Learning at Bodhshala

8/15/2019 Learning at Bodhshala

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BODHSHALA

B O D H S H A L A

Rajan Venkatesh

the story of an experimental school in the Himalayas


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to Pawan and Anuradha,

whose efforts created Bodhshala

and opened the door to possibility


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Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE ................................................................. 7

FOREWORD :: SIDH JOURNEY........................................10

FOREWORD :: BODHSHALA SCHOOL........................... 16

I

EYE OF COMMONALITY.................................................. 23

II

FOOD AND HEALTH .......................................................... 65

IIIPRODUCTION-INTEGRATED BASIC EDUCATION ...... 93

IV

PROJECTS .......................................................................... 157

V

ESSAYS...............................................................................194

RESOURCES & REFERENCES .......................................217


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AUTHOR’S NOTE

December 2007 saw me bid goodbye to a salaried job.

My intention was to settle down in agricultural land and

pursue a study of farming, a study of sustainable living, and also to address the question of the failure of modern systems.

In retrospect, that was the only action based upon a clear

decision. All other actions, subsequently, have been under the

umbrella of that primary action, and I cannot say that I

planned for them to happen. The school happened, the farming

happened, the production-integrated education experiment

happened, and now this narrative has happened.

In a way, this is also a reflection of the story of the

Bodhshala School Experiment. We had only one clear

statement which became the basis for all activities: The school

is a part of community; what is good for the community, what

strengthens it, what helps make prosperous families - these are

the things that make the curriculum of a school, meaning these

are the things to be studied, to be learned.

In such an approach, the direction is set, but the path has

to be one’s own - it has to be explored locally and understood

on the strength of one’s own capacity, because modern society,

and modern systems, and modern opinions, these may be


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completely contrary to the truth that one discovers.

In this book, I have used the phrase modern civilization,

and in other places, the word modernity. Both imply the

dominant western way of thinking which has prevailed after

the beginning of the industrial revolution - spanning the

colonial era and the post-colonial period till date. To me, it

denotes a warrior mentality; a way of thinking with insecurity

on the inside, and violence on the outside. By modernity, I am

referring specifically to the three colonial systems of

economics, governance and education, which remain un-

purged even after so-called independence. And these three

systems, which were created to rule over us, continue to keep

us captive. Yes, captive. It is only the glitter of our comfort

acquisitions which has dazzled and blinded us.

The Bodhshala school experiment has confirmed to me

the path of possibility. I am grateful to the teachers,

volunteers, children and parents who together made up the

school. Bodhshala school is a part of SIDH, an NGO started

by Pawan and Anuradha in rural Tehri-Garhwal, a district of

Uttarakhand. It is my good fortune to have them as friends for

25 years, as supporters in this experiment, and to have their

family in Mussoorie accept me as one of their own. I am also

grateful to my friends Ashok and Sheila Gopala who were

constantly supportive of the school and its activities, and

whose home has been my home whenever I am at Dehradun.


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When the school project ended, it was Pawan who first

suggested to me that I write the story of these experiments

with education. At the same time, I also made plans to

commence an exploration of agricultural land to buy for

myself. Both projects have gone hand in hand for two years,

and so this book has been written in between travels at

various places in India - Mussoorie, Dehradun, Indore,Thane, Narsinghpur, Satna and Sawantwadi.

It is indeed a fact that I received more support, more

help, and more guidance, than what I deserved - from people,

nature and the environment - and there are the numerous

nameless to whom I am very grateful. My thanks also to Nyla

Coelho who agreed to read and re-read this book, and who

pointed out to me parts within the text where, as she says, Iwent beyond observations and was ‘venting my frustration’. I

hope those sections have been amended. But in an experiment

like this, where the modern system itself is under scrutiny,

some criticism of ourselves may be warranted, may indeed be

necessary. Your feedback is welcome.

Rajan Venkatesh

16th May 2014.


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FOREWORD :: SIDH JOURNEY

To talk about SIDH’s journey has always been difficult.

The endeavour has been to engage with local communities

through education and share one’s learnings. There are noeasy and straight forward answers.

SIDH began its journey in 1989 in the Jaunpur area of

Tehri-Garhwal, nestled in the Himalayan mountains. Starting

without any particular ideology or baggage, we learnt quickly

that through so-called education, we are creating a class of

people who get increasingly alienated from whatever is their

own. It could be language, local knowledge systems or

lifestyle. Education was infusing in people a feeling of

inferiority; benumbing them into insensitive human beings

and turning them into mindless imitators – blindly following

what is served in the name of progress and development. This

learning happened in the first three years of our journey. Since

then, the effort has been to understand the cause of this

malaise and make every effort to address the issue through

education. For various reasons this has not been easy.

The influence of modernity is all pervasive, wide and

powerful. One realises, painfully, as to how we ourselves are

afflicted by the same disease – though it may manifest


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differently. There are far too many well intentioned people -

even those who have stepped out of the mainstream - who do

not see the value of local culture, local knowledge systems

and the fallacies and illusions of the modern day democratic

system and all that goes with it. They do not recognise the

value of traditions; are far too enamoured by the advancement

in technology and the notion of individual rights. The fact thateducation cannot be seen in isolation, that it is inter-connected

with other systems which support one another, seems to elude

most. Arguments criticizing the mainstream also come, by and

large, from the West and are not rooted in our own traditions.

In 2006 SIDH started a Gap Year programme. With it we

opened the doors to some well-meaning youngsters who were

urban educated, English speaking. Until then, our team largelycomprised youngsters from the neighbouring villages. There

was a reason for opening the doors to a different class of

people. We felt our team had come of age; had matured, and

would be able to handle influences that would come in with

the urban elite. Also, there was a feeling that perhaps to keep

a certain class of people away was discrimination of a kind

and was perhaps equally wrong (inverted snobbery).

In retrospect this decision was premature. This new team

was certainly more trained in supervising; they became the

leaders and started taking over many functions while


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patronizing our local team. The influence of English and

along with it angreziyat started spreading, almost insidiously,

in the rest of the team, something which had been resisted all

along. The local team members were getting attracted by

‘English medium’ schooling for their own children. All these

factors started impacting our own programmes, especially the

new primary wing at Bodhshala school. One could sense aslow but subtle change creeping in. Sanjay Dev, a friend, was

requested to carry out an internal evaluation of the Bodhshala

programme, and I am grateful to him for telling us the bitter

truth. It shook us out of our slumber and we started taking

steps to resist this change.

The strength to follow our conviction was built upon

guidance from Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche who has been agreat influence and inspiration. Additional support came from

many friends across the country, who said we should stick to

our path. They felt that we had created a space, however

small, for an alternative education grounded in local cultural

moorings. Anyway, the end result of our intended path

correction was that SIDH lost many of its team members to

corporate institutions which lured them away with steep

remunerations, leaving a great void in the organization.

It was at this time that my friend Rajan Venkatesh arrived

in SIDH to explore natural farming and agriculture


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economics. He was pained by what he observed as he was

witness to SIDH’s intellectual growth since the beginning. In

the initial years, he had been on the Governing Council of

SIDH. He was a fellow traveller, in a way, having studied

Vipassanaa and being an admirer of the work and life of

Mahatma Gandhi. He had helped us in many of our

publications. Venkatesh already had a deep interest ineducation and appreciated our efforts to bring education

closer to home by teaching through the local geographical and

cultural environment. He observed our struggles to keep the

education process close to our ideology and ultimately the

exodus of the senior team. Like a true friend he stepped in at

this crucial juncture, offering to take charge of Bodhshala –

his only wish being that he be allowed a free hand with his

experiments.

