

41

Institute of Human Rights Education:
India Experience
V. Vasanthi DeviThe Institute of Human Rights Education (Institute), based in Tamilnadu
state in India, is currently involved in human rights education programs inschools in ten states across the vast country. The Institute was establishedin 1997 as part of an experimental program of People’s Watch Tamil Nadu covering a few schools in Tamilnadu. People’s Watch Tamil Nadu is a civil society
organization involved since 1995 in the protection and promotion of humanrights, and employs a wide variety of intervention efforts on behalf of humanrights violations victims. The Institute was a child of the prior experience of theparent body.
hope of a new world led us to human rights
education.

The dream and the reality
The introduction of human rights education in Tamil Nadu schools was the result of adeep reflection that the value of rights can be
firmly established only when it is instilled in thetender minds of children as a social virtue, tobe safeguarded, protected and nurtured. India,
perhaps like all other countries of the world,
is a land of a thousand oppressions. Millionsof our people - children, women, dalits (theformer Untouchables), adivasis (indigenous
people), the poor, the slum dwellers and manyothers - are subjected to injustices, rights denials, exploitations, oppressions, discriminationsand violence.
How do we change such a brutal, heartlessworld? Where do we begin? It can only begin
in the classroom, where the destiny of thenation is forged. The seeds of a better world,of love, friendship, compassion, beauty, creativity, freedom, and equality should be sownand nurtured in the minds of children. Suchreflections and a firm faith in children as theWhy human rights education?
All education, including technical and professional education, ought to be human rights
education in one way or the other. Education
should, directly or indirectly, serve the interestof furthering human rights, not of select or
privileged sections, but of every human being,irrespective of her class, caste, gender, race, ethnicity, religious or sexual orientation or physicalor mental disability. Albert Einstein, the greatscientist, once said, “The concern for Man andhis destiny is the prime objective of all scientificand technical efforts. Never forget it in the midstof your diagrams and equations.” The purposeof all education is to sensitize, to humanize, totake humanity to higher levels of knowledge,
awareness, freedom and social responsibility.
While pursuit of knowledge is recognized as the
purpose of education, the other three, aware-41

42  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

ness, freedom and social responsibility are notconsidered inherent to Project Education. If welose the meaning of education in its wholesomeness, we will end up creating a world without
human values or justice and ultimately, without
progress, too.
While we define education thus, we are all
painfully aware that it is a distant vision. Education has never been the engine for furthering thehuman rights of every human being at any timein history. It has been a potent class instrument
to discriminate, deny, and dominate. Till recent
times it had been the monopoly of the ruling,
dominant classes and sections in society. In a
country like India, the inviolable iron frame of
the caste system had strictly guarded this monopoly. Our dharma ordained that education
was the preserve of the twice-born. Our mythology has tales of ruthless punishment and brutal
mutilation of persons who dared transgressthe ‘divine order’. Other societies across theworld have their own systems of monopoly ofknowledge. True education is a threat to power
and privilege.
While the modern society has moved far
from traditional exclusions, it still practices
subtle and nonetheless potent strategies fordenying empowering, equalizing knowledge
to vast sections of its citizenry. That is why Ivan
Illyich had to call for a ‘De-Schooling Society’and Paulo Freire had to seek an alternate education through a ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’.
The content of education and pedagogy havebeen designed, in most countries, to exclude,
to mystify large sections of their populace andto co-opt the dissenters into the hierarchicalsystems.
Education is, with exceptions, an alienatingprocess. It alienates the student from the world
around, from the society that gave birth to her
and nurtured her. It alienates her from relating
to and understanding the denials, deprivations,and the struggles of large sections of community. Our schools, colleges, and our centers of

research have raised high walls around them that
cut them away from the community. There are
no windows to let in invigorating, lifegiving
winds from the world around.
The education that alienates fails to further
human rights, justice and equity. It also miserably fails in its ostensible pursuit of knowledge.
With blinkers secured on her eyes to shut out
the immediate world, the student sees only
a fragmented reality. To know is to relate. If
you do not relate to the harsh realities of yourcommunity, its rights denials, the horrors of its
wretched poverty, inhuman deprivation, heartless exploitation and discrimination, then theknowledge that you acquire is partial knowledge, often distorted knowledge.
In the present age the alienating character ofeducation has assumed grotesque proportions,in spite of the democratic pretensions of themodern state. Education today is an instrumentfor domination, for thought control, for dangerous manipulations, for what Walter Lippman
once called ‘the manufacturing of consent’. A
powerful process of social engineering is operating through our education system to rationalize,
justify and perpetuate the horrendous inequities,
rights denials, violations of the very right tolife and dignity of millions of people across theworld. Our schools and colleges, in developed aswell as developing countries, are the recruiting
grounds for soldiers to defend the imperialist
system of global domination. The neo-liberal
ideology that rules the world today is a productof our ivory towers, our celebrated centers ofintellectual excellence.
The internet is, perhaps, the symbol par excellence of the era of global domination. Whatis happening to our students today? They are
getting hooked on to the internet and float incyberspace, relating to worlds and creatures,
which could as well be from outer space. When
our student is logged on, she gets logged off her
immediate world, the world in flesh and bloodthat is around her, the world that brought her

