Overview

The designers of “A Virtual Village” have attempted to create a pedagogical tool that reflects, however dimly, the complex interfaces and interactions among North Indians and their social and cultural lives. In order to do so, we have sought to establish a learning environment crafted less as a database and more as an experiential endeavor. In order for users to draw original conclusions about what they encounter, they must immerse themselves as fully as possible in the website.

We have resisted over-reliance on any of the staple social categories used to describe Indians – caste and religion – in order to prompt users to draw their own conclusions. For hundreds of years, labels like “Brahmin,,” “Harijan,” “Pathan,” “Muslim,” and “Hindu” have carried enormous weight for outside (especially Western) observers of the South Asian subcontinent. Their use often immediately impels an audience to imagine mutually-exclusive social groups whose interaction, if any, are essentially hostile. Although we have no desire to whitewash the social tensions in Arampur, we consider it best not to underscore these identities too heavily because individual Arampur residents live with many more identities than just these allowing them to relate to different groups with varying status throughout their daily lives. Identities include ones of class, neighborhood, gender, nation, state, profession, school class, and sports team. While not eschewing categories (since residents themselves continually rely on them), “A Virtual Village” seeks to portray this complexity by not reducing all individuals to a narrow set of them.

The designers recognize (1) that this holistic approach demands a great deal of extended observation and critical thinking on the part of the students and (2) that only those students with a preexisting interest in any of the associated topic can be expected to engage the website on their own terms. Most students will benefit if their instructors provide specific themes to explore and open-ended questions to answer. The list below offers only a beginning, and the designers would appreciate if instructors shared their own experiences of, reflections on, and suggestions for the site with us by using the questionnaire that is accessible from the home page.

Drawing on our own experience assigning the website for class use, the designers make four recommendations.

First, we urge instructors to assign the “About Arampur” section, in full, as the starting point for their students. They should reiterate the point made there that “A Virtual Village” imperfectly depicts only one of almost 600,000 Indian villages and should not be taken as “representative” or “average.” Students (and teachers) engaging in the study of any culture for the first time often fall into the easy trap of turning observations about a specific community into universal claims about an entire culture. As in all cultural studies, students often need help in rejecting claims about “all” in favor of “some,” “many,” or “most.” The use of some of the supplementary books and films listed in the Resources/Bibliography section will contribute to this goal.

Second, instructors should repeatedly emphasize the large size of the website and stipulate an amount of time they expect students to invest in engaging it. Most students appear to anticipate that “a website” will be relatively brief and quickly explored which leads to a failure to budget time accordingly.

Third, if assigning the entire site demands more time than the students (or instructor) can manage, the thematic maps (accessible from the home page) provide an alternative. By providing maps marking specific sites that relate to individual themes, this aspect allows a more focused excursion through the virtual village.

Fourth, students should be told to identify early on a computer that will adequately allow both a fast enough connection and enough capability to engage the website fully. Many are those who wait until the last minute and discover too late that their interface is not up to the task.

One way to use the Virtual Village is to encourage students to explore not only the conventional assumptions made in scholarship about India but also their own pre-understandings about Indian society. These issues can be approached by framing an exploration of the Virtual Village in terms of questions related to larger themes.

Suggested questions
(1) On society:

a. What are the divisions of society to which Arampur residents most commonly refer in their interviews? How do these compare to the social divisions to which your family and friends most commonly refer?
b. How do they describe the Village? What aspects of village life do they emphasize?
c. How do they describe Bihar? And India?
d. Is their primary focus local, national, or global?
e. Do residents of the Village mention caste and gender distinctions? If so, in what context? Do they mention caste and gender more or less than you expected?
f. How does the layout of Arampur reflect its social life? How does this compare with your own neighborhood and larger environs?
g. What changes have Arampur residents seen in the past? Are there specific patterns of change that can be identified? What changes would you anticipate to occur in Arampur in the next five years? Ten years?
h. What facet of Arampur most surprised you? Why? What does this say about your expectations for Indian rural life? From where did these expectations come?

(2) On religion:

a. To what extent is religion something that residents think is important? Does religious affiliation or identity have a prominent place in how residents understand themselves?
b. Describe the diversity of religious practices and expressions encountered in “A Virtual Village.” What similarities do you see in the traditions of various individuals or families? What divergences?
c. When are the words “Hindu,” “Hinduism,” and “The Eternal Dharma” mentioned and how?
d. What characterizes the religious lives of Hindus in Arampur? What common themes do you discern in their practices and beliefs? Describe some of the diversity you see.
e. When are the words “Muslim,” and “Islam” mentioned?
f. What characterizes the religious lives of Muslims in Arampur? What common themes do you discern in their practices and beliefs? Describe some of the diversity you see.
g. What common themes do Hindus and Muslims share? What are their divergences? Are Hindus any more different to Muslims than Hindus are among themselves? How about Muslims?
h. Is religion understood in terms of belief or practice or a way of life? Islam? What is the difference between the two?
i. Describe the spaces that religious communities set aside for their practices. What patterns can you discern? Explain with illustrations.
j. Is the term religion a helpful category for understanding life in the Virtual Village or does it need to be modified, or even abandoned?

(3) On Health and Healing:

a. What treatments are available to residents in the Village? Are they mutually exclusive or complementary?
b. What ailments do people experience and does that determine what treatment they seek?
c. What are the underlying understandings of health and healing in the Village?

(4) On cultural studies:

a. What are the limits of “A Virtual Village” as a portrayal of Arampur? What is not shown? Why do you think this item was omitted?
b. How might the website differ if an Arampur resident designed it? Choose two residents and explain how you conjecture they would design this website? How would you?

(5) The Interview Context:

a. How do the questions shape the responses?
b. Are there any questions that are “leading?”
c. Are there questions that should have been asked but weren’t?
d. Do you feel some responses are candid and others not? Can you tell?
e. Are there instances when someone seems to be avoiding answering questions?
f. Are there instances when the interviewers seem to feel uncomfortable or are having difficulty communicating?
g. How would you answer if similar questions were put to you? How would you respond to the questions asked of Mathews Bhai in the “My Life” section?
h. What appears to be missing from the interviews?
h. What are the limitations of this kind of research? What are its benefits and possibilities?

(6) The Visual Context:

a. How does the structure of the Roam feature shape your experience of the Village?
b. How do the images shape your perceptions of people and life in the Village?
c, How is virtually navigating the Village different from actually going there? How do these differences shape your perceptions of life in the Village?
d. What appears to be missing from the visual images?
e. Is there any way to access “real life” in Arampur?