Aizawl, India - Mizoram, the state with the highest literacy after Kerala, mainly due to the educational foundation laid by Christian missionaries, is ironically facing obstacles in achieving hundred per cent literacy due to religious groups.
Besides poverty in remote villages, the main obstacle facing the state government in the total literacy campaign are the beliefs of some religious sects.
In Melriat village near here, a sect called 'Pawlchhuak' (people who do not want to be identified with any religious denomination) have refused to send their children to schools.
Hmingsanga, a spokesman of the state's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Mission told PTI that 23 families, followers of the high priestess of the sect - Lalliani - initially did not allow 14 of their children to attend school as it "requires enrollment of names".
"She does not allow 'the believers' to enroll themselves even in electoral rolls or any other kind of government or organisation's registers and even forbids them from having ration cards to avail food grains from government fair price shops at lower rates," Hmingsanga said.
However, the SSA Mission's efforts have borne some fruit as some of the members of the sect now want to send their children to schools, he said.
Magistrates even threatened the group that criminal cases could be registered against them if they do not allow their children to have formal or informal education as it was against the Constitution and the law.
Liansanga, a member of the sect, who was convinced that the best thing for his child was to have formal education, even divorced his wife who objected to his "blasphemous" decision.
"After divorcing his wife, Liansanga can now send his son to a local school to join class five," Hmingsanga said.
After a lot of persuasion and threats of legal actions, the sect finally agreed recently to have peer educators, from "only among themselves" to impart education to their children.
Hmingsanga opined that though Lalliani's had "succumbed to SSA's pressures, it was only a face saving exercise for fear of being facing legal actions."
It was still very difficult to monitor the working of the SSA with the sect through the peer educators as everything was performed "under wraps", he said.
Meanwhile, another religious cult at Ralvawng Hamlet in southern Mizoram's Lunglei district prohibited its members from sending their offspring to schools.
Mizo Zirlia Pawl (MSP) or Mizo Students' Federation southern headquarters in Lunglei last week sent some of their leaders to persuade the sect's priests to allow the children to go to school.
Dr R Lalthangliana, the state's Education Minister, however, said that the obstacles would soon be cleared through awareness campaigns launched by the SSA Mission.
"I have declared that Mizoram will have the highest literacy rate in the country by surpassing Kerala within a few years," Lalthangliana said.