6. Análisis de resultados
6.2 Formas de relación que se establecen
I can only tell two of the costumed figures, that of Santa Claus, shown here on the far left, and Ganesha, shown here on the far right, who stand on the tractor and pose as they slowly move down the main village road, an in-built entertainment for parents who stand by and watch. Later, I ask one of my students, Nagraj, about these costumes, who they were and what their significance was. Nagraj, who also happens to be wearing the Santa Claus costume, lists the characters from right to left as Ganesha, Rama, Tipu Sultan (a happy reminder that earlier, seemingly tangential references to the historical presence of the Muslim ruler was propelled by his ethnographic presence), a British official, and Santa Claus. He is not sure exactly why they’ve been asked to wear these costumes though he does have a vague idea that children love Santa Claus (though not any children in Adavisandra), that he gives gifts and chocolates, and that he is especially important to Christians. I ask Nikhil sir the same question and he responds quickly, as if me asking such a question was itself a slight, explaining that of course they want all of the students to “experience the world” and have knowledge about all religions and people, not just those within the village.
Despite the terse response, or perhaps because of it, this last expression “experience the world” sticks with me over the course of my fieldwork, shaping exactly how I saw a school that,
by most accounts, would be, given the metonymic relationship between the rural, the local, and the traditional, viewed as a place in which globality was not being produced, reserved for the urban in the near-hegemonic ideal of the global-urban future. And yet, in Adavisandra, as in all localities, specific worldings are taking place, as important in the production of globality as the global imaginaries produced in cities. Indeed, what should be stated first, and is obvious in the example here, is that all localities are global and participating in worlding practices, a point that Piot (1999) makes clearly within the quite different context of rural Togo in West Africa on the very first page of his book, stating explicitly that it, “has long been globalized and is better conceptualized as existing within modernity” (1). Second, and more importantly, what makes the practices in Adavisandra different, if still indicating globality, is the explicit and conscious production of globality, in the common sense desire that students should have an awareness of the world beyond the village and, in turn, in the educative processes that teachers were undertaking to produce just such a consciousness, examples of global-rural worlding practices as relevant to understanding development as its urban counterparts.
Nikhil’s terse response, one of the few times he was not completely jovial in my presence, also presented an affective register by which to understand the Independence Day costumes: he was unhappy because he felt my question assumed that the school was somehow seen as not able to participate in this ubiquitous global consciousness, a feeling that linked Nikhil’s own sense of Self worth, his own potential globality, to his ability to develop his students’ globality as well. In other words, one’s own sense of value was linked directly to the possibility of (1) having a global sensibility and (2) being able to propagate this global sensibility in others and it was in this first set of remarks that I was able to understand the desire to produce a global Self as one of the affects of development made visible within the educational space.
Of course, the specifity as to what, exactly, globality looked like is as important as the meta-consciousness itself, and in this case the teachers had physicalized a religio-global imaginary, in which Hindu, Muslim, and Christian were all given representation, if only in caricatured form, Christianity, for example, represented by Santa Claus, whose relationship to Christianity is, at best, dubious.
In front of the line of students, two walk with framed photographs in hand, one of Ganesha, the Hindu remover of obstacles, and the other of Mahatma Gandhi, both garlanded and paraded around the village with stops along the way so that the community members can give their blessings to the passing students. Each time we stop, the parents touch the photograph of
Mahatma Gandhi and pray, treating Gandhi as God and receiving Darshan64 from him just as they
would from any Hindu deity. As I watched, I wondered how to make sense of the fact that the Gandhi they worship is also the Gandhi who sought to eliminate the very silk economy sustaining many of them and much of the community in which they live. Thousands of silkworms are killed in the silk production process, before they are able to metamorphose into a moth, a process justified because the silk is believed to be the finest at the stage before the cocoon opens naturally at one end to release the moth, which destroys the continuity of the silk fiber. Gandhi criticized the sericulture industry for this cruelty as part of his ahimsa philosophy, a reminder of just how extreme Gandhi’s form of nonviolence really was, nearly post-human in its ethical instantiations. This criticism of silk and the silk industry eventually became part of his argument for a move to cotton-spinning machines, a less known explanation within a dominant discourse that saw handspun cotton as a challenge to the exploitation of British colonial economics. I never brought this contradiction of Gandhi worship up with anybody at Adavisandra, partly because I only made the connections later and partly because it didn’t seem necessary to do so.
