Teaching teaches you as nothing else can. I remember, as an academic exercise, watching a documentary film on transgender with students, to help understanding and acceptance. As the film progressed, in the unlit room, I could hear sounds of people shifting in their chairs in discomfort, hushed comments, giggles, and at times, loud ridicule. After the film, in the lit room, it was time for discussion. Conversations oscillated from utter indifference to absolute disapproval. The writing on the wall was loud and clear transgender people are a scandal. In the same year, we had the privilege of a couple of transgender friends come over to the campus for interaction. After the initial introduction, as a discussion starter the students along with our guests watched the same film on transgender. With the past experience, my ears and senses were tuned in for sounds of discomfort and comments of ridicule, but I heard none. I ran my eyes across the unlit room; to my disbelief there was profound silence and attentive listening. After the lights came on, the floor was open for discussion. The questions were more genuine this time; the answers found better reception and acceptance. For the students, those were moments of rebirth of their individual and collective conscience. I don't mean that the students lived happily ever after; but they lived respectfully, and were more sensitive and conscious ever after, at least they make an effort to do so.
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| Inclusivity |
Though I did not have the misfortune of studying in one, I have heard of, and these days we hear more of, exclusive schools for the poor, for the rich, for Christians for Hindus, for Muslims. Rich kids are picked up from home to campus, and dropped back from campus to their homes. They grow up seeing the same colours, hearing the same stories and songs, thinking the same thoughts, dreaming of the same future, yet completely unaware that in the next campus there are other students growing up seeing another colour, hearing another story and song, thinking other thoughts, dreaming another future, yet who are completely unaware of the existence of the other campus. Such campuses have been on the rise. Whatever may be the reasons why adults opt for exclusive schools, reasons ranging from preserving one’s purity and standard to economic gains, it is simply disastrous for our kids, and detrimental to our society and country to educate our children without them having the possibilities of meeting others. We build parallel worlds and grumble about them not meeting. We grow brambles and expect grapes from them.
The way to inclusivity is by creating the possibility of having others (no matter who they are) with us, at least when they are the focus of our discussion. This is true of gender, ethnicity, religion, and abilities and disabilities. The magic is in the other being present. It is astonishing to watch how the presence of the other changes our thought process. A non-inclusive attempt at inclusivity is not only futile but a mockery of our shared humanity and inclusivity. Leaders of a country, a society, or an organisation, who do not indiscriminately include people of all sections into their dreaming, imagining, thinking, planning and execution, are set to be narrow-minded, offensive and abusive.
Watch our emotions, our words
What sensations surge in our bodies when we think about the differing other? What words crowd our conversations when we talk about them? Erstwhile ago, with the onslaught of Covid-19, India faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The migrant labourers, who were the backbone of the construction of our cities’ infrastructure and economic growth, became mere migrants. They became refugees in their own country. In the words of an Afghan refugee in Australia, a refugee is resilient, is a boundary pusher, hard worker, explorer, someone who is ready to do everything for the sake of his children and his family. On a sudden everyone, yes, even establishments, started labelling them as problematic , categorising them as illegal, unauthorised and even more. We ought to be watchful of our emotions and vocabulary with regard to the other genders, the spectrum of sexual orientations, ethnic communities, caste and class.
Anything new and different is seen as a threat, not because of what they are but because of what we have, or what we don't have. When the celebrated Baroque art arrived on the shores England in the 17th century, Waldemar Januszczak, an art critic and television documentary producer and presenter, quoted their reaction in order to expose the resistance and ignorance of England, “there is no welcome on this shore for the sinful, the idolatrous, and the abominable… by which they meant art”. Watch our emotions, watch our words; they control our actions.
Change changes us
Homes are changing. Our children are different; they are so very unfamiliar to us. Or perhaps they always were, but we never wanted to see the differences; we were ashamed of and even held in contempt of things that were unfamiliar to us. Arundhati Roy, in her book, The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness, pens down the story of how a perspective change happened to Jahanara Begum. She and her husband were expecting their fourth child, and were desiring a boy because all three earlier children were girls. Finally the day came. In the lamp-lit night the midwife announced the good news of the birth of a boy child. That was the happiest night in Jahanara Begum’s life. They even named him as was planned long ago, Aftab. The next morning when the sun was up and the room was warm, she unswaddled little Aftab. She inspected his tiny body starting from the head - eyes, nose, head, neck, and downward. That was when she discovered that underneath his boy-parts, there was also a girl-part. He was a Hijra. Jahanara Begum froze reacting with a surge of reactions. The walls of her world came crumbling down. The idea of what was normal and inclusive in her world took a beating. She now had to reimagine a novel a new normal and was forced to push back the boundaries of inclusivity. She was coming to terms with the fact that not everything is either man or woman.
Perhaps there was a time, when inclusivity was not our concern. We could always look the other way, but now that the unfamiliar is rightfully moving within our houses, we are sinking head-deep into it. And we have no alternative but to a leap in the dark into inclusivity. Just take the leap and swim into inclusivity. The waters are warm and heartening. The D-day of inclusivity will happen to us. We should not wait for that day but make peace with it when it is still far off, or we will be prisoners of our own non-inclusivity.
Perhaps, for most of us, the silent, favoured lot, non-inclusivity appears to be a distant reality. Take a hint from the post-Nazi, post-war confession of Martin Niemöller “First they came for the communists/socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist/socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me; and there was no one left to speak”. We see the impending future; and it is evidently approaching us. Our inclusion or our exclusion tomorrow is a choice we make today. Here is a prophecy, we will be destined to live in the prejudice and intolerance we fabricate, we will be condemned to dance on the stage we construct. We will live to the day we see the world that we fashioned collapsing on us. Yes. Any fool can be a prophet when we live in such well-defined times.
(This article is originally published in Together magazine, October 2020.)
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