The hidden violence of India’s Ashram residential schools on Adivasi Indigenous girls

Durga Masram

In June, the Indigenous communities in Canada and around the world were witness to another bitter and traumatising memory of colonial violence in Indigenous residential schools, as over 700 unmarked graves were found at the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan. In the following months, more cases of unmarked graves were reported at former residential schools in Canada. Back home, in India, it reminded the Adivasi Indigenous communities of the ongoing violence of various forms experienced by Adivasi children in the Ashram Schools – government run residential schools in Adivasi dominated areas.

A 2013–14 report by the ministry of tribal affairs titled ‘Working of Ashram Schools in Tribal Areas Forty-Fourth Report’ had stated that there were 793 reported deaths of tribal students in Ashram schools in the state due to various reasons including ‘snake bites, scorpion bites, fever, minor illness,’ among other things. In contrast, a 2016 report submitted to Maharashtra governor by the former director of health, Dr Salunkhe, had pointed that 1,077 Adivasi children had died over the last 15 years in Ashram schools – 493 of them were girls. The report cited ‘Sexual assaults, suicide, lack of medical help, malnutrition and negligence’ as the main causes of deaths and noted that,

in 67 per cent [of] cases, there was no proper mention of the cause of death in the death certificates…we had a feeling that girls were being sexually exploited, but it was obvious they were under pressure from teachers and the management and would not open to us.

To prevent the deaths of children, the committee had recommended the appointment of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) at each school campus for 24 hours to take care of children, but Maharashtra state appointed a Telangana based company which will provide ambulances to Ashram schools on contract basis.

Over the last few years, another school replicating the model of Ashram school has been on news. It is Odisha’s Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) – a residential school founded in 1992, which now claims itself to be the world’s largest residential school for Adivasi children. KISS has been vehemently criticised by the Adivasi intellectuals and leaders, for its partnership with mining companies such as Vedanta, and for reinforcing colonial anthropological notions through their ‘civilising mission’. Virginius Xaxa, a former professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, argues that Tribal or Adivasi communities have long been treated as savages and, ‘to run an educational institution today with a civilising mission based on this implicit premise is deeply disturbing­ – a throwback to the goals and methods of the colonial state and Christian missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth century’.

One of the promotional videos of the organisation describes Adivasis as people who ‘fill up their stomachs with forest products and cover their bodies with leaves of plants’, which Xaxa argues is a misrepresentation of current lives of Adivasis. He further adds,

When KISS students are asked what contribution the institution has made to their lives, the typical answer is that it has civilised them. Their self-esteem as tribal people is undermined tremendously, and the damage can linger for life. Children are led to believe that they have no future without KISS and its founder, and that they should therefore be forever grateful to both.

The official website of KISS claims that it has 30,000 Indigenous students in Bhubneshwar campus alone, and boasts of 20,000 Adivasi alumni. Xaxa’s observations about the civilising mission of KISS are also apt for Ashram schools.

The history of residential schools for tribal children goes back to the British colonial period, when Ashram schools were introduced by the Gandhian activists in the early twentieth century. The fundamental idea behind Ashram schools was deeply problematic as it came from Brahminical concept of Gurukul – where students and teachers lived together – and the term Ashram is also derived from Brahminical Vedic texts. The first Ashram school was established by Gandhian activist, Thakkar Bapa, who worked among the Bhil people and was a close associate of MK Gandhi, in Gujrat’s Mirakhedi in 1922. Thakkar Bapa later worked towards opening Ashram schools in other tribal dominated states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and so on.  According to Bipin Jojo, a professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the broad policy of Ashram schools envisioned them as ‘inter-village schools’ and that ‘they should be opened in such areas where normal schools cannot be opened and most backward tribal groups should be covered’.

In the twentieth century, Gandhian ideology and activists had played a key role in propagating Hinduism among the Adivasis through their ‘reform movements’ – or ‘civilising mission’ – and the Ashram schools replicated this practice. It was, in many ways, similar to the Indigenous residential schools in North America and Australia, where Christian schools were designed to forcefully assimilate Indigenous people into the non-Indigenous population.

