab)
At the beginning, almost all class members joined and they prepared a project for the film
festival competition called Social Transport. They wrote a screenplay about prejudices and
exclusion with the title ‘Do not judge least you be judged’ and won the prize which was an
opportunity to shoot the film in Budapest with the help of professional directors, technology
and actors. In this short film, members of various groups (Roma, older people, junkies,
skinheads) are represented as victims of exclusion but they also excluded other groups and the
story represented a ‘chain’ of exclusion. This was the first film project of the group.
As Anna described it, this club successfully attracted some problematic students and motivated
them to cooperate. One of them became the informal leader of the group and he helped to
organise the club again in the next academic year. And this also contributed to his better school
performance. In the new school year, 2011/2012, two student groups were merged and it
caused problems in the classroom. ’I realised that I needed to organise extracurricular activities
to keep them’ (Anna). The Club was started again in November 2011 with about 15 members
but some of them were more active than the others. They carried out several projects during
the school year, such as:
’CineFeszt’ Film Festival (Miskolc) – members of the group took part in a
workshop in which they wrote screenplays and prepared short and funny films
during the festival. One of them was a talk show in which a Roma and a non-
Roma guest expressed prejudiced views about each other, which resulted in a
burlesque fight between them. In another one, a father’s story is shown in which
his daughter is kidnapped but he has no money to pay the ransom and makes
usuccessful efforts to collect it (e.g. by being street musician). Finally, the
kidnapped daughter is released because she gets on the nerves of the criminals.
’Lájkold Ózdot!’ (Like Ózd!) project was an answer to the online voting via a news
portal (index.hu) in which they were searching for the most unliveable city of
Hungary and Ózd won. Here, the group prepared interviews with local people
about what they liked in Ózd. The project remained unfinished due to the lack of
technical equipment.
Short films – members of the Club introduce themselves and prepare interviews
in their environment.
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Berlin project– in August was a project where some members of the Club
travelled to Berlin to visit partners working with young Roma people in Neukölln
district and also prepared a short film during this trip.
The Club offered various opportunities including a visit to Berlin, the importance of which can
be understood only by the fact that for the majority of the students visiting Budapest, less than
150 kilometers away, is possible only on school excursions. The topics of these short films told
such stories which reflected their own situation and concerns: e.g. financial problems,
experiences of exclusion, everyday life in Ózd. Albeit in some cases the call for applications
framed and influenced the narratives and topics of these stories, students had wide autonomy
in deciding what to write. According to Anna, the ideas were from the students themselves, and
this is confirmed by observations from the next school year. This proved to be a strong factor in
stabilising club attendance. In another attempt of the school to write a school magazine, the
lack of the autonomy paralysed the activity:
But [the teacher] told them immediately to do an interview with the priest, and the
two girls immediately lost their enthusiasm, and I could never again motivate them.
I told him [the teacher] that it is not good if he tells the kids who they should
prepare interview with. They should find it out for themselves first and they should
do interviews with each other and about cool things and only later can the priest be
involved. (Anna)
Another feature of the club was the decreasing number of participants which seemed an
inevitable process; at the beginning all class members were invited but since it was a voluntary
leisure-time activity, a big part of them gradually dropped out. Between festivals, these
activities mostly meant sitting in a café bar, discussing project plans, or occasionally hanging
around town and doing interviews with passers-by:
Interviewer: And why did the others drop out?
Ildikó: Because they could not put up with waiting for that we go filming. They could
not wait and they were bored of it. (Ildikó)
But there was another factor that contributed to this high drop-out rate. Some key persons had
to leave the club and this is related to the disadvantaged socioeconomic situation of the
students of the school. For instance, one of them lost his parents and became responsible for
his siblings; another one who was the informal leader of the club had to leave the school and go
to work because his family lost their home and got into deep financial crisis. During the
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fieldwork, it also happened on occasion that the family got into a crisis and the student was
expected to go home, ‘settle down’ and behave like an adult – which meant that the girls
should help at home and the boys should go and find work which in this region entailed mostly
atypical forms of employment such as casual work or public sector employment.
But those few, who stayed in the group, were indeed motivated. Ildikó and István tried to
revitalise the Club after the summer break. In September 2012, they told Anna that they
wanted to go on with the Club and also tried to motivate others, convinced Mátyás to join and
organised actors also for the scenes of the projects. Mátyás sometimes went to the meetings
after the night shift at Tesco, without sleeping:
Ildikó: I really wanted to act, and I was good at it. (…) I was attracted by both sides
of filming; I like to be on both sides of the camera, in front of it but also behind it.
But I do not want to decide on it yet. Nowadays, in front of the camera, I am shy …
Interviewer: And how did you come to the decision to join the club? How did it
happen?
Ildikó: Uh, it has been going on for very long. I was in Year 10 at that time. Anna told
me that there would be such a thing and I immediately told her that I was in. And I
am in it since then but we started to make films only last year. When we started, we
were many more, 10-15, but they dropped out.
Interviewer: And why did you stay?
Ildikó: Because we were interested in it. (…) I watch really many movies. And when I
see it, I always think about how they could do this, and wow, I want to learn it.
Taking another example, István also emphasised personal motivations for joining, but quite
different ones:
István: Anna told us that there is this Film Club. We had no information about it at
all so we just went there and I was captured by it. The others were interested and
not interested at the same time. Many of them joined just because we will go here
and there and they wanted to join. And I told them to join not only because you
want to travel, but because you are interested in it. And after a while, they did not
come. There was a period when we did not travel, but were just shooting videos in
the town and around it and they did not like it. But we did not give it up, and got
through it.
Interviewer: And what do you like in it?
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István. I don’t know. I like that we create something, that we record something and
see what it evolves into. What can be done out of an awful cut or awful material?
(…)
Interviewer: Would you like to learn media?
István: Those who are in my age know much better these things that we should
already know. We have only one camcorder which is only sometimes with us. (…)
And we have classes in the morning, classes in the afternoon, we have to prepare
for them, it is tough like this. I think that is why many of the others left. (…) I think, it
will be my hobby. Maybe I was attracted by it because I like to direct, that we go
somewhere, we are in something and I decided that you do this and you do that. I
like this in it, that they pay attention to me. And as we have just been in [village
name], they look up to me. Because I have the camera, and I tell them to come, we
record this and that. Maybe I like that they see me doing something not just…
(István)
Even if the topics of the movies are clearly about public issues (discrimination, prejudices,
changing the negative image of Ózd, financial problems and crime), the motivation for young
people to join was more personal: travelling with the club, playing before the camera, doing
creative work with technical tools, making decisions, and giving directions to other people.
3.3 The Alternative 10 Commandments
3.3.1 The design of the project
Besides a shorter but exciting activity which was preparing an interview with a Roma writer in a
nearby village, the whole school year was dedicated to one project on the alternative 10
commandments. The work of the Club was delayed due to the financial problems described in
the introduction and in section 3.5. The first meeting was captured in the field diary notes
below:
The meeting took place in a café in the morning at 10:00. Two participants were
present, but more are expected to come later. (…) The ambiance is open, not a
student-teacher relationship but a much more informal, horizontal, partner-like
one. (…) Anna showed a call for applications on her laptop with the title ‘Sin in the
city’; a screenplay is to be prepared by 30 November. The topic, according to István
and Ildikó, is good: ‘Sin, there is a lot here’. The question is what kind of sins they
know? ‘Insulting old men, or crossing at the red light’ –says István. According to
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Ildikó, it is not a good one, ‘the policemen would not arrest you for this’. Anna then
asked them, ‘what were the major sins?’ ‘Murder’, they answered. They tell horror
stories about brutal murders from Ózd – very similar ones to those frequently
shown by the media and used by Jobbik to demonstrate ‘Gypsy crime’. (…) They are
brainstorming more about types of crime. They speak at length and prominently
about negative experiences with doctors. Doctors do not care about them, always
give the same pill, a kind of paracetamol, or do not prescribe medicines at all and
just suggest ‘to drink a lot of liquid three times a day’. According to them, it is
common for doctors to ask for money from them. For instance, for writing sick
notes. They also mention the case of István, who has serious problems now because
of tattoos or piercings and since it happened due to his own fault, the health
insurance fund does not cover his treatment. Therefore doctors keep asking him for
money for examinations but never give an invoice. The topic is uncomfortable, I do
not ask further details. Or, they also mention that gynaecologists always ask for
money even while the mother is giving birth, and don’t start the birth before they
pay, ‘Since you got it [the baby] in, you can get it out’, they say. (…) Ildikó mentions
suicide which it is also a sin and this comment leads to the question of the
relationship between religion and sins. The idea of dealing with the commandments
was born in this context. ‘It is that you should not steal and things like that, isn’t it?’
asked István. Finally, they decide that they would make up their own set of
commandments taken from their own lives. The brainstorming went on and one
commandment was born after the other... (Fieldwork diary, 15 November, 2012)
At this session, the idea of responding to the call for applications was only an impulse but the
plan to write new commandments and to take them from their own lives was something they
thought of themselves. Only occasionally did Anna influence the process; rather she just helped
to clarify things and encouraged them. She took notes on her laptop to document what was
being said. Finally, they could not stop at 10 commandments. Each scene constituted one or
two (in one case, three) stories illustrating one commandment and at the end of each scene the
commandment itself is written on something (poster, newspaper, etc.) in the background.
