Why Divaswapna Now?

• Because we need an example to show us that at the heart of the educational change lies the transformation of institutions and practices that exist, rather than creating new and parallel systems of schooling.

• Because we need a real model who sees learning and teaching as connected processes, who believed that unless we change, we cannot teach differently. More importantly who saw teaching as a way of changing oneself, transforming oneself from where we are to the higher level of being.

• Because we need a real model that convinces us that it is possible to change the institutions and practices that exist, has been in existence for long.

• Because we need a role model that actually made that happen- not with resources and manpower he had, but an individual who through his grit and determination faced all the odds of the time and came out a winner.

• Because we don’t need anymore philosophies of knowledge and pedagogy…we need to see how they work on ground, we need an example, a ‘prayog-purush’ who made the various theories and progressive pedagogies come alive in the
classroom of the schools that we so easily despise. And who is the better person to illustrate all this but Lakshmiram Bhai, the protagonist of Divaswapna. This is the book by Giju Bhai Badheka, a trained lawyer and practicing in South Africa, who decided to come back to the country and to give his life to fighting the inertia, meaninglessness and the resultant boredom of the school classroom. Laxmiram is his protagonist, who represents Gijubhai’s struggles and experiments in education which
were truly progressive and much ahead of his time in the country.

‘Sir, the fact is that we take what we have been told by writers or historians as absolute truth. They can at best make an informed guess based on the primary and secondary sources available from the past. What creates the problem is that these writers and historians are not always neutral. They are aligned to the left or the right, or another. Their interpretations are colored by those biases. Then there are new evidences that are being unearthed every day. Let me give an example- I recently read a book by a historian who uses facts to blast the view that Sati custom was rampant in India in the 18th Century. She uses writings from many contemporary travelers of that time and documents from British parliament to establish that the whole issue was highly exaggerated by the missionaries and evangelists to justify their entry and continued presence in India in the garb of eradicating superstitious customs…….’. Rajiv went on. The ladies and men gathered there were listening with rapt attention!

The above snapshot is from a party Rajiv and his mother were attending in West Delhi where some people happened to be discussing the history of India during the British time. Rajiv was enlivened by the topic, as you have just seen. On the way back from the party that night, Rajiv’s mother asked, ‘where did

you read so much? Is it there in your history textbooks? We never did.’ Rajiv smiled. ‘No mummy, it is still not there in our history textbooks. But it is there in our school library, and on the internet. This and much more! We never actually look for it because we are always so content with whatever has been handed to us. I was just the same, as you know me, until the school introduced Project Based Learning to us. And then everything changed. We seek the hidden, we ask questions, we raise questions on the accepted explanations, and explore the world to understand and discover what is invisible. PBL has brought revolution in the way we learnt and in the way we looked at things around us. It has changed our relationship with the world…the same world around us, the same books and library and friends, have become so much more richer and intense resources for learning. The power we feel from the PBL is immense…we do not have to fear anything because we can learn from every experience, and we can build what we want, modify what needs change and reach out to the world what we need for ourselves. We build perspective and we engage with those of others with equal respect.”

The mother was on the seventh cloud. So is the family that creates and nurtures a learning member. What they were most shocked at is the hidden revolution called PBL in the school that has changed the learning and lives of so many students, without making big noise.

Like many powerful books and treatise, Diwaswapna has its own interesting journey. First published on March 12, 1931 in Gujrati, it generated lot of interest as a document of thoughtful practice. The late Kashinath Trivedi translated it in Hindi which was published
in 1934. However, this powerful book seems to have been lost after that for almost 54 years from public space except for another Hindi edition printed in 1962. While celebrating the birth centenary of Gijubhai in 1984, Rajasth Shiksha Vibhag monthly
“Naya Shikshak” printed the whole book in Hindi and English in their special edition (the copy I read first time). Madhya Pradesh based ‘Palash’ educational magazine published the whole book in 1985. Thus, Diwaswapna was resurrected. Since then the book has
formed a powerful subject for public discourse amongst educators across the country, and has been published and popularized by National Book Trust.

