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By Hemangini Gupta The telling of history is often coloured by politics, or a boring narration of facts and dates. Filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj, however, has taken a fresh approach, making a series of films for Edusat, the distance learning programme in rural Karnataka, in which children learn about history by becoming historians themselves
In India, political triumph has often been marked by a strong identity politics: the construction of statues; the reshuffling of state administration and, on occasion, a strategic meddle in children's history textbooks. Recounting history is frequently more ambiguous than the explanation of the root of Pi but, in India, the complexity of the situation is compounded by the active mediation of political interests, rendering young people's study of history dependent upon the whims and agendas of the government in power. Children reading history right after the BJP came to power at the Centre, for instance, saw no mention of the assassination of M K Gandhi in their textbooks, and therefore no acknowledgment that it was a former RSS-follower who shot him dead either. Children in Marxist-ruled West Bengal were informed that the first exploitation-free society was established in Russia after the Revolution. But although the telling of history has morphed and been modified through the rises and falls of different governments, the real concern might not be the politics behind the telling of history: it might be just the telling of history itself. In an editorial reprinted on the website of the National Council of Educational Training and Research (NCERT), historian Sumit Sarkar suggests that more than concerns over political costs or the need to upgrade textbooks, it may be the “questions of pedagogy, accessibility, appropriateness for young people” that will confound us in the end. Unlike the sciences, where children can conduct experiments themselves to understand what they have just read, history badly told may amount to a meaningless series of facts, explained in often dull and heavy textbooks, suggests Sarkar. Filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj might have been listening to Sarkar's lament. In a series of approximately half-hour films made for Edusat, the distance learning programme broadcasting to government schools across rural Karnataka, she decided to teach history rather differently from the way it was being taught to Indian children. Children's history textbooks have little coherence, she says, so there was no point building on them, “compounding (the child's) misery by adding to the textbook”. So she took a fresh approach, casting children themselves in the role of historian. Over a summer vacation, Dhanraj and her team filmed with a small group of children aged between 8-12 years in northern Karnataka's Gadag district. These weren't necessarily the highest ranked kids in their class and they weren't carefully handpicked by their school principal to participate in a film that would go out across Karnataka and later to different parts of South India. Instead they were just kids who happened to have stayed home during the vacation. They became the “young historians”, which is also the title of this history-teaching series commissioned by state Education Secretary Vandita Sharma. What Dhanraj wanted to do with the films was to encourage a “historical temper” amongst young viewers, to show that the construction of history is a scientific process that uses solid research methodology. Her films are intended for a mixed audience of both teachers and students. That challenge was compounded by the distance element: creating comprehensive material for diverse viewers based elsewhere. History's existence and evolution might seem bewildering to the new learner, but she realised that experiencing its methods first-hand could provide clarity in understanding how history develops and evolves. In the films, the students explore their own families, their village, their state, as young historians: conducting interviews, comparing notes, verifying sources – all methods that a PhD student would use, Dhanraj points out, except that these kids were not more than 12 years old. Their 200-page notebooks were full of notes by the end of these exercises, and they discovered that, despite the roller-coaster of political influences, historical temper is, finally, evidence-based. The history series is anchored by science teacher Chengareddy, who has never taught the social sciences, but “demonstrated an ideal classroom”, says Dhanraj. “No child was belittled or mocked – everything that anyone said was taken seriously. There was democracy in the classroom.” At the start of each film Chengareddy introduces the theme to the audience and then proceeds to explore it with his young class. Their questions and interjections become talking points and the camera follows them through their actual exploration of historical methods both outside and inside the classroom. The students begin by exploring their own family histories, asking elders in their homes to share what their lives have been like, and finding out about food habits, major events and lifestyles that constituted their world decades earlier. They then return to the classroom to share and compare notes. Chengareddy's questions provoke the students to question accepted practices and to think afresh, to construct history from their own particular positions. For instance, in the film where students learn about their village, Chengareddy asks them who they will approach to ask questions about the history of the village. When the students suggest approaching the landlord and the chairman of the panchayat, their teacher asks them why they would only approach rich and influential people, suggesting that they could approach 'regular' residents as well. The students set off to explore old sites in their village, such as the temple, the upper caste well, the granary. Bridging scenes are Aditi Nair's colourful illustrations indicating where the group is headed to next, with a moving red dotted line indicating the students' path. The children ask basic