We were delighted as we felt that we were on the same

page with Venkatesh ideologically. We had great faith in his

commitment, even though he had no prior experience of

running a school. This was the beginning of an experience

that we are truly proud of. We have had our failures but we

are proud of some of our work: the Sanjeevani and Sanmati

programmes for young people; the published research studies

– A Matter of Quality, Child and Family, Text and Context;

our efforts in teaching through the local contest subsequently

published as – Jaunpur ke Ped Paudhe and Itihaas ki Samajh.


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We were running village schools from the beginning where

we tried to adopt the approach of teaching through the local

environment. However, we were not fully satisfied till

Venkatesh took charge of Bodhshala.

In three years Venkatesh achieved something that we had

dreamt of. Integrating subjects with production work, making

children and students realise the worth of local knowledge

systems and practices without sermonising, and constantly

learning while teaching. There was an overall structure in the

school and yet great flexibility. There were rules but not

rigidity. It took time, it did not happen overnight. But within

three years the experiment had matured. We realised that for

such a school to flourish, one needs a person at the helm of

the school who has clarity of vision and is not afraid toexperiment, who does not think within prescribed categories

and is ready to put in hard work, has true respect for the

community he works with, and has full support of the

management. Had the experiment continued for a few more

years it would have been a great learning place for those

interested in running such schools. However matters beyond

our control prevailed. Once it was decided that Venkatesh had

to leave this area we decided to shut down the school.

We feel that this journey, and the experiments within it,

would be a source of learning for others making attempts in a


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similar direction. I hope this book will provide some insights

for those interested in the finer details, nuances and subtleties

in running such a school; and encourage many of them to

take similar steps.

These small experiments may seem insignificant and

irrelevant to those interested only in addressing issues at the

macro level. However, initiatives such as these become

extremely significant in present times of mono-culturization.

They keep the hope alive.

Pawan Kumar Gupta

SIDH, Mussoorie

Ramnvami 2071

April 8, 2014


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FOREWORD :: BODHSHALA SCHOOL

I am glad Venkatesh decided to write this valuable

narrative of his experiences in Bodhshala, SIDH’s

experimental school in Uttarakhand. In years to come, I amcertain that this little book will become an important

document for educationists, teachers and students of

education.

It was my privilege to be a witness to some of the

processes in Bodhshala. I was very impressed with his

courage, clarity and integrity. This comes across quite clearly

while reading the narrative. Although the book reflects onlythree years of Venkatesh’s engagement with Bodhshala

school, there is a sense of continuity as far as SIDH is

concerned. It took forward SIDH’s journey - of making

education relevant along Gandhian lines - to a more concrete

level.

Twenty five years ago, SIDH started as a simple response

to the community demand for village schools. In our dialogue

with the community, especially the women, our attention was

drawn to the negative impact of the modern system of

education upon their children. We learnt how the prevalent


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education system, styled around colonial lines, had alienated

the students from their language and culture and how it was

destroying sustainable lifestyles which still existed in villages.

We found a similarity between Gandhiji’s critique of modern

education and that of the village women, viz., that our

education ought to make a farmers’ child a better farmer and

that alienation from traditional occupations could be harmfulto communities that lived by the land.

It was at this time that Venkatesh began his experiments

in line with sustainable living - agriculture and hand skills

based production activities - in Bodhshala. His task was not

an easy one. Initially there was resistance from teachers and

parents. He was a hard taskmaster but he always set an

example by stretching his own reserves to the utmost. The factthat he lived what he preached, coupled with his sincerity and

genuine affection for his associates as people, was a major

factor in breaking down the resistance and winning the

admiration of his team. Of course his unflagging enthusiasm,

energy and determination for what he considered to be the

right lifestyle helped to further overcome these hurdles. That

is why, within a span of three years he managed to implement

many of his innovative experiments in education. His

experiences are important as they elicit that if one has a

single-minded pursuit and courage of conviction it is possible

to accomplish what he did.


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He was critical of too much verbalisation in our method

of communication and identified it as the major gap in the

current system of education. He felt there was a

disproportionate amount of attention given to learning based

only on words rather than living the learning. He writes,

“There is too much emphasis on verbal solutions. People

explain problems and also verbally explain the solutions…Life demands a real response. But when our education makes

us incapable, then we offer only verbal analysis and verbal

solutions. This insulates us from real living”. And states,

“…modern schooling has induced a dangerous kind of stupor

where the walking unconscious are trampling all over their

fellow men.”

In his own fashion, Venkatesh tried to undo what he callsthe “…modern schooling system which is creating a 15 year

distance between life and living”. He says, “It is up to the

school to take` responsibility; …to take on the challenge of an

adverse, modern urban situation and rejuvenate the child and

through the child his/her family…”

That is what he tried to do. He insisted on a lot of hand

based production and agricultural activities as part of his

classes in senior school. He strongly believed that in order to

communicate any lesson it had to be lived by the teacher. He

demonstrated this himself through example. He motivated


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teachers and students to participate in all activities like

cleaning, washing, chopping and cooking in the kitchen as

well as in hand-based production activities. These activities

helped to integrate different subjects in the classroom. He

succeeded in inspiring the teachers and students because he

stayed and lived on the campus. I remember how his passion

towards land, farming, food and health (subjects whichremain largely outside the normal school curriculum) slowly

but surely spread to his team of teachers and the children

around him.

The significance of this book lies in the fact that it is an

inspiration for making the school a place of investigation. It

can also be a practitioners’ handbook. It tells us simply of

what was done and how it was done. For a teacher, the book isfull of many practical suggestions like collecting local seeds,

growing haldi, fruits and vegetables, as well as sourcing all

the surplus produce of dal/grain/rice for the school kitchen

from local villages and integrating all these everyday

activities in classrooms. Issues of food, agriculture, health and

sustainable lifestyles are usually not a part of classroom

discussion. But these activities also provide the opportunity to

discuss the exploitation by the market and how this has

affected the health and economy of the community. At one

level this book reads as a very honest, simple, first-hand

account of what was done in Bodhshala, the processes


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involved in the decisions, and learning from trial and error.

There are many valuable insights which flow very naturally

through the detailed narrative. It is as if the author is sharing

with us how he arrives at his learning. The complete absence

of theoretical postulations only enhances the impact of these

findings, simply because they are the outcome of practice and

not the other way around.

His narrative flows easily from food, farming, and

sustainable living to community, economics and tradition,

showing their links and inter-relatedness. Venkatesh writes,

“School is discovering what is right living and relating

learning to daily living – not as a strategy but because this is a

reality. Learning implies practicing to live correctly. School

learning should enable the child to live productively in his/her community and ethically in society”.

He was also constantly in touch with the local

community, often visiting farmers and collecting farming tips.

He writes, “Such is the nature of tradition – it is alive as long

as the community is alive. When a society decides to finish its

communities as we are doing then we are caught in a no man’s

land… If the school is a living unit, studying and practicing

sustainable living, then it also becomes a guiding light for the

community. It is integrated with goals and aspirations of the

community. Without this integration the school stands


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isolated.”

This book is not only essential reading material for all

teachers and those concerned about the ill effects of the

current quality of education, but I recommend it to all who

dream of another world – a sustainable world.

Anuradha Joshi

SIDH, Mussoorie

April 2014


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1

EYE OF COMMONALITY

From nothing to possible is the giant step. It is the unseen

effort, the untold story. From this sprouts possibility which is

in the realm of the visible; where stories usually begin. In thiscase, that giant step is the exploration and effort of twenty

years that Pawan Gupta and Anuradha Joshi together invested

in rural education; passionately, with a seeking spirit. It is the

essential prologue to this book. Here flowered a community

called SIDH and a school called Bodhshala; nurtured on a diet

of questioning, curiosity, values and philosophy.

