Rikhiyasan Rath: Fighting for Emancipation Through Education

Eighteen-year-old Santoli Kumari is the first woman from Makhdumpur in Bihar’s Jehanabad district to top the 12th board examinations. "Besides breaking the bars raised by the society, as women we have to keep proving ourselves to equate to the status of men and why we must not be betrothed at a young age," says Santoli.

Santoli belongs to the Musahar community of Bihar, derided as rat-eaters, a large number of Musahars in Bihar villages see education of their children as the only way out of the everyday oppression they face; however; the going is still tough.

Balmanti Devi and Renu Devi, landless laborers belonging to the Musahar community, living in Hinduni Musahartoli village of Phulwari Sharif administrative block in Patna district, are sending their children to a government school in the hope education will help them escape the oppression their parents have faced all their lives.

But Somaru Manjhi, a resident of Kurkuri Musahartoli, said none of his five children went to school. “Even today, a majority of Musahars are like me, whose children are still not going to school. This is a big hurdle for us,” said Somaru, who rears pigs.

Asharfi Sada, state president of Mushar Vikas Manch, said high illiteracy among Musahars is due to the fact that they have been always kept away from mainstream society. “Musahars were not only treated untouchables but were allowed to only settle outside a village and away from the main population for ages. Even today, Musahars are outcasts of society,” said Asharfi, one of the first few Musahar to earn a postgraduate degree in 1991.

Bihar has nearly 2.2 million Musahars, according to the state Mahadalit Commission’s interim report. Community activists however claim the population of Musahars is not less than 3 million in the state. About 96.3 percent of them are landless and 92.5 percent work as farm labour. Literacy rates among this community, which the upper caste Hindus still consider untouchable, is only 9.8 percent — the lowest among dalits in the country.

They are in the vanguard of a slow change taking place in the hundreds of Musahartoli or Musaharis, as the villages of Musahars are known. At a time when India is making rapid social and economic progress, Musahars are still not allowed to live anywhere in Bihar except in hamlets earmarked exclusively for them. Living in unhygienic conditions with very little benefits from the government, this impoverished and oppressed scheduled caste is overwhelmingly landless, eking out a miserable living by working as unskilled or farm labour.

Most Musahar children did not get an opportunity to join schools and the few who went quickly discontinued because of the discrimination they faced. They also lack the environment for education in their mud huts. 

Ghalib Khan, deputy director of mass education department of the state government, said experts have observed that discrimination on caste lines and a strong reservation for their unhygienic lifestyle results to discouraging Musahar children to join school.

Sudha Varghese, a Padma Shri Awardee dedicated her life in the service of the Musahar community,  a community which is at the bottom of India’s hundreds of dalit sub-castes, who are still treated as untouchables.

To help the community rise from this oppression, Sudha Vaghese launched Nari Gunjan, a non-profit organisation to help Dalit women become aware of and access their rights. In 2005 she established a residential school named Prerna on the outskirts of Danapur, Patna.

She named a special residential school “Prerna”- which means Inspiration in Hindi -  for Musahar girls, to make sure they are removed from the farm labour and escape the evil of child marriage. The girls are taught the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution, special classes on arts and dance and Karate class as Sudha felt that self- defence training would give them “more self-confidence, and self-protection”.

Since birth, a feeling of worthlessness is inculcated in Musahar girls, and Sister Sudha’s fundamental goal is to replace that feeling with dignity. In an interview to The Globe and Mail, she said, "All their lives, they are told, 'You are the last. You are the least. You do not deserve to have.’ They learn very fast to keep quiet, don't expect changes and don't ask for more." 

The girls of Prerna hostel became so proficient that they won five golds, five silvers and 14 bronze medals at a competition in Gujarat in 2011 and it earned them an international trip to the Asian Karate Championship in Japan where they won seven trophies. The Prerna residential school currently accommodates 150 girls. The success of Prerna school was such that in 2012, the government of Bihar asked Sudha to replicate the model at Bodhgaya which has the residential capacity of 100 girls.

As a part of this initiative, she launched the Rikhiyasan Rath, a mobile vehicle which acts as a school, a library, a resource centre and an awareness drive about the community and its past. Musahar community was originally known as Rikhiyasan, and the history of this community tells us of a rich background with tribal origins. 

Sudha says, “They too deserve dignity. I decided to do something for them and opted to stay in a mud hut within the Musahar settlement and fight for their rights and work for their betterment.”

- Smriti Choudhary