Education is power: A postmaster-turned-professor’s quest to teach human rights to students

CHENNAI: In 1983, K Ragu from Vellore had to postpone pursuing his dream of doing a PhD in human rights and being a teacher as he joined the Indian Postal Service. “While I wanted to initially pursue the IAS, I gave it up after I got a central government job,” he begins. “I decided to postpone my dream.”

But throughout the time he was working, the sub-postmaster kept his passion for research alive by pursuing degrees on the side and attending college events where he would address students and teachers on human rights and contemporary issues. It was during that time that some teachers advised him to take the National Eligibility Test (NET), which is mandatory for recruiting teachers. “I appeared for the exam and cleared it on my first attempt,” he recalls proudly.

While working at the postal office, Ragu completed MA in Human Rights. He took voluntary retirement in 2014 to pursue teaching and research full time after 30 years of service in the postal department.

In 2019, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (part-time) at Dravidian University, Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, on the title, ‘Socio, Economic Conditions of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Religious Minorities in Tamil Nadu (Special Reference to Vellore District) – A Study’.

When the Teacher’s Recruitment Board of Tamil Nadu announced a vacancy in the Human Rights Department, Ragu applied for it. “While I was shortlisted for the job, due to internal politics, I was not selected. They chose an ineligible candidate who was not qualified in human rights,” he says.

Following this, Ragu appealed this in the Madras High Court and was selected for the job. “After that, I joined as the HoD of the Human Rights Department in the Government Arts College in Salem in 2017,” he adds.

The reason behind Ragu’s passion for human rights in education lies in a childhood marred by caste-based discrimination. Ragu is the first graduate from his family. He lost his father when he was 5, His mother supported his education with the meagre wages she earned as a labourer.

“I am a victim of the caste-based hierarchical system. I realised that even with proper higher education, the dominant caste people of the village will not treat you on par with them if you do not belong to their caste. They might not be educated, but even educated youth cannot demand respect,” he laments. “People from certain castes were not allowed to fetch water from certain tanks. Agricultural landlords used to mistreat us. There were many other instances.”

Discrimination, however, was not limited to villages but also government offices, such as his postal department. “The discrimination runs deep. For example, the department hires people for part-time work while making them work as full-time employees,” he says, drawing parallels. “There have been a lot of human rights violations regarding their wages, health care, and exploitation by bureaucrats and higher officials. I found discrimination and human rights violations in the working conditions, study conditions, etc. I faced a lot of difficulties in addressing their problems within my department.”

This is when he decided to pursue his earlier dream of studying human rights and becoming a scholar in it. He believes that the human rights violation issue can be addressed by introducing constitutional values and human rights as a subject to all students across the country.

Though the University Grants Commission (UGC) has been conducting workshops on constitutional values across the country, subject on human rights has not been made compulsory in the curriculum. “Neither the higher education department, vice-chancellors, or chief secretaries of the respective states agree to include it in the curriculum. Had it been implemented in educational institutions, definitely all sorts of discrimination based on caste, creed, religion, and others would be addressed and resolved. The younger generations would be taught to address the issues as per the constitutional principles,” elaborated Ragu, who has been continuously writing to the NHRC to do the same as well.

Ragu retired in 2019, and has been translating theory and other political works for the Textbook Corporation into Tamil, a mission to make knowledge more accessible. He has also been creating videos for the SWAYAM portal, an online education platform by the central government.

For a topic like human rights, there are no books in Tamil. That’s why translation works are important – it enables access to students, faculty and the general public,” he points out.

Ragu alleges that the government has been stalling the process of translating his doctoral thesis despite multiple representations. And his request remains that it be translated so that people can understand how far behind the state of Tamil Nadu lies in becoming an egalitarian society. “Why can’t students learn human rights as a subject in their colleges?” he says.