It was to this place full of possibility that I arrived in

2008, one could say by chance, having prepared myself over

three years to do everything I could to understand man’s

relationship to land, to try and understand human insecurity.

From June 2008 to March 2012, I lived in Bodhshala. The

school was my home, and everything recorded in this book

happened during this period. It is the collective experience of

teachers, students and volunteers.

If the beginning was serendipitous, the culmination was

inevitable, and tinged with some sadness –the Bodhshala

school programme came to an end in March 2012. The

learnings, however, remain, and we see that they are alive


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uniformly useless in a productive environment. Urban society

has accomplished this efficiently, and the same model is being

thrust upon rural schools.

There is also an important psychological element in this.

When a child from a farming family enters school, he comes

out feeling inferior. He considers his family’s work to be

somehow backward. It is deeply ingrained in him that literate

or educated people should not do the type of work his family

does. The same holds true for children of parents involved in

other hand-skill occupations, like artisans. Livelihoods are

thus being methodically taken out and, as a result,

communities are being destroyed. It can be seen, and shown,

that modern schooling is an important cog in this movement –

it is the place where the mind is conditioned to conform; tonot ask questions. So the dialogue among the teachers and

volunteers was, at the core, about all this. No one amongst us

was completely ready with a comprehensive understanding of

it all. We asked ourselves, are we prepared to be ready? All

hands were raised, and so we proceeded.

* * *

We started with a seed bank. Almost all teachers at SIDH belong to the local rural community, and every child at

Bodhshala school comes from a farming family. Hence it was

not difficult to collect the seeds. The next step was to sort the


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seeds, and in doing so, we learned something significant

about how we see things around us. Given a group of items to

sort, how do we see them? Do we see differences, or do we

see commonality? If we want to find differences, we can see

that two trees are different, that two mango trees are different,

that two branches of a mango tree are different, that two

leaves on the same branch are different. If the leaves are of thesame size and shape, we can see differences in the shade of

their colour; we can feel the difference in their texture. We

can taste the difference in two mangoes, or even between two

parts of the same mango. We do this with our eyes, ears, nose,

tongue and skin, which are fine-tuned organs - instruments -

whose function is to spot differences in physical attributes.

When we gave a child two pumpkin seeds and asked what the

difference was between them, he promptly found some

attribute to separate the two; the child chose a reason to divide

the two pumpkin seeds.

So, with the Eye of Differentiation, if I can call it that, a

person negates commonness, and can even divide things

meaninglessly. If you give a child two tomatoes to taste and

ask what the difference is between them, he will find that one

is less sour than the other. He may then conclude that one is

tastier than the other. He may also declare that he likes one

tomato, and dislikes the other. So, with the Eye of

Differentiation, the activity of comparison becomes dominant.


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Comparison has negated commonness. Two simple tomatoes

are now opposing one another (in the child’s mind). Since

commonness indicates usefulness, therefore even usefulness

(of the tomato) has been negated. When we say a person is

nit-picking, or splitting hairs, or finding faults, I wonder now

if he is looking at things with an Eye of Differentiation.

So is there any usefulness in this kind of differentiation,

this comparison, this separation, we asked ourselves, and, if

not, should we not drop this approach. After all, it is us, i.e.,

the teacher, who has guided the mind of the child in this

direction, by asking him to differentiate. The child is making

meaningless divisions of the world around him. Also, I was

keen that our pedagogical approach should be to stay with

facts all the while, and move from fact to fact, whereas withthis approach, the child was quickly moving from the fact of

tomatoes to the non-fact of opinion (tastier) and conclusion

(like/dislike). I resolved to be aware of this, to see if I myself

was not leading the children’s mind ‘off course’ with wrong

questioning. A few other teachers also felt that this would be

useful.

Now let us call the other way of seeing as the Eye of

Commonality. When we say we see many trees, we have

already stated a commonality and kept them together, i.e., the

fact that these things called ‘trees’ share the commonness of


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sprouting and growing roots, shoots, leaves, flowers and

fruits. So, we recognise them on the basis of this common

behaviour; but identify them with the help of the sense organs.

Even as we see them as trees, the Eye of Commonality

discerns that there are different types of trees. This is not the

same as seeing with the Eye of Differentiation. Here there is

no comparison. While keeping the trees together, one can see

the fact that some of them are mango trees. So by recognising

on the basis of another level of behaviour, the mango trees

have come together –all of which grow in a particular manner,

and with which we relate in a particular way. Again, we use

our sense organs to physically identify the mango trees. And

even as we are seeing these mango trees, we can discern that

some are big, some are small, some have dense foliage, some bear no fruit, etc., but the differences do not distract us.

Commonality implies togetherness. With an Eye of

Commonality, you see the thing that keeps things together.

So, with the seeds, we asked the children what could be

the basis for sorting them. It is assumed that it is we who do

the sorting, and that we can choose the basis –all round seeds

together, or all brown seeds together, or if one really wants to

indulge in whim, all beautiful seeds together.

What we found was this:

- There is no commonality based on liking (beautiful,


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etc.). There is no such attribute, it is unreal.

- Commonality of merely one attribute of form, like

shape or colour, is not useful. Sorting black mustard seeds and

black tori seeds (ridge gourd) is quite meaningless.

- Commonality of form as a whole, which is seen as

similarity, is useful only in identification. The physical act of

sorting is done using similarity, involving the sense organs.

Now, there is a higher level of commonality while seeing

the quality of the substance –quality being its relationship to

us; what happens when it comes in contact with us. For

instance, the effect of some substances like starch and sweet is

that it results in the body getting some energy. The sense

organs cannot detect this, it is a higher level of activity in the

mind which can sense the quality, viz. that this is an energy-

giving substance. Similarly, spices have the quality of

enhancing digestive fire, and there are substances like lentils

which help the body grow.

In this way, the students sorted the seeds based on the

commonality of quality - and we saw that nature has given us

grains, pulses, spices, vegetables and fruits. We did not give

the seeds their quality, we only saw and recognised it, so you

could say the seeds sorted themselves. So we could see that

recognition of a substance on the basis of its quality is useful.

Now, is there a level of commonality higher than this? Yes, all


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of these seeds - and the leaves, roots, fruits and vegetables

they represent - have the common essence of being human

food, or in other words, they all carry the essence of

nourishment for human bodies. Naturally, they were kept

together.

So, when we see the whole kingdom of vegetation,

nature has sorted out what is food for us, and what is not. This

is not seen by the sense organs, or by the higher activity

which senses quality. This seeing is an even higher function of

the mind, which can grasp, in one sweep, a whole system of

natural order. When this activity takes place, one is alive to

relationships, and one usually says, ‘I see!’ or ‘I understand!’.

Commonality represents certainty, and provides

assurance. Recognition on a higher level of commonality

provides us a higher level of assurance. Of course, we can

look at other characteristics of seeds and sort them

accordingly (like which ones grow in summer, which in

winter). What this exercise did, for us, was to open our eyes to

the fact that there is an orderly sorting already done based on

natural behaviour, and that it is very useful to see, to

recognise this. This is true not just for seeds, but for

everything. And yet there are so many ways in which we sort,

or categorize, in our daily lives –are we aware that these are

assumptions? Just to give you an example, let me take a


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school; it is also relevant to us. We have developed a system

of sorting children by age, and we assume that at a given age,

every child should absorb so much mathematics and so much

geography. We have developed curricular content which, we

contend, should be absorbed within one year by a child in that

class. Are these assumptions, on which we have categorized,

true?

