Vishal Vasanthakumar was born in Chennai and studied mechanical engineering before switching paths to teaching, which he did for six years. He is currently enrolled for a PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. He also has a Masters in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has previously worked with the Department of School Education, Government of Tamil Nadu and as a political consultant for a political party. Between 2020 and 2023, Vishal ran a thriving pesto business from his home kitchen. He currently lives and works in Cambridge, UK.
The Smart and Dumb explores education’s connections to caste, class and gender and understands how they affect the promise of education. In documenting the fractured realities of the many children who want guns for Christmas and the psychological trauma of conflict in Manipur, how a ban on toddy-tapping affects educational choices in Tamil Nadu or why a grandmother chose to get her fifteen-year-old granddaughter married to a seventeen-year-old truck driver in rural Rajasthan and many such stories, this book attempts to paint a portrait of the political and cultural processes that affect education.
The following extract is from the chapter, “The Girl Will Get Away”, where a young girl from rural western Rajasthan fights against her child marriage to continue pursuing her education.
One person whose story was unusual was Nisha, who had been married at ten and divorced at fourteen, all within the small confines of the village of Kotdi. ‘I enjoyed my wedding a lot,’ Nisha recalled. ‘I was ten and everyone told me that I looked like a little doll. Everyone around looked happy also; they told me what to do, so I did it.’
When I went to meet Nisha, she welcomed me enthusiastically, while her mother eyed me with suspicion. I had gotten to know about Nisha’s story from some people who were at Punaramji’s NGO, which was running night schools. Nisha was a product of the night school, having done most of her schooling there, and now was doing a bachelor’s in botany. Nisha didn’t go to school initially. She grazed and watched over goats. ‘My mother used to work in the salt fields, so someone had to take care of the goats,’ she said, carrying a bundle of hay and putting it in the shed. The night school provided her an opportunity to experience education for the first time at the age of six.
‘But the night school really helped; I could graze the goats and then go to school too,’ she continued. ‘There were many days when I would lose track of some of the goats, and I would be late to school, but no one scolded me at the night school. They all understood.’ Nisha was happy in school; she felt like she belonged there and enjoyed the environment of the school, during twilight and after dark. It gave her a sense of possibility that there is more to the world than Kotdi, the very thing the elders in Kotdi feared.
And then Nisha got married; she was ten. The boy was from the neighbouring village; he was twelve. Her paternal uncle’s son was getting married at a relatively more respectable age of sixteen. ‘Why spend separately on two weddings?’ Nisha laughed. ‘When he got married, they got me married as well.’
The concept of choice didn’t seem to exist. Children were to do what their parents asked of them, and then the cycle repeated itself, generation after generation...
Perhaps Nisha’s family feared freedom. ‘Everything is decided by the elders; no one cares about your intentions, what you like, what you want, whether you are actually fit for marriage,’ she said.
In any case, Nisha was married. Tradition in Kotdi didn’t allow for the bride to go to her in-laws’ place until she was at least fifteen or had achieved puberty. Nisha finished her wedding rituals, and later that night, she returned home to continue grazing her goats by the day and going to school at night.
Education achieves many things—it pulls people out of poverty, enables socio-economic mobility and promises a route to dignity. But what does education mean to different people, what does it do and whose needs are being met by education? | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
A little after a year after she got married, a drought hit Kotdi. Nisha would often miss school, for she had to fetch water and graze the goats, and these activities took time. ‘I had to go collect water from quite far off, and by the time I could finish grazing the goats and getting water, I was exhausted. I just couldn’t go to school.’...
She was a good student, but she was fourteen and married, honour bound to move in with her husband and in-laws. The in-laws had started calling, asking when her parents would send Nisha over. It meant starting a whole new life, away from the comforts of her home, away from her goats and her friends down the street. It meant taking care of her husband, a man she had seen once when she was ten, her in-laws and their house. It meant stopping going to school. ‘They said when I went there, they wouldn’t let me study,’ she said grimly. ‘What is she going to do by studying, was their question.’
What promise did schooling hold? Nisha’s mother and in-laws were scared that ladki haath se chhut jayegi (the girl will get away or out of hand).
Those in Kotdi who went to school studied till Class 8, but they could barely write their name or perform three-digit subtractions. But this was not a situation limited to Kotdi. It was a phenomenon across Rajasthan and even India. According to the Annual Survey of Education Report 2022, only 17.32 per cent of all kids in Class 5 in Rajasthan could perform subtraction. The only option for a real education was a private school, 40 kilometres away in the town of Roopangarh, which charged a fee of about Rs 30,000 a year, a sum unimaginable to Nisha’s mother and undoubtedly preposterous for Nisha’s in-laws. The very notion of a young married girl living alone in a town was beyond imagination. When something is beyond imagination, it is usually quickly dismissed as scandalous or heresy.
A representational image of a group of women at the Anupgarh railway station in Rajasthan. The State’s education system is playing an important role in spreading awareness and bringing down child marriages. | Photo Credit: V. V. Krishnan
‘I don’t want to go, Ma, please don’t send me there. I want to study, I will study well,’ Nisha cried and cried. She lay in her room for days, refusing to eat, tears flowing from her eyes. Her eyes were puffy and red from all the crying, and a lingering feeling of hopelessness hung in the dry desert air....
Nisha was firm that she was not going to go to her in-laws.
Some of her neighbours belonging to the dominant upper caste and having access to social networks and economic opportunities had been able to pursue some education and were seemingly doing well for themselves, mainly in Kishangarh. People from Nisha’s school came and tried to convince her mother. As it turned out, Nisha’s mother was on her side, an ally. She had decided that she would make her daughter study, moved by Nisha’s sheer willpower, or perhaps she’d just had enough of the whole thing. It was a decision that took an enormous amount of courage and resolve. Her mother refused to talk to me about this; it was an ordeal she wanted to put behind her. Nisha could study now, but her mother had to face everyone else.
They told the boy’s family that she was not going to come and that they were going to ‘divorce’ him. ‘Once I had decided this, it was easy to tell them,’ Nisha said. ‘There was guilt that I would bring down the honour of my family, that my mother won’t be able to show her face to anyone. But my mother supported me.’ The divorce was finalized....
‘Marriage isn’t a choice here. It is an inevitability,’ Nisha laughed again, shooing a couple of baby goats into their enclosure. ‘People don’t let you work after you get married, and if you don’t get married, you can’t do anything.’ There was a sense of humour in her voice, as if she had reconciled to her reality, and she was able to see the irony of it all. Today, Nisha works in a local school near Kotdi. Her mother remains worried about who will marry her daughter now. Education had given Nisha not just capabilities but the ability to choose. She decided to choose her own identity, not the one ascribed to her for being born a woman.
The Smart and the Dumb: The Politics of Education in India releases on July 22, 2024, under the Viking imprint of Penguin Random House India.
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