These miniature stories are depictions of moral rules that they feel are relevant to their lives.
For instance:
Scene: Interior. Labour room. Daytime.
In the background, a pregnant woman is preparing to give birth, she is suffering.
The doctor and the father are in the front. The doctor is drinking his coffee; the
father has a menu-like list in his hand.
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One moment later.
We see the list: ‘Heart operation: upon agreement; Birth: 50,000; Appendectomy:
40,000; Tonsillectomy: 20,000; Examination: 2,000; Sick note 1 week: 1,000; five
weeks: 5,000. Please, slip it into my pocket!’
The father has a surprised and stupid look on his face. The doctor is standing with a
hypodermic needle in his hand.
Doctor (with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth): ‘If you put it in, you should
get it out!’
One moment later.
On the wall of the labour room, there is a poster with an inscription: ‘Don’t charge
money to heal!’
(Alternative Ten Commandments, Screenplay)
This commandment was filmed on 25 May, 2013. In order to understand how this screenplay
was developed, the filming, based on the field diary, is briefly described. The scene was
recorded in a village medical centre. The actors were recruited by István; he apparently has a
wide network of friends and was able to convince them to take part. A pregnant young girl and
his husband joined in; they enjoyed the situation, indeed, the afternoon was entertaining and
funny. They asked the researcher to play the doctor. This scene was filmed together with the
Introductory scene, in which Moses comes down from the hill with the tablets. ‘I made a
bargain with someone who looks like Jesus; he told me that for 4 litres of wine, he would even
be crucified. But he will do it without it…’ said István. ‘But we need a Moses, not a Jesus…’
replied Anna laughing. The assistant of the general practitioner knew István well, ‘I remember
you, you are…’ and suddenly turned silent. She did not want to mention István’s ‘accident’.
István and Ildikó told us that it was really funny to shoot this scene in the medical centre of this
doctor, because he also actually asks for money for treatment. ‘How surprised he will be when
we present the movie!’ They were hesitating whether or not to make a special edition of the
film for this village so that the doctor was not shocked but finally decided not to do so.
The doctor’s assistant wanted permission from the mayor, so they went to the village, to the
mayor’s office but the group could only reach his secretary, it was mostly István who told her
what was needed. The secretary could not reach the mayor but was helpful and asked
permission from someone else and called the assistant to let the group in for a few minutes.
The assistant was not too friendly and told the group to be really quick because the consulting
hours started in 15 minutes and the doctor would arrive any time. Only after this did they
discover that they had forgotten to bring the white robe and the hypodermic needle to be used
as props for this scene. So they used those of the doctor (without permission), which made the
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atmosphere one of adventure, an illicit action even more. So, the shooting was really quick and
in all about 10 minutes was spent in the consulting room. There were some deviations from the
original plan; for example, the money (borrowed from Anna) was indeed slipped into the
doctor’s pocket and the doctor had to simper contentedly. The camera was held by István who
instructed the actors about what they had to do – for instance, that they should not look into
the camera. Ildikó was responsible for managing the props, but also gave instructions
sometimes.
After this scene, the group went searching for a ‘Jesus’ in the pubs but could not find one.
When searching for him in an ethnically homogeneous, non-Roma street of the village, the
group experienced prejudices from neighbours who at first just watched with suspicion but
later overtly accused the group of coming to steal from the poor and unemployed.
3.3.2 Interpretation of the Commandments
The Commandments in their final form were written down by Anna. The following list of scenes
is based on this screenplay, with a brief summary of each segment:
Introduction: Moses is coming down from a treeless hill with stone tablets in his
hands, the wind is blowing hard. The picture turns black and white, stripes appear,
the picture fades away. In the next moment, a boy and the girl are sitting next to
each other, Ózd can be seen in the background, they are looking at a laptop with
the title on the screen: ‘10 Commandments, Actual’.
1. Do not ask for money to heal patients! (the doctor is asking for money from the
father while the woman is giving birth. The inscription is on a poster on the wall).
2. Do not exhort others to take drugs! (in a disco, a young boy is offered a drug and
sniffs from white powder which is in the shape of the commandment).
3. Do not put anything into your body which does not belong there! (a boy is making
tattoos and takes muscle-building injections in an unhygienic environment.
Meanwhile, pictures of rotten limbs are shown for a minute. The commandment is
on a long air balloon that slowly blows out…).
4. Do not torture your family! (a father is abusing his family in various forms, starting
from listening to music loudly to physically threatening them. The commandment is
on a wall-hanging).
5. Do not torture animals! (an illegal dogfight is shown. The commandment is on a
newspaper next to a dead dog on a dump).
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6. Do not swear! (two women are swearing. The ‘traditional Gypsy’ curses cast on each
other come true, the two women disappear. The commandment is depicted in a
speech bubble and is uttered by a black cat).
7. No racism! (non-Roma students are discriminated against, they cannot go on an
excursion, they are not let into the swimming pool. A teacher is shouting at the
‘Hungarian’ boy. The commandment is written on a vapour-covered window of the
swimming pool by a sad student who is looking inside).
8. Do not abuse your power! (a police car crosses a poor district and a policeman
intimidates a group with his truncheon without reason. In the next scene, poorly-
dressed people are waiting in a queue, in front of an administrative office. Someone
in a suit leaves the office, sits in an expensive car and drives off with exhaust fumes
blowing onto the queuing people. The commandment is etched into the ground, in
the dust.
9. Don’t spoil your and others’ life! (the scene cuts back to the boy and girl on the hill,
with the laptop, the Commandment is on the screen).
Further commandments were also discussed during the meetings but were not included in the
screenplay. ’Don’t pollute your environment!’ should have been the 5th commandment but
was left out most probably by a coincidence; the story was a simple one, people are waiting for
their social benefit payment in front of the office and are throwing rubbish on the floor. There
was also a plan to add a commandment about homeless people but this was not worked out.
As seen above, the commandments and the stories used to visualise them are all taken from
the students’ lives and present the main injustices and dangers that they feel are important in
their everyday life. A great part of the commandments are moral rules that can be regarded as
general ones and not specific to the experiences of Roma people. One of the commandments is
connected to a general risk of modern society, i.e. environmental pollution (Do not pollute your
environment!). Another one was also a general ethical question about protecting animals (Do
not torture animals!) which was a very prevalent theme in the WP5 interviews. Addressing the
issue of homeless people and feeling pity for them was a sign of solidarity, it is not their own
experience – the members of this group have a modest economic situation when compared to
other Roma people but only in that respect, otherwise they have all experienced a deeply
disadvantaged situation. The commandment against the exhortation to drug use and
aggression inside family also represent general, liberal norms about abuse, asymmetric
relations and violent behaviour. These are moral dispositions that are common to this
generation.
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However, the majority of the commandments are motivated by personal experiences which
reflect discrimination experienced and the frustration felt because of it. This frustration is
clearly present in the more general rules such as ‘Do not put anything into your body that does
not belong there!’ and ‘Do not heal for money!’. Both of these are motivated by stories from
their own experiences with the health system and are supported by research data that state
that Roma people do not have access to the same quality of services as the majority population.
Nevertheless, corruption is part and parcel of the Hungarian health care system and affects the
whole of society. However, marginalised and poor Roma people suffer even more from it and
the doctor had to be a non-Roma ‘actor’ in this scenario. In the case of ‘Do not abuse your
power!’, there are two stories and for ‘No racism!’ there are three to demonstrate the problem
and this shows the relative importance of them compared with some of the other
commandments.