Actually, commonality is, well, common. It is all around

us in our daily lives, and our behaviour reflects this

perception. When we say ‘stationery’, it reflects a

commonness of items; ‘woollens’ are stored together; and it is

useful to keep ‘tools’ in one place. Our teachers saw and used

the fact in math classes that commonality keeps things

together, so does counting. You count things which arealready together because they have something in common. If

one ‘sees’ banana, that brings all the bananas together which

may be counted, and if one ‘sees’ the commonness of ‘fruit’,

then one may count the bananas, apples and mangoes. So the

seeing of commonality comes first (why are they common?),

then the act of counting (how many?). This is simple, and can

be shown in a simple manner to smaller children.

However, with some of the bigger children it took more

doing, and we found out why. This was because they had been

drilled for years into seeing only the numerical signs of 0 to 9,


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without giving significance to what it represented. You show

them 8 and 7 and they gave you 15, without even asking what

the 8 and 7 are, that’s the way they have been taught. And yet,

after years of just reacting to meaningless numerals and signs,

we still seem surprised as to why the kids make mistakes

while combining different measurement units (grams and

kilograms, or centimetres and metres). Our teachers tried torestore the order of seeing commonality first, then doing the

math, and reported that the results were encouraging.

I tried with classes 6 and 7 a language exercise asking

how would we go about forming a new language. The first

step they said would be to give names to things. Yes, that is

correct. So, would we give a unique sound to each and every

thing? We explored this –say we see a thing and name it‘tree’. Then we see another thing which is similar in

appearance. What would we do? We will call this too a ‘tree’,

the children said. We explored further –we have three things;

the first and second look alike, i.e., they have a commonality

of shape and colour, but their behaviour is not common. The

first will lie on the ground without any change, while the

second will begin to sprout. Now, the second and third things

are not common in appearance, they are different in shape and

size and colour, but they have the commonality of behaviour,

i.e., both of them sprout. So, how will we name them? The

children promptly said that they would name the first thing as


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‘stone’ and the second and third things as ‘seed’.

So it is commonality of behaviour that has significance;

it is useful, so we base our recognition on this. And thus the

concept of ‘common noun’ emerged. I told class 7 that class 6,

too, had worked out the same method –how come they had

thought of the same way to name things? Because, it came out

slowly, but clearly, they are like us. We humans have a

common way of seeing, a common way of perceiving. Ergo,

every language will have common nouns; because that is the

way humans see the world; that is the way nature has built us.

I thought they were on to something.

FARMING BEGINS

Just as the seeds sorted themselves, the farming

objectives, too, established themselves as we went along.

Bodhshala school is at the top of a hill. We prepared a few,

small, terraced strips of land adjoining the school, and these

we made ready for our farming experiments. SIDH also has a

residential campus about half a kilometer downhill with a few

larger fields for cultivation. These were also put to good use.

The school is surrounded by forest on three sides, and there

are many fruit trees in the school property itself. The place

therefore is a haven for birds, and regretfully, for a large

contingent of common monkeys as well as langurs (a white-


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furred, long-tailed Indian monkey). Our first three

experiments with potato, garlic and onion were uprooted,

literally, by monkeys. So we enclosed one small field with an

iron grill fence that had a grilled ceiling as well. This was not

a green house. There was free flow of sunshine, air and water

through the fencing and small birds could fly in and out.

We discovered an interesting fact about the monkeys. Till

as recently as seven years ago, there was little problem from

the monkeys. The few who came were forest dwellers who

were wary of humans and so kept their distance. Their

population, too, had been in check all these years through

nature’s own system of balance.

What disrupted the system was the decision of

neighbouring Mussoorie to get rid of their town monkeys. A

contractor was hired by the town council to export their

problem. The monkeys were captured, only to be set free at

Kempty – the little town next to Bodhshala school. It has

shops and restaurants catering to tourist travellers. Now, these

creatures were different from the forest monkeys. Their

behaviour was deviant, they were aggressive and sometimes

violent towards humans.

Towns always have excess food, all year round.

Moreover, a town like Mussoorie catering to wanton tourism

is simply overflowing with food-related garbage. This has


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changed the eating habits of the monkeys as well as their

behaviour with humans. Their population is exploding. At

Kempty, the town monkeys began attacking nearby fields and

farms, and, over the years, have reached other villages a

kilometer away. Their population is visibly expanding, thanks

to food-garbage at Kempty and to their town habit of

proximity with human habitat. In a nutshell, this can describethe bane of modernity and industrial ‘progress’. Create

problems. Don’t solve them; just export some of them so it

becomes somebody else’s problem. Meanwhile, the original

problem is still growing.

I have used the word ‘interesting’ at the beginning of this

monkey episode. I wonder now if that is correct and if at all

the human predicament in this has come out in my narration.Suppose you have a job at Delhi or Mumbai, and you are told

one day: ‘You have just lost four months of salary in the last

one hour because of some monkeys sent from Mussoorie. You

are also notified that your father, mother, wife, brother and

sister have also been penalised.’ (It takes less than an hour for

monkeys to destroy a corn field nurtured over four months by

a family of farmers). Think about it.

* * *

So the fenced enclosure was built. It cost quite a bit of

money –all that iron coming all the way from Dehradun, but


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Pawan at SIDH did not even hesitate. All through this three

and a half year period, he never once adversely questioned a

plan or move of mine. Self-sustenance was far away at that

stage, it was a concept, a goal –otherwise we were voluntarily

frugal. This was good enough for Pawan, and he provided the

kind of support a researcher or experimenter can only dream

about.

In this protected field, which we called the ‘jali ghar’, we

replicated selected seeds and experimented with plant

varieties like garlic, onion, potato, radish, cucumber and

beans.

The hills are a treasure trove of beans. In the seed bank, I

saw a variety of local chemi (bean) in various shades of

yellow and red, and even black and white. Qualitatively, they

shared the commonality of being chemi or bean, i.e., they are

the Indian legume, they are grown in the summer monsoon,

they begin to pod within two months, some are small shrubs

about 12 to 18 inches in height, most are climbers and have to

be provided with props for their vines to twirl around. They

are legumes, dicotyledons, and have the place of dal (cooked

lentil) in our diet. Being natural nitrogen fixers, they nourish

the soil in which they grow. A few varieties we eat as

vegetables, but most others we let dry on the plant, store and

cook as dal, like rajma and lobia – red kidney bean and black-


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eyed bean.

Since some of the bean varieties grow quickly, one can

even have two crops between the Indian calendar months

Jyeshta and Ashwin (mid-May to mid-September). We first

sowed the seeds by variety, and by proper selection and re-

sowing over three seasons, we could get a collection of robust

seeds of each type. I was happy whenever our students or

neighbouring farming families would take some seeds for

themselves. When we grew the different varieties together in

the same field, we were surprised by the results. We saw that

many new cross-types appeared. We ended up with a

collection of eighteen different looking chemi seeds, colourful

as a rainbow, some monochrome and others with multi-

coloured designs on their skin, some smooth, some wrinkled.I was struck by the abundance of nature’s creativity, though I

must admit that some of the beans turned out in such gaudy

blue and purple as not to look edible at all!