My first encounter with Divaswapna happened 17 years back when Rohit Dhankar of Digantar, Jaipur helped me train teachers of the new experimental schools we were starting in the rural Rajasthan. We used ‘Diwaswapna’ as the basic reading for the newly recruited teacher for their initiation. So powerful it proved that the young teachers converted themselves into missionaries fired by the zeal to bring joy and meaning in their classrooms. Master Laxmiram became a role model for them to take inspiration from,
and learn about context-imbedded pedagogy. Many of these teachers have remained there for years in the heat and struggle of desert villages trying to do innovations in the classrooms, and enthusiastically sharing their learning with others. Marushalas (these
schools were called) came to be known as field based educational experiment centers in the Thar desert.

Diwaswpana is Gijubhai’s Gita. It is the first Indian book of its kind that chronicles a primary teacher’s innovation in class, through self-learning within the context of a mainstream school in rural India. It has four section that are quite simply called-
I. The Experiment Begins
II. The Progress of the Experiment
III. At the End of the Term
IV. The Last Gathering
Deeply influenced by Montessori’s thoughts and methods, and Gandhiji’s ideals, the protagonist “Master” Laxmiram is anguished by the pathetic scene in the classroom-stagnated teachers, uninteresting rote learning for the sole purpose of writing recall questions in examination, fearful uninvolved and thoroughly bored students, and so on. He takes the cudgel, and plunges to bring about change…wow, as if it was easy. He gets permission from the Education Officer only on the guarantee that he will not disrupt the
discipline and the routine of the school, and that the students will have to be performing well in the exam!!! All in the given one year!!!

Of course, it was not going to be easy. Master Laxmiram faces the ridicule of the fellow teachers from the start. He doesn’t give up…and expresses gratitude for the opportunity he has been given. It is there, in the classroom of grade 4 in a government primary school that his momentous journey begins…of making him into a teacher. Master Laxmiram uses simple ways of winning his students’ heart- by listening to them, telling them stories, taking them out for walk, playing with them, and above all being interested in them. He
uses student centric activities like cardboard pieces for playing cards, different kinds of games, singing and outing. He uses drama extensively and relates things to the child’s context. The stories or situations on which the students do a role-play are based on the
roles of people they see and encounter in their daily lives e.g. the tailor, the cobbler etc. This not only gives recognition to the socio-economic status of the children but also implicitly sends a message that their knowledge is valued- knowledge outside school is
knowledge worth being acquired. His use of map, drawings of buildings and surveying the locality to teach geography bring the power of the context in the learning of the child-becomes real and authentic.

Laxmiram’s experiments enlist varieties of other pedagogic practices that are simple, and working. He uses students involvement and very simple strategies to build library in his class, gets his students to collect things from their surrounding to build their museum,
and so on. He refuses to follow the ‘rule of thumb’ which bases itself on “more cramming without understanding”. In the spirit of true enquiry approach, he refuses to give answers to his pupils who are so long been only told to receive from the teacher- “what is
the word adjective mean, sir?” “Find out for yourself” he tells them. But , he doesn’t leave them unattended, and scaffolds them to find meaning by giving examples. Again like a true constructivist, he shuns memorization of definitions, and helps them to understand. He asserts to his headmaster, “definitions are implied.”

The purposeful strategist in Laxmiram comes through when you see him NOT antagonizing the system where his uncompromising stand may jeopardize his “experiment”. Right in the beginning we see him asking the Education Officer to let his pupils come to school without their caps as he sees them dirty, and unnecessary. This is not acceptable to the EO. Master doesn’t give up and settles for the students not wearing them in class. His purpose is met anyways. Later on at another place he is willing to teach children grammar (he considers any kind of learning without intrinsic meaning abhor- able) for the sake of exam, but in an interesting way. This establishes his credibility in the minds of the Education Officer, and his colleagues.

