A fortnight ago, the Sunday Observer, initiated this column aimed at resurrecting our indigenous knowledge in spheres such as education, farming, medicine and irrigation; all of which constitute a rich philosophy of ‘being’ through a deep and non violent connection with mother-earth. This philosophy which governed us for thousands of years was integrated with spiritual alignment, self-reliance, duty to country, happiness and purpose.
In the past two weeks we pointed out that the Covid-19 virus has induced all nations to examine their levels of self-sufficiency; mainly in agriculture and medical science. We highlighted that these two entities go hand in hand with our ancient heritage where our Hela Govithena and Hela Wedakama were inter-nurtured.
The aim of this column is to remind ourselves that we had a heritage where we were a robust, healthy country, producing our medicine and food, with a rich pre-colonial education system that produced empathetic human beings, not robots in human skin running helter skelter chasing an elusive ‘development.’
Last week we took a glimpse at biodiversity centred agriculture we had expertise in as a nation and which few patriotic Sri Lankans resurrected in the 1980s after realizing the long walk to sickness initiated by chemical agriculture introduced by the Green Revolution in the 1960s.
We mentioned the facts about the metamorphosis of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations which had somersaulted from the ardent green revolution promoter, to finally issuing a warning against it, five years ago and pointing out that developing countries (yes that’s us) are most at risk. See last week’s column here.
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2020/05/03/news-features/covid-19-and-oppor...
This week we focus on the following inter-related themes; education as per our now almost lost lifestyle heritage, genuine sustainability based on our indigenous knowledge, true development and wellbeing.
In February this year, attending the Tamil Literary conference focused on the Tamil classic the Tirukkural at the Jaffna University patronized by Lankan and Indian scholars of disciplines such as literature, geography and history, this writer got into conversation with an 86 year old professor of English from India on the topic of education.
Given that this professor was trained when India had strong colonial influence, his knowledge of literature was confined to only western writers such as Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, etc., He had not read the works of the great South Asian giants of literature such as Saadat Hassan Manto, O.V. Vijayan, etc., and thereby was not aware of what they documented in terms of their times pertaining to Indian post-colonial history. However, highly respected as an academic and of humble deportment, he admitted that of his own volition he had ‘learnt and taught’ all his life like a ‘foreigner.’
In his general life however he was living fully his indigenous endowment; at 86 years he had astonishing youthfulness, the result of the strict use of only Indian heritage foods, use of ancient methods for health such as Pranayama, meditation, oil pulling, basic knowledge of Siddha medicine practices and farming his own food in a small land using biodiversity methods of cultivation. Asked what he thought of the ancient Gurukula system common to India and Sri Lanka, his instant response was that it was the only system that merits the word ‘education.’
This, from a professor who had reached his highest level as an academic in Indian and international universities who finally at the end of it all could only admit that all he had achieved was to learn and teach on how to be a ‘foreigner.’
As the products of an education system introduced to us through colonization, we have effectively learnt to be ‘foreigners,’ in our own land, viewing our local skills and ancient knowledge with the squint eye of ridicule in the same way the colonisers had taught us to.
It is this squint eyed education that had propagated this strange brand of ‘development’ that we have today. This ‘developed’ and ‘modern’ education that makes students memorize irrelevant jargon they are emotionally divorced from has put them under enormous trauma, sometimes to the point of suicide.
Within this imperialist introduced education structure we do not learn how to keep our minds free of envy, anger, jealousy. We are not exposed at school level to the great art and science of using the knowledge we acquire creatively and selflessly, to make this world a better place.
Now think about this. What if we compulsorily taught every child in school, from age four or so onwards skills of our indigenous knowledge; such as self-defence based on ethics, growing their own food that they will cook in school for consumption, using native preparations ; they can easily grow some onions, spinach, karapincha, garlic, ginger, pumpkin, karawila (this is just a random example) and learn about our heritage foods as part of mainstream subjects such as, history or social studies.
