The beautiful Kishtwar is bounded by hills and valleys (Pic courtesy: http://www.kishtwar.com)[/caption]
I did a fair amount of writing for various newspapers based on my field observations in the then Doda district. I wanted, in particular, to highlight instances of inter-community solidarity that I observed which withstood the forces of Hindu and Muslim exclusivity, killings by militants and the armed forces and spells of communal violence that had wracked the region in the last few decades. I didn’t turn a blind eye to the reality of deep-rooted and fairly widely-shared negative perceptions that many local Muslims and Hindus had of each other. But, I felt that rather than denouncing them, I’d serve a better purpose by highlighting instances of Hindu-Muslim sharing. In that way, I hoped, I might help, albeit in a modest way, to inspire people to appreciate alternate ways of dealing with religious differences.
Kishtwar provided me many touching examples of inter-community harmony, even as the town didn’t remain unaffected by violence and communal polarization. Unlike in many other parts of India, where Hindus and Muslims often live in separate localities, in Muslim-majority Kishtwar there was no such segregation. Every evening, vast crowds - Hindus and Muslims - would spill out onto the sprawling Chaugan, an enormous field on the border of the town, to stroll around, play cricket, and generally have fun. Of how many other Indian towns could the same be said?
Kishtwar, elderly residents made it a point to stress, had been spared the horrors of the Partition violence in 1947, in which tens of thousands of people had been massacred elsewhere in the Jammu province. The town’s inhabitants formed joint Hindu-Muslim patrolling teams to prevent rioters from entering.Bits of that tradition of camaraderie still survived. Many Hindus continued to visit the Astan-e Bala, the graceful shrine of the seventeenth century Sufi, Shah Fariduddin Baghdadi, in the heart of town. The saint is credited with having spread Islam in the region. The then ruler of Kishtwar, Raja Kirat Singh, is said to have accepted Islam at his hands and to have taken on the unique name of ‘Tegh Muhammad Singh’. Shah Fariduddin married a local Hindu Rajput woman, and the descendants of her natal family, who are still Hindus, continue to have a special role in some rituals associated with the shrine. [caption id="attachment_7789" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
The picturesque town of Kishtwar(Pic courtesy: http://www.kishtwar.com)[/caption] Kishtwar’s Hindus and Muslims alike also flocked to the Darbar-e Asraria, the shrine of Shah Fariduddin's son, Shah Asraruddin. Legend has it that Shah Asraruddin miraculously brought back to life a Hindu friend of his so that they could finish a game of polo that they were playing when he had suddenly died! As I type these lines, I think of the amiable Riaz Ahmad, custodian of Shah Asraruddin’s shrine. He was bitterly critical of religious exclusivists on both sides. ‘God is the Cherisher of all the worlds, and not just of Muslims alone', he explained, lamenting the excesses of radical Islamists and Hindu chauvinists alike. Besides local people, even army personnel, Riaz Ahmad said, visited the shrine that he looked after, for, as he put it, ‘The doors of the shrines of the Sufis are open to everyone.’ Many Hindu farmers around Kishtwar, he said, unfailingly left a part of their first harvest every year at the door-steps of the shrine as an offering, and some of them came to him for settling their disputes. There were other people I met in Kishtwar on my several trips who, in different ways, worked to promote communal harmony. I wonder where Imran is now, and what he must be doing as his town is up in flames. He was, when I met him, a handsome schoolboy - he must be a grown-up man now. With great enthusiasm for making his town a better place, he, along with some of his friends, formed a group christened 'Message for Peace', through which they got school students together to discuss burning social issues, including, and especially, communalism and communal conflict. They even brought out a ‘magazine’— photocopied sheets of paper stapled together - almost every issue of which had something or the other to say about communal amity.
