Category Archives: Ekalavya (Eklavya, Eklabya), EMR & Factory schools

1. Ekalavya (Eklavya, Eklabya): the name of a legendary archer prodigy “who, being a Nishada [Sanskrit Niṣāda, “tribal, hunter, mountaineer, degraded person, outcast”], had to give his thumb as a fee to the brahmin guru thus terminating his skill as an archer.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University) in “The epic of the Bharatas” (India Seminar 2010)
http://www.india-seminar.com/2010/608/608_romila_thapar.htm
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=26432
2. “Ekalavya Residential School Scheme”: a network of boarding schools where tribal children are to be educated in accordance with rules and syllabi provided by the government; such schools are being designated as “Eklavya Model Residential School (EMR)” with the objective of empowering students “to be change agent, beginning in their school, in their homes, in their village and finally in a large context.”
https://tribal.gov.in/DivisionsFiles/sg/EMRSguidlines.pdf
3. In some regions there are similar “Residential Schools” and “Ashram Schools” for tribal children, as in Tripura where they are managed by a society called “Tripura Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TTWREIS)”
https://twd.tripura.gov.in/tripura-tribal-welfare-residential-educational-institutions-society
4. Factory schools “exist to turn tribal and indigenous children – who have their own language and culture – into compliant workers-of-the-future. The world’s largest Factory School stated that it turns ‘Tax consumers into tax payers, liabilities into assets’.” – Survival International
https://survivalinternational.org/factoryschools
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=34514

“EMRSs [Eklavya Model Residential Schools] are a flagship intervention of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to provide quality education to tribal students in remote tribal areas. The programme being implemented since 1998 have created a niche in the tribal education landscape of the country. […] Currently there are 588 schools sanctioned across the country in 28 States/UT with around 73391 students enrolled in the Schools.” – Ministry of Tribal Affairs (PIB Delhi) in “MoU signed with 21 States/UTs for better functioning of Eklavya Model Residential Schools”, 01 February 2021
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1694272
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=34514

“Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS) for tribal children is another ambitious programme under which 740 EMRS will be established in tribal dominated areas in the next three years.” – “Education & Tribal Affairs ministries launch school innovation” (Times of India, 16 July 2021)
https://m.timesofindia.com/home/education/news/education-tribal-affairs-ministries-launch-school-innovation-programme/articleshow/84474106.cms
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=29790

“Their parents sent these children, belonging to the most marginalised segment of Indian society, to these schools in the hope that education would liberate them from poverty and want. […] There are no easy answers to how and how fast tribal communities join the mainstream. Taking their brightest children out of their homes and away from their culture, only to maim or kill them, is certainly not one of them.” – The Economic Times (Commentary, 19 April 2016)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/et-commentary/schools-for-tribal-kids-or-for-horror/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=29790

“A 1941 lecture by Thakkar in Pune highlighted negative stereotypes about tribal ‘laziness’, ‘promiscuity’, ‘illiteracy’, and ‘addiction to shifting cultivation’. The cultural racism in such stereotypes forms the backdrop to the continuing discrimination and humiliation of Adivasis.” – Felix Padel & Malvika Gupta in “Are mega residential schools wiping out India’s Adivasi culture?” (The Hindu, 13 February 2021)
https://www.thehindu.com/society/children-from-tribal-communities-are-being-corralled-into-mass-schools-that-are-wiping-out-cultures/article33818793.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=21733

“The parallels abound: as with the ‘Indian boarding schools’ of North America, privately owned institutions are now reeducating Adivasi children; in consonance with settler-colonial practice, the material basis of Adivasi life is being steadily undermined by restricting access to traditional foraging grounds and the banning of certain kinds of hunting and gathering.” – Amitav Ghosh in The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (book excerpt in The Print, 14 October 2021)
https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/congress-left-bjp-india-striving-to-remake-itself-as-settler-colonialist-amitav-ghosh/750429/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=44650

“If Adivasis were to start writing their own Discovery Of India, it would be something like this: [T]hey could not destroy us. They knew us as Nishada and Naga; they called us Rakshasa, they burned the forests to destroy us and free the land to fashion their agrarian society stamped with the hierarchy of caste. They were the ones who remembered us as their enemies. Ekalavya was one of our great archers, so skillful that the hero of the Aryans, Arjun, could not stand before him. But they assaulted him, cutting his thumb, destroying his ability to fight – and then fashioned a story in which he accepted Drona as his Guru and agreed to surrender his thumb!” – Gail Omvedt in “Call us adivasis, please” (ADIVASI Special issue, The Hindu, 16 July 2000)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=26645