The commandment ‘Do not abuse your power’ expresses frustration felt about the
discriminating practices of the authorities. ‘The first story, policemen intimidating passers-by is
a practice that is a frequent experience of these young Roma people; they live their life
frequently abused by the police. It was also documented once in Budapest at a training session’
(Field diary, 20 March 2013) when a group of Roma student council leaders standing and
smoking peacefully outside a community center called the attention of a police patrol which
stopped and questioned them. Further examples abound; during the second brainstorming
session, István told an even tougher story about being arrested once just for being loud in a
public place and was beaten up by the policemen and locked up in the cell naked for a night
(Field diary, 15 December, 2012). The other story, in which people are standing in a queue in
front of an office while the person from the office leaves, sits into his expensive car and blows
car exhaust smoke on them is an image that represents not only ignorance but also the
contempt of the authorities. But it is also instructive that in the original version, Roma minority
leaders were also mentioned by the group members as typical politicians who ‘make such
decisions above us which only they profit from.’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2013).
‘No racism!’ in the first version was suggested as ‘Do not discriminate others’ and was later
changed to this more concise version. The commandment tells three miniature stories about
school discrimination of which they have wide experience These stories are probably the
strongest and most touching ones of all: non-Roma kids are crying while the others go to school
trip, they are watching from outside while the others are in the swimming pool or teachers are
shouting at them while the others are having good time. In this context, it is clear to everyone
that this happens not to non-Roma but to Roma children. It was suggested by Ildikó to reverse
the roles and show the non-Roma students as the discriminated ones: ‘Let it be the opposite
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way, the white kids discriminated in this scene!’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2015). They also
told other stories during the discussions; for instance, in one of their previous schools there was
a separate toilet for Roma students.
This inverse story telling might be interpreted as symbolic, magic revenge. just as if this time, in
this fictional reality created by them the Roma would be in a dominant position and the
Hungarians would suffer discrimination. But this was perhaps not their main motivation, if it
was their motivation at all. They may have introduced this twist in order not to represent
themselves in a really humiliating situation. A large part of the stories are inspired by Roma
people’s experiences of discrimination and show them in a humiliating situation but if one
reads just the screenplay taken out of its context, one might not link these commandments and
problems to Roma people only: doctors ask for payment from everyone; politicians do not care
about people generally; there is risk of drugs for all young people; animal rights, family abuse,
environmental protection are issues that affect all people. Thus, these problems appear not to
be ethnic group-specific issues. Of course, there is another level of interpretation of the
screenplay, a more ethnicity-oriented reading. For instance, doctors discriminate against Roma
people even more and is not a coincidence that a Roma couple is in a powerless, vulnerable
situation in the baby delivery room. But even if one identifies this situation as a form of
discrimination based on ethnicity, the story is told in a burlesque scene; the father shows a
‘stupid face’ when seeing the ‘menu’. Thus, they keep a distance from this situation. But in the
scene about discrimination, nobody would laugh at a schoolboy who is not let into the
swimming pool or is crying when the bus leaves on a school trip without him. Thus, in this
situation, this inverse narrative is a part of a distancing strategy – similar to representing the
problems in a de-ethnicised or burlesque form in the previous scenes.
This de-ethnicisation is also present in the original wording of the ‘No racism!’ commandment,
i.e. ‘Do not discriminate against others!’. Logically, it stands for ‘Do not discriminate against us,
Roma people’, but there is a reason as to why they formulated this sentence in a more general
way. Not naming victims of prejudice is a frequently described discursive technique of modern
racist language (Van Dijk, 1994) in which speakers try to ‘keep face’, viz. reconciling the
(external) demand for racism-free communication with underlying structures of cognitive
representations. Here, speakers, who are not racist but are victims of racism would also like to
‘keep face’ and hide or at least less emphasise what they really think and how they feel about
these issues; but it is not about with the goal of meeting the requirements of a non-racist way
of speaking but rather that they want to retain their self-esteem. A proud young man or woman
cannot represent himself or herself continuously as a defenceless victim. It is similar to what
Goffmann (1959) described as role-distancing: they do not want to be judged on this negative
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role. This twist of the story shows their twofold and ambivalent efforts, on the one hand, to
express the discrimination that they live through but, on the other hand, to do it in a way that
does not over emphasise their defenceless situation. Pity is definitely not the emotion they
wanted to provoke from the audience.
The last commandment, ‘Do not spoil you own life!’ shows a similar pattern. This should be
interpreted together with the process of how it was developed during the discussion. At the
first meeting, it was suggested as ‘Do not deny yourself!’, which could be interpreted as a
commandment attributing high value to individualism and searching for one’s personal goals,
and identities. However, in this case it has a more ethnic-oriented connotation. In a Roma
context, it would mostly mean ‘Do not deny that you are Roma!’, and it frequently appears in
Roma popular culture. The examples the students brought to this original commandment also
proved the ethnic-oriented meaning without any doubt: ‘[Michael] Jackson made himself white
and his nose fell off’ or ‘The Roma should not be white … Long ago, I wanted to be white but it
is over now.’ (Field diary, 15 December, 2012). But this original commandment during the
discussions was gradually dropped and changed to ‘Do not spoil your life!’ In this case, the
commandment lost its original meaning about attributing value to preserving ethnic identity,
and was extended to a more general, de-ethnicised, and individualised meaning: you are
responsible for your actions. This commandment is clearly a paraphrase of the 3rd vow from
the Confession of the Jai Bhim Community: ‘I take responsibility for my own life’ (Confession,
2007). As demonstrated above in section 3.1, teachers of the school try to transmit values of
Buddhism not in the form of religion but as worldview:
‘We bring a lot of ideas into classes that are concretely parts of Buddhism, but we
let them learn them not as commandments, but to understand it and think about it.
And familiarise with the idea that everybody is responsible for himself. Similarly it
was an important message of the Dalits that there is this hundreds of years old
oppression, there are external conditions, but I am still responsible for myself.’
(Anna)
Therefore, this commandment can be also interpreted as a manifestation of the Buddhist
character and the ideology of the school, a move from an ethnic-oriented worldview to a more
open, individualist, Buddhist or even post-materialist value structure.
The commandment ‘Do not swear!’ is quite different from the others. On the surface it is also a
general moral rule, ‘Do not humiliate or insult others verbally’ and this commandment is the
one that is close to the original biblical commandment about taking the name of the Lord in
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vain – or at least as far as the popular understanding of it is concerned. On the other hand, it
also has a deeper, ethnicity-motivated meaning but this meaning is not motivated by
experiences of discrimination. The way it is illustrated with a story shows the effect of the
romantic (and stereotyped) image of Gypsy witchcraft. Two women are swearing at each other,
but in fact what they are saying to each other are curses and, in this scene, they really invoke
supernatural powers and the curses come true. ‘Have only one tooth, and may even that one
hurt!’, says the first woman and the other touches her mouth in pain. ‘Have a hundred rings but
no fingers!’ and the first woman hides her hands in her pocket. Funny curses like this go on until
they curse each other to death (‘May Peter Doszpotdraw around [your dead body]!’ 6 and ‘If
only you dried on the sheet!’); one of them disappears and only her clothes remain there. Thus,
in this scene they wanted to show Roma people not to harm each other:
István: It happens in many families that they swear at each other, but in the case of
the Gypsies it is different because they believe that it can have an effect on them.
And we want to show that indeed, this swearing is a tough thing and it can be
harmful.
Interviewer: And what do you think, how can it have an effect on other people,
does it really come true?
István: I believe that it really comes true. (István)
However, the feelings they had about how Roma people swear are not only negative, there was
a certain pride in the way they spoke about this during the brainstorming. They cited more than
a dozen curses, all of them laughing, like ‘May a horse lick your naked eye!’ And they also
added: ‘This pertains only to Gypsies. Most of the Hungarians don’t even understand it’ (Field
diary, 15 December, 2012). This story is quite different from the others, since here Roma
people do not appear as the target of discrimination, but in the role of the fearful Gypsy witch
who has power over others and knows supernatural powers which others don’t. Here, although
appearing harmful and represented in a funny, distancing way (even the shooting of the scene
on 24 April, 2013 turned into a comedy), the positive elements of Roma identity are present.
Nevertheless, these ‘positive’ elements are inspired by a 19th century romantic image of the
irrational, wild and superstitious Gypsy which also stigmatises them. Thus, even if
unintentionally, the narrative also tells about a prejudice but this case an interiorised one.
6 Péter Dosztpot was a well-known member of the Hungarian Police and ’drawing around [your dead body]’ refers to crime scenes where outlines of bodies are marked where they lay dead.