Adivasi communities are the Indigenous people, the original inhabitants of India, and possess distinct languages, cultures, belief systems, rituals, festivals, histories, and mythologies. However, despite being the original inhabitants of this land, they have remained at the margins of the nation. In the Indian Constitution, they have been recognised as Scheduled Tribes (ST) under Article 342. According to the last census, Scheduled Tribe population was 10.45 crore, estimated to be around 8.6 per cent of the total population of India. This comprises of 705 tribal communities and 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.

Since independence, various governments have taken steps in providing many schemes for tribal development focusing on social, economic, education and political spheres of their lives. It also provides for schemes like tribal government ashram schools, pre-matric and post-matric scholarships, etc. However, Adivasi representation in higher educational institutes remains dismal, as Adivasi communities have the highest dropout rates among various sections of Indian society. According to a 2019-20 report, the dropout rate at secondary level (class 9 and 10) was highest among Scheduled Tribes with twenty-four per cent dropout rate, while it was eleven per cent for ‘General’ category. The lack of education has also been considered a reason for their exploitation by non-tribals and the challenges in fighting against injustice. The few ones among the tribal community who have become relatively literate also find it hard to reap the benefits of the schemes and services, and there remains a huge gap between tribals and the government officials, who are themselves, most often biased and indifferent to these schemes.

It is said that a woman educates many generations along with her. It is true as the education of women is a very crucial factor in the development of the home, family, as well as society. Even though half of the population in this patriarchal society are women, they have to struggle hard to get education, but despite all odds, tribal women have proven they are ahead in many areas by competing with the so-called ‘mainstream civilised society’. Their situation gets worse due to the prevalence of many communicable and non- communicable diseases are also higher, along with the higher maternal and infant mortality compared to the national average. According to a report by National Family Health Survey (2015-2016), infant mortality is endemic and high; 44 per 1000 among tribals in Maharashtra, because of lack of knowledge about contraceptive measures. As a result of extremely high prevalence of undernourishment among two fifths of tribal women and prevalence of Anaemia among one third of pregnant women, health problems of tribal women are grim. This has led to a continuous rise in the number of deaths caused by undernourishment during the time of pregnancy and infant mortality.

India has a patriarchal society where women are subjugated in every terms of position and they don’t have decision making power. Due to this, women are also backward in educational, political and social sphere, where they do not have freedom to make decisions. On the other hand, tribal women are decision makers at home, and even in the economic sphere they have more power compared to general women. However, those tribals who have accepted culture of other religions like Hinduism do not have freedom to make decisions and they face various hurdles of a patriarchal society. History of tribal women from stories, books, and oral histories tells us that there were many tribal women who fought against the outsiders to protect their land, such as Rani Durgavati, Zakariabai, Phulo Jhano Murmu. There are many tribal women who took part in the anti-colonial movement. Tribal women live a relatively better life, but on interacting with the non-tribal community, they are exploited by men.

Since education and health are interlinked, as good health is important for wellbeing; when we talk about tribal women education, it is important to highlight that tribal women have to pass many barriers due to their socio-economic conditions compared to the so called ‘mainstream society’. They face many problems in getting education due to their parents' lack of awareness for education, remote location of the schools, language, parents' attitude towards education, early marriage, sex abuse in the school, poor methods of teaching, and poverty among many other issues.

In an already vulnerable situation of dispossession and poverty, government schools become the only rescue of many Adivasi parents. The Ashram schools offer free education for tribal children up to 12th and in Maharashtra alone; there are over five lakh tribal students in Ashram schools. Moreover, Ashram schools are one of the only accessible educational institutes for Adivasi girls in tribal areas, yet the education level among Adivasi girls remains extremely low. The provision of free food in residential schools remains one of the reasons that many Adivasi families send their children to these schools at young age. Their families reside in hilly and forest regions, rely on marginal farming, and belong to economically backward family. Additionally, many girls are married at early age and denied access to education, since many families believe that girls are burden and for a poor household, early marriage also means that they can send girl for work to earn money. Moreover, due to the poor conditions of the Ashram schools and several reported cases of sexual abuse, Adivasi families have been hesitant to send their daughters to these schools.

