Frontline
February 1998
Learning

Kids grill a cop

Tackling real-life events is an effective way of initiating a discussion on sensitive issues


Dear Teachers,

Police chi gaadi aali, tulla gheoon jaanar (The police van has come to take you away).
Bhaago, bhaago, police aayee (Run, run, the police have come)..
Amma why are you talking to a policeman? I’m scared.

These are not uncommon outbursts from children. The mention of the word police and we find, in the reaction, the groundwork laid by the family grapevine’s favourite and most convenient, bogeyman yielding the necessary result.


Has this bogey been created simply out of fiction or an overactive imagination? Or is it based on raw reality? Can today’s policeman be seen as a needy person’s friend? A person to trust, to run to in times of crisis, trauma and need? Or is he an object of fear, dread, even loathing? What are the real life factors that make him one or the other? Surely family-driven bogey tales cannot be held fully responsible for the latter, and more dominating impression.


A friend, active in relief and restoration to sanity work after the massive anti-Sikh pogrom in the nation’s capital in 1984, vividly describes the reaction of an 18-months-old infant girl in the arms of her grandmother when he went in, under police protection, to rescue the pathetic remaining members of a family from a burning neighbourhood. On first glimpse of the policeman, the child let off wails of terror, reflective of her cognitive experience in the recent past when she must have associated the police officer’s vardhi with terror and pain.... caused to her own father?


Increasingly, as civil society gets affected more and more by a brutalised state, its children are going to reflect the experiences and the memories of these real life experiences of brutalisation. Our approach in Khoj, as has been mentioned in these columns before, is not to avoid and skim over areas of pain and conflict for the child but to try and create openings and spaces for regular and sensitive discussions. An integral part of this approach is to introduce and gently probe into around real life situations that impinge upon, and therefore have a bearing on, the child’s consciousness, stay with him or her and affect and influence attitudes and opinion formation.


An incident, say, a brutal police firing takes place in the city or the country in which innocent protesters fall victim. It makes headline news. Should we not, as animators working with children, initiating discussion and examine the pros and cons of such hasty action on the part of the police?

If the debate on the incident revolves around the rectitude of police conduct, should not children, as future citizens, be given an opportunity to analyse and examine the situation and allegations. Should not every facility within the educational apparatus, in fact, be stretched to enable students to form a reasoned and informed judgement of their own?

Following the initial and informed examination, should not this kind of interaction logically lead up to a real-life ‘encounter’ between the children and the police?

Following the Ramabainagar firing of police against Dalits in Ghatkopar (east) in Mumbai in July 1997 , this is precisely what we did. Events were discussed through newspaper reports, both supportive of and adversarial to the role of the police.

The module formulated by Khoj took the discussions into the area of caste system and its impact in current day India, urban and rural, privileges, denials of opportunities etc. This exploration over the next few weeks was a rewarding experience, dealing as we were with largely middle class and therefore upper caste children (we will discuss these interactions in later columns).

But before we concluded the module, and a few weeks after students had an opportunity to reflect upon the initial discussions, we came back to the issue of police conduct and asked the children whether or not they agreed that an encounter with a former senior cop worth their while.
“Providing its us asking the questions and him replying,” was the response. “We don’t want a lecture on the police. He must know what we think.” Hearing these reactions made us proud and satisfied; we felt we were actually getting somewhere!

That’s how we had Bombay’s former police commissioner spending an afternoon with school children, being grilled by 11 and 12- year-olds (see accompanying article).

There is another wider point about learning and education that gets touched upon here. If learning is not just what we cram from textbooks and what is absorbed in classrooms, then a once-in-a-lifetime encounter, or experience, can have a lasting impact and leave a child asking the real and pertinent questions. One such studied encounter with a police officer can raise a consciousness about human rights and fair play, another with a doctor on medical ethics versus commercialism, the third with a lawyer on his/her commitment to a clients’ interests versus general ethics etc. A more effective way of value sharing and building than the moral science stories that we, as children, grew up on and in the past laughed out of the window!

Narration of stories and real-life events that bring alive recent traumatic events is another concrete way how we introduce a discussion on sensitive issues. In the beginning of December last year, the time of the year that still has Mumbaites cringing with the memories of the mayhem and carnage of five years ago, we read out a sensitive short story of a deep friendship between two young boys —Aditya and Khalil. The bond of intimacy withstood the rioting between communities during which Khalil lost his home. It could have been a real life story from Bombay or any other part of India.

Discussions followed after the story. “A lovely story, its about friendship, a nice friendship between two friends”. “They are from different religions”. A slight scepticism there. Could a friendship across communities actually endure in these troubled times?

Surprisingly — and this was something unexpected for us (that’s the utter challenge and joy working with children!) — these children who were only five or six year olds during the Bombay riots carried graphic memories of those times. After the initial hesitation, they wanted to talk. And we did (CC, December 1997).

Memories, particularly bad ones, can be rarely wished away. Evaded as a dark unpleasant spot they can be dangerous. Because they can lead us to emotional conclusions not properly reasoned out. Let out and free, even if they are initially accompanied by disturbance and tears, they can help us look back at unpleasant moments, painful moments, more minutely. And possibly more even-handedly, less bitterly, slightly dispassionately.

The reactions and memories were graphic and worrisome, coming even from Hindu children not directly affected or traumatised by events. Such efforts at police-children interaction in minority areas where the wounds run deep and the losses suffered have been more severe, would not only help the children come to terms with unspeakable pain and tragedies, but also render the officers concerned more sensitive. The challenge and candour of a child’s direct gaze and innocent, clear voice, brooking no evasions or embarrassments, is unlikely to leave even a hardened officer untouched.

The first-hand experience of this interaction has prompted us to work more actively in effecting such exchanges in minority areas in future.

Teesta Setalvad
(Teesta Setalvad is co-ordinator, Khoj — a secular education programme —which has been running in several Bombay schools for the last four years. Aman, an attempt to establish direct communication between school children in Pakistan and India is an olive branch of the Khoj project).

 



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