MeraPahad Community Of Uttarakhand Lovers

thanks Mahar bhai is amulya jaankaari ke liye. Captain Ram Singh Thakur jaise veer saputon ki janani Uttarakhand ki Veer bhumi ko mera pranaam.

Mehta Ji

Kya aapko Veerbala Teelu Rauteli ke bare me kuch jankari hai.

By: Rajshekhar Pant

Born sometime in the year 1883 in the family of an ordinary farmer in Mehragaon, in the vicinity of Bhimtal (Distt Nainital) he was armed just with a vernacular certificate, though  laved in twenty six languages besides herbal sciences and agronomy. His ardent desire of seeing his then a slave country fully emancipated was transmuted by him into a ceaseless effort to literate and enlightens the millions. Both destiny and his own kinsmen however, tricked him to such an extent that by the dusk of his tragically unfortunate life he was reduced to a psychotic. Pt Devidutt Sharma of Kumaon hills of course died over half a century ago almost unwept, unhonoured and unsung.   

An opportunity to enter into an intimate conversation with his matriculate grandson, who with his hairs turning grey came to me looking for a job, and later with the other members of his family, revealed the magnanimity of this gifted genius, who was a born teacher and was probably years ahead of his times.   

In the early years of the previous century when anti-British sentiments were percolating down the masses and the time was ripening fast for the emergence of a popular leader like Mahatma Gandhi, Pt Sharma – then a primary school teacher posted near Okhalkanda in the remote interior of Kumaon -thought of enlightening and integrating his ignorant and diversified country men by means of literacy. An inhabitant of the region where even school-going happened to be a luxury in those days, he first became well versed in twenty six languages spoken and written throughout the Indian subcontinent. His genius was then concentrated in developing a technique through which several languages could be taught simultaneously. In the dim light of Kerosine lamp he would spent his off school hours cutting with his knife different shapes from the soft bark of the pine trees. After so many sleepless nights he finally succeeded in developing thirty perfect shapes. Letters of twenty six different languages written in different scripts of Indian subcontinent like gujarati, kannada, tamil, telgu, tibetan, brahmi, kethi etc besides Hindi and English could be formed by piecing together the selected shapes from his collection. Himself devoid of proper formal education, Pt Sharma was fully aware of Child psychology.  So meticulously these shapes were designed that for children the exercise of making different letters from the given number of shapes could be preceded by piecing them together into hundreds of other figures like temples, cradles, flowers, and so many other symbols inherent in folk life.

It is quite interesting to note that Pt Sharma was busy perfecting his system almost at the same time when the famous Italian educationist Maria Montessori was toying with the idea of evolving a play-way method for educating young children. She is said to have started her project in the year 1907 and propounded her famous thesis in the year 1910. Pt Sharma got his finally perfected technique, which undoubtedly was as original as that of Maria Montessori, registered in Calcutta in the year 1910-11. Unlike the far better placed Maria Montessori this poor Pundit from the interiors of Kumaon could never start a Casadei-bambini (the house of children) of his own. He however, started a small Kindergarten at his village home in Mehragaon. The thirty different shapes there were made in wood, beautifully cut and polished, and were placed in a box entitled Kindergarten Box No 1. Education Directorates of the then United Province, Bengal, Bihar, MP, Punjab, Bombay Presidency etc patronized it. The innovative mind of Pt Sharma developed a series of boxes and several other visual aids for teaching alphabets, numbers, tables, addition, subtraction and so on in a play-way method.

While turning the pages of the old registers of his Kindergarten, I noticed a pile of citations and certificates awarded to him in the first half of the previous century. Stalwarts like Mahatama Gandhi, Pt Madan Mohan Malvia, Dr Rajendra Prasad and educationists like Powell Price had praised the originality and usefulness of his products. In its halcyon days the kindergarten of Pt Sharma was a well known name in the far off Peshawar, and Rangoon. Popularity of his boxes is reflected well in a booklet entitled Vidya Bhari Pustak which accompanied Kindergarten Box No 1. Twenty edition of this booklet were released in a short span and the last one consisted of twenty thousand copies.

Pt Sharma did also work for the revival of the ethnic medicine, industries based on locally available raw material agronomy and herbal science. He perfected the age old technique of making pahari-paper, fatless soap, ink and so many other things from the material locally available. Most of these articles were produced by him in a large scale for the masses. His book Himalaya Jadi Booti Prakash, the study of which was compulsory for the concerned officials in hills, happened to be once the bible of the forest department.

Propagation of literacy and enlightenment of his compatriots however, was his first love. For opening a High School at Bhimtal he offered to donate five acres of his ancestral land. As an articulate votary of women’s education, he fought hard for removing the disparities in the scholarships for boys and girls. Old-timers in the village still have the fond memories of Pt Sharma walking on the cobbled streets of Mehragaon. A sixteen spoke forty two inches umbrella with a thought for the day written on it in bold letters would invariably rest on his shoulders in all seasons while he counseled the fellow villagers to desist from defecating in open or not to keep the community water resources open or unfenced.

The ways of Pt Sharma obviously were disliked by most of his kin. Born with a mission larger than his own life and that of his family’s needs, he could never run his Kindergarten as a business enterprise. It always remained for him a means to serve the nation. Most of his earnings were spent in helping the poor and needy. His younger son, quite dearer to him became a psychiatric case and the elder one, his bitterest ever critic had to be disowned. Further, after independence the department of education also did not take any cognizance of him. All this must have been too much for this poor old man. Forsaken by his kin and reduced to utter poverty, he lost his mental balance and passed away silently sometime in the year 1956 as a tired soldier, who, in spite of being exhausted enough to win the battle never accepts his defeat.

The wallowing mire of time has engulfed Pt Sharma and his Kindegarten now. Even the District Institute of Educational Training (DIET) –where high sounding seminars and symposiums of NCERT and other such bodies are held quite frequently and which is just six km ahead of Meharagaon in Bhimtal – is not aware of this man of letters. His grandson however, has preserved in a rusted box the smoke sodden registers , stencils catalogues, correspondence, citations and other belongings of the Kindergarten Co. as a proud legacy of his grandfather.

“The time worn proverb that All’s well that ends well” says Dr Mathpal, the famous prehistoric archaeologist, “has never been repudiated with more vehemence than in the life of Pt Sharma.”  It is really difficult to find out any justification for the weal and woes which criss-crossed the life of this unfortunate genius. We Indians believe that those born with a saintly aura do not normally take rebirth and have to bear the pros and cons of their accumulated Karma during the course of their life. A bit cruel it may sound, yet there is no other way out to accept the wanton moves of malevolent destiny. 

 

साभार- http://pant.rediffiland.com/