Then, there was a bunch of friends - Hindus and Muslims - who got together to form the Faridia Charitable Trust, named after the Sufi Shah Fariduddin. They raised resources to help poor patients at the local government hospital. Hindus and Muslims numbered roughly the same among the four hundred-odd members of the Trust. I don’t know of any other trust in India with a similar sort of Hindu-Muslim composition.I distinctly remember, as if it had happened just the other day, that dark, wintry evening when I had accompanied Abdur Rahman, one of the founder-members of the Trust, to the depressing, dimly-lit wards of the hospital, where he sat with patients, Hindus and Muslims, on their beds, placing his arms around them and whispering words of comfort. Thereafter, we met up with the rest of the core-members of the Trust at a roadside dhaba, discussing religion and politics over steaming rajma-chawal. The suave Ghulam Rasul, Chairman of the Trust, had the last word on the subject. 'Religion should inspire believers to recognise the common humanness of everyone, irrespective of community, and to work for the benefit of all' he said, as the dhaba-wala began pulling down his shutters minutes before the night curfew was to start. [caption id="attachment_7788" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
The Astan-e Bala shrine in Kishtwar(Pic courtesy: http://www.kishtwar.com)[/caption] Where, now, I wonder, is the exceedingly charismatic Asghar Ali? When I met him, he had just returned from an accident site up in the treacherous mountains of Padder. The victims were all Hindus, and he had made arrangements for medical supplies for the injured and for the bodies of the deceased to be sent back to their homes. This work, of helping accident victims, was his life's mission. He had started it after his own sister and brother were killed in a road accident. And where, in the midst of all the turmoil and frenzy that the newspapers are reporting, is the blind Ramanandi sadhu who claimed to be more than a century old? He was in charge of an ancient Shiva temple located in an entirely Muslim locality on the slope above Kishtwar's bus stand. He was from eastern Uttar Pradesh and had settled in Kishtwar in 1961, never going back after that. We chatted about many things, but mostly about Hindu-Muslim relations and what he felt were the changes that these had undergone over the decades.
'When I came here', he said, 'I was taken aback by the very close relations between Hindus and Muslims. But now', he grimaced, 'things have changed.' Yet, he went on, on the rare occasions that he stepped outside the temple, his Muslim neighbours greeted him politely. 'They treat me very kindly', he said. 'God is One, and his light resides in every heart', he quoted Kabir.There were many other such inspiring people others I met on my various trips to Kishtwar and around. I made copious notes about them - and also about people I encountered who didn’t think Hindu-Muslim bonhomie was possible or even desirable - hoping to write about them all some day. Perhaps there is a reason why I'm writing this down today.
Yoginder Sikand is a Bangalore-based freelance writer.
Women in certain remote parts of rural Kashmir have to walk for miles before they can reach a safe drinking water source.[/caption]
Carrying heavy loads of water on treacherous mountain paths is dangerous for women.[/caption]
Amidst poverty, many parents are forced to take their children away from school. Many children are found to be working as child labour to aid their family's income[/caption]
Similarly, 14-year-old Showkat Ahmed from Sikloo-Khaigam loved studying and going to school with his friends. The son of a hair cutter, he dropped out of school after his father’s death. With a mother and an unwell elder brother to take care of, Showkat was forced to work as a domestic help to support his family. However, within a few months of working, Showkat was back in school after securing admission in Class 7 in Government High School, Waisarmarg.
For both Nadia and Showkat , the Children Activity Centres (CACs) in their areas helped them escape child labour and continue with their education. These Centres were introduced in 2010 by child rights organization CRY to help the huge number of out-ofschool children continue with their education and transition back to school. The intention was to create a community based facility for children to impart age specific education and subsequent integration into mainstream schools. Once identified, the children are assessed and referred to levels 1-6, as prescribed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, and trained accordingly. They also have to clear six internal exams and the final NRBC exam conducted by the education department for integration into formal school
The rampant problem of children dropping out of schools midway was identified by Jammu and Kashmir association of Social Workers (JKASW), CRY’s partner in the region, which runs these centres, during their child focused interventions in different communities.
Jammu and Kashmir Association of Social Workers started running 3 CACs a few years ago; the number has now grown to 23, touching the lives of 3500 children till date.[/caption]
They also came across a huge percentage of first generation school goers - children who would be the first ones in their entire family to receive a formal education and hence in need of help and support. Both the issues called for some level of intervention thus giving way to CACs.
The most challenging part however was to convince parents to let their children go back to school. Interaction with and counselling of parents and community members was done on a regular basis. Over time, having understood the importance of education, their reluctance slowly turned to consent. The next step was mapping and identifying out-of-school children and finding qualified teachers at the community level. While it was very difficult to find teachers in all the areas, in most places the community members themselves nominated a few teachers who were then selected after an assessment, and subsequently trained to teach children.
The activity centres are designed to aid the learning process by adopting different mediums of intervention like Bridge Course for drop-outs, basic literacy courses for first generation and new learners, and remedial classes for mainstreamed children. Besides being a platform for education, they also provide a multifaceted and multicultural space for children to interact, share and learn together through their many children's groups.
