"I want to kill the enemy!"

Every morning, all the students assemble on the dusty school ground to say the morning prayer, sing songs, hear the Thought of the Day and announcements from the principal and to utter the pledge and sing the national anthem. The pledge goes as following (I know it by heart by now, having heard it around a hundred times I suppose):
“India is my country; all Indians are my brothers and sisters.
I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage.
I shall always strive to be worthy of my Motherland.
To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion.
In their well-being and prosperity alone lies my happiness“
Add these words with the complete uncritical and unlimited admiration of the Indian military and armed forces and the result is this: A student in my fourth class, Divyraj, who also lives in the children’s hostel, is a sweet and smiling boy with what I what call a very friendly nature. He loves listening to me telling ghosts stories or fairytales about dragons and brave princes and he is a very smart boy; he scored the highest marks in his class in the English exam. He smiles and laughs a lot and I really like him. But to my great regret he is one of the many boys who are completely fascinated with the thought of being an army man and killing the enemy, Pakistan that is. I recently made a worksheet for the fourth class and one of the questions asked them to write a short story about flying in a helicopter. This is his answer (I have copied it exactly as he wrote it, including the few mistakes): “One day when I would become a army man. One day I am flying in a helicoptor the pilot was a pakastani milatery so he take me to pakastan they beat me one hunter. I got angry. I kill everyone and I went to my home and I told everyone this accident with me.” Imagine if I Danish child had been writing something similar about killing all the Swedes or Norwegians… I know you cannot compare the countries, but it is just to illustrate the completely different mindsets. It is the same thing with a boy in my sixth class also from the hostel; Virendra is his name. He is so full of life and good ideas, is great in creative writing and I always enjoy talking to him and he is definitely one of my favourite students in class sixth. But unfortunately, he is just as brainwashed as Divyraj. I have had discussions with both of them in the hostel about the army, and Virendra is completely convinced that if the Indian army does not fight against Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir (the northern state of India, which Pakistan and India has been fighting about for ages. It is currently deserted because of the wars and there is still no official solution), then Pakistan will attack and conquer the whole of India. “I want to fight the enemy!” he proclaims with loud voice and adds without a flinch that he wants to kill all the Pakistanis. All my attempts to tell them that they are also people, that war is wrong and that it is just a piece of worthless land and that Pakistan would never want to take the whole of India peels off like water on goose feathers. In my last discussion with both Virendra and Divyraj I told them about Jahnvi and Jehangir both my 2nd years at Red Cross Nordic. Jahnvi is from India and Jehangir is Pakistani and they were best friends in the college and I believe, still are. Virendra reacted to this piece of information with denial. “No, it is impossible, it cannot be,” he simply repeated and my confirmation that it was true did not penetrate at all. I always get very frustrated when I have these talks with the boys, because there is nothing I can do to make them change their view. I am up against a whole mentally of morning pledges, national anthem and massive military propaganda. There are military school were primary school boys are trained to fit the army from a very early stage on. Currently, the Indian army counts 10 million soldiers and the government uses 14% of all expenses on the army.
The principal-madam’s husband is a captain in the army, and a few weeks back he visited the school, because he wanted to have a little presentation about ‘the opportunities available in the military’ for interested boys and girls from class sixth to tenth. Driven by my expectation to be provoked, I attended the presentation. It consisted of the man telling the students that the army was the best carrier option AT ALL in India. “It is a very good life”, he said. He was emphasising these facilities: Free accommodation (the colourless barracks), free food (we used to compare the food of RCN with military food when it was at its worse), free clothing (the uniforms and probably not the most comfy material) and free transport service (the two times a year they get a chance to go home) and medical help (after being injured because you are wasting your life running around in a constant mock war). Additionally, one would have the honourable job to serve one’s country and if one died, the family could be very proud of the sacrifice. I couldn’t restrain myself, so I asked a couple of questions which had a hidden hint of criticism in them, but I doubt anyone noticed it. I asked the captain if he really thought there was a risk that Pakistan would attack India within the next few years and he replied yes, you never know, they might. When I asked him to elaborate on the reason behind such an attack, he ‘explained’ to me that the Pakistani president could easily throw a war against India, if he himself was becoming unpopular in his own country so to lead the attention towards the war and away from his own descending power. If this explanation is all it takes to convince people that a war is likely, then I understand the vast support for the military protection of the country.
I asked the five big boys in the hostel from ninth and tenth class the same evening, if they considered joining and it turned out almost all of them had thought about it as a good option and they certainly all supported it. One of them even told me that yes, it is better to spend these massive amounts of money on providing weapons for the army than on the many poor people in India and that it would only be an honour to die for your country. This lie has killed so many people throughout history and yet the false tunes are exactly the same. And don’t think that this view is only held by the boys. I had a talk with one of the sweetest girls in my sixth class, Isha, who wants to become an airforce pilot. To my horror, she told me that she thought it was the right thing to kill Pakistanis even though she recognized that they were also just people like you and me. She is not only a girl, but furthermore a Muslim, but yet she seemed to have the same disturbed image of Pakistanis being the root to all the evil in India. I am sure you can find exactly the same view of Indians on the other side of the border.
This whole military business makes me very frustrated, because I am so utterly and totally against wars and militaries and all the propaganda crap about honour and ‘the enemy’. No one seems to see the wrong thing in having a job, which’s only function is to train you to destroy other people’s lives, not only the ones you kill, but whole families and homes. It makes me very sad that these otherwise wonderful children have these depressing and distorted views. The only person who has expressed the same feelings in this matter as I hold, is our loved friend and neighbour, the 82 year old man, Mister Mohan. He follows a spiritual movement and believes that we are all brothers and sisters no matter skin colour, race, religion or any other reason to have a ‘us’ and ‘them’. But he is the exception and I can do nothing but sit back and wonder why human beings never learn from the mistakes of the past.

