What is Real Education?
AN ILLITERATE’S DECLARATION TO THE LITERACY PREACHER by Shri Dayal Chandra Soni First Published in 1996 Translated and Adapted from Mewari by Shri Dayal Chandra Soni and Vidhi Jain ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shri Dayal Chandra Soni was born in 1919 in Salumbar, a small town in Mewar, Rajasthan. Having received intensive training in ‘Basic Education’ under well-known people, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Zakhir Hussain, Vinoba Bhave and Khwaja Galamusadan, he worked for several years as a teacher at Vidya Bhawan, a small school, based on Gandhian philosophy and principles of community service, founded in 1931 in Udaipur. In the 1960s, Dayalji left Vidya Bhawan because of his controversial views and made a living through tutoring, freelance writing and eventually by setting up a small flour grinding mill in his home. The experiences with running the grinding mill profoundly influenced his thinking about education. He later worked at Seva Mandir, an NGO in Udaipur, on an innovative literacy campaign for