On the outskirts of the small hill town of Kotdwar in Garhwal, in a village called Haldukhata, from where the green Sal forested hills rise, and wild elephants sometimes cross over looking for a change in diet, there is a small school. Though it caters to only 206 students, classes are split from nursery to Class VIII, which is complicated math for a two-room, one-hall building. When I visit Buksa Janjati Balika Vidyalaya on a winter afternoon, there are blackboards everywhere.
There is one standing in the corridor, another under a mango tree, as many as four in the hall, and, of course, two in the classrooms, with teachers writing on them and keeping their voices low so that other classes are not disturbed. A fascinating story of selfless sacrifice links 90-year-old Gandhian Man Singh Rawat to this quaint school, where Buksa tribal children study math and geography. This is after generations in the village lived in seclusion and practised animalism and magic. Rawat and his wife Shashi Prabha, 82, also a Gandhian, have spent 63 years with the Buksas.
In the year 1954, Rawat was in his 20s and a brilliant scholar with air tickets to New York in his hand. He had been offered a place at Columbia University, when he was summoned by Jayaprakash Narayan. The latter had joined Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement in 1953, which was aimed at persuading landowners to gift a percentage of their land to the landless, so that they could settle down and grow their own food. A young and idealistic Rawat was so moved by it that when Narayan asked him to join the movement, he tore up his tickets and came back to donate his land to the landless and started working with the Buksas. Ask the gentle old man how much courage it took to give up his ambitions, and he doesn’t say anything. Only his finely wrinkled face breaks into the most beautiful smile.
The newly-married Rawats packed their meagre belongings and went to live with the Buksas. “Since they were not ready to send their children to school, we took education to them. We lived in a hut with them and slowly won their trust. We began by teaching them about health and hygiene and elementary education,” says Rawat. What started with Bhoodan went on to become Jeevandaan. Rawat and his wife pledged their lives to the Sarvodaya or Gandhiji’s well-being for all movement. For 63 years, they have worked with the tribals in nine villages in the vicinity. In 1994, they opened a small residential school for Buksa children in Haldukhata. “We had 21 children there aged eight to 13, but it had to be shut down after two years because we ran out of funds,” he says.
In 2000, the couple made a second attempt. They bought one bigha of land with what remained of their savings and decided that a school would be built on this land. This time, they had help from their son and daughter-in-law. “We would go to the river and bring back stones and sand to construct the school,” Manju, Rawat’s daughter-in-law, and now principal of the school, says.
“Once we had collected enough, we would pay labour in the village to build the structure,” she says. Gradually, a two-room building with an office came up in Haldukhata. In its first year, the school had two teachers and only 10 Buksa students. The children were taught to recognise alphabets and numbers. The basic rule was that no one was allowed to use thumbprints as signatures. Everybody had to learn to at least write his or her name. The next year, the school had 25 students. The villagers were still wary of sending their children to school. The Buksas were believed to practise magic and were feared. It was their unkempt appearance that earned them the moniker Buksa, which means mountain goat. The villagers feared that the Buksas would curse them and others believed that the tribals had the power to shape-shift and turn into animals.
While some of them went to the Buksas for magical remedies for ailments, most of them simply stayed away. It took a few years for the locals to accept the school and start sending their children to study with the Buksas. Slowly, the prejudices disappeared. The school currently has 206 students, 150 of which are Buksas with 10 teachers teaching them. In 2011, The Hans Foundation, a village development programme in Uttarakhand, adopted the school. The teachers were paid fairly good salaries and children got free meals, education and books. Things began looking up.
As I push open the gates of Buksa Janjati Balika Vidyalaya, nine-year-old Taj is sprawled at the back of the corridor class, his head resting on his school bag, safely hidden from the eyes of his teacher by the kids sitting in front. Jyoti is sitting cross-legged under the mango tree, in a crowd of senior Class VIII children, reciting “ Barah ekam barah, barah duni chaubis ” (Twelve ones are 12, 12 twos are 24). I meet siblings Mohammad, 9, Rani, 13, and Alamgir, 14, youngest of the nine Van Gujjars and the first three in their family to be educated. They tell me they walk across from the teak and eucalyptus forest two kilometres away every morning, making sure they reach just a few minutes before 9.30 a.m., when the assembly bell rings.
They have stayed in the forest for many generations, rearing cattle and selling milk for a living. Now, Alamgir says he wants to join the Army; Rani would like to become a teacher and Mohammad is still daydreaming. The school has given them the power to dream and maybe even make those dreams come true.
The next day, when I visit the school, it is assembly time. I wait by the gate and watch nearly 200 children stand in their red-and-white checked shirts and grey uniforms. Their hands are folded and their beautiful singsong voices carry in the wind as they sing “ Itni Shakti hame dena data, man ka vishwas kamjor na ho ” (Give us the strength that does not let our beliefs weaken).
Not wanting to disturb them, I make my way to the crumbling old house next to the school, where I know I will find a 90-year-old Gandhian, who is a living example of the words they sing every morning. I want to see him smile again.
Bottomline: After 62 years of selfless work, Man Singh Rawat was awarded the Jamnalal Bajaj Puraskar in December 2015. He has pledged the prize money of Rs. 10 lakh to Sarvodaya, a Gandhian society that works with the underprivileged.
