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By:

Shoumojit Banerjee

27 August 2024 at 9:57:52 am

Classroom of Courage

In drought-scarred Maharashtra, a couple’s experiment in democratic schooling is turning child beggars into model citizens In the parched stretches of Maharashtra, from Solapur to the drought-hit villages of Marathwada, a modest social experiment has quietly unfolded for nearly two decades. It is neither a grand government scheme nor a corporate-backed charity. Since 2007, the Ajit Foundation, founded by Mahesh and Vinaya Nimbalkar, has worked with children living at the sharpest edges of...

Classroom of Courage

In drought-scarred Maharashtra, a couple’s experiment in democratic schooling is turning child beggars into model citizens In the parched stretches of Maharashtra, from Solapur to the drought-hit villages of Marathwada, a modest social experiment has quietly unfolded for nearly two decades. It is neither a grand government scheme nor a corporate-backed charity. Since 2007, the Ajit Foundation, founded by Mahesh and Vinaya Nimbalkar, has worked with children living at the sharpest edges of society in Maharashtra. The foundation has become a home for out-of-school children, those who have never enrolled, the children of migrant labourers and single parents, and those who scavenge at garbage dumps or drift between odd jobs. To call their foundation an “NGO” is to miss the point. Vinaya Nimbalkar describes it as a “democratic laboratory”, where education is not merely instruction but an initiation into citizenship. The couple were once government schoolteachers with the Solapur Zilla Parishad, leading stable lives. Yet what they witnessed unsettled them: children who had never held a pencil, begging at traffic signals or sorting refuse for a living. Prompted by this reality, the Nimbalkars resigned their jobs to work full-time for the education of such children. Leap of Faith They began modestly, teaching children in migrant settlements in Solapur and using their own salaries to pay small honorariums to activists. Funds soon ran dry, and volunteers drifted away. Forced out of their home because of their commitment to the cause, they started a one-room school where Vinaya, Mahesh, their infant son Srijan and forty children aged six to fourteen lived together as an unlikely family. The experiment later moved to Barshi in the Solapur district with support from Anandvan. Rural hardship, financial uncertainty and the pandemic repeatedly tested their resolve. At one stage, they assumed educational guardianship of nearly 200 children from families that survived by collecting scrap on the village outskirts. Eventually, the foundation relocated to Talegaon Dabhade near Pune, where it now runs a residential hostel. Twenty-five children currently live and study there. The numbers may seem modest, but the ambition is not. Democracy in Practice What distinguishes the Ajit Foundation is not only who it serves but also how it operates. Within its walls, democracy is practised through a Children’s Gram Panchayat and a miniature Municipal Council elected by the children themselves. Young candidates canvass, hold meetings and present their budgets. Children maintain accounts and share decisions about chores, activities and certain disciplinary matters. In a country where democratic culture is often reduced to voting, the foundation’s approach is quietly radical. It treats children from marginalised backgrounds as citizens in formation. The right to choose — whether to focus on sport, cooking, mathematics or cultural activities — is respected. “We try never to take away what is their own,” says Vinaya Nimbalkar. Rather than forcing every child into a uniform academic mould, individual abilities are encouraged. A boy skilled in daily calculations may not be pushed into hours of bookish study; a girl who excels in cooking may lead the kitchen team. For children who have known only precarity, standing for election, managing a budget or speaking at a meeting can be transformative. On International Women’s Day, the foundation seeks visibility not just for praise but for partnership. If you are inspired by their mission, consider supporting or collaborating—your involvement can help extend opportunities to more children in need.

Hindutva’s Weird Foot-Soldiers

A farcical censorship row at Bhopal’s lit fest shows how in trying to protect Hindutva from imagined enemies, its most overzealous foot-soldiers have embarrassed the very ideas they claimed to defend.

Syed Akbaruddin, easily among the most effective communicators, was singing paeans for Narendra Modi’s foreign policy; a top Pune industrialist, Aditya Pittie, was fondly talking of ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision while detailing his book on the theme. Earlier, Bhupendra Yadav, Union Minister, discussed his book on BJP’s rise whereas Amitabh Kant and Rajiv Kumar, both former heads of NITI Aayog under BJP government, dissected economic policies and presented development perspectives of the government and then Vikram Sampath dealt at length on Veer Savarkar.