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3.4 Ethnicity and attitudes to political activities, participation
3.4.1 Activities in and after school
The School makes conscious and continuous efforts to motivate its students. Based on the
extracurricular and curricular activities of the School that can be linked to politics, it is not an
exaggeration to say that these students have exceptional opportunities to learn active
citizenship.
1. First, the student council is elected through secret ballot, which is not evident in the
majority of the schools.
2. The student council was trained in the framework of an international project run by
Amnesty International; three day long training sessions were organised in Sajókaza,
Budapest and Salgótarján. At the latter one, they were trained with other student
leaders.
3. Occasionally, watchdog organisations give lectures to students on human rights issues.
4. During the period of observation, student leaders and active students were taken to two
demonstrations: the first was a counter-demonstration on 17 October 2012, in Miskolc
organised by the Gypsy Minority Government against a Jobbik demonstration called
‘March for Hungarian Life’; the second was a demonstration in Budapest organised by
the Hallgatói Hálózat (Student Network) against the proposed modification of the
amendment to the Law on Equal Opportunity where the law was criticised for legalising
widespread segregative practices and opening the door to the separation of Roma
students from the mainstream, under the pretext of 'positive discrimination’. This
demonstration was followed by a debate on the issue which was moderated using
Occupy hand signals.
5. Students were invited to visit a session of the Hungarian Parliament, in Budapest, on 20
November 2012 dedicated to issues related to the situation of Roma people in Hungary.
Members of the Film Club and student council leaders also took part in the visit.
6. Extracurricular club meetings are also devoted to public issues: e.g. the Film Club; the
‘Disputa’ Club where students learn and practice argumentation skills; the ‘Globus’
Project, which is dedicated to ecological issues. In previous years a Family History Club
was also successful. Here they collected information about the local Holocaust and
Porrajmos7 and also collected material for family history building. They planned to
restart it in 2012 September but the teacher responsible for it left the school. .
7 Systematic genocide of Roma people during WWII, also referred to as the ’Roma Holocaust’.
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7. In September 2013, a school radio was launched with the participation of an
underground community radio station, the Tilos Rádió.
In addition to these activities, teachers deal with political and social issues and try to empower
students through critical reading skills, especially in history lessons:
What we are doing is developing reading skills. If I show them a HVG8, a Magyar
Nemzet9 or a Heti Válasz10 article, first, they cannot identify the persons, second,
they cannot locate the topic in time and space. Thus, it is difficult to grasp the topic.
(…) That there is one standpoint which belongs to one side and another which
belongs to the other side, which most articles are about. These articles are about
conflicting standpoints, like voting, or terrorism. (…) And I have never seen any
student during my career who was able to do this at high school age. And without
this, one cannot behave as a voting citizen in a democracy. Now we teach these
things to them with our teachers who are also part of this cultural milieu. (…) But
we are doing our best. The most important instruction for teachers is that we do
not do lectures but we work on sources together, we make them understand each
sentence and we answer the questions. And we gain knowledge from the text that
can be useful to know. (Dénes)
For instance, during a history lesson which was observed a teacher showed excerpts from a
HVG article which criticised Géza Jeszenszky, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, for stating
in a university textbook that in Roma families it is acceptable to establish incestuous
relationships:
After her demonstration of the article which she distributed in photocopies, the
reactions were diverse. ‘This is a call against Roma people!’ or ‘Again, we were all
bracketed!’ or just simply ‘Bastard!’ There was a debate on it, one of them accepted
the stereotype: ‘We all know such cases!’ but the majority had arguments to refute
it, for instance: ‘But he was racist to say that!’ or ‘A real Roma would never do that!’
The teacher, after making clear that they understood who the author was, did not
intervene. (Field diary, 19 October, 2012)
8 Liberal weekly periodical. 9 Right-wing conservative newspaper. 10 Right-wing weekly periodical.
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Another tool used to motivate them is the special relationship between teachers and students
which, from the start of the observation period, appeared as a kind of partnership. The first
manifestation of this special relationship was that they were on first-name terms which, in the
Hungarian language, includes using a grammar for a familiar form of address. This seems
unprecedented in a school context. But students were told about the school’s financial
problems which they tried to solve in their own way; for instance, by making photocopies for
the class at a local Christian community centre, in order to save the school some money (Field
diary, 19 October, 2012). Trust is regarded as the key component of this relationship:
These students, who come here, for instance in their 9th year, they come from
schools where they were made to feel Gypsy for 8 years. That you are worthless,
you are stupid, you are not able to do this, and they were given a two11 just to let
them go from here to hell. So, it takes a lot of time for them to believe that it is not
true. Everyone is the master of his own fate. That he can achieve something, if he
wants, but for this, they need self-confidence. (…) And if we can convince them that
you are able to do a task, even if it is in a circus programme,12 than you can
convince them that you are able to learn Hungarian language and literature or
Maths. (Dóra)
There is indeed a high level of trust between teachers and students’ ‘Here, we can say anything
to the teachers. We can talk about everything sincerely. In the other school, they did not listen
to me at all …’ (Ildikó). And this is mostly because the teachers and leaders never humiliate the
students or approach them using racist language; they are approached as partners as far as the
framework of education permits:
There is this distance and mistrust in them, but the longer they are our students,
the better experience they have from non-Gypsies. And this [mistrust] can be
applied faster in their relations with totally unknown people as well. But we are
needed for this and the practice that even when they behave badly, we don’t call
them in racist terms. And this [trust] takes months and years to mature, but
whatever a student does, I tell him that you are fool, you are acting against yourself,
I am strict, there are sanctions, but I never humiliate him and destroy his dignity.
None of us do that. (Anna)
11
Pass grade. 12 The Ethnocircus Projectwas one of the extracurricular activities in 2013; a circus visited the school, and provided them with circus skills training. Later some of the students had the opportunity to travel to Turkey to visit the circus.
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Nevertheless, observation and discussion carried out by the researcher with the members the
student council from Ózd showed that the efforts to motivate students did not bring them
closer to formal political activities. Their attitudes to political organisations and institutions
were not fundamentally different from those we observed in the case of the WP5 respondents.
Their image of politicians was the same, i.e. corrupt, privileged persons looking for their own
interests. Only one of the student representatives of Ózd did not exclude the option of being a
politician in the future, but this was clearly because of family influence, not that of the school.
Imre: My brother is a minority leader, or something like that, and he told me to
learn much, take the final exams, and learn something that is good for this, and go
there where he is.
Interviewer: So you would like to be there.
Imre: Yes…
Interviewer: So you would like to work for the minority government. Do you know
what they are doing there, what is this organisation like?
Imre: I think they help Gypsies. And also children, who cannot get to such places…
For I was with them once as a kind of mentor, we took them to the Balaton.13 (Imre)
They occasionally joined demonstrations (especially against the Jobbik Party), signed petitions
or some of them had opinions about public, especially human rights oriented issues and could
clearly articulate their opinions with ease, and this was at least partly a result of the activities
undertaken at school. However, not even the student council was active enough to initiate
activities:
Interviewer: And do you experience from the student council sometimes that they
would collectively represent student interests?
Dénes: Anna knows this better. But I do not experience it and honestly speaking, as
[school leader], I have never been in a situation that I had to reckon with any effort
from them for long time. I don’t remember such a thing. I remember that we had
these camps, and that our students did well there. And it also had good echoes
later. This stabilised the situation of students this case, in their studies and in their
interactions with each other and with their families. It is surely very important what
is going on in the student council, but I see primarily its didactical benefit for the
present. That it complements our efforts in Scinece and Geography lessons. (Dénes)
13 Popular touristic destination, a lake in South West Hungary.
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The quotation above also confirms the researcher’s observations, that there were considerable
efforts invested in the student council, the School organised weekend-long training sessions
and teachers travelled with them in their free time and asked their opinions during these
sessions but the student council was not an actor in the power relations of the school:
Interviewer: Could you tell me, how this election looked like, who nominated you,
or did you want another candidate?
Ildikó: I did not want to be this. It was the class. All of them wanted me. And they
wrote it on papers, who voted for whom, and so I became that. And after it, we
went to such a camp so that we speak about what we want and so an. And we
wanted school radio, and it was achieved, but in this building [i.e. the School rented
rooms from other schools in Ózd]we could not exploit it because they protested
whenever the music was on, so we finished it. (Ildikó)
Thus, their occasional initiatives mostly pertain to leisure activities, such as radio, excursions or
parties. But these were mostly experiences from the previous years and in 2012/2013, the
financial situation of the school was destabilised by the new Church Law which removed the
official church status from the Jai Bhim Community and there was therefore less money for
these activities:
There are always ideas. What they really miss are theatre and movie visits,
excursions. There used to be a lot of them but in the first half of the school year,
nothing. And it caused big emptiness in them. (…) The leaders of the school always
ask their opinions about major changes, decisions that have an effect on school life.