Institute of Human Rights Education: India Experience  43

into existence and nurtured her. The virtualworld is shutting out the real world. The individual, fiercely alone is the ideal. The aggressive,fiercely competing, self-aggrandizing student is
the marketed model today. These are the virtues
the management gurus glorify.
In such a dismal educational scenario today,
the rationale for bringing human rights education into our schools is almost self-evident. It
is to radicalize education as a whole, to makeit truly an instrument for liberation, to break amillion bondages. It is an antidote to the ills of
the contemporary education system. It is thefruition of the search for alternate, liberating
education that has been pursued for a longtime by reformers, radicals, nation builders,and dreamers.
So, we dared to dream and to challenge
and took the plunge. The last nine years havebrought rewards beyond our wildest hopes,
exciting growth, expansion across the vast andvaried landscape of India, warm welcome toour program from unexpected quarters, from
insensitive bureaucracy and indifferent politicalleadership and more than anything else, appreciation of teachers and eager, enthusiastic
response of students. We have also had a muchsmaller share of disappointments and setbacks,
which however, pale into nothing compared to
the rich rewards we have reaped. It has been
an intensely learning experience through adynamic, dialectical process, not all of which
was pre-planned.

Building a national program
Though the Institute had initially launchedthe Human Rights Education (HRE) program
independently, with no reference to the United
Nations Decade of Human Rights Education(1995-2004) [UN Decade], soon it opted tocome under the global program. The Instituteviewed the UN Decade as an opportunity forconcerted and collective action to promote theconcept of human rights through educational
interventions. At the close of the UN Decade,the United Nations has come up with theWorld Programme for Human Rights Education (WPHRE) with a special focus on primaryand secondary schools, for the 2005 – 2007
period. The WPHRE considers human rights
education as essential for the promotion andachievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering
mutual understanding, tolerance and peace.
The Institute is implementing human rights
education in consonance with the objectives ofthe WPHRE.

Beginnings in Tamil Nadu
From its inception in 1997 till 2005 thehuman rights education program was confinedto the state of Tamil Nadu, our base. It is in
this state that our vision was sharpened, thecontent of human rights education developed,
our modules for students and teachers designed,
appropriate pedagogy identified, partnerships
forged and Government’s approval won. Since
1997, 100,000 students and over 2,000 teachers in more than 1,000 schools throughout
the State of Tamil Nadu have benefited fromthe human rights education programs of theInstitute. Both government and private schools
have been covered under it.
The Institute is proud to say that all theschools under the Adi Dravida Welfare Department of Tamil Nadu Government, with theirstudents hailing from the most deprived sectionsof society, mainly dalits and tribals, have beenpart of this human rights education program.
Since 2002 the program is being offered to
students in classes VI, VII, and VIII in the 350
schools under the department.

44  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

Table 1: Human Rights Education in Schools in Tamil Nadu
PhasesYear

Districts

1

1997-1998

1

2

1998-2000

3

1999-2002

Total
4

No. ofSchoolsClass

Students

Teachers

Private Schools

9

9th

1,756

90

10

City Corporation and Private
Schools122

8th, 9th

21,320315

29

TNCRI* (Catholic Schools)238

7th, 8th, 9th

33,785730

56,861

1,135

29

369

(as of 2007)

2002-2005

29

Govt. ADW**(SC/ST) Schools

258

6th, 7th, 8th

25,819492

2002-2005

10

Diocesan Schools

134

6th, 7th, 8th

14,330251

2002-2005

15

CSI Schools***155

6th, 7th, 8th

12,650333

52,799

1,076

Total
5

Schools29547(as of 2007)

2005-200830

Govt. ADW
(SC/ST) Schools

355

6th, 7th, 8th

21,057(492) + 233
Newly
trained2005-200810

Diocesan Schools

154

6th, 7th, 8th

11,000200

509

32,057433

1,425

14,1717

2,644

Total

30

(as of 2007)

Over-allTotal* TNCRI – Tamil Nadu Congregation of Religious Institutions** Govt. ADW – Government Adi Dravidar Welfare Schools*** CSI Schools - Church of South India Schools

National program
The response we received from the Adi
Dravida Welfare and Tribal Schools inspired
and encouraged us to move to other parts of thecountry. Starting in the latter half of 2005 it has
now spread to ten other states of the country
as the National Program of Human Rights
Education in Schools. The program, at present, covers the states of Gujarat, Tripura, West
Bengal, Orissa, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Kerala, and Rajasthan apart from
Tamil Nadu. Bihar has joined the national
program in April 2007 and Pondicherry andMadhya Pradesh are on the threshold of entering the family.