We could then reduce children being addicted to foreign fast food chains that have perfected the art of making people spend on impairing their immunity.
What if there was a special subject to learn about the ancient methods of paying homage to the earth as part of the cultivation process? What if there was focus on learning about all the insects, birds, etc., that co-habit this planet and contribute to the eco-system based agriculture of our past, when these creatures were not treated as enemies and killed off with imported poison. What if we make every child of the country a true native farmer and native physician?
What if we make it compulsory for every child above four years to learn about native medicinal plants that surround us and how it was used in ancient time tested medical practices such as Desheeya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama) and Ayurvedha as well as Sidha and Unani? What if we make it compulsory to teach children the hundreds of pressure points (acupressure) in the human body that can instantly relieve minor ailments including stress? What if we encourage children to connect deeply with the cosmos, and to perfect the art of meditation, contemplation and holistic exercises such as Yoga; the great mind-body balancing technique?
Today we have a sick population. Forget Covid-19. We are anyway sick and dying every day (of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and diverse other lifestyle disease). We have been permanently quarantined in claustrophobic offices, in our blind marriage to modernity and poisoned by impurities we allow into our mind and body. What if we taught our children NOT to live like this?
What if we taught our children about how our ancestors conserved and fostered water (there are many methods including cultivating specific plant species to purify and foster water). Water is an academic subject by itself. Although we will all die without water, our children act as if it is a permanent resource, without knowing their responsibility to foster and safeguard it.
If we educate children how to increase ground water using agro forestry related and other ancient methods, we will not need the so called Western water based ‘experts’ to set up base here.
What if we teach children to re-think and question everything taught to them? The ability to think and question is the first casualty of the current rote education system we follow introduced to us to make us cogs in the wheel of western industrialization.
As a result of this ‘education’ we are pursuing a brand of ‘development’ that makes us live in a disjointed way, separated from the soil, spend more than we need, consume substance not fit for humans, and then finally end up sick and depressed, spending what we earned trying to battle life threatening diseases.
But if we changed this, beginning at the initial stage of primary school, wouldn’t our children be encouraged to take diverse forms of innovation and creation as adults based on the heritage knowledge they learnt in school? What this writer has penned here should not be interpreted as doing away totally with technology and science based knowledge.
Instead what is proposed is inculcating in Sri Lankans a thorough foundation of our own vast inheritance of knowledge so that later, as per each child’s talent, innate ability and skill it would trigger them to come up with their own innovations which are not alien to Sri Lanka and will serve humanity. Any psychologist will be able to explain that what we learn as children, make us who we are as adults.
For example the great economist and philosopher, Amaryta Sen, who transformed economics to a ‘human science.’ in one of his memoirs, had narrated how his childhood education at the non-conformist school, Shanthiniketan set up by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, shaped who he became as a thinker. An example he had used is how teachers during his time in Shanthiniketan were suspicious of any student getting full marks, assuming that such marks are gained by becoming a human photocopy machine (memorizing and writing what is in the text as it is).
Sen narrates how he overheard one teacher comment on a child to the effect that ‘so and so has an acute mind although she is a good student and scores high marks’! Sen had then onwards vowed to prove that he too had an acute mind although he scored full marks on almost every subject!!!
If we re-introduce a Gurukula like system to our education structure, we will also prevent nonsense from passing through our university education where Walt Rostow’s failed development theory is still taught and shelves filled with academic thesis which gloriously fulfil the purpose of confusion rather than contribution.
Take for instance a recent presentation of a PhD student on his study on ‘development’ in a rural farming area in Sri Lanka where the research was centered upon. The academic sum up of this ethnographical study after a duration of year observation/association with farming families which a large scale local NGO had begun working with, went something like; ‘The farmers are now very happy after being affiliated by this NGO because their children are being assisted in education and they will not be forced to take up farming.’