as well as probing questions about the places they visit: “When was the well built?” “Who paid for it?” “How many lorryloads of stone were required to build it?” “How long did it take to build?” Different views of history are revealed in this process of exploration, as well as some of the more recent changes that have made history a subject of the past. For example, when women from the lower castes recount their experiences of not being allowed near the upper caste well, and having to be dependent on someone to lift out water for them, the young students challenge why this should have been so, and suggest that the women should have helped themselves to the water. In a section on ‘meeting people who made history’, the young students gather around an elderly man who recalls the Quit India Movement and explains what it was like to live in fear of the British. This Movement was amongst the events recounted in a controversial manner in the textbooks approved by the BJP government: there was no mention there that the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha did not join the movement. But the children in the film are well-protected from larger political distortions. Their understanding of the Quit India Movement comes from the elderly man seated in their midst telling them stories that are still fresh in his memory, even pointing out the house of a local resident who was deeply involved in the movement. Through the conversation with their historical source, the children learn not only about the movement but also about resistance and protest and, as a result of their critical questioning, about the power and the pitfalls of collective disobedience. Back in the classroom, when information is shared amongst the students, Chengareddy encourages the comparing of notes and data. If a student makes a mistake, the others are encouraged to highlight it and correct it with the correct facts, from their own notes. Their teacher emphasises the importance of writing a few lines about the source of the information so that there is a record of who he or she was. He emphasises the need to constantly ask diverse sets of people for different points of view while putting together an accurate account. In an exercise on archaeology, students are given a number of different objects and asked to identify who might have owned them and what the material at hand revealed about the owner's occupation. The children argue and debate within their groups before presenting their findings, which they also have to defend and justify in a logical manner. This sharpens their reasoning skills and ensures that they think through the points leading to their conclusion. It also guides them to articulate their ideas in a convincing manner. As part of the exploration of their larger environment, the students leave their village to go on a short field trip. At the triumvirate temple towns of Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal, experienced historians show the young historians around the sites, pointing out ancient carvings and monoliths, as well as explaining the uses of ancient implements. The children are even shown how to take a print from a stone inscription standing several feet high. The larger lesson: history belongs to everyone -- the temples may be in the name of the kings, but they were usually built with tax money collected from the poor and with the expertise of sculptors and other artisans who were ordinary members of the village. We must remember their histories, too, Chengareddy tells his students. Perhaps the most powerful film is the one on the Vacanas, in which the children are shown how literature can be read to understand history. The Bhakti movement comes alive through the recitation of Vacanas by young musicians. The film tries to understand what it was about the Bhakti movement that compelled people to leave their homes and completely transform their lives in order to become immersed in it. Chengareddy explains that the powerful draw of the movement came from the inspiring experience of hearing ordinary people question rigid caste hierarchies and injustices against the disempowered. Vacana poets such as Basavanna and Akkamahadevi wrote their powerful poetry in Kannada, protesting the prevalent thinking that the gods only understood Sanskrit, a high-caste, Brahminical language, the use of which automatically alienated lower castes. The children are told the story of how Basavanna removed his sacred thread in protest over the priority accorded to a non-living object (his thread) while a living being (the dalit) was treated as inferior and expected to be shunned by the thread-wearing boy. This anecdote provokes the children to recall caste prejudices in their own lives; Chengareddy encourages them to become Basavannas in their own right, and to fight injustice. Dhanraj says that three months after the filming of the series, she received a call from Gadag informing her that the students had come together to pool in money and buy a pot for water, which they could then use without conditions, ending the humiliation of being dependent upon upper caste approval for their access to water. Watching the small group of children conduct their field research, impulsively try to mouth Vacana songs that they are hearing only for the first time and ask thoughtful, probing questions to the various authorities they encounter, makes them appear like old and familiar friends. Each of their expeditions is marked by a flurry of questions and line upon line of descriptive writing accompanied by vivid pictorial representations of what they have seen, diligently coloured right down to the last corner. At the end of one of the films, Chengareddy points out to his students that each one of them has, in fact, become a historian. He then asks how many of them want to be well-known historians when they grow up. Not surprisingly, every single hand shoots up. (Hemangini Gupta is a freelance journalist who has previously worked with The Hindu and CNN-IBN. She is interested in gender and how new technologies can be used for development.
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InfoChange News & Features, August 2008 |
