Amitabh Shukla
A veteran freedom fighter, the fight of 84-year old Satya Narayan Shukla has started anew. This time his fight and struggle is against illiteracy in his village of Malkauli in the Bagaha sub division of West Champaran district in Bihar.
Shukla started teaching the primarily Scheduled Caste children from 1983 onwards when his responsibility towards his large family was over. “I had to work hard and see to it that my agriculture yielded enough for the sustenance of the entire family. As soon as my responsibilities were over, I took to teaching after realising the rampant illiteracy and inability of the poor labourers to send their children to school,” he says.
He has already made a difference to the lives of around 1500 children whom he has taught in the last twenty years. A few of them are in colleges and most of them in the government schools at present. Some in the earliest batch have opened shops while others have migrated to the cities to earn their livelihoods. Interestingly, the parents of almost all the children whom the freedom fighter taught and now teaches have never been to any school. However, Shukla teaches only till the sixth class and then the children enrol themselves in the local school.
Born in 1919, Shukla joined the freedom movement and was jailed for an year in 1942 for participating in the Quit India Movement. All his four brothers and father too were freedom fighters and went to the British jails for varying periods. When the government of India started giving pensionary benefits to those who fought the British imperialism, Shukla too was one of the recipients. However, he now spends the entire amount of around Rs 4000 a month on teaching the children. As this does not suffice, he adds some of his income from agriculture to the proceeds of education.
“These children are very poor. Unless they have an incentive for education, they would not come to me,” he says. As an incentive, free mid day meal for around 20 children is provided in his house. Moreover, the children get a feast on special occasions like Independence Day, Republic Day and Gandhi Jayanti. “These children do not know about these historic dates and it is our responsibility to make them aware,” says the man in his eighties.
The teaching material - books, slates, copies, pencils and pens - are provided by the septuagenarian himself. Very few children manage to buy these things of their own. “I ask the children to bring these things on their own but if they express their inability, I have to arrange it myself,” he said. He, however, felt that every parent, even if they are extremely poor, can provide for these if they feel that education is as important as the food which they eat for survival and growth.
The rate of literacy in this backward hamlet in the north of Bihar, bordering Uttar Pradesh and Nepal is estimated to be around 40 percent. “Poverty is the main reason for illiteracy,” says the torch-bearer of the new movement. He says that the poor people need more hands to supplement the meagre family income and do not send their children to school. “Government initiative on this front has not worked as the parents do not see any incentive in sending their children to school. This can only happen in the form of mid-day meals and providing them with books and other teaching material,” he says.
For the sceptics, the efforts of Shukla are an exercise in futility. He himself realises that the efforts of one person cannot change the outlook of those around him. “However, at least a beginning has been made and more such efforts would definitely lead to improved awareness and literacy in the region,” he says. According to him, sustained efforts on the part of the authorities and innovative schemes to motivate children and their parents at the grassroots level is the key for improving literacy standards in the backward district and the state.
The scheme of the “Charwaha vidyalays” (school for the children indulging in cow rearing), launched by the Bihar government with much fanfare sometime ago, has failed to take off in this district. None of them were started here and even in the rest of the state, the scheme was quietly shelved after the initial months.
Ranjit, a seven-year old boy and a student in the informal school, said that he learnt the alphabets with Shukla and can now recite the national anthem and read from the books. Savitri, the 13-year old girl and the senior most student, has learnt Hindi, History and helps her parents calculate their income from selling vegetables in the local market. Asked to come before the camera for a group photograph, the 20 odd students first sought time, rushed to their homes and dressed themselves in their best clothes before getting clicked with their teacher.
Asked why the poor do not send their children to the school, Ram Ratan, the father of three kids aged 5, 7 and 8 said that after getting education, the children do not want to do any manual labour. “Here, only manual labour is the means of income for most of us and if we shun this, we would have nothing left for survival,” said the 35-year old father. He, himself, however, sends two of his children to Shukla’s school and the elder one has joined a government school three kms away from the village. “I make it a point to remind my children about the importance of labour so that they do not see it as a contempt when they grown up and start managing their own lives,” Ram Ratan added.
“When we were a part of the movement against the British, out level of motivation was quite high and we were clear about our goal. In this era, spreading literacy and removing ignorance requires a similar movement,” said Shukla. He said the half hearted efforts of the government and opening of schools just for the purpose of statistics won’t help. “Overhauling of the existing system of education is a must to make the future generations literate,” he added.
But has he any plans of increasing the number of students in his school and open new branches in the nearby villages? “Well, I am 84 now and cannot travel much. I have talked to some educated old people in the area to start such schools in their villages. Only one of my acquaintances started the informal school two years ago and he has around ten students,” said Shukla. He said that he is now trying to rope in the younger generation in this effort.
According to Shukla, education at the primary level should recognise the needs of the children and their parents. It cannot be contrary to the social reality of those who send their wards to schools. “We have failed to keep this point of view while randomly opening schools,” he said, adding, “in these government schools in the villages, only those parents send their children who are financially better off”.
He stressed on the need for a new educational policy aimed at those sections who are deprived, do not have any savings or support mechanism and have to work everyday to earn their meals. “Only these sections are deprived of a basic necessity like education and our policies have to be focused on them,” he points out.
For now, Shukla enjoys teaching and wants to spend the rest of his life teaching these poor kids. He does not even go to see his sons and daughters fearing that it would affect the regularity of the studies of his students. “God willing, the fight against illiteracy would succeed sooner than later and the country would be rid of a curse like illiteracy,” sums up the septuagenarian freedom fighter, farmer, social crusader and above all a teacher, the profession by which he wants to be known.
POST SCRIPT: I wrote this in 2005 and wanted to get it published in the newspaper in which I was working then. It could not materialize. This write-up remained hidden in my e-mail for long. My grandfather expired a couple of years after this piece was written. The absence of his physical body pains us but there is another pain - the legacy which he created in teaching has also been lost. I could not gather enough courage to take up this challenge and carry forward the legacy, at least not as of now.
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