{"id":201536,"date":"2022-01-10T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=201536"},"modified":"2022-01-08T10:05:09","modified_gmt":"2022-01-08T10:05:09","slug":"new-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/new-india\/","title":{"rendered":"New India"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a photograph of a twelve year old student who is teaching the poor children of his locality in Delhi. What he teaches is what he learns in his own regular school \u2014 arithmetic, Hindi language and some history of India. If you look carefully, the children are sitting below\u00a0a flyover on a busy road. A neighbouring wall is being used as a\u00a0blackboard by this intrepid young teacher. The words\u00a0INDIA DEKHO means\u00a0See India.<\/em><\/p>\n

This photo is reminiscent of a Hindi film\u00a0Shree 420\u00a0<\/em>made in 1955\u00a0by the well known actor – Director\u00a0Raj Kapoor<\/em>.\u00a0In the film,\u00a0Nargis<\/em>\u00a0the leading actress\u00a0was shown\u00a0teaching street children without charging any fees near her home in Bombay (Mumbai) a big commercial town on the western coast of India. The children sat on the ground as the photo also demonstrates.<\/p>\n

One should mention that there are many good public and private schools all over the country but poor children need additional help that this young tutor is providing.<\/p>\n

I would also like to talk about the school where Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi studied when he was a child. He was born in\u00a0Porbander<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(in the state of Gujarat) on 2 October 1869, but his schooling was in a neighbouring town of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rajkot for a few years.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

His father was a rich person and so Gandhi studied in a good school that was located in a big building and had desks for the students to sit on. The teacher taught from a table on a raised dais. Gandhi had to study Arithmetic, Gujarati language, History and Geography.<\/p>\n

There were no girls studying in that school. In fact there were very few schools where girls could study. Several years later (1909) when he wrote a small book called\u00a0Hind Swaraj\u00a0<\/em>he wrote \u2018To teach boys reading writing and arithmetic is called primary education\u2019.<\/p>\n

Indirectly he pointed out that girls were not getting formal schooling. He also suggested that school education should also include various skills required in society. Gandhi also promoted the learning of southern Indian languages by people of north and vice versa and learning of Hindi language by all. He felt that if we only learn English in addition to our regional languages we will remain mentally enslaved. India has had a rich repertoire of culture \u2014 Sanskrit and Bhagwad Gita that have been the country\u2019s guiding spirit since centuries past.<\/p>\n

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu bigot on 30 January 1948, but the spirit of Gandhi boldly remains today in India.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dr Ravi P Bhatia is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, an<\/em> educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University. His new book, <\/em>A Garland of Ideas\u2014Gandhian, Religious, Educational, Environmental was published recently in Delhi.<\/em> ravipbhatia@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a photograph of a twelve year old student who is teaching the poor children of his locality in Delhi. What he teaches is what he learns in his own regular school \u2014 arithmetic, Hindi language and some history of India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":166069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[258,524,759],"class_list":["post-201536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-education","tag-gandhi","tag-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}