Where did this happen? Well, all this action was under the banner of the Bhopal Literature and Art Festival at the Bharat Bhawan, an iconic multi-arts complex designed by famous architect Charles Correa in past few years. It was here the tribal artistes Bhuri Bai and Durga Bai Vyam (both Padmashri awardees) were not only felicitated, but their beautiful exhibitions were also put up by the Society for Culture and Environment, a non-profit group that hosts Bhopal Literature and Art Festival (BLF) since 2019. BLF promotes tribal art and its practitioners who are normally found on the sidelines. They were brought into the mainstream and their art celebrated. The non-English speaking tribal artistes from 10 states participated this year at Bhopal.


Then arrived Aabhas Maldahiyar, in January 2026. The young architect-turned author of a successful book on Babur made BLF ‘famous’ overnight, thanks to his session which never happened. Why? Because a small, self-seeking ‘Hindutva group’ in Bhopal possessing nasty nuisance value under its own government, opposed it.


Needless Furore

No sooner than Aabhas landed in Bhopal, some right wing, ill-informed and biased individuals, led-guided by a Sangh-supported newspaper, created furore around the book which none of them cared to read. A low-circulation Hindi newspaper printed a story opposing BLF and accused the hosts of inviting an author who, they thought, was pro-Babur. They did not bother to speak to the brilliant writer nor to the organisers to ascertain facts.


The three-day popular Fest is organized with the support of MP Government and many Indian philanthropists. The Society, an ensemble of historians, journalists, former bureaucrats, army officers and architects, got together in 2018; conceived an idea of having a festival around books, knowledge and arts to promote India’s veritable soft power. MP had no such unique Lit Fest before.


Raghav Chandra, a creative former IAS officer from MP and, an alumnus of Harvard University, is the altruistic brain behind BLF.


Books and controversies are not new to any part of the world, but what happened in Bhopal was bizarre. The illiterate elements who threatened to disrupt BLF and forced the police to cancel the session of Maldahiyar, slated on January 10, went against their own ideology and its proponent who came to Bhopal for the first time.


A large posse of police suddenly swooped down upon state-owned Bharat Bhawan when the inauguration of the 8th edition of BLF was happening. Sahitya Akademi Awardee Hindi author Govind Mishra, 86, was there to inaugurate the Fest along with Mumbai-based well-known theatre personality Waman Kendre, the chairman of Bharat Bhawan. Interestingly, BJP has been in power close to 25 years in MP where an author was set to expose the rule of Babur but was denied the opportunity. A dejected Aabhas said: ‘’I was not there to glorify Babur but to tell people that he was anything but tolerant towards Hindus’’.


Distorted Facts

The travesty of facts is that the right-wing forces in MP succeeded in their efforts to block a BLF session, something that will gladden the Communists. Freedom of expression was muzzled. But a ‘learned’ vice chancellor of national journalism university, wrote official letter to culture minister Dharmendra Lodhi against BLF without finding out truth. Incidentally, the V-C had got his book released at the hands of Dr. Mohan Bhagwat a few years ago at the same Bharat Bhawan where he does not want a Lit Fest to happen. After that he climbed up the ladder rapidly not to look back ever.


Curiously, the newspaper’s report led to the orchestrated protests by an ignorant lot and ignited controversy out of nothing. The group, having been stunned following the author’s long post to PM on X, later began training their guns at the BLF organisers to level false charges and hide their big blooper. Raghav Chandra refutes allegations of foreign donations saying not a single paisa had been collected from abroad. ‘’If they think Australian or French authors read out their books at BLF means foreign funding, I can only pity them’’, he quipped, adding ‘over 700 scholars, painters, poets, Hindi writers, students and tribal artistes assembled under BLF umbrella in eight years and praised our efforts, so some people are jealous’.


Satish Jha, who resided in the US for many years, attended the BLF for two years, including this January. He observed: ‘It was the quiet opera of the heartland…the story of BLF is of a quiet rebellion against noise, a sanctuary where ideas are not shouted but heard, where the heartland’s voice is neither romanticized nor drowned out but amplified with care.’


While it may look like a storm in a teacup, the outcome of the entire drama created by Hindutva forces exposed themselves badly as an illiterate lot instead of taking on the Babur author or the organisers - which was their aim. They did more damage to Mohan Yadav government and to ‘Hindu philosophy’ than to a neutral, non-political literary group.


(The writer is a senior political and environment journalist based in Bhopal. Views personal.)

 


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