(…) But we are now in the phase of preparing them for these tasks, so that they can
speak about them, to lobby on issues, to argue for something. So that they learn to
organise, to deal with money, to work together, and so on. (Gabi)
The student council and these activities are planned and organised by the teachers and social
workers. They encourage students to express their opinion, they motivate them and try to get
them to take action. Grass-roots initiatives are only rarely undertaken, especially in the Ózd
centre of the school where the students come from an urban environment and have less
contact with each other. This situation together with the passivity into which they are socialised
can provoke various reactions. Some of them, especially in Sajókaza, seem to become more
active. But in Ózd, it could also provoke rejection:
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Mátyás: Once I was at a demonstration, and I felt like a sheep.
Interviewer: Once we were together in Budapest on one, did you feel like a sheep
even there?
Mátyás: Yes, it was then when I felt like a sheep. It was the first demonstration in
my life and I just felt that I was marching after the crowd. People are making noise
to call attention to themselves and we are just marching, marching after the crowd.
I was just like a sheep. I just marched unconsciously. Even if I knew why I was
marching, I was unconscious. I can almost say it was not my decision. (Mátyás)
3.4.2 Ethnicity and politics
During discussion with the students, all of them emphasised that being Roma (or Gypsy, a term
which they used more frequently) is something that is given and can never be changed. ‘Dogs
won’t meow…’ (Sándor). Roma is not perceived as an identity group that can be discarded or
replaced by another ethnic identity, for instance Hungarian. It is seen instead as a group of
people characterised by inherent belonging to the group or even by phenotypical features as
determined by other people. In this, they simply follow the thinking of majority society; there is
no need to ask someone if he/she is Roma or not, it can be decided by others:
I think, not only our students think like this but also the majority of the society. (…)
When I was talking to them about such issues, the answer was always: ‘but you are
brown!’ And they would say about to other that ‘you are as black as the night, you
cannot deny it.’ So, this is such a thing that is given, that they were born with, this is
an existing thing and they think they cannot change it. (Gabi)
Only those, who had mixed heritage and who, because of this, did not have visible features
mentioned the option of being non-Roma in certain situations. This phenomenon, that the
person is marked by his or her physical features which obliges him/her to identify him/herself
with a given group was described by Young (1990) and is prevalent among Roma people in
Hungary (Neményi 2007).
Numerous social psychological theories focus on the conflict between the need for positive self-
image and the experience that the group one belongs to is subject to negative connotations. In
this social psychological tradition starting from Erikson’s study (1968), this crisis is crucial for a
person’s identity development. In Erikson’s view, in order to have a consistent personality and
experience wholeness a young person must feel a continuity between what s/he conceives
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her/himself to be and that which s/he perceives others see in her/him. If s/he fails to develop a
strong, clear sense of identity, s/he remains in the phase of identity confusion and will never be
able to develop an autonomous and creative personality.
Tajfel and Turner (1986) identified three strategies that individuals from discriminated groups
can pursue: individual mobility through which the individual physically or psychologically leaves
the group; social creativity where a group redefines the meaning of membership; and social
competition where the group struggles for a change in the social hierarchy. Crocker and
Luhtanen (1990) emphasised the importance of collective self-esteem in this; their empirical
studies show that members of devalued groups, with low collective self-esteem, opt for the
first strategy, i.e. that of leaving the group while people who have high collective self-esteem
are more likely to react to threats to collective self-esteem by derogating out-groups and
enhancing the in-group. Feagin (1991) postulated four distinct types of responses to
discrimination: withdrawing from the situation of discrimination; ignoring the discrimination
while continuing interaction; verbally challenging discrimination; physically responding to
discrimination.
Neményi recently studied Hungarian Roma adolescents’ identity strategies (2007). In this, she
followed Phinney’s model (1990 and 1992) where three distinct stages of ethnic identity
development are described: first, the unexamined ethnic identity stage which implies little or
no understanding of issues related to ethnicity and where individuals accept the values and
attitudes of the majority culture, including, often, internalised negative views; second, the
ethnic identity exploration stage in which individuals examine the meaning of their ethnic group
membership in relation to the dominant culture; third, the ethnic identity achievement stage in
which individuals have a working knowledge of their ethnic heritage, a clear idea of the
meaning of their ethnic group membership and a commitment to their ethnicity and the role it
plays in their lives. This theory describes the ethnic identity development of adolescents as a
linear, one-dimensional development process, which, in optimal cases, would result in an ideal
status. Neményi has argued that in her interviews with young Hungarian Roma adolescents, the
respondents rehearsed such reactions to humiliation, discrimination or even separation that
could be described mostly in terms of withdrawal or silent recognition of the power relations
determined by the majority. Only in exceptional cases was strong solidarity with or conscious
embracement of Roma identity observed and that too only in cases where a family member or
another influential person could help to strengthen the respondents’ own identity/ies and work
out what it meant to be Roma in Hungary.
The hypothesis that the common experience of exclusion could serve as a catalyst for activism
when combined with active political socialisation was only partly confirmed by the researchers’
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observations in the course of this study. First, the aim of the school is not primarily to train
Roma leaders but rather to transmit general civic skills. The Ambedkarite ideology behind the
school is about identity change and it opposes nationalist- oriented Roma identity construction.
True, there are activities that aim at transmitting a positive definition of Roma identity which
includes, for instance, singing the Roma anthem, teaching Lovari (Roma) language, paying
special attention to the history of Roma people in history classes, or campaigning to modify the
mainstream high school history atlas in a way that it also demonstrates Roma migration and the
Roma and Jewish Holocaust. All these efforts contribute successfully to a deeper understanding
and acceptance of Roma identity and the construction of a personality where ethnicity forms an
integral:
We teach them about the migration of the Roma people, their Indian roots, the
anti-Roma measures of the enlightened absolutism, the reasons and the
consequences of this. Or, we tell them that Áron Gábor14 was Gypsy. (Anna)
But the development of the scene of the last commandment, from ‘Do not deny your [Roma]
self!’ to ‘Do not spoil your own life!’, from the moral obligation to retain one’s ethnic identity to
individual responsibility for one’s actions also reveals how the Ambedkarite ideology has on
influence on the students’ attitudes and activities.
Second, these young people do not have the same attitudes to Roma identity and they do not
all come from the same socioeconomic situation either. Those living in highly segregated,
ethnically homogeneous enclaves have different or greater problems than those who live in or
close to urban centres and who have more contact with the majority population. In this sense,
there was a contrast between the centres in Ózd and Sajókaza which were observed during this
study. The majority of the students at Sajókaza came from the same settlement, a Roma
enclave located, both geographically and socially, out of the village and all potential problems
were concentrated there, including a lack of services, segregation, deep poverty and a lack of
opportunities. In Ózd, students came from diverse districts and a good proportion of them lived
in an urban environment and had more opportunities. This difference did not necessarily mean
better job opportunities since these opportunities mostly encompassed atypical forms of
employment (such as temporary jobs, public work programmes or seasonal agricultural work on
the Great Plain), but rather the difference meant having a different horizon, lifestyle and
cultural background. And this was also reflected in the young people’s political attitudes:
14 Famous cannon smith of the Hungarian Independence War of 1848-1849.
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Their activity also depends on their place of residence. For instance, in Sajókaza
they are involved in these things much more since there are more conflicts that
have a political nature. In Ózd, it cannot be felt so much, but since the [human
rights oriented NGO] was active here, they also know about these things. So, they
are also interested in them and they are more open, but they have a lot of
prejudices, they have distorted information which we want to clarify with them.
(Gabi)
In Ózd, young Roma people are in a daily contact with non-Roma people which makes them
more open and facilitates their integration but they also have more encounters with extremists
and sometimes they need to cope with these:
József: My neighbour is on old woman and she has a son who is in the Jobbik. But
he is my mate. He is not so bad even if he is in the Jobbik.
Interviewer: But he is not Roma is he?
József: No, he isn’t. But he helps me when he is there to visit her mother. He helps
me and I help him and we speak normally.
Interviewer: But why is he from the Jobbik if he has a Roma friend?
József: I don’t know.
Interviewer: Haven’t you spoken with him about this?
