Coimbatore: Battling against a horde of odds and obstacles, Sridevi, a Muthuvan tribal girl from Tamil Nadu has secured first rank in Thrissur District in the recently held board exams for Std 10.
Coimbatore: Battling against a horde of odds and obstacles, Sridevi, a Muthuvan tribal girl from Tamil Nadu has secured first rank in Thrissur District in the recently held board exams for Std 10.
The Kerala Government has bestowed the honour of a state award on the girl and has announced it will bear all the expenses toward her higher education.
The tribe generally does not allow its girls to pursue education and imposes several restrictions on them. The tribals even have the habit of banishing the girls from their communities if they attempt to speak to men. Hailing from such a closed tribal environment, it is no mean feat that the girl has achieved this commendable distinction.
The hardships that the girl's father Chellamuthu faced in providing education to his child are too numerous to count. He used to walk 6 hours a day and cover nearly 15 km so that his daughter could pursue her studies. Speaking to us Chellamuthu said, "I am a native of Karumutti in Valparai, an area that is riddled with wild elephants. There are just around 60 families living in the area. We used to go to places in Tamil Nadu and Kerala looking for work."
He said after facing a lot of difficulty in Karumutti, his family moved to Poochikottampaarai, which is located 15 kms away from Kadamparai Dam.
"We moved to Poochikottampaarai for the sake of practising agriculture and providing education to my child. The area has no electricity, roads or even mobile signals. It is very tough in my tribe to provide education to a girl, but still I enrolled my daughter at Chalakudy Modern Residential school in Thrissur District and today she has done us proud. She has fetched laurels to our Muthuvan tribe today and I am confident that she will secure more victories," Chellamuthu added.
It is to be noted that the Muthuvans speak a dialect that is a sing-song mixture of Tamil and Malayalam.
The Kerala Government has bestowed the honour of a state award on the girl and has announced it will bear all the expenses toward her higher education.
The tribe generally does not allow its girls to pursue education and imposes several restrictions on them. The tribals even have the habit of banishing the girls from their communities if they attempt to speak to men. Hailing from such a closed tribal environment, it is no mean feat that the girl has achieved this commendable distinction.
The hardships that the girl's father Chellamuthu faced in providing education to his child are too numerous to count. He used to walk 6 hours a day and cover nearly 15 km so that his daughter could pursue her studies. Speaking to us Chellamuthu said, "I am a native of Karumutti in Valparai, an area that is riddled with wild elephants. There are just around 60 families living in the area. We used to go to places in Tamil Nadu and Kerala looking for work."
He said after facing a lot of difficulty in Karumutti, his family moved to Poochikottampaarai, which is located 15 kms away from Kadamparai Dam.
"We moved to Poochikottampaarai for the sake of practising agriculture and providing education to my child. The area has no electricity, roads or even mobile signals. It is very tough in my tribe to provide education to a girl, but still I enrolled my daughter at Chalakudy Modern Residential school in Thrissur District and today she has done us proud. She has fetched laurels to our Muthuvan tribe today and I am confident that she will secure more victories," Chellamuthu added.
It is to be noted that the Muthuvans speak a dialect that is a sing-song mixture of Tamil and Malayalam.