As vegetable, we grew the standard chemi, now known

everywhere as ‘french bean’. Another variety, which we called

‘peeli chemi’, was also tender at the pod stage. A third variety

was the perennial flat bean which is aptly called ‘barahmah-

si’. All these found their way to the kitchen. The ‘barah

mahsi’ is an ambitious climber and one has to be watchful to

see what it is latching on to. We once planted two seeds next


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to a tall silver oak tree. The resulting vines clambered up the

willow to such an extent that we had to share its produce with

the langurs. They kept to the higher regions, while we

plucked the beans within our reach! Summer monsoon was

also the time we saw the beauty of the whole bel (vine)

community - different variety of pumpkin, gourd and

cucumber - spreading across the length of the field, racing upthe hill slopes, their lovely tendrils coiled at the ends,

twirling, gripping, moving, their bountiful fruits dangling

from the nodes; disguised to the non-gardener but quickly

spotted by those who have tended to it. They are a sight to

see, and can be a part of every school garden. They provide

food for the soul too.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN HALDI

The local Himalayan haldi (turmeric) is known for its

quality, for its medicinal properties. We grew this in excess of

our requirements, enough to distribute it amongst a large

number of friends. Our seeds originally came from a village

known to produce good haldi. Since then, we have been

largely self-sufficient in seed, falling short only when we had to increase the field size. In our region, haldi is a two-year

(and in some cases three-year) crop. So we have two fields,

one in Bodhshala and the other at the LRC (Learning


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Resource Centre) campus, providing yields in alternate years.

In the first two-year crop, we got over 65 kg of sabut (whole

pieces) haldi. After storing 15 kg for seed, we boiled and

dried out the rest, which when powdered, yielded nearly 10 kg

of haldi churna (powder). Sometimes, the ratio is lesser, about

1:6. In heavy rainfall season, a yield of small-sized tubers

may result in as little as one-seventh the crop weight in powder form. Fortunately, or should I say the wonder of

nature is that haldi is required in small quantities, so that

output and requirement are well balanced.

Pure and naturally grown haldi is worth its weight in

gold. This sounds clichéd, but I am using it just to drive home

the point that good haldi is so valuable for our health. We

found that pure haldi is very scarce as the entire marketplacesells adulterated haldi. Corn flour or wheat flour, available

for10-15 rupees a kilo, is added to haldi which can fetch a

price of 150-300 a kilo. Adding impurities is thus seen as

profitable business. Even cheaper and dangerous additives

like yellow-coloured chemical powders are also being used.

The marketplace has become an adulterator’s den.

How do we know that the haldi is adulterated, we asked

ourselves in class. By the colour, said some, but that varies

from yellow to brownish red depending on how long it is

boiled and the moisture in the air while drying. By tasting it in


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dal (cooked lentil), suggested some, but this was possible

only when the haldi was grossly adulterated and the person

tasting had the necessary sensitivity. One sure way is to find

out the price of dried sabut haldi (whole pieces of dried

turmeric) from the market –the prices are also listed daily in

the commodities section of newspapers. Then one discovers

that, surprise, haldi powder is selling ‘cheaper’ than sabuthaldi. But, wait a minute! One kilogram of sabut haldi on

grinding results in ten per cent less powder, so powdered haldi

should be more expensive. Now add the cost of grinding,

packaging, labelling and transportation, and one reckons that

powdered haldi should be way more expensive than sabut

haldi. But, the market shops are selling it cheaper!

The same can be studied for other powdered spices aswell, as well as for edible oil. The entire class can become

detectives. It can be easily established that lying, cheating,

betrayal and even manslaughter (many adulterated food items

are poisonous) is taking place regularly through commerce.

What about the perpetrator? Here, it is more difficult than in

detective fiction. For the perpetrator is us, all the links in this

chain of deception are human. Can human behaviour sort

itself out? Till it does, this is a continuing story. In the first

three years of my stay here, I found the farmers selling pure

haldi, usually sabut, and all the adulterating mischief was

done by the commerce chain –middlemen, wholesalers and


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shopkeepers. But during the last six months of my stay, there

was a change. Many farmers were reluctant to sell sabut haldi,

and admitted: ‘Why allow them to make all the money? We

have good corn flour; we can mix it ourselves and sell

powdered haldi.’ The producer himself as adulterator;

corruption at the very source! We have all the makings of

rural multi-national corporations.

GINGER WOES

We noticed that villages a few kilometres away to the

south-west were reaping a rich harvest of adhrak (ginger),

whereas there was none in our neighbourhood. Weather

conditions being similar, why was it not being grown here?

Was it the soil, which was more gravel on our land, or was it

the slight difference in altitude and lay of the land –

sometimes, these subtle differences affected some plants.

About the soil, I had observed that turmeric, garlic,

potatoes, radish and arbi (colocasia) grew quite well. All

these develop under the soil; our loose gravel-type soil was

probably good for them, I thought. So why not adhrak?

Strangely, we could not get seed locally. No farmer kept them;

they all bought the seed, year after year, from the

neighbouring town of Vikasnagar. Fortunately for us, a newly-

joined colleague belonged to a farming family from just


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outside Vikasnagar, with over thirty years’ experience of

growing ginger. They always kept their own seed. So we

procured our first lot of hand-picked seed from his farm. We

sowed two kilograms on an experimental patch at Bodhshala

school, which yielded nearly 10 kg after eight months. Some

women farmers who visited the school commented that that

these were superbly formed, it was very good ginger. But wehad dug them out early, for the crop can be ruined by winter

frost, we were told, and therefore, they were not good enough

or mature enough to be able to sprout well. So we had no

seeds of our own that year. We bought more seed and selected

a bigger field at LRC campus –this too gave a good yield; we

got some 26 kg from four-fifths of the field. As an

experiment, I let the remaining face the winter frost with some

dry mulching on top, but three months later, we found most of

them spoiled, they were soft and decomposing from within.

So again, in season two, no seeds.

Now we knew why our village did not retain ginger seed,

while down below Vikasnagar, with no threat of frost, was the

source of seeds. This also explained the reluctance of our

nearby farmers to take up ginger cultivation. It was money-

dependant farming, buying seeds every year, whereas

virtually all their other crops were cultivated using their own

seeds. Subhash Palekar’s zero-budget farming came to mind –

its virtues are still visible in these rural hill pockets where


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SIDH runs its schools; but only so to the alert interested

farmer.

While the farming activities were going on, on another

front, a group of teachers and students were studying and

producing a few ayurvedic medicines (Indian medical

science). Dried ginger, or sonth, is an important ingredient in

many medicines, and so we embarked on a project to make

sonth in the school from the second year’s harvest. We took

17 kg of fresh ginger and ended up with about 2.5 kg of sabut

sonth. Since sonth, too, like haldi, is needed in small

quantities, we had enough to meet our needs for the next two

years, and a little to spare, which we distributed to friends.

Sonth, too, is available in the market in powder form, though

if you have read the haldi experience mentioned earlier, youwould do better to pick up sabut sonth and grind it yourself to

ensure purity.

LEARNINGS FROM LENTIL

We tried growing local lentils. Masoor, urad, tor and

kulath are the ones grown and consumed here (pink lentil,

black gram, pigeon pea, horse gram). We started with 700 gm

of masoor as seed and got about 14 kg, a productivity of 2000

per cent. Naturally, we wanted to keep some aside as seed for

the next season, and here we got to learn something.


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Masoor and kulath are two seeds which quickly attract

micro-insects, and are eaten up within months if left

unprotected. We found that even though there are traditional

methods of protecting seeds, these are being given up in

favour of pesticides, which is pushed by the market. This is

the tragedy of the modern system –evil is advertised with the

power of government and business, the good is left for villagers to defend.

