Where the mind is without fear

Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, August 19--“Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high, where knowledge is free into that heaven of freedom, my father let my Country awake…” For 13-year-old Tumpa Mandal, mind was never without fear. Nor the head was ever held high, as knowledge was never free in the dark gloomy shanties of Tiljala-Topsia area of the city.
For Tumpa, every day was the repetition of the same old story of seeing her mother getting battered by her drunken father for want of money. Dreaming of going to school like all the other kids living in the sky-scrappers of her area was just next to impossible. “I never thought of going to school as we have to struggle for getting two-square meal everyday. My mother was our bread earner as my father used to lose all he earned in a day by working as a daily labour in the tannery in gambling and drinking country liquors,” Tumpa said.
Tumpa is now a student of class-VIII in one of the city’s most prestigious school—Loreto Day School, Sealdah. She is one of the brightest students who compete with students from financially well off families, informed Uma Roy Choudhury (Chakraborty), educationist, Children’s Rights Development Service (CRDS), the non-governmental organisation that brought Tumpa into the light of education.
Tumpa is no single child whom CRDS is helping educated. The organisation has devoted itself to the mission of lifting up the condition of under privileged children of in and around the city through education, healthcare and recreational activities since 1989. “We have five schools in Tangra, Topsia, Kidderpore, Beltala and Rash Behari. There are also three primary schools in Chhatua and Gurguria village of South 24 Parganas, Bhubaneshwari in Sunderbans, where we impart education and other vocational trainings to the children of under-privileged families,” Roy Choudhury added.
Apart from teaching subjects like English, Bengali and Hindi, the CRDS schools help the students solving the complex problems mathematics and learning general science and general knowledge that are being taught in the normal schools. There are scopes for extra-curricular activities like dancing, singing, drawing, taking the students in excursions, sports and games just to make them fit for competing their counterparts of any other city schools.
Apart from getting encouragements from the state education and minorities’ development and welfare departments, the CRDS has achieved many accolades from the founder family of Alameen Mission, Uluberia and the management of the Loreto School, Kolkata. While the Loreto School management has come up with providing trainings to CRDS teachers and providing education to few students in their schools, the Alameen Mission is helping their mission of providing residential educational facilities to many children of under-privileged families.
Like Tumpa, Astami Mandal is one of those fortunate whom CRDS is providing education in Loreto Day School and Fulmoni Khatun, Sheikh Shabbir, Sheikh Karim are getting the best education at Alameen Mission. Good work never went unrecognized. Organisations like Friends of Calcutta, Association of Ecoles De La Terre, Uncle Association of France, former state primary education minister, Kanti Biswas, eminent social worker, Asha Lata Biswas, state minorities’ development and welfare minister, Abdus Sattar, the family members of the founder of Alameen Mission have come up to stand by the organisation in its mission of reaching light of education to street children and children of underprivileged families of those region. But for these children, CRDS has set only one goal “Let There Be Light”. EOM
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