Finally, after four hours walking in the sun, everyone walks back to school, this time to the new school building, still unopened, approximately seven minutes walk away, just past the end of a small road off of the main road, and onto a dirt path leading beyond a small, dry pond surrounded by foliage and to the new school. Everyone sits out front under a small, makeshift tarp that gives enough shade from the sun. My students are starting to learn how to use the photo and video cameras I’ve brought with me just around this time, and I watch them stand to the side importantly, snapping photos and shooting film footage of their own choosing, a directorial ownership that I want to encourage as much as possible and which I will discuss directly in the next chapter.
I realize while I sit in the back and take in the proceedings that this truly is a “community event”, parents sit all around the perimeters of the assembly, watching the ongoing proceedings and it is a moment when the school can speak directly to parents and share the values which they hope their students should learn. First, the students put on a performance, dancing, singing, and reading poetry, choosing from Kannada film and folk songs as well as popular Bollywood songs to the amusement of everyone who watches. Afterwards, each of the teachers gives a speech,
64 Pinney (2002) citing Eck (1981) writes, “Darshan is a practice of Hindu visuality predicated on the mutuality of ‘seeing and being
seen’ by the images of the deities one worships” (Pinney, 2002, 358).
specifically about Indian independence, the meaning of the day, and their hopes for the students’ futures.
Of all of the speeches I am most struck by that given by Manjunath Sir, the students’ social studies teacher, whose voice rises above the frenzy of children and adults talking to one another distractedly, paying very little attention to the preceding dialogues. He is already one of the most important figures in the school community, the majority of the students choosing him when asked who their favorite teacher was and, given his influence, when asked what their favorite subject was choosing social studies. He is decidedly handsome, broad shoulders and a strong jaw line, well-groomed and with kind, interested eyes. When I first meet him we connect after he hears that I am an anthropologist, which I have translated to sociologist, given that sociology and anthropology are a single discipline in the Indian context. He explains that he got his MA in Sociology and he starts talking immediately about Auguste Comte, “the father of sociology”, a name that I would never have expected to hear in Adavisandra, and yet is
prominently discussed in one of the first lessons in the student’s social science text as well. It hits me during that first interaction that sociology around the world has congealed around a single originary figure, presented as such in my own cultural anthropology doctoral classroom in Philadelphia and in Kannada medium schools in Karnataka, a reminder that Western scholarship, because of its historical dominance over the social sciences, still holds sway on how postcolonial social scientific knowledge is constructed today.
Manjunath sir’s interest in sociology makes him exceptionally interested in my study and he asks me many questions about what I seek to learn. He is full of knowledge about students and their families, having developed trusting relationships across the standards and I was always thankful for his help in trying to understand where a student’s family was from, what hardships might be preventing a student from succeeding in the classroom, or the local economy in which students were growing up. At the same time, because of his understanding of the field, he was also slightly suspicious, protective of students who he did not want to be exploited by an outsider sociologist.
As he starts speaking students finally begin to listen intently to words that he drives forth like bullets from microphone to loud speaker and directly into their ears. The Kannada is fast and I grab my audio recorder, eager to make sure I capture every word that Manjunath sir says. He speaks for a full 20 minutes, a speech that I wish I could transcribe in full given its affective impact. He begins with three unassuming sentences, “We have been celebrating the national festivities with much grandeur. Today’s function has been rather different but has been filled with
pomp. So I would like to speak about the significance of Independence day…” followed by an intensely nationalistic description of India’s past up till the moment of British rule:
India is one of the leaders among the greatest nations of the world. When we see India’s ancient traditions, there is no other country as rich in resources and as vast as India. Humans have their evolution and have learnt all their culture from India. Today, Europe’s nations proclaim
themselves as great, but they came to know what the world is just 500 years ago. Whereas we had constructed a model village, the Harappan Civilization, 5000 years ago. Since the Harappa civilization, our nation has preserved and nurtured it’s culture and the ancient traditions. The world’s first literature was created in India, the Vedas. Also, our kings have never fought wars unethically. India has never declared war on any other nation unnecessarily. When we consider people coming here from other nations, we have actually allowed for them to live here. One can witness all of the world’s languages and religions in India. It is true that India has allowed people from all over the world to observe (practice) religion of their choice.
These grand, sweeping, essentializing statements read quite similarly to those espoused by Western colonial powers two hundred years earlier, only now it is India and Indians who stake claim to this unblemished and golden past, a hallmark of nationalist thought in India, one which is summed up by Chatterjee in one simple phrase “ancient glory, present misery” (Chatterjee, 2013). And indeed, Manjunath sir continues into the story of India’s demise, explaining in vivid detail the 150 years of the British colonial era, which lasted so long because of the “slowness” of the Indian state of mind. There is little reference at all to Muslim rule, surprising given that Tipu Sultan sits only a few chairs away, and instead, Manjunath sir proceeds to re-invent the moment of Independence when Gandhiji, Rajguru, Sakhdev, Chandrasekhar Azad, and Bhagat Singh fought for freedom, describing in gruesome detail the final moments of the latter two, when they were tricked and found out by the British, eventually killing themselves rather than be taken prisoner by the British.
