India Post News Service

FREMONT: The Ekal Vidyalaya movement aims to help eradicate illiteracy from rural and tribal India by 2011. This goal from Ekal's website seems unattainable when we realize that 65.4 percent of India and more than 70 percent of tribal India is still illiterate. Swept under the carpet by the rapid growth of the Indian economy and the dazzling visions of India Inc., we tend to forget the vast, teeming masses of dispossessed Indians.

The Ekal movement does not forget or overlook them. The movement starts, supports, and runs non-formal one-teacher schools (known as Ekal Vidyalayas) all over India. They would like the deprived to flourish, the disenfranchised to become powerful and the destitute to be prosperous."Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". Ekal Vidyalaya follows this old adage to reach beyond relatively simple literacy to self-empowerment. It involves the entire local community to try and make their schools self-reliant in a period of five to seven years.

The Ekal Movement's 2007 Annual Concert is the Path to Peace, a multimedia dance production on September 9 at Smith Center in Ohlone College in Fremont. Path to Peace is drawn from Gandhiji's experiences that literacy and education make up the 'path towards peace'. His vision was that everyone and anyone belonging to free India must have a basic elementary education- all would be able to read, write, and do their arithmetic.

'Literacy is not an end to education but a means of intellectual development, building a person of character and enabling empowerment to shape the individual as a good citizen for an overall social progression and evolution'. Path to Peace- the multimedia production presented by Sridhar Shanmugam Dance Alliance group includes artistes from various nationalities. The group has performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center among other places. The music for the show is composed by Andrew Sterman, distinguished saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist and composer, has composed the show's music.

The other highlight of the evening will be the presence of Nitish Bhardwaj, the chief guest. To people who say who's that, that would be Lord Krishna from the famous TV epic, 'The Mahabharata'. The man who so came to personify Krishna, that his face is forever associated with the Mahabharata, is much more than that one facet. He has directed two contemporary Bharat Natyam productions in London based on societal stereotypes and the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He also recorded ten episodes of the 'Bhagvad Gita' for BBC Radio 4, performed the main lead of 'Lord Ram' in the English radio production 'Ramayan' for BBC Radio4 and received the 'Best Actor' nomination for the prestigious Sony awards, 1994.

He performed the lead role in a musical comedy extravaganza at one of London's oldest theatres- Theatre Royal Stratford East- which was one of the biggest fringe-theatre hits of UK in 1993. The production won the 'Time-Out' award in the UK. Acclaimed actor, director, and producer aside, he is also a qualified veterinary surgeon. If that was not enough to make him a shining beacon of education and opportunity, Nitish Bhardwaj has been politically active. He was a Member of the Indian Parliament until 1997 and Chairman of Madhya Pradesh Tourism Corporation in 2004-05.

With the celluloid personification of Krishna amongst us, we can only remember the immortal words of Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita, "karam kar phal ki chinta mat kar", (To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive). Adopting Krishna's advice to Arjun on another famous, ancient battlefield, Kurukshetra; the dedicated volunteers of the Ekal movement soldier on with their Herculean task.

Currently, Ekal has more than 20,142 schools throughout India that provides education to 604,260 children.