Have you ever felt school was not enough to represent the inner human being?

Bhaber Pathshala (or Bhabshala) was started in 2022 in a place called Mohishdhal Moujar, just 10 km away from Shantiniketan station with probably the same peripheral vision of spreading the essential mediums of art and activities. Four people and their need to create communities started this space. Arnab Sengupta, Meenu Baske, Pritam Chakraborty, and Anjan Das started the initiative to teach the local Santali kids. The commune now has 30 kids visiting it. These four teachers visit the place twice a week. Anjan Das is in charge of artistic guidance, paintings, and drawings; Pritam Chakraborty teaches music to the kids there. Meenu Baske has the pivotal role of translating foreign languages, that is, Bengali and English, to the Santali language so the children can learn, imbibe and express their own emotions. Arnab Sengupta has a long history as a theatre artist, a teacher by profession, and a cultural studies propagator. The inevitable Sengupta started his communion journey with an ashram in Bankura named Kalyan Sangha. After the pandemic period of 2019-2021, Sengupta decided to create this path-shala along with his three other comrades in the model of studying of what Rabindranath Tagore and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar had envisioned for India. They have bought a plot of land which is in no way barricaded with barbed wires, it has just bamboo planks in the demarcating points and a ‘char-chala’ (a thatched roof of straws and four beams to support the roof.) The whole concept of this settlement is openness. There is very little constriction even in the eye line of the children flocking to have a peaceful co-existence in tune with the normative cultural parameters.

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“Santali is their mother tongue, while Bengali and English are foreign languages to them. This isn’t a school or a private tutoring centre in any sense. We call it Bhaber Pathshala, or Bhabshala—because this is a place where we weave the joys of life through reading, writing, counting, and art. They are not our students, and we are not their teachers,” said Arnab Sengupta about Bhabshala, which will be two years old this December of 2024.

Education according to Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore believed that education should not be limited to the acquisition of knowledge, but should also focus on the development of the whole person, including their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. He advocated for learning that is rooted in one’s culture and surroundings, rather than imposing Western or colonial models of education. This approach emphasised the importance of local languages, customs, and traditions. Tagore’s concept of mass education aimed to reach the rural and marginalised populations, particularly women and children, who were excluded from formal education. He believed that education should be accessible and inclusive, breaking down social and economic barriers. Institutionalised education has been urban at its core, not really reaching the peripheries. Maintaining such open schools of physical and mental expression builds up introspection among the children, which most lack in a four-walled, uniformed classroom. There have been countless movements among the city folks of ‘return to nature’ in the late-capitalist setup. Education, too, has become a commodity; in such conditions, teachers like Sengupta are a rarity and definitely a minority.

What Vidyasagar envisioned

Vidyasagar believed in the importance of mass education for social transformation. He advocated for the education of the masses, regardless of caste, creed, or social status. Vidyasagar supported the idea of free and compulsory education for all children, including girls and women. He believed that education was a fundamental right and should be accessible to everyone, regardless of economic or social background. Vidyasagar’s efforts helped democratise education in India, making it more accessible to people from all walks of life. Today, there are government schools in almost every village in India. However, the purpose of education has not really changed from what the colonists had in mind for us. Education has simply been a training process to make an individual ready for economic and societal norms. By providing spaces for dance, music, and art, Bhabshala is creating an environment for the students that mainstream institutions rarely can.

Talking to Arnab, he delightfully mentions how two of the kids from this space have gone on to live in hostels; Ram and Rima. But whenever they come back on breaks to their homes, they are more than eager to culminate into Bhabshala.

No work is done in seclusion. There are small pockets of such spaces around. One such alternative educational space is ‘Choloman Pathshala’, which translates to a school on wheels. They operate in Diganta Polli, Shantiniketan, and Balgona. All these communities have been born out of the need for expression and upliftment of non-city children.