According to a 2015 report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences – which conducted the study about the conditions of 1,076 Ashram schools – ‘the post of female warden is vacant in almost eighty per cent aided schools and forty-two per cent of the government schools’. Therefore, these residential schools have male-dominated staff.  The death figures illuminate the extremely poor infrastructure and precarious health and hygiene conditions in Ashram schools, as well as the scale of violence perpetrated on Adivasi children in Ashram schools. Along with the poor living conditions, the health statuses in ashram schools are also alarming and the incidence of anaemia, malnutrition are common. Amongst tribal communities, the health-related vulnerability exists due to poor awareness and lack of proper counselling and guidance. However, the primary reasons for the depleting health conditions are also due to deforestation, pollution of rivers, land, and forest that has been happening in the name of development. Good health is one of the important determinants of the well-being of an individual. While tribal societies have relied for generations on indigenous medicines, the ongoing slaughter of biodiversity has left them without access to them.

Koitur writer, Maruti Uike, in a 2009 Marathi article had warned that ‘Ashram schools have become the den of sexual abuse’. He alleged that about 386 Adivasi girls had been raped in Ashram schools asking, ‘How can children study in such conditions? What will be their future?’ In 2016, during my research field work, a girl in an Ashram school told me that her sister was raped when she was in Grade 3. When the female teachers got to know about it, they asked the victim’s family to not report it. However, it eventually came to light during a medical examination. A year before that, in my native district of Wardha, two minor Adivasi girls were brutally raped in Pandhurna Ashram school. In this case as well, the school tried to hide it, but their reported pregnancy and medical examination revealed the case of rape. When I had visited Pandhurna Ashram school during my field work, I saw the poor infrastructure and isolated location of Ashram schools. The school was about four kilometers away from the village in the middle of forest, where wild animals and human conflict are common. There were no provisions of security or transport at the school.

In 2009, the report of rape of five Adivasi minor girls was reported from Ashram school in Wardha’s Maandwa – which had been awarded the President Prize three times. Similarly in 2013, in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker, another Adivasi dominated district, cases of rape of 11 minor Adivasi girls between the ages of 5 and 12 were reported in Narharpur Ashram school.

There are very few reported cases of sexual violence in the media, and a large numbers of cases go unreported. In November 2016, media reported the case of rape of a 10-year-old Adivasi girl in a tribal residential school located in Maharashtra’s Buldhana district. Following which, another girl from the school came forward with the complaint of rape. Two years later, another eight Adivasi girls were reported to have been sexually abused in Ashram schools in Maharashtra’s Sangli district. The list goes on and during my own research work in Wardha, Yavatmal, Nandurbar, and Bhuldhana, incident of tribal girls’ rape and harassment were commonly narrated to me.

Journalist Devendra Gawande (2016) in his piece in Loksatta notes that the Ashram schools have become the den of exploitation of tribal students as a result of absence of strict monitoring caused due to the location of these schools. Since these schools are located in remote areas, administrative authorities do not have strict control and monitoring over it and that confidence and incentive for corruption in collaboration with other authorities. The children coming to Ashram schools come from vulnerable backgrounds, particularly girls and being away from the home, the staff in these schools feel empowered to abuse them as there is no fear of any authority or even parents due to their extremely poor situation. On the other hand, students who do not get nutritious food at home and come to school in the hope of education, silently accept multiple forms of exploitation enacted upon them.

Although the report of Salunkhe committee is not made public as of now, Salunkhe then told the Hindustan Times that,

They had a feeling the girls were being sexually exploited, but it was obvious they were under pressure from teachers and the management and would not open to us. This must be why no one confided in us. Also, our visit to each school was for a limited time. We had no solid evidence to prove the crime.