This history is but a setup for the real demise, the contemporary moment when India’s leaders have truly failed:
If such great souls were alive today, our country would not be in this condition (/state/situation)… But you are the youth of tomorrow, should develop selfless patriotism, selfless politics, but not involve in bunkum politics. We should support those who work selflessly for the nation. If we support someone just because he is from the same caste, same religion, or from Karnataka, our country will not rise up even in another 500 years. We are celebrating the Independence Day today but we have actually not got our independence. Where are we called independent? We are independent to eat and work, but we have not learnt to think
independently. We have not gained independence to fight against injustice in our country… This country is in the hands of a very few people… Our state’s Chief Minister gives away 1kg rice for 1rupee, and gives away milk, uses our taxes to build bungalows… and settle abroad. Our country is not safe though we are being attacked from both the sides… Pakistan invades from here and China invades from there. Our Prime Minister does not have the daring to talk about this. This shows the faint-‐heartedness of our Prime Minister. Today…our soldiers are dying every day on the Pakistan border… our soldiers live in China’s 0.40 centigrade… means less than zero…
sacrificing their lives, fighting and protecting out border… they do not have any kind of security. Our nation doesn’t even have the mettle to bury the dead soldiers with dignity. A minister from Bihar says, “Soldiers are meant to die.”…
We should never respect such worthless leaders; our country has superb scientists, superb, superb teachers, police officers, DCs (district commissioners), lawyers, judges, but we don’t have superb politicians. All I ask for on any stage is that the country needs superb
politicians, superb selfless patriots. The country’s independence gets it’s meaning only when we have such patriots. We just celebrate 26th January and 15th August, hoisting the flag and declaring India as independent. We have become slaves in the country, we’ll become independent only when every citizen gets his freedom, develops thinking and has an access to opportunities (emphasis added). People with talent are not getting any opportunity in our country. These people are going to America and settling down there, we are losing our talent-‐pool. The talented people are not getting opportunities in our country, only people with recommendations and with money are getting a position and status in our country. We talented people are working in meagre jobs and roaming around giving speeches. Talented people should become the Prime Minister of the country, the Chief Minister of the state, talented people should own the
leadership, should become the presidents. All of you pursue your studies with this view, and then the independence of this country will have a meaning. Your studies will be fruitful and us
teachers’ efforts will be fruitful. With this talk, making you understand your work, for the country’s independence to have a meaning, I thank all of you…
In a quieter moment Manjunath sir would soften his words, admitting that the force with which he had lashed out at the ruling politicians in India during his speech may have been too extreme and that yes, some of those in power were not completely “worthless”. Still, there is much to be learned in the frenzy of his speech, especially if we take seriously Mazzarella’s (2009) reinvigoration of crowd theory, whose perceived regressive and immoderate potentials, in for example the work of Le Bon, make them antithetical to the modern, civilized liberal subject. However, Mazzarella (2009) suggests that such collective spaces teem with “affective
effervescence… members… indiscriminately amplifying each others impulses and impressions” (296-297). And it is in these moments of affective intensity that reason is subsumed, not just in the members of the crowd, but in the orator himself or herself, as he or she works up to a moment in which individual emotion is collectivized. In this respect, Manjunath sir’s use of “we” at particular points during his speech is telling, especially in the phrase “We talented people are working in meagre jobs and roaming around giving speeches,” a statement that when juxtaposed with the earlier phrase, “All I ask for on any stage” indicates quiet clearly that it is not just about his students that he is speaking of, but about himself as well. He is, after all, the one on stage giving a speech, and is also one of those talented people who is working in a “meager job,” in this case the teaching profession. He also is speaking in the “we” when he claims that, “We have become slaves in the country, we’ll become independent only when every citizen gets his freedom, develops thinking and has an access to opportunities,” an absolute, if overzealous
statement of his own feelings of dissatisfaction at the lack of opportunities for those like him in contemporary India; the lack of opportunity, in turn, equated with a lack of freedom, in turn, equated with slavery because all they are really free to do “is eat and work.”
But his critique is also related to a world beyond the village, Karnataka, or India, in all of those who are leaving to get jobs in, specifically, America, the place where those of talent can go to find jobs aplenty, not restricted by the cronyism that defines who and how someone can get positions and status in India. India’s independence is only of value if, and only if, the flow of