For me the most interesting, but not very surprising thing was that not a single senior academic saw anything wrong with this analysis but rather nit picked on diverse aspects connected with methodology. Later I asked the PhD hopeful concerned whether he was ok with an education system that is far removed from farming and promoting the image of farming being the job of the ‘ignorant’ without any other option of employment.
He was not able to give me an answer because he could not really comprehend a world where farming and this so called ‘education’ went hand in hand.
However, let us conclude with something positive. Here I cite the living example from the legacy of the renowned green crusader, Dr. G. Nammalvar, in Tamil Nadu, India who created a truly sustainable model of food and health sovereignty of a nation; by helping humans to connect to the earth and ensuring all villages he worked with were truly ‘developed’ and ‘educated’ where at least one person in the family was comprehensively trained in their ancestral preventive and curative medicinal knowledge such as Siddha and Ayurveda.
“We continue Dr. Nammalvar’s mission through his organization Vanagam (Nammalvar Ecological Foundation),and in this Covid-19 time the village of Karur where we are based is one of the happiest and disease free places in India,” says 39 year old S. Sivagami, who had previously worked for 15 years in the IT industry.
Also qualified as a homeopathic medical practitioner, she has for the past six years functioned as a trainer on nature based living and sustainability. She points out that today she uses her knowledge of IT in diverse ways to spread the knowledge of indigenous sustainable living, embedded in the true traditional philosophy of living as per Indian culture.
“We farm on 50 acres of land, in Karur, in Tamil Nadu. We have an abundance of produce without using chemicals and today when so many town folk are in fear of getting this virus and languishing because of shortage of food, the area of Karur is totally the opposite,” she points out.
“These farming families live as they have always lived; spending time happily with their families, cultivating all the vegetables, fruits, herbs and medicinal plants they need, providing the surplus to nearby villages and being financially secure.
They are confident of their health as well, with each family well versed in preventive and curative medicine as per India’s Ayurvedha/Sidha/acupressure traditions as well as the German originated Homeopathy which boosts the immunity, and is widely used in villages,” explains Sivagami. She points out that after Covid-19 hit India, she and her fellow trainers, took steps to ensure that every family member is proficient in knowing how to keep their immunity at the highest level.
With a host of herbs being cultivated in each home, and where eating habits are unlike the unhealthy town diet replete with chemical induced food, Karur would be ideal for an academic study on how this pandemic was handled using indigenous medical, dietary and immunity boosting knowledge.
Sri Lanka has been a self-sufficient nation with its Desheeya Chikitsa (Hela Wedama) pre dating Ayurvedha and where we still have many Weda Mahattayas around the country who do not get the respect they deserve at national level.
Keeping in mind that every calamity can be overcome and transformed to be one of opportunity, we could, if we use acuity and rationality, make this crisis a watershed in Sri Lankan history where it could one day be said that the Covid-19 pandemic was a time of indigenous knowledge resurgence in Sri Lanka. It is the time to make every child and adult a non-chemical farmer and a native physician.
Just as we are today reaping the poisonous results of chemical farming and paying the penalty for neglecting and rubbishing our traditional medicine, if we turn around our mistake, we could reap a totally new result in the months, years and decades to come.
About the author:
Frances Bulathsinghala cultivates trees in the Central Province using only indigenous methods and promotes indigenous knowledge in schools. She is currently working on an academic paper on Indigenous Knowledge and Mass Media as well as a book on the link between Hela Wedakam and Agro Forestry. In 2018 and 2019 she introduced the concept of Edu Tourism linking it to indigenous knowledge and the Gurukula system, published as abstracts in the conference proceeding publication of the International Tourism Research Conference held in Colombo. She has opened her collection of books, totalling over 15,000 as a library in Kandy. She is a curricula writer and visiting academic at a National University in Sri Lanka. As a curricula writer she is currently attempting to introduce a new subject on Indigenous Knowledge and Mass Communication. She is affiliated with several South Asian publications.