This shows the limitations of committee to identify or discover the prevalence of sexual exploitation. There is a need of investigation like in the case of recent incident of Balikagruh in Bihar, which exposed the brutal sexual harassment and exploitation of girls carried out by KISS. Such interventions are necessary to investigate into the cases of sexual harassment and abuse of the tribal children in Maharashtra. The girls are less prone to express to male members of committee so there must be inclusion of female members from the community who are sensitive and aware of the tribal issues.

Another factor that makes access to education more difficult in Adivasi areas is the ongoing insurgency of Maoists and counter-insurgency military operations of the Indian state. The ministry of home affairs under its wing Left Wing Extremism has identified areas which are affected by Maoist insurgency in the country. It is however not a coincidence that most of the regions marked are Adivasi districts with rich mineral resources. The Maoist movement, which began in 1960s as a response to exploitation by jamindars and moneylenders, has reached the core of many Adivasi areas in central India’s Gondwana region. The counterinsurgency by the Indian state has led to increasing militarisation of these regions, and the violence between Maoists and security forces has left many Adivasi children vulnerable and without education. It is also in these circumstances that Ashram schools become even more relevant, which are designed for interior Adivasi areas.

Bipin Jojo in his paper points that in their visit to schools in relief camps –established by the Indian state for people displaced from violence – in Bastar’s Konta block, nearly three thousand students had been driven out by the Maoists because ‘their original schools were either completely destroyed or were not allowed to function’.  Jojo further adds that according to teachers serving in these schools, ‘the police keep frequenting the schools and interrogating teachers suspecting that they are involved with the Maoists. Similarly, the Maoists too make their visits to schools suspecting that the teachers are involved with the police’. In such precarious conditions, most teachers are generally not willing to work in tribal areas affected by Maoist movement.

While the national average literacy rate of the country in last census was seventy-three per cent, it was merely fifty-nine per cent for Scheduled Tribe communities. Among them, the literacy rate among tribal women remains even lower at about thirty-two per cent. Education is considered the most important instrument for the progress of any community. However, the Scheduled Tribes face plenty of hurdles and problems, which make their access to education difficult. Women are particularly vulnerable and lag in access to education due to various factors such as poverty, lack of awareness for education, parent’s attitude towards girl child education, distance of the school from home, lack of support from family, language barrier, and lack of proper monitoring for education.

As mentioned earlier, the Ashram schools and Hindu religion share a deep connection and therefore, the consecutive governments led by upper-caste Hindus have also promoted Brahminism and Hinduism through these schools. The study by Bipin Jojo had also found that all the Ashram schools in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand state has ‘garlanded idols and photographs of Hindu gods and goddesses and also of senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders’ and these pictures even were put on the walls of hostel rooms. Similarly, the study found that in the name of ‘mainstreaming’ Adivasi students, various agencies were propagating Hinduism in these schools, and ‘Hindu festivals like Holi, Diwali, Ganesh and Sarswati puja are celebrated in the schools, but there are no celebrations of the local tribal festivals in any of the states’. I made a similar observation in the Ashram schools during my visits that students were socialised in a Hindu culture and had nothing about their own history and culture in their syllabus.

Language certainly remained a large concern. During my field work, I met several girls from Korku and Gond community, who did not know how to speak Marathi; however, their education was being conducted in Marathi language. Pointing to the importance of education in mother-tongue, writers and activists such as Ramanika Gupta have argued that in places like Kerala, the education status is higher because the primary education is provided in their mother-tongue. However, the same is not the case for Adivasi communities, who are not only denied education in their mother tongue but many of their languages are now endangered. For the large Adivasi population, who mainly rely on government run schools, the findings of Bipin Jojo, TISS, Committee reports, and my own field study were deeply alarming and point towards the complete erasure of various aspects of Adivasi life and worldview and the imposition of an alien Hindu culture, worldview, and language.