Bangalore: India is claimed by its ruling class as the world’s only land of non-violence, love and compassion. If so, how does it also house the world’s largest number of persecuted peoples — hidden beneath its Dharma? While Indian “scholars” are silent on this, foreign scholars do not fail to notice that India in fact is the world’s most violent country. A book review in the Far Eastern Economic Review (June 6) shows the ugly side of India.
The name of the book is Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in Perspective by Myron Weiner — Princeton University Press, Princeton, US$45 (cloth), US$ 14.95 (paper).
Why child labor in India cannot be prevented even “when there are so many legislations banning it? This is because the reigning Hindu value system wants child labor. The ruling upper castes do not allow the children of the “lower castes” to get education. Because the moment they get education, they either migrate to cities or refuse to do manual work for the upper caste feudal lords. In the name of dharma, education to the non-Aryan original inhabitants is prohibited. And that is how India has the world’s largest number of illiterates.
DV proves right: Our upper caste “research scholars” have spread the falsehood that the “free, compulsory and universal primary education”, for which there is a constitutional provision, has failed because of the “poverty” of the people. They say it is “poverty” that is forcing the people not to send their children to the schools and avail the govt. facilities. Weiner has blasted this “poverty theory” and exposed India’s dishonest scholars — nay intellectual prostitutes.
DV has been repeatedly telling that poverty is not the cause of our misery —and Weiner endorses our stand. The review says:
The nature and motivations of these groups varied enormously. For instance, European and American Protestants pushed literacy because of a belief that everyone ought to be able to read the Bible while Tokugawa officials believed that universal education would make the Japanese masses more moral and obedient.
By contrast, “Indians of virtually all political persuasions oppose the notion that education should be imposed”. Weiner spoke to scores of education officials at all levels, yet did not find a single one who advocated compulsory education.
India’s political culture — not its poverty — is at the root of the problem, according to Weiner. India’s educators and officials do not regard education as “an instrument for developing shared attitudes and social characteristics, but rather as a way of differentiating one class from another.” Elite Indians are united in their belief that “excessive and inappropriate” education for the poor would disrupt existing social arrangements”.