A space for children to interact, learn and grow[/caption]
These Centres have now become a model for Non-Residential Bridge Course (NRBC)[/caption]
A soldier stands guard in a deserted market in Srinagar.[/caption]
There are no roads, no electricity and no fixed addresses on this journey that takes them across high plains, treacherous passes and picturesque Himalayan valleys. Like for their ancestors before them, life for the nomadic tribe of Van Gujjars, is all about survival and perpetual movement. Originally from Jammu and Kashmir, the tribe has over time spread out across the ranges of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in search of rich forests and meadows for their cattle.
The lives of the Van Gujjars are centred around caring for and finding food for their animals. Winters are spent in the wilderness of the Himalayan lowlands, the Shivalik range, where the lush foliage provides plenty of fodder for the buffaloes. Aware that the amount of milk produced by the buffaloes, along with its flavor, is determined by what they eat, the herders themselves climb up trees to chop off the best varieties of leaf-laden branches for their buffaloes.
The annual spring migration, called transhumance, starts when summer hits the northern hemisphere in the months of April and May. With the temperatures soaring above 45 degrees Celsius, leaves wither and creeks run dry in the heat. With nothing left for their buffaloes to eat or drink, the Van Gujjars load up all they own and start the long trek with their herds up into the cool mountains.
Each family gets a permit from the forest authorities to live in a particular forest for six months. From children to the elderly, entire families trek with their herds up into the Himalayas. While on the trek, camps are set up within striking distance of water sources.
There are two things that the Van Gujjars have to reckon with to optimize the timing of their ascent. If they reach alpine grasslands too early, the meadows will still be covered with snow. But if they linger too long en route, they will waste money (earned by selling milk on the way) to buy fodder and food they don’t actually need. So they move strategically, analysing the ground conditions, aiming to reach the meadows as soon as the grass comes up.
Each member in a Van Gujjar family has a well-defined role (based on age) with the animals: the adults walk with big buffaloes and horses while the children follow at a slower pace with the calves.
A Muslim community, Van Gujjars have their own dialect called Gujjari, which is a linguistic fusion of Dogri (a Kashmiri tongue) and Punjabi. For most of their history, the nomads were known as Gujjars. They only added the word Van (forest) to their tribal name in the late 1980s. This was to distinguish themselves from the other Gujjars in India, a very different community with whom they may or may not share distant ancestral roots.
Buffalo milk is the main (and often only) source of income and the staple food for the Van Gujjars. With the well-being of every Van Gujjar family being completely dependent on the well-being of its herd, it's no wonder that caring for the water buffaloes is the axis around which the tribe’s world revolves. The tribe's water buffaloes are different from those normally kept by farmers and dairymen in India.
Aside from thriving on all sorts of foliage, these animals also know how to fight with predators and work together to protect their calves from attack.
If a buffalo becomes ill or injured, its owners fret with concern till the animal gets better and when a buffalo dies (a loss more personal than financial for Van Gujjars), the animal is mourned almost like one would mourn a family member.
The Van Gujjars spend their summers in the Himalayan meadows practising seasonal and rotational grazing, which is generally regarded to be environmentally responsible. Since they only spend part of the year there, the land regenerates when they’re gone, helped by the animal dung left behind that acts as a fertilizer for the meadow ecosystem.
When the cold sets in at the end of September, the Van Gujjars head back down to the Shivaliks, where the forests have sprung back to life following the monsoon rains.
But things are changing now with the Van Gujjars facing serious challenges to their livelihoods, most of them stemming from a lack of forest rights, unrecognised domicile rights, illiteracy, and poverty. In recent years, many high altitude forest passes have become paved roads with heavy traffic, making walking with buffaloes hazardous. This has forced the nomads to cover certain stretches at night to avoid accidents. Climate change and indiscriminate deforestation has also led to less foliage and water in the forests.
Under the aegis of the National Literacy Mission, Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) identified the lack of literacy among the Van Gujjars to be the root cause of their exploitation. To remedy the situation, it started a unique and innovative adult literacy programme - Teaching the Nomads in the Wild. To support this ambitious and innovative adult education programme, a forest academy of sorts was put in place with 350 highly motivated volunteer teachers. These teachers were trained and deployed in the Van Gujjar settlements to teach the tribals at their doorsteps.
