16 March 2016

EID IS ACROSS THE RIVER (II)

by Jie Wu


Photo by Jie Wu

2.


After three months of soul-searching, I gathered all my hope and energy to return again to India, to visit Ramaswamy, Amina baji and all the dear teachers and students at the school. The school director, Ramaswamy, supported my decision and generously offered me a place to stay in his family house in Kolkata. On a sunny afternoon, Ramaswamy and I sat conversing in the wide-view veranda on the first floor of his family house in Kolkata. As he smoked a cigarette, he calmly said, “India is like an apartheid society.” He gently asked, “Do you know what apartheid is?” I nodded my head and replied that I had read some things about it.

A long silence followed and then Ramaswamy began puffing out some words. “Similar to the separation of ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ in South Africa, Indian society too is divided along lines of class, caste, religion, gender… The Muslim basti-dwellers in Priya Manna Basti in Howrah are like the ‘blacks’ of apartheid-India.” Another long silence followed as he smoked and I continued meditating on the stream of words that had escaped from his mouth. His mouth now slowly puffed out cigarette smoke, enveloping both of us, as I tried to understand his life’s journey.

It can be said that it is quite a rare occurrence for a person of Ramaswamy’s background to start a grassroots organization in a Muslim basti in Howrah. An “outlier” if you put it in literal terms. Born and raised in an educated middle-class South Indian Brahmin family, Ramaswamy used to work as a consultant to the government in the field of environment and urban poverty in Calcutta. After several life-changing experiences, like the Hindu-Muslim riots in 1992, a long-term study on Islam and Sufism, and working in an environmental improvement project in Priya Manna Basti in Howrah, Ramaswamy entered into an existential struggle that eventually led him to establishing Howrah Pilot Project in 1997.

Howrah Pilot Project or HPP works towards the goal of “building awareness, capabilities and leadership for community uplift among disadvantaged youth in Howrah.” It is through HPP that Talimi Haq School provides non-formal and empowering education in Priya Manna Basti. One might ask, why should an upper-class Brahmin start a school in a Muslim basti? This might be the reason why Ramaswamy assigned the local teacher-coordinators, Amina baji and Binod bhai, to assume leadership of Talimi Haq School. Being conscious of his position of power and privilege, Ramaswamy patiently waited for Amina baji and Binod bhai’s leadership skills to emerge and gradually removed himself from dictating the course of the school. Most matters with regard to running the center are currently managed by Amina baji and Binod bhai. If necessary Ramaswamy steps in and backs them up, but he now devotes most of his time to performing the roles of director of a family-business and translator of the Bengali writer, Subimal Misra. Ramaswamy continued puffing out spirals of smoke as we both sat in his veranda. Quiet and pensive, I looked at all the people of different castes and classes walking past the three-way intersection in front of his house. Ramaswamy puffed out some words again: “The Indian social structure has been designed and functions in such a way that there is no intercourse between the upper-class Hindu Brahmins and the below-the-poverty-line Muslim basti dwellers.” Confused yet awed, I meditated on his words.

There must be some kind of implicit social contract imposed by the upper classes upon the lowly basti dwellers. An oppressive, silent contract, marked by blood and birth. Yes, birth – that was it. Since birth … no from even before being born, the basti dwellers were conditioned into lives of servitude in which they are expected to blindly serve their privileged ‘superior’ masters. If I follow along Paulo Freire’s thinking: poverty, illiteracy and structural oppression would be the major forces conditioning the basti dwellers to cycles of silent servitude to the people from upper classes and castes.

Let’s say a female child is born in the basti. Her mother is an exploited maidservant in an upper-class man’s house and her father is an exploited factory labourer. The child grows in the slum among her many siblings, helps in family chores and goes to poorly-funded, overcrowded government schools. Due to family financial distress, she quits school sometime during middle school and goes on to take up exploitative work continuing their parents’ work-cycle, until her marriage, has her own children, by chance she falls sick (due to poverty, malnutrition and inadequacy of healthcare) which leads to an eventual early death.

Of course, women do have the agency to take control of their lives, but that means they have to fight head-on against structural forces such as poverty, illiteracy and gender discrimination. Yes Amina baji, she is a living example of a brave woman who is battling the oppressive forces consigning women to tragic cycles of life and death in the bastis. And Amina’s teacher and guide was Ramaswamy, this man sitting and smoking in front of me, the man who had seen through these cycles of life and death in Howrah’s bastis and decided to dedicate himself to founding Howrah Pilot Project.

While staying at Ramaswamy’s family house in Kolkata, I was once again confronted by those innermost questions that I had left unanswered during my earlier stint as an English teacher and researcher at Talimi Haq School. Why can’t I fully connect to the teachers and students at the school? What is it that separates me from them?

From March through August 2015, instead of working hard to answer these innermost questions, I spent most of my time trying to develop a children’s dance-drama with this centre. Once again, I encountered major difficulties in trying to work together with the teachers and students at the school. First, I couldn’t inspire people to fully dedicate themselves to this dance-drama project. It might have been that this project wasn’t able to appeal to the teachers’ needs and aspirations for the school. Amina baji, Binod bhai and most teachers wanted to start sewing classes and a women’s health programme, but I had come to offer a children’s dance-drama project. Our goals and aspirations did not match, hence the dance-drama venture came into a halt. Later, conditions arose for me to go to work with Indian Chinese youth to start a Dragon Boat Festival, as a means towards initiating revitalization of the old Chinatown of Kolkata. This new project took up almost all my time and effort until the end of my second trip to India. My existential questions were again neglected and left unanswered. In September 2015, I returned to Lisbon to visit family and start on the path of a writer.

Read from Part 1 here.


Jie Wu

THE DECOLONIZER
February 2016

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