Our modus operandi of taking human rights
education to different states varies according toour understanding of the political climate andthe educational scenario in different states. We
reach out to the government of the state, at thelevel of political and administrative leadership,with a request to join the National and World
Programme for Human Rights Education andwith an offer to initiate a pilot program forabout fifty schools with orientation to teachers,
supply of books, and so on. The state programis then launched with their permission. We
also contact private schools and offer it in theirschools. We identify a state partner, which iseither a civil society organization working withchildren or an educational institution. We run

Institute of Human Rights Education: India Experience  45

the program, along with the state partner, as acollaborative venture. A state co-coordinator isappointed as a full time employee and the key
functionary. A State Advisory Committee, witheminent persons in the state is also constituted
to advise and guide the state program. We
conduct a series of advocacy and sensitizing programs before launching it. We have had variedlevels of response and degrees of success.
Our state partners, in collaboration withwhom the program is implemented are the following organizations: Loreto School in West
Bengal, People’s Cultural Center (PECUC) in
Orissa, Justice and Peace Commission in Andhra
Pradesh, SICHREM in Karnataka and Kerala,
Centre for Social Justice in Gujarat, HOPE in
Pondicherry, Hidayatullah National Law University in Chattisgarh, Government Law College in Tripura, Sophia College in Rajasthan andAsian Development Research Institute (ADRI)
in Bihar. In addition to the state partner, we seek

the support, solidarity, cooperation and partnership of various organizations/institutions, whobecome our implementing organizations.
Table 2 below shows the number of schools
covered in each StateIn every State, various stages were followed
prior to teaching human rights. After theidentification of the collaborating partners andstate coordinators, various actions such as State
Level Consultation, constitution of State Advisory Committee, State Implementing Committee and State Resource Team, identification ofschools, training of the State Resource Team,
Head Masters (HMs) Meeting, Training of
Teachers, State Launch of Human Rights Education, translation and printing of modules,
and so on were undertaken. Simultaneously,
efforts were pursued to get the approval of
the government for introducing human rights

Table 2: National Programme of Human Rights Education in Schools
S.No

PeriodDistricts
CoveredNo. ofSchoolsClass

Students

Teachers

Orissa:Phase I,
Phase II
(S.C.* and Tribal
Schools)

2005-200815

65

6th, 7th, 8th

3300

68

2007-2010

25

60

6th

3800

70

2

West Bengal

2005-2008

3

50

6th

8,290

61

3

Gujarat2005-2008

336

6th, 7th

3450

44

4

Kerala2005-2008

5

55

6th

8500

56

5

Karnataka

2005-2008

680

6th, 7th, 8th

8300

90

6

Andhra Pradesh

2005-2008

970

6th, 7th

4500

65

7

Tripura2005-2008

3

62

6th

3500

68

8

Chattisgarh

2005-2008

4

36

6th

3000

36

9

Rajasthan

2005-2008

5

17

6th

3000

24

10

Pondicherry

2005-2008

In preliminary stage

11

Bihar

2007-2010

In preliminary stage

1

State

*S.C. - Scheduled caste46  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

education in schools. Advocacy at the nationaland state levels is an ongoing activity so thathuman rights education becomes integral partof the regular school curriculum. While humanrights education is being taught, regular school
visits, Teachers Review Meetings, Summer
Training for Teachers, celebrations of importantdays, interactions with HMs, teachers and pupils
are carried out to facilitate and strengthen theprocess.
We have had varying experiences in ourinteractions with governments in states. In
Karnataka and Orissa the governments havebeen enthusiastic partners from the beginning.
At the other end, in Gujarat and Rajasthan,ruled by the Hindu communal Bharatiya Janata
Party, with the communal carnage witnessedin Gujarat recently, we were wary of directly
seeking the support of the government. In
these two states, a civil society organization
and a reputed women’s college implement the
program respectively, bringing in interested
private schools. Even in these states government
support is gradually being won.

