Patna: The principal took up a toilet brush and his faculty members wielded brooms and mops as a Jesuit college opted to observe the May Day in a different way.
“Usually May 1st is a holiday in the name of laborers. Nobody bothers about them, except that everyone gets a holiday. This is of no use,” said Jesuit Father Tomy Nishaant, principal of St. Xavier’s College (and St. Xavier’s College of Management and Technology), Patna, who decided open the institution on International Labor Day and let its teachers do the menial tasks for a change.
Father Nishaant and the vice-principal when around the college cleaning toilets and restrooms, while other members of the teaching faculty mopped, dusted, and swept out the campus. Some male teachers prepared the morning tea and snacks.
The college let the ‘non-teaching’ staff – office assistants, cleaning personnel and gardeners – relax, besides treating them to a special high tea.
The students observed their teachers putting into practice the principle that education is all about learning for life.
Fr Nishaant said the teachers and management, imitating Mahatma Gandhi, sought to address the very ideology of the Indian caste system, by which only a group of people belonging to a particular caste are meant to do such ‘polluting’ works as cleaning up garbage, excreta, and so on.
Most sweepers, cleaners, and drainage maintenance staff of the municipal corporation come from the former low caste groups. Even the morgue attendants and workers who handle the corpses are from the Dalit castes.
“Enlightened people can act against such an ideology by volunteering to do such works. This is a symbolic way of valuing the dignity of work itself, whether it is cleaning toilet or lecturing students,” Fr Nishaant explained.
The well-guarded Indian society de-values manual works as menial and looks down upon the members of the maintenance staff.
The Jesuit college did not allow its students to be part of the exercise. “When the students see the professors willingly doing the works of the maintenance staff, they understand that these works are valuable, and that one’s dignity isn’t taken away by sweeping or cleaning,” a teacher said.
The male teachers broke another male stereotype making the tea and serving the snacks to the maintenance staff, he added..
During the tea and camaraderie that followed the exercise, professors shared their experiences with each other, and they generally agreed that the tasks were difficult.
“The management didn’t force any of the teachers to join in the kar seva. It was entirely voluntary,” another teacher said. He said he has hardly ever mopped the floor at home as he has a maid for that. “And here was I mopping the entire length of the corridor. Back breaking. Experienced what my maids have to do for a living. I swear, after I get back home, I’m going to put my feet up and rest,” he added.
The principal hopes that such exercises, though symbolic, bring about a transformation in attitude toward the value of labor, especially manual labor and laborers. Attitudinal changes are one of the main components of quality education, says Nishaant.
He says May Day is of no consequence in ameliorating the conditions of the workers. “There is no need for us to enjoy a holiday in their name. May Day has actually of no real meaning for them,” said the principal as he scrubbed a squatter-style water closet on the premises.