József: I don’t like to speak about these issues. (József)
These young people live in an environment where they are victims of prejudice racism and
discrimination on a daily basis. And of course, this has an effect on their confidence, their
success or lack of it in their activities and can cause frustration:
Interviewer: What do you think, this movie on the Ten Commandments, could this
change people’s mind? (…)
Mátyás: Look, go to Youtube and type ‘Gypsy’ or ‘Gypsy music’, or type anything in
connection with Gypsies and take a look at the comments below.
Interviewer: What do they write there?
Mátyás: You know it well don’t you? Stinking Gypsies, rotten Gypsies, let all of them
die, let’s go Jobbik, I hope the Jobbik will win. You can read there only these, they
don’t even watch the video, they don’t even know what it is about. It is written
there, there is a Gypsy in it, or they see that he is a Gypsy, and immediately write
‘what does this dirty Gypsy want here?’. And this is the problem. This is why the film
will not take effect. Because they will read the comments after it and these
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comments will be anchored in the people. It will be anchored, they will look a video,
see that there is a Gypsy in it and in the comments, there is Gypsy, Gypsy, Gypsy,
Gypsy this, Gypsy that. And even if there is nothing under the video, and they just
see that there is a Gypsy in it, these things will come up unconsciously. (Mátyás)
The negative attitudes displayed by local populations towards the Roma community and the
readiness of the majority population to resort to segregative practices are also demonstrated
by the MYPLACE WP4 survey data. For instance, 63 per cent of WP4 respondents disagreed
with the statement that ‘Roma, Gypsies and Travellers make a positive contribution to society’,
and of these 34 per cent strongly disagreed. It is worth noting that 30 per cent of the
respondents identified themselves with the Roma minority, so, if we narrow down the sample
to ethnic Hungarian respondents, 73 per cent of the sub-sample disagreed with this statement,
and of these 43.4 per cent strongly disagreed. However, it is also noteworthy that 38.5 per cent
of the Roma respondents similarly disagreed with this positive statement on Roma and of these
13.5 per cent strongly disagreed. This suggests a case of interiorised prejudices which were also
apparent during fieldwork.
The way the young Roma people reacted to the prejudiced views against them was widespread
at local level. The extent to which this can be viewed as normal varies not only between
individuals but also between situations and this was also observed in Wakefield and Hudley’s
study of African American youngsters (2005). One possible reaction is solidarity or even
defensive opposition although this occurred mostly when they were attacked and other
solutions were not available, for instance in the case of the Hungarian Guard marching in their
town or village:
József: Last time, there was a theft in [name of the village], no one knows who
committed it, they have taken only a few things, some sausages and a bacon. One
hundred guardsmen from the Jobbik came, they wanted to kill Gypsies.
Interviewer: Really? When did it happen?
József: I don’t remember, it happened this year, a few months ago. The policemen
came, they just waved and left. Every day, [name of the village] is full of policemen,
every day. They are there on foot, in cars, in every way they can. One cannot move
in [name of the village], there are so many of them. But the Jobbik supporters were
there and they left.
Interviewer: So they left the Jobbik there?
József: That is why I want to be a policeman.
Interviewer: Wow.
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József: Nobody is on the side of the Gypsies.
Interviewer: And did any atrocities happen there?
József: No, nothing. They were just shouting and then left. But we, the Gypsies, also
gathered, I was with them, but actually nothing happened. (…)
Interviewer: Do you know where they were from?
József: No. (…) I know that the old woman who was robbed has all her relatives in
the Guard. All her relatives are from the Jobbik, and they came to her. (József)
As seen above, the strategy applied is not only dependent on the personality and the social
environment but also the situation; the same person needed to follow different strategies in
two real-life situations. In everyday, interpersonal interaction he cooperated with a Jobbik
member (see József’s account on page 35), and called him his friend; however, in another
situation he was at war with them when his group was physically threatened by the guardsmen
marching against them.
Examples of achieved, reflected ethnic identity (Phinney 1990), working knowledge, solidarity
and refusal of the negative prejudices based on commitment to ethnic identity can be
frequently found in this group. One of the most explored viewpoints observed is from a former
student of the school:
I don’t want to use bad words, but I cannot find a decent word about what is going
on in this country on this issue now, and it is flaring up now. This is a scandal and it
is a shame on the country. Disgrace. And we have to live our life in the middle of the
situation in which we hear that ‘because he is Gypsy, because he is Jew, because he
is, let’s say, Romanian or Slovak’. And then I say, stop, my friend! He is a man like
you, and you have no right to condemn him or punish him, there are authorities to
punish him if he committed something. Let’s try to look at him in a different way,
let’s try to help him to catch up. Because there are really a lot of people among the
Roma (…) who want to catch up and live another way of life. They just need help.
And there are a lot of them. Even if they say that the greatest part of them will
never change, and never want to change, there are so many of them who do want!
(Jakab)
This rejection most frequently takes the form of refusing ethnic categorisation:
The problem is that we are all taken the same, we are all bracketed. If one Gypsy
steals, all of them are thieves. But if one Hungarian steals, then do all of them steal?
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It is never the same if a Hungarian steals or a Roma. If a Hungarian steals, it is one
year, but if the Roma steals, it is three years in prison. But I know Hungarians of this
kind too. (…) People are stupid to bracket everyone. There are poor and rich among
the Gypsies, and there are also poor and rich among the Hungarians. (Ildikó)
However, other strategies observed were those of distancing or withdrawal. It was sometimes
observed in conversation situations when negative attitudes towards Roma people or even
interiorised prejudices were expressed. For instance, on one occasion István expressed his
opinion that Gypsies were happy to receive money just for lying in bed. He was told that it was
not true since he worked hard, just like many other Roma, and that most people would be
happy to receive money for lying in bed but he was not convinced. Later, in the interview
situation he repeated the same idea: ‘What are my aims? I would rather say that my dream is
that I lie in bed and receive a lot of money’ (István). But further examples abound; for instance,
when they repeat negative prejudices about Roma people:
Mátyás: If you ask a Gypsy what he thinks about Gypsies, almost half of them would
say that they are doing is really wrong … I cannot explain, you should hear what
they say. I hear it every day.
Interviewer: Gypsies about Gypsies?
Mátyás: Gypsies about Gypsies.
Interviewer: And what would they say? I am really interested in it.
Mátyás: For instance, what my father have said. [Before the interview, his father
had told stories about how public workers are exploited and humiliated]. In the
Gypsy minority government, it is not the situation that they speak kindly to Gypsies.
But they call them all the animal names. A Gypsy about a Gypsy. (…) This is the
situation among the Gypsies, if a Hungarian tells the Gypsies that they are bad like
this or that, all of them revolt, but if there is no Hungarian, then there is also a
Gypsy to tell them that they are bad.
And this was also confirmed by their teachers:
Interviewer: And do you also experience that the students repeat these
statements? One such statement is that they have kids in order to get social
benefits…
Dénes: Yes…
Interviewer: …or the campaign in connection with gypsy crime…
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Dénes: Yes, yes. We experience this, and this is comprehensible, since they are
exposed to this pressure in their own social environment and we try to exert a
counter-pressure here, but this is not so easy… (Dénes)
Once, the students told me that we are Gypsies, we are like this, we steal. Then I
asked, ‘Do you steal?’ ‘I don’t.’ ‘And you?’ ‘Neither I.’ ‘And you?’ ‘Well, there has
been an example to this’–said the third. We were twenty in the class and fifteen of
them have never stolen anything in their lives. Then I said: ‘What is this sentence
then?’ And they said: ‘The Gypsies are like this. I don’t steal but the Gypsies are like
this.’ It is so deeply embedded in them, what they receive or what is attributed to
them. (Anna)
Sometimes it is manifested in a kind of preference for out-groups:
I am not racist, I do not choose between people, or I would be happy if I could meet
more foreigners, or I could be with Hungarians. That would be really cool. Or even,
how shall I put it, I like Hungarians. More, probably more than the people of my
origin, because I could speak much better with them than I could with those who
are living around me. (Sándor)
Or even in openly negative, prejudiced or even racist views about other Roma groups:
Respondent: I don’t like those from [name of the village].
Interviewer: Yes, you mentioned this, could you tell me more about this?
Respondent: They are humble people. Stinking, black, and wild. I don’t like this kind.