I wanted to test the village method and see its efficacy

myself. We split the seed amount in two halves and tried two

traditional techniques of the local region. In the first, we

added a little mustard oil to the seed and mixed it thoroughly

with shredded leaves of peach and walnut trees (which are

abundant here, also available in the school premises). In thesecond, we again added a little mustard oil and then mixed the

seed with wood ash (from a kitchen chulla).

We left both out in the sun to dry for half an hour, and

then packed them in two martbans (clay jars). This was in

Chaitra (March-April). That year, we had a heavy monsoon,

the highest rains in forty years, and so there was high

humidity, conditions ideal for germs and insects. Yet, in

Ashwin (Sept-Oct), the masoor seeds were absolutely fresh

and fine, and were sowed successfully. What was left over

was washed and used in the kitchen for dal (cooked lentil).


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This was when I discovered that market seeds come with

a label ‘Poison –not edible’. It amazed me that the first thing

our seeds and sprouts get to eat is the pesticide poison which

mixes with soil and water. All edible sabut dals are similarly

mixed with some pesticide or the other, and they carry the

warning label in the wholesale bags. But when it is

repackaged into smaller one-kg polythene bags for the super-market, this warning message is not put on it.

Wheat, too, has rat poison mixed with it. The wholesale

50kg gunny bags bear the ‘poison’ label and advice that the

contents be washed well before use. I have seen some village

folk sell their good, organic wheat and buy the low-grade

ration shop wheat because it is cheaper (subsidized by the

government). And without reading the label, or without beingable to read, they send it straight for grinding into atta (whole

wheat flour). I once mentioned to a village elder about this

dangerous preservation technique. He looked skeptical. I tried

to explain to him the whole market game. He still looked

skeptical. Finally, he said, ‘Can a man knowingly mix poison

into another man’s food?’ There are still pockets in India, and

Asia, where people appear so different from the modern man.

Maybe they are different, civilizationally.

* * *

In another dal experiment, we sowed some urad seeds on


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Earlier, two or three people from a joint family would go out

with a dozen cows and oxen and four dozen goats; now after

the breaking up, one person each from four or five smaller

families goes with lesser number of cattle. Also, that person,

usually the woman of the house, is in a rush to return for other

household and farming work, because now there is no support

at home. So the earlier relaxed grazing in distant forests over an entire day is now a rushed affair; something to get over

with quickly nearby. Also, while the cattle are grazing the

woman is busy cutting grass, hence the accidental strayings

happen.

The force towards fragmentation is not only making the

individual families more hassled and insecure, but also

inconsiderate towards their fellow villagers. Few are nowwilling to own up to their cattle straying into fields; indeed, of

late, we are witnessing more ill will between neighbours than

ever before. ‘Bhaichara khatam ho raha hai,’ is the uniform

assessment of the village elders (there is no more a sense of

brotherhood).

So we saw in school that agriculture is dependent not

only on good seeds and soil, but also upon a healthy

community. In the classroom, the teachers guided students in

conducting surveys in their villages on the fragmentation of

families, sharing of work in joint and nuclear families, farm


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output and cash income, migration to Kempty or Mussoorie,

and the quality of life, including health. This was a learning

for all of us –students, teachers and volunteers.

MILLETS OF THE HILLS

We do not have sufficiently large fields for growinggrains, makki (corn) being the only cereal which we grow, that

too only a little. We enjoy some of it as butta (corn on cob)in

the rainy season –roasted on a coal fire, with lime and salt

rubbed onto it. We ground some into flour for our local grain

biscuit experiment. Sometimes, a little of it is mixed with

whole wheat flour for rotis. However it was not high on our

list of preferred cereal in the school. In the villages, corn, rice

and wheat are all grown and consumed; and one can see the

dried garlands of golden-yellow corn hanging outside every

home – it is a wonderful sight.

We tried growing jau (barley) once, more to revive

interest in it, but our own colleagues were not motivated, they

had stopped eating it in their homes. So I dropped that, and

focused instead on the excellent millets of the region –

Jhangora and Mandua, which were still grown and eaten, but

which were facing a threat from the glamour of wheat and its

easy availability through ration shops. What we observed was

this:


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1. Chotta anaj, which are small grains called millets in

English, have been grown here, like in all other parts of India,

for hundreds and hundreds of years, and recognised for their

nourishing value.

2. Seeds are stored in every house for the following

year’s sowing, farming methods are traditional using farm

manure, all knowledge needed is locally rooted, passing from

parents to children, yields are steadily good for hundreds of

years, the soil continues to be fertile –this is a wonderful,

sustainable, no-cash-cost way of farming, the result being

wholesome grains, which many say is more nourishing than

rice or wheat.

3. Mandua, a dark-coloured finger millet (also known as

ragi or nachni), is grown along with urad dal in the summer

monsoon. It used to be the cereal of choice for rotis during

winters.

4. Jhangora is a light-coloured (fox-tail) millet. It is

planted and harvested at roughly the same time as broadcast

rice.

5. Mandua is still grown in many villages, but with fast

reducing acreage. Those who have migrated to Kempty town

or to Mussoorie or Dehradun cities have stopped consuming

it.

6. Jhangora is a delicate grain which is still hand-


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pounded for de-husking. Because it is delicate, the whole

grain gets crushed if de-husked in a regular electrical de-

husking machine. Sixty-five years after independence, we still

have not used our science and technology to solve village

problems in the village itself. Instead, the answer has been to

neglect Jhangora. So with every passing year, lesser and lesser

acreage is devoted to this excellent millet.

7. The government has thrust wheat through the public

distribution system, offering it for rupees two a kilo. This has

discouraged the farmer from putting in effort on millets.

8. Even the farmer growing natural, organic wheat in this

region is discouraged. What he produces has been devalued as

a cheap commodity by the government. He is forced into

thinking about giving this up –why work to grow ten quintals

of one’s own wheat when one can earn two thousand rupees

through ten days of daily wage labour and buy ten quintals of

the government ration’s two-rupee wheat?

9. In actual fact, the wheat that the Garhwal farmer grows

is far superior to the low-grade stuff that is distributed through

government subsidy shops. Government wheat acquired

mostly from Punjab and Haryana is grown with a lot of toxicchemicals and pesticides; different varieties and even sub-

standard qualities are dumped together; they are stored for

years mixed with rat and insect poisons; they only resemble


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wheat, that’s all. But the real mischief is that such wheat is

dumped in government ration shops for a subsidized rate of

two rupees a kilo. Because of this artificial price differential,

many farmers here are selling their own pure organic wheat

and instead buying and consuming the government junk.

10. The health of farming families thus compromised is

further weakened by the market propagation of excessively

ground wheat flour, or maida. In the absence of any sincere

effort by the government to provide correct information and

education, rural communities are taking to maida like a fad

(just like their urban cousins). The increasing attraction of

ready-packaged food items, all of which are made of maida

(bread, biscuits, noodles, chowmein etc.) is also contributing

to a worsening health situation in villages.

11. All this is having a telling effect on the state of the

farm. More and more farm land is now lying fallow because

of reducing acreage to millets and due to outward migration

of the younger generation. Hill lands are precariously

positioned with respect to soil erosion and with less and less

care of the land, more and more of fertile soil is being washed

away. The state of the community and the state of the farm are

a reflection one another.

* * *

So what do we do? Growing these millets in the school


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was not a priority for me. The lesson was. The lesson of

farming, food, health and sustainability, the commonality of

which was captured so beautifully by Wendell Berry, who

said, ‘eating is an agricultural activity’.