The teachers trekked up and down with the community and their buffalo herds during their transhumance and also stayed with them in the highland pastures during the summer months. They would move back to the forests of Shivaliks for the winter along with the community. This ensured that there was continuity in the adult literacy programme, which laid stress on functional aspects of literacy, making the community reliant in keeping its accounts, lodging police complaints, petitioning the authorities for the redressal of grievances, and fighting for their rights. The community was also taught how to read and write Hindi besides being taught simple arithmetic.
American author and freelance photographer Michael Benanav is known for immersing himself in foreign cultures and bringing compelling images and stories back from distant places. He followed one family of the Van Gujjars on their annual spring migration into the Himalayas. Documented in his recently book, 
Their initiative – Project Taleem – is a school development programme that supports and collaborates with the Directorate of School Education of Kashmir in Srinagar and Bandipore. It’s one of the few nonprofits to have made inroads there. SEF began as a school transformation project working closely with teachers and headmasters in 10 schools, but after curfew was imposed, it pulled its team out of the region. However, they remained committed to the region, and coordinated with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan program to revolutionize their teacher workshops. Their redesigned teacher training modules and remote efforts now impact more than 80,000 teachers in the state. But each minute of instructional time lost is tragic for a community that’s so committed to learning. The children are constantly calling the team to ask them when they’ll be back.
Teaching in Sangam Vihar in Delhi – one of the largest slums in the country – for two years transformed Roy. It gave him an inside look at an education system riddled with problems, but more importantly, fundamentally shifted his approach to leadership. “In college, I always took the initiative to start clubs and organizations, but my managing style was top-down and corporate. I had no empathy—I didn’t even know what it was. I was angry and short-tempered, with a strong opinion on every question. When I started working with parents and students (in the Fellowship), I realized that wouldn’t work. Now I never take a decision without at least listening to others,” says Roy.
Post the Fellowship, he co-founded SEF with a 2012 Teach For India Alumnus, Rahul Bhanot, and undertook a small independent education project in Delhi. During the summer of 2015, many Teach For India Fellows volunteered in Kashmir, and after the government saw the value they added, it was receptive to SEF’s Taleem project. SEF can now count on space, resources, and buy-in from the local government. “We focused on building relationships, really rooting them to the main cause: Why are we really teaching? How can we keep the child at the centre of what we do?” he reflects.
Working in tenuous, conflict-ridden Kashmir might sound like a risk with few rewards, but Roy maintains that everyone in the region is remarkably open and eager to transform it. He adds that people are quick to accept and implement feedback; he’s seen them change teaching methodology within a matter of days. SEF often gets requests from people who want to get into education, to which Roy responds by, “redirecting them to Teach For India. We ask them to work with us after that. There’s no better experience.”
Taleem brought teachers together every 3-4 weeks to equip them with a set of skills that enhances learning outcomes for children through their Instructional Leadership Curriculum. Each teacher is also assigned a coach who observes them weekly. Post the observation, they debrief and share observations about the classroom to find the positives and areas of development. The coach might also teach a skill to address a certain area of development. The Headmasters go through a Leadership Development Module (adapted from Creatnet Education’s programs), where they explore their own leadership styles through reflective questions that help them understand different facets of leadership.
“We’re designing curriculum, consolidating a lot of the work we do now, and exploring other opportunities,” says Roy, “My team is extremely committed to our mission.” SEF’s team consists of 10 people, three of whom are working with Taleem, including Anushka Ghosh and Samantha D’Cunha.
A few weeks after inducting teachers into the programme and exposing them to the concept of Guided Practice – a major challenge in most schools – Samantha observed Humaira Ma’am’s class. During the debrief, Humaira Ma’am spoke tearfully about a transformation: “I’ve been teaching in this school for years. My students and I share a cordial relationship. Despite this, I had been struggling to bridge the Sunni-Shia divide in class. Ever since we started working and studying in groups, I have seen my girls get along so well. They even share their food, a spectacle I thought I’d never witness. The solution was so simple, and yet I struggled for years. Today is a very proud and emotional moment in my life.”
“As an organization, we’ve been advocating for Kashmir whenever we go back, and we can paint a really good picture of it,” Roy says. With a resolution in Kashmir unlikely, we can thank organizations like SEF working for the youth caught in the middle. It’s efforts like Taleem that help humanize such conflicts and give us hope for a brighter future in the region!
(Written by Sneha Kalaivanan, Associate, Communications at Teach For India)
Applications for the 2017-19 Fellowship programme are now open.