Designing the content
Human rights education is offered in Classes
VI, VII and VIII. The Institute has brought
out three modules on human rights education
for the use of students and teachers in Classes
VI-VIII. Of the three modules, the first is an
introduction to human rights, the second is
exclusively on child rights and the third deals
with discrimination. These modules were initially written in Tamil, and are now translated
into English and the other Indian languages of
Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Bengali,
Gujarati and Hindi to enable the expansion ofthis program to the other states and its eventual
spread to the rest of the country. (See annexes
for the cover pages of some of the modules).
The writing of each language module is entrusted to a group of education, human rights
and language experts of the state. Care is taken

to see that in each state our original module is
not mechanically translated, but is dynamically
adapted and rewritten to reflect the local reality
and is relevant to local human rights issues.

Pedagogy: search for the appropriate
The radical education of human rights
education needs a radical pedagogy. The
classroom, as it exists today, is ill suited totransact a humanizing education. Classroom
relations are power relations, with the teacher
wielding absolute authority over the students
within its confined space, while she herself isa low level functionary in a bureaucratized,
elite-driven, elite-centered education system.
The curriculum, evaluation methods, a fiercelycompetitive culture, and concepts of discipline
militate against nurturing a human rights anddemocratic culture. Human rights educationneeds to be a child-centered education, respecting the child’s role as constructor of knowledge
rather than treating her as a passive recipient of
information. The child who comes into a classis treated as an empty vessel, into which readymade, pre-cooked knowledge is poured. Everychild brings with it to the classroom a fund of
cognitive and cultural capital. This rich capitalmust be fully utilized in the collective processof classroom transactions.
And human rights education cannot be imparted within the four walls of the classroom.
It has to be learned, out in the world, in the
midst of people, particularly among victims of
injustice and rights violations. It cannot stopwith acquiring information, but should lead tocourageous and collective action in solidarity
with the victims.
Our search for appropriate pedagogy isproving to be endless, constantly evolving, as
we delve deeper into our mission and as wemove across a land of immense variety andrichness.
We started with small steps, departing frominception from the rote–learning system of theInstitute of Human Rights Education: India Experience  47

Indian classroom. Every lesson is introduced
by way of stories, dialogues, historical incidents, experiences, media reports of everyday
violations of human dignity and so on. Our
insistence has been on participatory mode oflearning. We advocate sharing by students of
their and others’ experiences in class, interactions with victims of violations of human rights,
interviewing, games, inspecting places where
violations have taken place, submitting petitions
to authorities, and so on.

The impact
The stories of transformation of humanrights education teachers and students and thesocial impact of the human rights education
program we have so far gathered from our work
have touched the hearts of all those who havecome to know of them. Stories keep trickling in,from the remote corners of the states, of questions asked that were never before asked, silences
broken, voices raised, a little hand of help extended, adults shamed, alcoholics transformed,
a silently suffering mother surprised by her little
son confronting the drunken father, daughtersof fiercely patriotic communities daring to demand education. A twelve-year-old student of
human rights education in an area notorious
for female infanticide, intercedes when the lifeof another female infant is to be snuffed out,
quotes his human rights education lesson, runs
from pillar to post to save the life and ultimately
succeeds. Where young girls are married at theage of thirteen or fourteen, a little girl’s marriage
is stopped by the collective intervention of herclassmates. In a place of rampant child labor, aten-year-old boy being physically abused in aroadside shop is saved by the intervention ofhuman rights education teachers, keeping vigil
through the night and bringing the abuser tolaw. The evidence we are marshalling is, tillnow, mainly anecdotal, but each anecdote is astone thrown into the cesspool of centuries of
oppression and indignity.

We have presently taken up the documentation of this intensely human experience, withfunding received from the Human Rights
Education Programme of the Office of theUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Challenges
We have built a vast network across theimmensity of India. We work in twelve states,from Tripura in Northeast and West Bengal in
the East to Gujarat in the West, from Rajasthan
and Bihar in the North to Kerala and Tamilnadu
in the South. We have encountered challenges,
bewildering in their variety, throwing questionsat us for which we have no answers. We havetaken in our little hands a handful of seeds ofimmense potency and broadcast them acrossa sub-continent. We have moved with thefaith that wherever these seeds fall they will
germinate and in the chemistry of mingling
with wildly varied soil, a thousand flowers will
bloom. We are asked again and again, are you
not spreading yourself too thin; is there not a
big transmission loss? We acknowledge there istransmission loss. The passion of Madurai (ourheadquarters) drawn from daily encounterswith brutal violations and daily struggles on
the side of victims cannot be easily transmitted
to distant Rajasthan and does suffer loss in theprocess. But we have also seen enhancements,
in dedication, in our repertoire, in exhilarating
new pedagogical methods. We see an exciting
dynamics of enhancement operating. The main
reason for it is that everywhere we move, we
initiate a collective process that rolls on, carving
its own trajectory. To cite a few such instances,to the human rights stories we initially identified in Tamilnadu, Orissa has added new oneson land rights, cultural rights and language
rights, as these are the inalienable rights thetribal communities, who constitute 28% of thestate population, are being brutally denied. We
initially developed the modules in the language48  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLS

