College Life

Education in India isn’t free, students have to pay a basic fee to the Government, to enter SXIE it costs 16.000 Rupees per year (£1 = 18 Rupees). The course lasts 4 semesters and at the end, the students get a teacher’s degree. Their week is from Monday to Saturday from 9am to 4pm (they have a 30 minute lunch break and a 10 minute break a bit later)

They don’t work on Sundays. They study English literature such as Shakespeare.

No religious object is allowed inside SXIE but there are religious classes. But religious tolerance is a much followed idea in India. Students live inside the campus, in individual places (no shared accommodations) and the Institute is based in town.

The Indian school system is derived of the British system: from Kindergarten to College.

Family and Cultural traditions

During the chat sessions, Marie-Joaona and I talked with Jackson Nadar, a 25 year old Tamil Indian who comes from the state of Tamil-Nadu at the extreme South of India, not very far from Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon). The State capital of Tamil-Nadu is Chennai (formerly known as Madras)

Jackson explained us that India was a very secular country. All religions are tolerated and there is no link between religion and politics (As in France since 1905). The main religion in India is Hinduism but it is multi-cultural country.

He explained us how marriage is done in India; you can get married at the age of 21 for boys and at the age of 18 for girls. There are still arranged marriages but also love marriages. If some marry before the age, it is illegal. The two fiancés don’t live together, sex is prohibited before marriage. He explained us how Tamils get married: the future wife wears a sari and the future husband wears a shirt, trousers and a tie. He seemed quite amazed by the fact that in France people live together before getting married (but is was the same for us when he told us that they don’t live together before getting marriage).

After talking about marriage, we talked about transportation in India. Like in France, they have cars, buses, planes, trains and boats but most people use their feet. He talked to us about the famous Mumbai local train.

Meaning of life and Religion

This video session turned mostly around religion, we asked them several questions on this topic. I learned that the position of women in India was that women are not as important as men, men take every decision. Women leads the family but has to follow their husbands decisions, even though things are changing, men still relish on their domination.

Religion is strongly linked in Indians’ lives the 4 main religions in India are Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.

In India, pupils learn about every other religion, so they can understand everybody’s differences, and by doing that, people are more tolerant.

The meaning of the red dot on women foreheads: It is named the tilaka, it describes the third eye of Shiva and it is placed on the 6^th chakra (named âjnâ-chakra) it underlines the spiritual dimension of the person wearing it. For women, it describes their marital status.

Women weren’t allowed to choose a career over their family, but now they can but it doesn’t depend only on her will.

In India, every morning is a blessing (when I heard that, I immediately thought about the song from the Monty Python’s in their movie The Life of Brian “: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Their families are the most important in their lives, but when here in Europe we talk about families we only see the parents and the children, in India; a family is the grandparents, the parents, the children but also the relatives.

The students we talked with are all from different religious backgrounds, they have converted themselves to Christianity.

Stereotypes and Prejudices

When we talk about stereotypes I had about India, I could talk about music, elephants, cows in the streets, tigers, fakirs, Bollywood, strange dances and music.

 But the image I got of French people from Indians wasn’t very surprising for me: We are seen as egocentric, arrogant (French are often seen like that) but what surprised me is that our food is very blunt for them (it can easily be understood because Indians like very spicy food: meals like curry, Vada Pav It can be described as hot spice, with hot spice inside and with a bit more hot spice for us Europeans) and we drink a lot of wine (Indians drink a lot of tea but they also produce wine in the Sula Vineyards near Goa).

When we told them our stereotype of India, they immediately laughed, we told them they were very keen in mathematics, their music and dances were quite strange (music and dancing is a part of every celebrations in India).

They are keen on sports (that are quite inexistent here in France) such as Cricket and field hockey.

Epilogue

I thought it was a great chance for me to have this course, it was a great pleasure to talk with other person, and a great opportunity to discover other point of views and other mentalities. Even though there were some technical issues which is totally normal, 

I want to thank Mrs. Frund for getting this course it was a fantastic experience and I hope it will continue for the next years because what you discover is truly amazing and priceless.