I am also Gypsy, but I would never want to be like them.15
This stereotyping of other groups is not tolerated in the school but was witnessed during a
school trip to Budapest:
We are crossing the City, this is the most exciting part of the excursion. [name of
student] and [name of student] stopped making music and were at the bus window,
just like the rest of them. They wave and shout to passers-by, especially to boys. (…)
They are the most excited when they see a ‘black’, ‘Hello, Brother!’ Everybody is
laughing. There are also racist comments, but, in these cases, teachers stop them:
15 The pseudonym to which this quotation is attributable has been intentionally left out.
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‘Waving and saying hello is allowed, but calling names is not!’ (…) They are not very
kind to Chinese, one of them calls a passer-by ‘rice’! Anna is really angry: ‘Just one
more racist comment and you will be sitting silently till home!’ (Field diary, 13 June,
2013)
Discrimination seems to be contagious, they also stereotype other groups, such as
Chinese, Arabs or Gays, but if we speak about these issues, they can easily become
tolerant, and they recognise that it is no good to stereotype other groups. (Anna)
These attitudes were even manifest in tensions between students from the two centres,
Ózd and Sajókaza. Some of the students from the Ózd centre passed on the prejudices
they had experienced from the majority society to other Roma students coming from a
more disadvantaged situation. Similar patterns were also observed by Neményi (2007).
According to Phinney’s model (1993) of ethnic socialisation, these attitudes can be
described as belonging to the first, undeveloped stage of identity development, the
unexamined one, which implies little or no understanding of issues related to ethnicity,
and where individuals accept the values and attitudes of the majority culture including,
often, internalised negative views. However, the situation is more complex and needs
further study. These reactions were mostly dependent on the situation; so, for example,
the same person could react by showing deep commitment to ethnic identity in one
situation and yet, in another case, might also repeat and pass on the negative attitudes of
majority culture.
Jost (2001) described similar patterns in his theory on system legitimation. He observed
that members of groups with disadvantageous and even extremely disadvantageous
situations might opt to refuse the in-group and prefer the out-group just in order to
preserve the status quo. According to his theory, a number of factors might contribute to
this, for instance the need for cognitive consistency, a belief that the world is just and
everyone gets what is deserved, or ideological dissonance reduction (Jost et al. 2002)
Thus, differences between the young people’s perceptions of Roma identity, sometimes even
conflicts between the groups, and the ideology of the school that does not put the primary
focus on developing such political attitudes that would strongly emphasise Roma (nationalist)
identity building limits the effectiveness of ethnicity as an activating factor. On the one hand, a
common experience of social exclusion, discrimination and segregation can indeed function as
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a mobilising factor and raise solidarity among students. This could be well observed in the
events connected to the struggle for the existence of the school and the results of this struggle.
3.5 Epilogue: The end of the story Since the very beginning of fieldwork, financial and existential problems cast a shadow on the
work of the school and especially the Ózd centre. In 2012, the Jai Bhim Community lost its
status as a church school due to the amendment of the Law on Religion; therefore, the School
lost the extra support that religious education institutions receive. Due to the specialised
teaching and decentralised structure of the school, this caused serious problems; for instance,
in paying the travel costs of teachers commuting from Budapest or in financing extracurricular
and social activities. Although negotiations were started with the Ministry of National
Resources, through the intervention of the minister, whereby the School finally received some
extra support to compensate its loss of revenue, the problems did not end there.
In Ózd, the School did not have its own building and it rented rooms from two other schools
close to the segregated districts with a high Roma population. During the academic year, both
those schools decided not to rent out classrooms. One of them justified its decision by referring
to a new regulation that obliged schools to keep students in the building and offer them
programmes until 4:00 p.m. . However, the other school simply decided not to rent out their
surplus rooms:
We heard rumours about a deputy mayor going around schools and telling them not
to give us rooms. I have to add that we needed 6 rooms altogether, and this should
not have been a problem in such a town. (…) They would say that the school is our
business, not the interest of the town. There are enough schools without us. (…) We
tried to get a building which has been empty for years now. It was renovated from
EU funds directly for a Roma talent support programme. But the town informed us
that the contracted maintenance period was over and they would like to use it for
touristic purposes. (Anna)
The town council offered to rent two buildings both of which were literally in ruin,, one without
roof, and there was neither time nor money to renovate them by May when school buildings
had to be accredited for the following school year. According to the teachers, the decisions
taken clearly appear to be the result of the negative climate of opinion, in Ózd, against Roma
people and the malevolence of the town council leaders towards them. ‘The mayor is from the
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FIDESZ Party,16 but his voters are from the extreme right. He tries to convince the supporters of
Jobbik to support him to be elected mayor again’ (Anna). The teachers even mentioned the
positive efforts of the Ministry which were not strong enough to go against the town council
leaders decisions: ‘This is a tough place, leaders have to pursue anti-Roma policy, only through
that can they win the elections’ (Anna).
They also frequently mentioned the Jobbik campaigns against Roma initiatives, especially the
‘World Tent’. In May 3013, at a closed session, the city council of Ózd decided to host the
Ethnic and Roma Cultural and Methodological Centre in the town (supported by UNESCO and
EU) which could have given white-collar jobs to hundreds of local people in the region which
suffered extremely high unemployment rates. The local Jobbik organisation launched a
successful campaign against the project, and organised a demonstration on 13 May. Within
two weeks, they had collected enough signatures for a local referendum on the issue. Their
main arguments included ‘may Ózd not become a Gypsy capital’ and that they wanted public
security and work places, not ‘charity from the Union [EU]’ (Kovács 2013). The mayor did not
dare risk a referendum and backed out of the project. Thus Ózd cancelled an investment to the
value of 1.7 billion forints.
But the campaign against the centre had started long before. Students also mentioned other
arguments: ‘There were rumours in the town that hundreds of Roma would be settled here
because of the World Tent and there were already enough Gypsies here, that there was no
need for more’ (Dóra). Students also spoke of even Roma people who were against the project
because they did not want more Roma to be ‘settled’ in Ózd: ‘As I understood, it was said that
they wanted to settle a lot of Gypsy people from Canada to Ózd in the framework of the Gypsy
Tent’ (István). Even Roma people signed the petition:
‘A Gypsy girl came there, very black, and she said that she had already signed the
petition against them coming here. I told her, ‘What is this, you don’t even know
what you are signing’. Another Gypsy woman next to us said: ‘My daughter, signed
it!’. (István)
The decisions not to give classrooms to the school and not to host the cultural centre were
taken within the same period of time and therefore teachers and leaders linked the two things
together:
16 Right-wing governing party of Hungary.
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The intercultural tension is very high. The World Tent project already blew the fuse
because the Jobbik launched a mendacious campaign about what would happen
here. The edging out of our school fits this process. (Anna)
In their experience, the Jobbik was against all initiatives that supported the situation of the
Roma people and the school had no real ally in the region:
In this town, in this micro-region, Nazi ideology has no ideological rival. This is a very
strange situation; in Budapest, whoever we speak to, we feel the ideological
thinking in him that the situation of the Gypsy is a problem and something has to be
done. (…) Even an extreme right-wing partner would accept it [in Budapest].
Because a democratic way of thinking has a substantial presence there. In Ózd,
what we experience is the opposite, even those who identify themselves as people
with humanitarian or a civil rights way of thinking, even those take on the wildest
speeches of Jobbik. This is a very exciting situation that a town becomes the
hostage of such an ideology that has no space in Europe at all. (…) We knew quite
well that we arrived here upwind. This was not a great surprise. But personal
experience is different to knowing about something. When I see that we work with
many Roma minority leaders and none of them is armoured ideologically against
this problem. So, they take on the fascist blah-blahs. Even the Gypsy minority
leaders. This is shocking. (…) It would be nice to have social forces or civic
organisations that stand firm on the ground of human rights. But in Ózd, we have
not met them. It is possible that they are very silent. (…) But if they did not discover
our presence, and nor did we discovered them, I can say that they don’t exist.
(Dénes)
In these interviews, the school appears as a deserted cathedral – an institution that is not
embedded in local society; remains isolated and is condemned to failure. They kept on
negotiating with local government until the very last moment but failed. During the summer,
the Ózd centre of the school was closed. In September, about 40 students decided to travel to
Sajókaza every day to continue their studies but more than a hundred were lost and a huge
number of them dropped out again from the educational system.
There could be other narratives of these events; what is demonstrated here is the viewpoint of
the school and mostly that of the school teachers. In these narratives the local Jobbik started a
campaign against the school, ‘they said it gained too much space’ (Anna), and the leaders of the
town council did not support them either and saw the School as the Ambedkarites’ own
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business and hence impeded their efforts to find a place to teach. This situation clearly had an
effect on the political activism in the school.