We decided to be alert about this and to draw the

children’s attention to it wherever possible. So teachers

initiated a discussion on millets as opportunities opened while

teaching history, geography, social science, languages, and of

course, health and agriculture. These were useful at some

level, no doubt. But I was uneasy that this should not end up

as millet versus wheat story. Wheat is a natural grain and, if

grown naturally, has its place in the food order. Events of the

last fifty years have trapped wheat and corn in a nefarious

business-political nexus. Having originated in the U.S., thedisturbance has been pushed out throughout the globe. We

know this. We also know that in our own country, the same

forces of commerce, helped by a weak self-serving

bureaucracy, unleashed a toxic revolution which has poisoned

our land and waters –all in the name of producing wheat.

But here I am in rural Garhwal, among villages where

traditional farming practices still abound, where toxic

fertilizer and pesticides are still at the periphery, where hybrid

and gene tampering are not in the vocabulary, and where there

is still a multiple-grain diet of rice, wheat, corn, mandua and


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jhangora. Yes, this system is under severe threat, but what do I

communicate to them? I have no intention to dazzle them with

the latest information. Do I first tell them the story of modern

history; that it is based upon lies and loot and domination and

deceit and the genocide of continents? That a section of the

world has developed into an uncivilized ruling class

harbouring an insane wish to control what all humans eat?That colonialism continues to operate through other means,

and we only carry the myth of being independent? That we

are weaker today, with less courage, less generosity and more

insecurity, than we were in 1947? That modern schooling has

induced a dangerous kind of stupor, where the walking

unconscious are trampling all over their own fellowmen? Do I

say all this to the Garhwali farmer and to his child in school?

If I don’t, am I hiding something from them? Will this make

them understand, or make them insecure of humans and

human systems? From time to time one has pondered this –

this tangled web of modern deceit, and if one pondered for too

long, one caught a bout of it, and needed to recover. I then

slept with a prayer that dawn should bring in some freshness.

It usually did.

ANTIDOTE TO A DISORDERLY SYSTEM

So, how does this questionable modern system affect the


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farmer of Garhwal? We found that:

1. It does not give him correct information. It does not

give him complete information.

2. It negates his traditional knowledge; it negates his

long-standing, native socio-economic systems. It removes

traditional occupations, while simultaneously placing

demands for cash income.

3. It disturbs him psychologically, makes him feel

inferior, and leaves him with little confidence in what he is

doing.

We asked ourselves what is our response to this, what is

the content of our communication to the student in school,

and through him, to his family?

In response to point number 1, we found a treasure of

valuable research in Dharampalji’s work. Correct information

begins with knowing who we are, and I found his research

and findings on Indian society, economy, education and

science and technology very useful. So is his essay, ‘Bharatiya

Chitta Manas’, on how cultural India sees the world.

Masanobu Fukuoka, Bhaskar Save and Subhash Palekar, I

have already mentioned as having inspired me. I encouraged

the teachers to read them. (Bhaskar Save has written a historic

letter to M.S.Swaminathan concerning Indian agriculture

which can be shared with students).


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There are other sources of information, investigation and

inquiry –books from Other India Press, Navdanya

publications, Annie Leonard’s films, writings of Arundhati

Roy, science references and Hindi translations of various

books from Arvind Gupta’s website –all good people serving

an important purpose, because government, school and media

are all stultifying minds with a single story. USA’s farmer,thinker, poet-writer and practicing self-sustaining human

being Wendell Berry I recommended to many friends – there

was no Hindi translation to give to my teachers –but I don’t

think any of them read him. Pity.

Of course, all of this was for us teachers, to open our

minds. After all, a real school is a place of learning for

teachers, and therefore, for children. At our discussions,teachers suggested ways they could take their own learning or

inspirations to the classroom. There was a direct integration

with many lessons in the curriculum itself, so the

opportunities were always there. But we had to be careful; the

objective was not to counter assumptions with other

assumptions. We had to find ways to indicate, to draw

attention, so that the child saw facts, and the facts spoke for

themselves –this was what J Krishnamurthy had said, and it

impressed me enough to become a conviction. But as the great

man had warned, the danger of teacher as authority kept

cropping up, one needed to be alert in spotting it, not to push


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opinions and conclusions in the classroom; to be, as he said,

constantly aware. For this, we found it was important to

encourage direct observation. So more and more of school

work, and homework, was observation-based, survey-based

and research-based. We also found that it is important to have

an integral approach, because that is the way things are in

reality.

With an Eye of Differentiation, we have divided the

world into mythical ‘subjects’ like Science, Environment,

Geography, Mathematics, etc. So one teacher tells about the

science of electricity, another teacher talks about the

environmental degradation caused by large hydro-electric

power projects, while a third reads from the textbook about

big dams being the ‘temples of modern India!’ – all servingindividual dots that don’t make a picture. Our challenge was,

can we see things now with an Eye of Commonality and

understand the common characteristics that define a

community, that sustain a village eco-system, and from there

examine individual attributes, whether in the science class or

the social science class. This put the onus squarely back on

the teachers, for we had to use and provide information as part

of a whole story, so that we could help one another see what

an orderly system is, and what a disorderly system is. This

had its repercussions.


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During the enactment, at the end of the play, a girl - the

sutradhar (narrator)- came forward and revealed that this was

not fiction at all; the play was based on fact. “I come from

Bhediyan village. My whole village will soon be drowned by

a hydro electric power project on river Aglad. We are being

told to leave, but we don’t want to. Why are they doing this to

us,” she asked. The entire assembly felt her sadness.

Incidentally, Bhediyan is the village where SIDH started

its first school in 1989. It is a prosperous village, hardworking

farmers getting a good produce, good animal husbandry

supported by a healthy forest, the Aglad river flowing a few

hundred feet below. It is the birthplace of SIDH, from where

we raised those first questions about relevant and meaningful

education, about modernity and its mode of destructivedevelopment. Now, they want to drown us out.

* * *

We are seeing how the modern system is affecting the

Garhwal farmer, and we said the second point was that it

negates his traditional knowledge and his way of living. It

removes his traditional occupations while simultaneously

putting demands of cash income. Mahatma Gandhi’s epochaldocument ‘Hind Swaraj’ bears clairvoyance now. An inimical,

globalised, consumption-based system is bearing down hard

on our localised, production-based rural communities, tearing


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farm produce. Teachers and students learning and producing

together, useful things for the school; this had a ready

resonance with Swadeshi, and so this evolved as another

response to point number 2. Our reading of Gandhiji and his

vision of ‘buniyadi shiksha’- basic education - also provided

direction, and soon this activity grew into a full-fledged

Production-Integrated Basic Education programme. It ran for three years, during which the learning activities at Bodhshala

school resulted in the production of recycled hand-made

paper, value-added food items, ayurvedic medicines, soaps

and creams, cloth bags, paper bags and envelopes, and

learning material like number rods and abacus.

Further elaboration on this experiment and its results is

presented in a later section. This was a response throughschool to a crisis in community, and it was a source of great

learning. It has confirmed to us the path of possibility.

* * *

There was a third point mentioned; that the modern

system disturbs the Garhwal farmer severely, psychologically,

leaving him with little confidence in what he does.

In response to point number 3, it was clear that a

provision of holistic information, of an enabling environment,

of caring teachers, all this was helpful. It helped prepare the

child see things for himself. But what if these provisions were


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this modern system. Still, we find that many amongst this

class are uncomfortable with the contradictions; maybe their

attention can be drawn towards an orderly, value-based

system. To me, this makes sense at the level of community,

and appeals to the natural acceptance of every individual.

So these are the three key points, and to the extent of my

understanding, I have enumerated the response –this formed

the basis of our activities in school. The school is a part of

community. The community is for the individual. What is

good for the community, what strengthens it, what helps make

prosperous families –these are the things that make the

curriculum of a school, meaning these are the things to be

studied, to be learned.

