“It takes a community to unschool ourselves…”
An interview with Sumit and Mridula, co founders of the Unschoolers Ecovillage, Swaraj University, Udaipur, Rajasthan.
by Fatema C
Sumit, Mridula and their children are one of the anchor families at Unschoolers Ecovillage (UE) in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Six months ago, they envisioned this community with Manish Jain, a visionary who believes in the power of community to evolve as conscious beings and build regenerative alternatives to the monoculture system. Sumit and Mridula were trained as engineers. They had decent careers and financial stability. However, there childhood experiences led them to follow the path of self-discovery and walkout from the system.
Can you please share a little about yourself and life journey?
Sumit: I studied in multiple towns and villages as my father was a bank employee. That made me curious to understand diverse communities. So after graduating, I started spending time with the tribal peoples’ in and around northern Maharashtra.
“Tribal communities are interdependent to their ecosystems, like water, forest, and land. Their children learn naturally by following oral traditions and hold a deep spiritual relationship with mother earth. There, the community and ecosystem is involved in nurturing them.”
I got the chance to understand natural learning systems that gave a different connotation to education. I also lived with nomadic tribes that follow seasonal migrating patterns, to experience minimalism and impermanence.
Mridula: My childhood environment was affectionate. However, being good at studies gradually burdened me with the pressures of doing well in exams. I completed my engineering and started working as an IT professional. My childhood experiences led to my conviction of never wanting my children to face that pressure.
What motivated you to choose a path of unschooling, conscious living and learning for your family?
Sumit: Living in tribal communities was a breakthrough experience in my life. I could never settle back into the current system of modern capitalist society. Despite this, I came back to the city to work and start a family. While I got convinced that reimagining education is just the tip of the iceberg, I knew we needed to challenge the our entire approach to life.We sent our son, Traingunya, to a school in Pune and observed the damages of schooling first hand. Our child was losing his individualism, creativity, and love for learning. Soon, my wife agreed to un-school and we gave him the freedom to explore the structure and rhythm of the day. We didn’t want to break his chain of natural learning.
We were always ecologically sensitive. So I left my job and started working with the tribal people on education. However, since tribal people are already natural learners, we tried to support their livelihoods instead. This experience challenged our concept of money. We came closer to minimalism and started living on gift culture.
Mridula: I had fallen in love with Sumit, for his beautiful understanding of life. But, after the birth of our first child, I succumbed to the pressures of my family and had to put our sonto school. My child had stopped smiling. He would keep doing his homework without any play which bothered me a lot. Gradually, I also made up my mind to reimagine life differently.
Why did you help start un schoolers ecovillage?
Sumit: We were trying to live a minimalist lifestyle while connecting with the tribal communities around Pune. Simultaneously, I was also reading about different experiments in education where I came across the articles and work done by Manish Jain, Jinan KB and many other philosophers. We were intrigued by their work which made us attend the Learning Societies Un-Conference (LSUC) in Orissa. This experience re-shaped our perspective about life. We wanted to live and work in rural areas nearby Pune. But we also wanted to know more about Shikshanter Andolan which was started 25 years ago by Manish Jain and Vidhi Jain. So we decided to move to Udaipur.
The Un-schoolers Ecovillage was a completely fascinating invitation. It was an opportunity for us to co-create together. We design activities together and connect with the local community to weave our learning ecosystem. The driving force in building UE was that we wanted our kids to get a beautiful experience and exposure in the lap of nature with beautiful souls around them.
What is your day like at Unschoolers Ecovillage? How does everyone contribute?
Sumit: Honestly, it is a self-structuring environment that we all co-create together. It is a safe and non-judgmental space as we envision a holistic community life for adults, children and all the creatures who inhabit the campus. Every day is different here, we don’t have a structure for our kids. They climb trees, go on treks in the mountains, swim in the lake for hours, run behind butterflies, frogs, insects, puppies, etc. We see all of these things are valuable forms of learning.
For adults, we have a loose structure to connect with the head, heart, and hands for transformative learning. Exchanging skills, volunteering in the kitchen, facilitating, and connecting with the nearby village, are some of them. Activities around making our eco-village self-sustainable from an alternate economy standpoint are also important. We host workshops like permaculture design, grow our food, pottery, carpentry, baking, painting, welding, etc. We invite artisans to live with us in the eco-village so that we can witness their wisdom along with their artwork. We make sustainable products for our daily requirements, like insecticides, shampoos, oil, Kada, lemongrass tea, bio-enzymes, etc.
In parallel, we hold circle discussions to try to more deeply understand the systems controlling us, our insecurities, and our inhibitions about life. We use millets and local produce in our daily diet while helping locals to revive millet agriculture. All in all, food, education, religion, lifestyle, medicine, waste, every aspect of life is being re-looked at to build an ecologically sustainable community.