Master Laxmiram makes a convincing case of a different kind of testing. Way ahead of his time, he tests skills while his pupils are actually engaged in doing, or applying what they ought to have learnt. He also says that the evaluation should be done by the teacher who has taught them. Another fundamental principle visible is that evaluation should include everything that has been learnt- so he wants the Education Officer to see how the boys have learnt to clean their rooms and the campus!! And it must be done in such a way
where competition and comparisons are avoided…hence he innovates antakadi to be done in a circle where everybody is equal, and gets a chance to demonstrate their learning. “A match between teams ends with victory and defeat. That gives rise to competition and jealousy. In my arrangement if one boy does not know, the next boy takes over and the game goes on. A boy may be unable to say his piece once, but he has another chance and may be able to do so in the next round.”

Gandhiji’s influence is visible on Gijubhai’s educational philosophy. Learning to keep the places we live and study in is important…so are the personal hygiene. When the Education Officer expresses lack of ‘propriety’ of cleanliness, the unyielding revolutionary teacher declares, “Squalor is the biggest problem of this country…”. The other trait we see is the emphasis he lays on self-discipline so much that beginning a class with uncouth kids who would quarrel and fight on the first given opportunity, he develops them into a team that is able to collaborate to perform complex tasks in the school- from cleanliness to teaching other children to planning and managing school function.

These simple ideas in practice look real and engaging. It is not surprising that within a short period of six months the classroom is the not the same- the syllabus and the textbooks continue in some ways but what happens with them has changed. It is the same children but no more bored but deeply interested in what is happening in the class, rather than being fearful of coming to school every morning, they look forward to it.

In his ‘experiment’ Laxmiram is not without critique and supporters. His colleagues and headmaster are cynic of his ‘fads’, and consider him an enthusiastic, ‘impractical fool’. Throughout the book, all doubt, criticism and contrasting successes are revealed through the conversation between him and others. His headmaster tells him “Forget your fads about receptive moods and the like. The game of silence may be good for Montessori schools. Here in primary schools a sharp slap would make all the students quiet. I would advice you to teach the pupils as the other teachers do….”. Gijubhai lets the opposing views come through and be known to the reader, and he often lets them be. There is rarely an attempt by the protagonist to justify or convince them, who simply allows the action speak for his convictions.

In the Education Officer, Master Laxmiram has a supporter, a coach who has placed his confidence in him, yet he is not willing to blindly accept everything Laxmiram asks for. Gijubhai shows how the knowledge and aspiration of EO has remained dormant in the absence of the will to go against the norm, and how it comes out whenever Laxmiram’s experiments yield result. On seeing how children have learnt through play, he lends his support, “recently I read that children learn through play.” Many a time in the book I was amused to see EO’s concern for the experiment on which he seemed to have put high stakes. While Laxmiram is going about telling stories to his kids, EO asks, “When are you going to begin your experiment?” And what a reply he gets, “the experiment is already on, sir!”

What has happened is nothing less than realizing the ‘Day-dream” of an educator. Master Laxmiram has not just brought about a perceptible positive change in the class and survives, but achieves much more. He has become a teacher loved by his students, and
also earns the acceptance and respectability of the colleagues and authorities. In the time when little was innovative in the schools (much more so in a rural govt school) we see the visible presence of an emerging curriculum through the interaction of
the teacher and his students. In the most natural way Master Laxmiram has developed essential components of progressive classroom practices:
• A beautiful relationship of love, warmth and respect between the students and the teacher
• Children are free from the fear of the presence of the teacher, and his corporal punishment
• Students have the freedom to converse, participate, decide together, play
• Differential learning in the class- children learning alone, and in groups of similar level of academic ability
• Learning language through lots of activities, stories, conversation, plays
• Use of locally available materials to learn about numbers, shapes, sizes
• Evaluation by the teacher to promote student learning, not to pass or fail the students
The most valuable lesson for me from the book is the spirit of bringing about change, and digging in in the face of un-successes. Time and again we see master Laxmiram slipping, and facing the ridicule of his colleagues and headmaster. Yet, he refuses to give up. In
fact, he uses these failings unfailingly for fresh and further learning. The quintessential fighter reflects, “It was good in a way that I slipped up at the very first step. Tomorrow I will try a new approach.”
If this writing inspires you, great. If it doesn’t, tomorrow I shall try a newer way!
Vishnu Kant
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