Now, the community is a part of society, a larger socio-

political system with institutions which are also acting

according to a curriculum. Now, if that curriculum is saying

something, showing something, doing things which are

fundamentally at odds with our school curriculum, for

instance, if they are weakening and breaking down rural

communities, then what do we, the teachers, do? I think this

has been the problem for ‘alternate’ schools everywhere. The

larger, forceful curriculum of society has prevailed. So what is

the right approach, what is the right thing to do?

We find that contemporary evidence, worldwide, has no


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answer. So can this question itself become a quest, i.e., can all

school activity be based upon finding out what is right living?

I feel that with the weight of importance, the question itself

becomes the driving force. I would call such an investigation

of life and the study of right living as ‘religion’. Seen this

way, the school is a religious place, not merely studying

theoretical science and theoretical philosophy, but discoveringwhat is right living. I think this is the core function of a

school –a school without such investigation is a school

without religion, it is a lifeless thing, it is a dead school.


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II

FOOD AND HEALTH

With the study and practice of farming at school and

community, I could see that we are related to land. This is nota choice, it is a fact. So agriculture as a human cultural

inheritance started to make sense. This shows the way to right

livelihood, and resonates with the potential of sustainability.

The important thing about sustainable living is that we

produce with great care and affection, and then joyfully

consume it ourselves. So it was natural that our agricultural

experiments extended to a community kitchen at Bodhshala

school –in a way, we actually ate our learnings. Teachers,

volunteers and guests had their lunch in this kitchen. Students

by and large brought their own lunch, but those who didn’t or

brought rotis but no subzi (a cooked vegetable dish) were also

welcome in the kitchen.

Our own experimental production was not sufficient; we

had to buy a large quantity from outside. Our first priority was

to buy from the neighbouring villages; the condition being

that the teachers ensured that the family had produced in

excess of its requirement, and was not selling in distress. Not

many families had an excess of rice and wheat, so we sourced


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most of our staple grain from a friend’s organic farm in the

plains. We also asked for and got the local millets. Mandua

began to be regularly cooked in our kitchen, and jhangora too

as and when available. This had an unexpected effect on both

parents and children. Visitors from the community would

always comment, with pleasant surprise, ‘oh, so you eat

mandua as well’! This bridged the psychological distance between home and school. Our teachers, too, re-discovered

the joys of traditional Garhwali cooking which they

remembered from their childhood. Some of them were still

eating this at home, but joylessly, because schooling and the

modern system made the millets appear incomplete and

inferior. I realised then how detrimental schooling is to health.

The Bodhshala kitchen, being open and inclusive,contributed greatly to making the school environment what it

was –a place where the children felt at home, where there was

no psychological distance between village and school.

Modern schooling has separated these two, making the home

and traditional living as something to be despised, to get away

from; while the school offers a dream, however vague, of

something different and superior. Even behaviour-wise, the

school shows a different way of doing things; the way we

dress, sit, cook, eat, talk, play. This has been studied at SIDH

by Pawan and Anuradha for a long time. I could see and feel

the truth of it here. I could also now see what happens when


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we do not behave this way, how fertile then a school

environment can be.

One thing I wished to do but could not, regretfully, was

the way we cooked in the kitchen, where students and even

teachers did not feel at home. Our kitchen was initially built

to cater to large groups of workshop participants, so it had a

stand-up marble platform with gas stoves. Bodhshala school

came later and we inherited this kitchen. We had to cook

standing. Also, the ‘pukka’ cemented floor meant that people

walked in with their shoes, the cooking was also done

wearing shoes. This was not comfortable at all. A ‘no-

footwear’ rule was just not possible because the cemented

floor chilled the feet. In traditional village homes, the stone

and mud walls, the mud flooring and the wooden ceilings aresensibly, and scientifically, designed. The interiors are cool in

summers and warm in winters. The floor, kept fresh with a

regular ‘lipai’(layering ) of cow-dung, is most comforting to

the feet; it in fact invites bare feet. A teacher pointed out how

one would not even think of entering a traditional structure

with shoes, but a change in home materials has brought with it

a change in behaviour. This is beginning to happen even in the

villages.

I wished for a home-like chulla (wood-fired stove) on a

mud floored kitchen. I had even selected a design for a chulla


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which consumed thirty per cent less wood and whose exhaust

went up a chimney and around a water tank on the roof, thus

providing warm water as well. But all this was not to be – to

change the way of our cooking would have involved

architectural changes and too much breaking and rebuilding.

The kitchen was also the place for a ‘food and health’

class which we had for about a year. This was a 50-minute

morning class where different groups of children came for

two to three weeks each. The teachers, too, took turns to learn

and experience from this new type of class. I left it to them to

organize their own way of implementing it, but the syllabus

was clear –understanding food qualitatively, seeing the

relationship between correct food and health, study of

regional crops and fruit, survey of traditional diets, a healthhistory of children’s families, discussion of common illnesses

and home remedies, and other hygiene issues. Much of this

syllabus was distributed across different subject textbooks, so

this class served as a place to bring it all together, to connect

all the dots. It linked good land use to prosperity and health,

and explored the new dependence on shops and the market.

Each student group also chose to cook a few local food

preparations, and also identified something new to them that

they wanted to learn. The children had fun. I hope the teachers

did too. Their involvement was certainly deeper. I wanted the


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teachers and volunteers to take responsibility for the kitchen

as a whole. In the beginning, only a few teachers showed

interest in fully running this, so I took it upon myself to drive

this initiative. It was a long learning curve. But with

perseverance, and with relationships blossoming, everyone in

the school saw the kitchen as their own. By the third year, it

was a common sight at school to see teachers and volunteerscooking, cleaning the kitchen or washing utensils. The

organization had an employee mainly as a cook, but now he

was part of the faculty team, involved right from farming to

production to the kitchen classes. Cooking is not an isolated

activity; it is one link in a chain between growing and eating.

The cook, who used to be almost illiterate, learned during

this period to read and write adequately, and also to maintainkitchen notes and accounts. We often had workshops in our

lower campus and the cook would be required there. At these

times, the teachers shared the kitchen duties, and quite

happily too. Planning the meal for the next day, procuring

anything necessary, cooking and then cleaning up the kitchen

and washing the utensils –they planned and did it all without

much ado. A colleague and myself, who lived on the school

premises, would be left with a spic and span kitchen in the

evening, for us to cook our evening khichdi (a common Indian

preparation of rice and lentil).


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Towards the end, the Bodhshala community was

integrated enough that I would not notice the absence of the

cook. Each and every faculty member, including volunteers

and guest faculty, has participated in the kitchen activities.

This had its uses in many ways. I still recall those faculty

meetings around a fire during cold winter evenings,

accompanied by hot pakoras and chai. I was once asked by avisitor if all this was not an interruption for the school. I had

never thought of it this way, and so re-looked from his

viewpoint. I must share my finding that community living and

community work are not an interruption for a school; they are

essential in completing education.

THE GHARAT

Our attention was firmly drawn to food and health. We

wanted as much local food as possible. All our farming

experiments were with traditional crops and varieties. We ate

as much as possible according to a traditional diet. We also

discovered the joy of ‘junglee subziyan’, a variety of wild

leaves, root and fruit which are a good nutritional supplement,

and which were eaten in a strict seasonal time-table, tried and tested by our forefathers. This was documented well in class.

We ground our wheat, mandua and corn in a gharat .

Gharats are pani-chakkis or water-mills. They use the natural


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Documents

Learning at Bodhshala