Student council leaders, also from Sajókaza started to organise a demonstration on behalf of
the school. This was a joint initiative and in this the hidden conflicts between the students of
the two centres disappeared. However, this initiative was turned down, the school was
negotiating until the very last moment and probably did not want to provoke the town leaders.
However, the story of the closed school raised solidarity between the two centres:
I was very afraid they would say, here come the bigheads from Ózd and the yokels
from Sajókaza. But nothing, imagine, nothing like that happened! The situation that
they came there from Ózd, having lost their school, was such a message that you
would not believe. That they put such things on the wall that two hearts and
Sajókaza and Ózd written in them, (and Rakaca inbetween, because there are also
students from Rakaca there). (Anna)
In this new situation the film club was disbanded. A new film club was organised in Sajókaza
with a new leader, a documentarist, but Ildikó and István dropped out for family reasons.
Mátyás continued his studies in Sajókaza, but did not join the new club. The project on the
Alternative Ten Commandments was not finished.
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4. Conclusions Observation of the activities of the school confirmed that in contrast to the general trends in
the Hungarian education system, this school made conscious efforts to prepare students for
active citizenship and to oppose mainstream interpretations of events. This is proved by the list
of political and pubic activities undertaken and the practices performed (and observed) during
education and extracurricular activities. In this, the School offered outstanding opportunities
for its students.
Nevertheless, as Percheron has argued, practising democratic knowledge is necessary for
successfully interiorising and validating it. In this, the two observed group somehow had
different opportunities. The Film Club was characterised by horizontal relationships with
teachers and initiatives from students were not only encouraged but the whole scope of
activities was built on their creativity. Thus, they were more motivated, they organised the
group for themselves at the beginning of the school year. Participants also made efforts to
collect resources and recruit more actors and were planning to continue filming even after the
end of the Club.
In the other case, the inner structure of the student council clearly reproduced the relationships
of the classroom. Activities were organised by teachers and had didactical aims, ('It is surely
very important what is going on in the student council, but I see primarily its didactical benefit'
(Dénes)) and some of them were indeed training activities. True, these training activities were
not frontal lectures but used creative and participative tools and teachers encouraged student
representatives to propose activities which partly were accomplished. However, those
proposed rarely moved beyond excursions, parties or student radio. Nevertheless, at the end of
the school year when the students learned that the Ózd centre would probably close, they tried
to organise a demonstration. In this, they could have shown solidarity with each other and
commitment to the school. The fact that it was not supported is informative about the context;
i.e. that democratic representation of interest would not be welcomed by the leaders of the
town council and that negotiations behind closed doors were regarded as more effective in this
situation. But it is to be emphasised again that members of the student council were elected by
secret ballot and they were offered wide-ranging opportunities to learn democratic and
leadership skills. Students in Ózd were not motivated to engage with formal political activities
(let alone one case when a family member was already a minority leader), but discussions with
them revealed that at least some of them had a deeper understanding of democratic processes
and could express their opinions about public issues with greater ease than most of the
respondents in the WP5 interviews.
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Thus, the hypothesis that engaged and purposeful political socialization, with pedagogically
sound methodology, can lead to active civic participation even in the most disadvantaged
circumstances was only partly confirmed. Students had negative opinions about the formal
political sphere and did not want to participate in it. However, they were more active in
activities (e.g. demonstrations, informal discussions on politics, media projects, creative
activities) that were related to ethical issues or minority-related problems. They were more
open and motivated to participate in public activities which were related to leisure.
The other hypothesis, that the experience of exclusion could simulate political participation was
also only partly supported by the researchers’ observations. Group solidarity increased
especially under certain circumstances, for instance when their school was in danger. But it can
be argued that their various and situation-dependent attitudes to ethnicity did not provide a
sound basis for political engagement and collective actions. The experience of the Film Club's
project showed that on the surface the topics were independent from ethnicity and mostly
related to post-material values such as environmental pollution or animal rights. However the
narrative analysis of the scenes themselves revealed the deep wounds of exclusion, prejudice,
and poverty. Throughout this project and fieldwork, strategies used by the young people to
distance themselves from Roma identity were also observed and varied from humorous
representations to interiorised prejudices to applying prejudices to other ethnic and sub-ethnic
groups. These mechanisms in the social-psychological discourse on psychological development
could easily be regarded as signs of an undeveloped, unreflexive stage of identity construction
in which the person is unable to achieve a strong and positive commitment to ethnicity; this
being the only way to develop an active, creative and consistent personality though, this
example also shows the dangers of regarding psychological development as a linear process.
The Ambedkarite strategy is not primarily based on building a strong ethnic identity and
engaging in a discursive battle to change the meaning of it. Besides some efforts to construct a
positive image of ethnicity, it rather tries to change the identity structure in which other
elements – such as Buddhism, (or another religion) for instance, could play a more important
role than the ethnic identity. As Neményi (2007: 96) also argued, surpassing the obligation for
ethnic categorisation can also be a way, and an easier one at that, of self-realisation. This is
especially true in this case where prejudices and racism have extremely strong positions.
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5. Future analysis
The present case offers an opportunity to understand better why 38.5 per cent of the Roma
respondents expressed negative attitudes and prejudices against Roma people in the MYPLACE
quantitative survey. But further analysis of the WP4 data set could reveal more about this issue
and could help answer the question, ‘what are the factors that determine these attitudes?’
The interviews recorded in the fieldwork may be compared to the W5 data set, and this
comparison could reveal to what extent the school was successful in building a committed
approach to ethnicity and stable identity structure.
Comparison with WP2 data could also reveal what effects are produced if a school pays special
attention to memory policy, to the extent that they organise visits to the Holocaust Memorial
Centre (WP2 field site) and also organise Holocaust-related activities (such as history clubs).
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6. References
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Csípő, I., R. Daróczi, R., Kun, E., Lakatos, G. and Vircsák, E. ( 004) ‘Az iskola demokráciája–a
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7. Appendix 1. The credo of the Jai Bhim Network
‘The credo of Jai Bhim Network is the ”Dauazasj si doj da zminc”, the vows based on
DrBabasaheb Bhim Rao Ramji Ambedkar’s text written in October 1956. Half of the vows is (sic)
unchangedly adopted to our need, but the other half is adjusted according today’s local
context. The first two paragraphs we use, are much older than the rest of the text, for those
originate in the two-thousand-year old Pali Canon. We chose the translation made by Lajos
Erőss in 1906. There are eleven vows (no 1, , 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 17, 18, 19) the meaning of which only
make sense in the social context of India, so we used sentences to suit our life in today’s
Hungary instead.
22 Vows
1. I do not believe something just because it has been passed along and retold for many
generations.
I do not believe something merely because it has become a traditional practice.
I do not believe something simply because it is well-known everywhere.
I do not believe something solely on the grounds of logical reasoning.
I do not believe something merely because it accords with my philosophy.
I do not believe something because it appeals to „common sense”.
I do not believe something just because I like the idea.
I do not believe something because the speaker seems trustworthy.
I do not believe something thinking, „This is what our teacher says”.
2. Kesamuttisuttam.
3. I will take responsibility for my own life.
4. I will not allow to anyone to dominate or control me.
5. I do not believe that the Buddha was the incarnation of God. I believe this to be sheer
madness and false propaganda.
6. I will not work for a bottle of wine. I will be neither a master nor a slave. I will abandon
oppressive social structures.
7. I will live in manner being in harmony with the virtues and teachings of the Awakened One.
8. I will develop myself in every way: in health, education, culture.
9. I believe in equality of human beings.
10. I shall endeavor to establish equality.
11. I shall follow the noble eightfold path of the Awakened One.
12. I shall follow the ten parameters of the Awakened One.
13. I shall have compassion and loving kindness for all living beings and protect them.
14. I shall not steal.
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15. I shall not tell lies.
16. I shall not commit carnal sins.
17. I shall not get drunk and I shall not take drugs.
18. I appreciate rationalism and the science.
19. I shall endeavor to establish fraternity. I will work for the benefit of others, helping them to
help themselves.
20. I will take the Awakened One, The Doctrine and the Community as my refuge.
21. I feel I am being reborn and that I am entering a new life.
22. I solemnly declare that I shall hereafter lead my life according to the principles of the
Awakened One and his Doctrine.’
(Source: ‘The Credo of Jai Bhim Network is the ”Dauazasj si doj da zminc”’
http://www.jaibhim.hu/the-credo-of-jai-bhim-network/#more-72. Last accessed 24 April,
2014).