Now the festivities of Diwali are over and life will go on as usual again. The school will open again tomorrow and the boys at the Ashram are enjoying another day off. They also had the thought however to prepare a bit for tomorrow and got the school books out. Guests at the Ashram are usually also interested in who our boys are, where they come from and what their family situation is and they enjoy practicing with them or playing with them. For them it is another enjoyable way to get to know more about India and its people – by being with the children of the Ashram. Some weeks ago there was an incident which showed them an aspect of life here that I have written about before and that we here wish to finish: violence against children.
The situation was as following: one of our guests was in the Ashram entrance hall and playing with the younger children. One of the boys saw that his father had come to visit. This boy’s mother died some months ago and his father had asked us if we could take care of his son who would be alone at home the whole day otherwise, as the father has to work. As his father lives nearby, he visits him regularly and nobody paid much attention to the conversation that the boy and his father had. It was only when the father started telling him off for something that the other kids stopped playing and watched what was happening. Obviously our guest looked up, too, and that just in the moment when the father lifted his hand and slapped his son on the face. Gasps were heard all around and protest could be heard straight away from the other boys, telling the father that in this Ashram nobody was supposed to hit anybody else, big or small.
You can imagine the emotional situation of this boy. There he was being slapped for some kind of mistake in his school work in front of all other boys and on top of that in front of a guest! Even worse were the emotions of this guest, who had not understood a word of what was said and who was sitting there, asking herself what was going on and if she could have prevented the violence.
We are happy that she shared with us and told us about the situation but unfortunately we could only say sorry and that we did not allow such actions here. We would definitely tell the father to never hit his son again but we also know that it is not this one boy who gets beaten at home, it is something so normal in people’s homes that they don’t even think before they slap! The boy felt bad, our guest felt bad, we felt bad but the one person who would not feel bad was the one who caused all these feelings: the father, for whom it had been a necessary action in the education of his son.
It is not that the father does not love his child and also now, the boy went to spend Diwali with his father. With this incident however we understand why some of the children who have been living here for years often don’t really have the wish to go home during their holidays. The problem is that there is no awareness that hitting your child is really violence, something bad that you should not do and that creates anger and unhappiness in the child.
We will continue our efforts to reduce violence by giving an example in our school and our Ashram on how you can treat children, solve problems and raise them without hitting, beating, slapping and without threatening with violence. Because violence will only increase violence, nothing else. Treat your children with love and they will learn love and a loving behavior, towards you and their own children.
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