of each state. However, in many states, large
proportions of the people speak dialects, significantly different from the state language. The
curriculum development committee in Orissa isplanning to bring out the modules in the major
tribal dialects. In Bihar the proposal is from theinception to adopt three major languages of thestate as medium of learning for human rights
education. Tripura, too, plans to have two major
languages, one a tribal language, as learning
medium. Our program is for students in Classes
VI – VIII and is pitched at that level. In a schoolin West Bengal the human rights educationteachers felt bad that the senior students, who
would be graduating out of the school soon are
denied the benefit of the rich and empowering
human rights education program. So, on theirown initiative, they are offering human rights
education to students up to Class XII, withsuitable adaptations.
I discuss here some of the challenges weface, many of them inherent in the nature of
the project we have undertaken:
1)	Education is in the realm of the state. The
Institute is a civil society organization that ismaking a foray into the realm of the state. It
is sometimes seen as breaching the boundary between state and civil society and ourcredentials to be educators are questioned
and viewed with suspicion. The critique,however, softens and dies out as educationists, who have held high academic positions,and persons of eminence constitute our
Institute and State Advisory Committees ineach state.
2)	Dominant sections in all societies control
state power. These sections are the beneficiaries of the exploitative, unequal regimesthat prevail. Human rights education critiques, challenges and hopes ultimately tooverthrow such regimes. That is why Tolstoy
once said, “True education is liberating. No
government in its senses will allow it.” Howrealistic is it to expect governments to extend
support to a radical education? Here thecontradictions between the philosophy andpractice of a modern democratic state cometo our rescue. The Indian Constitution is a
profoundly human document and the state is
expected to uphold the democratic mandateof the Constitution. The rhetoric of freedom
and equality prevails in the public domain
and sweeps the horrors of a class-caste society under the carpet. And so human rights
education is accepted, perhaps, as belonging
to the realm of rhetoric and will be permitted in the classroom till its radical content
becomes manifest.
3)	Still some state governments are uncomfortable with our content. They question theneed for talking to students about inequities
and violations of human rights. They are
worried about the radical implications ofhuman rights education and seek to dilute it.
They want us to sanitize our content, “keepcaste out, keep untouchability out”. What
do we do at such moments, when we areasked to compromise? We have attempted
persuasion and when it failed we chose toabandon the program in the particular staterather than compromise and corrupt the soulof human rights education.
4) The age of globalization and reforms inwhich we are living is a dehumanizing
time. The education system is designed forthe needs of hegemonic corporate capital.
Our children are indoctrinated with theideology of competition, of fierce, ruthless,man-against-man competition. Children areprogrammed and launched into the world
for global conquest. The individual fiercely
alone, slogging every minute to excel is themarketed model today. Some schools ask us‘when is the time for human rights education? Every minute is needed to coach ourstudents to excel in exams.’ How do wechange this mindset? How do we start a
process of detoxification, to flush out thepoison?
5) And then, do we talk about state violence,
which is a good part of human rights violations? The vast majority of students in ourInstitute of Human Rights Education: India Experience  49

human rights education program in all thestates are from sections of the citizenry thatbears the brunt of state violence. They are
witness to the brutalization of the state,when the police swoop down on theirpoverty stricken homes and drag away thefather or mother, foisting false cases. The
children in tribal schools have suffered thetrauma of dispossession and displacement,
when the guardians of law in unholy alliancewith forest mafias flushed out their entire
communities like rats from their ancestral
lands. Should we speak about these violations in human rights education classes? If
we do not, are we not guilty of hypocrisy?

If we do, can we hope to have the continued
patronage of the state?
Such are the questions that torment us. Suchare the challenges we face. We make a collective
effort to analyze them, understand them, andevolve strategies to meet and overcome themand turn the whole experience into a learning
experience of great import. Meanwhile somemore schools want to join us, a few more states
are beckoning to us. We move on.
Human rights education is part of the
struggle for human rights, “an eternal struggle,
in which a final victory can never be won. But
to tire in that struggle would mean the ruin ofsociety.” (Einstein)50  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLSANNEX AInstitute of Human Rights Education: India Experience  51

ANNEX B

52  HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION IN ASIAN SCHOOLSANNEX C