Christmas in India...

Airiin comes back after having been gone for 45 minutes. “It didn’t work again,” she says with a tired voice and throws her small bag on her bed, which is right next to mine. I express my sympathy, because I know how annoying it is to go in vain to the internet place, as we call the only place that has one computer with internet connection in the whole of Bali. Of course the system is dial-up and it only works half the time. If we are lucky and get connected, it takes a good portion of patience from our side to wait for the mail inbox to be opened. Yes, that is one of the reasons why I have not been able to update my blog frequently, but now I trying to make it up! (I just hope the connection will work when I paste it. Obviously, it did eventually since you are now reading it on the net, hehe).
The past month has focused mainly on schoolwork. No exiting camel safaris in this month, but that’s alright, after all teaching is why we are here. All the classes had half-yearly exams in the middle of November. ALL classes from nursery class, where the students are three years old and barely able to speak hindi, till class ten have exams twice a year in all their subjects. These exams are not just easy check-up tests, but real exams and if a student fail a certain percentage, it is right back to the same class next year, no elevation to the next class. It gave me, Sanna and Airiin the chance to understand how bored the IB teachers must have been during our exams in May while observing us writing exams. We only had to give the teachers 15 mins leave twice a day during the exams, but that was enough. Most of the time I tried preventing the students from cheating, which they did at any given opportunity. Handsigns, winks, and even speech was used when they tried to communicate with each other in the class rooms. I was shocked to see how much they cheated, or tried to, but in a way it was maybe understandable, because many of the exams were way too difficult in my opinion.
During the exam time, we were faced with another problem: The man, who hosts the children at the hostel we visit every evening, that is the man who owns the house they live in, had called the principal-ma’am (that is what we all address the female principal as) and told her that we were banned during the exams. In his opinion we did not study probably with the children, while being in the hostel, because the children we all “shouting and running around.” To say that we don’t study with them is really not according to the truth, but it is true that they become excited by our presence, laugh and raise their voices more than usually. It is just an example of the complete difference in the perception of what is good for the children. We think that a combination of fun, laughter and studies is the best, but this man clearly has an imagine of effective studying being absolute focus on the books in complete silence. It would have been futile to try and discuss it with him, so we simply just didn’t show up during the exams and instead I helt some tuitions with my students from the hostel at our home.
We started visiting many of the students homes and it is always a very pleasant and learning experience. I get continuously impressed by the Indians admireable hospitality and friendly nature. When they see strangers like us, they get curious, but in the good way and will do anything to make us feel home and comfortable. It is nothing like in Europe, where peoples first thought is suspicion when they see a stranger with a different skin colour. The other day, when I sent a Christmas parcel to my family, the men in the post office asked me if I missed my family. I admitted that I did, since it was Christmas, but he said that I should not worry, because they would be my family instead! “You have family here also,” he said with a friendly smile, and it is true. It goes with the story that we visit the post office very regularly, because letters now became the main source of contact for us. Welcome to the old days, hehe.
Talking about Christmas, yes, it has also reached little Bali in India, at least for Sanna, Airiin and I. We are trying as much as possible to create a Christmas atmosphere for each other. We have bought advent candles, are planning on performing Lucia for the hostel kids, and we have three socks hanging in our bedroom curtain. Every morning, there is a small gift from Santa Claus, or at least his Indian helper (it varies who of us gets the honour of passing on the gifts, hehe). Additionally, we started doing Christmas decorations with the students in Art and Craft classes (yes, I actually have an Art and Craft class!) and I finally started my choir, which I am now teaching Christmas songs! Lastly, we started organizing a Christmas play about the birth of Jesus, which will be set up the last day of school, which is, to the regret of all three of us, the 24th December (one thing is that we have to go to school on a Saturday, but Christmas Eve!!). It has surprised me a lot, how well informed about Christmas and the story behind it, the students and teachers are. Not because I had expected them to be ignorant generally, but simply because the vast majority of both students and teachers (expect religion teachers perhaps) in Denmark at least, have very little knowledge about Hinduism, let alone Diwali and the story behind this festival, which is equally important for Hindus as Christmas is for Christians. But everyone knows about Jesus and his birth, Santa Claus and Christmas trees although they do not celebrate any of it themselves. They still decorate the school though and do other Christmas things similar to what we do in Europe. I cannot imagine any school in Denmark decorating their classrooms with the elephant god Ganesh around Diwali time and light oil lamps and fire crackers, simply because they do that in India. The only reason I can come up with is the massive influence of Western culture in Asia generally, which is not mutual and therefore the exchange of traditions is only one-way. Anyhow, it is very nice for the three of us to be able to do some Christmas things, because it is true that it is hard to be away from home in this month and I have missed my family more than usual.
There has been a bit of chaos at the school lately, because some teachers have left without notice and the timetable has been changed. But not it seems as if things are settling again and we all just need some time to get back in the rhythm. I discovered the monthly salary of the average teacher at the school: 4000 rupees (500 Dkr or 40€)! Even in India, that is not a high salary. But most of the teachers are women and if their men are also working, it is enough to get by relatively well.
I am thinking a lot about home, friends and family now it is Christmas and I hope you are all enjoying yourselves. India is still treating me very well, although I would probably wish for a Harry Potter wand to transport me to Denmark for a few hours on Christmas Eve and my birthday the 26th.
Merry Christmas to all of you!