We hosted a three-week Unschoolers Winter Camp with 15 teenagers from around the country. It was really beautiful to see how the kids enjoyed community life in nature.
Mridula: We have created an environment where we don’t have to force children to follow us all the time. This is something I felt uncomfortable about while working in an alternative school. If the kids are interested in what we are doing, they will join us willingly. The philosophy here is to never say no to children. This gives them the freedom and responsibility to go into whatever they want to explore.
My daughter is 7. Once she decided to make pancakes for everyone. She replaced maida with wheat flour and sugar with jaggery and the pancakes turned out amazingly. It is eye-opening to see them taking charge of their learning without any pressure. Our mother tongue is Marathi, but children pick up all languages spoken here. My 12-year-old son is much more independent now. I don’t need to look after him. He reaches out to anyone for assistance and everybody is trustworthy. Back in the city, I always held myself from trusting any other person. But didn’t want my children to grow in a non-trustworthy environment. Here, that fear is gone.
What have you had to unlearn to live in, grow with and build the Unschoolers Ecovillage?
Sumit: We need to challenge our social conditionings and beliefs carried from our upbringing. In the beginning, we were not sure whether our kids would be self-disciplined. Then, we decided to give them the independence to take charge of their schedule. Earlier, my son would wake up late and have lazy days. Slowly, he got bored and started to wake up early to see the sunrise and go for treks with his friends. This space is an inter-generational space that is vital for the holistic growth of children. They are friends with everyone over here. They enjoy talking to Mehta uncle, who is 90 years old as well as tribal kids who live nearby. We believe kids will find their guru based on their needs.
We must also question our anthropocentric human-centered approach and focus on living an eco-centric life in harmony with nature. I see my kids involved with insects, frogs, birds, and plants, and that bond is more important than getting into the taxonomy of the words. Most of the time, we tend to answer their questions or break the chain of their thoughts by trying to teach. But we must restrict ourselves from doing that as children will figure out their answers on their own. This will give them the responsibility and autonomy over what and how they learn.
What are some of the challenges you face at Unschoolers Ecovillage? How does decision-making take place?
Mridula: I have seen that the children adjust very well here, but the adults carry also social fears, anxieties and inhibitions. Families find it hard to let go of their livelihood options and urban rat-race lifestyle for the sake of unschooling their children. Visiting parents are generally eager to offer their knowledge and answers to children. I see it as a challenge as I would like my children to develop their perspective based on their own experiences instead of seeing everything according to others’ lens. Parents need to unlearn and question their parenting and teaching methods in such spaces. That is why we organize orientation sessions and consensus-driven agreements on how to host the learning space.
Sumit: There exist an Ecovillage Parliamentary Board (EPB) where we make decisions regarding the community together. So far lots of the decisions have revolved around the community kitchen and the care of community spaces. The membership of EPB is comprised of anchor families, team of Swaraj University, staff members, and some visiting families. We hold circles twice a week where problems and conflicts are discussed with the help of a practice called sarva anumati. It is a participatory decision-making process where anyone can raise objections and offer an alternate proposal. This practice was introduced to us by Abhishek Thakore and the Blue-Ribbon Movement of Mumbai. We also try to delve into what conflicts can help us reveal about ourselves.
What do you think about co-creating the Unschoolers Ecovillage in other parts of the country?
Sumit: The unschooling movement cannot really grow and evolve very well if it remains captive to the anaemic space of nuclear families. One of the fundamental problems of modern society is the design of nuclear family life. Being in a committed micro-community, even if it is just 5–6 families, can open up so many more learning and unlearning possibilities for both parents and children. So unschooling is as much about building a community as it is customised individual learning processes.
This simple model can be picked up and evolved anywhere in the country. One doesn’t even need to be in a village to build the Unschoolers Ecovillage. You can start by making your own neighborhood or apartment complex into an Unschoolers Ecovillage, along with your kids and neighbors. We would love to build an Unschoolers Ecovillage near Pune in the future.
Any message you would like to give to new parents starting this journey?Mridula: To help co-create the Unschoolers Ecovillage itself has been one of the best learning opportunities for us as parents. It is way better than parenting workshops. We love to live here, build the community, reconnect with nature and participate in the diverse workshops organized by Swaraj University. The Unschoolers Ecovillage is an easier way for families to start transitioning to community living and land-based lifestyles.We now understand more clearly that unschooling is as much about how we, as parents, keep opening and exploring ourselves as it is about what our children do. We would love to have more families and co-travelers join us to experiment and experience a more holistic life.
check out https://www.swarajuniversity.org/unschoolers-ecovillage
