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A school shows the way
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The family get-togethers, part of the Communal Amity Through Familial Harmony (COMFY) programme, got going at the Al-Ameen Public School. SUNANDA KHANNA joins the students and parents.
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IN THE week that saw peaceniks and social activists converging in Mumbai, celebrating the world's largest social gathering, the World Social Forum and speaking on wide ranging topics such as caste, creed, race, war, terrorism and hunger, a school in downtown Edapally is doing something similar but without the brouhaha and hype that is linked with the WSF. In fact, there were no high profile speakers here, no impressive assembly of politicians and academicians to deliver speeches on the paybacks of living in peace and harmony.
Last week, on a lazy Saturday afternoon when the rest of the student community raced through tuitions and extra classes, the students of Al-Ameen Public School entered their school gates sans school bags. In tow were their parents, siblings and a small parcel of food that they had brought with them. The school premises, still squeaky clean after President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's recent visit wore a festive look as invitees wore their best outfits and glided into the spacious Silver Jubilee hall. Make no mistake: this was no regular parent-teacher meeting. It was an out-of-the-ordinary event.
It all began a couple of months ago when the school's manager, T. P. M. Ibrahim Khan approached Rashtrapati Bhavan with a unique programme, COMFY or Communal Amity Through Familial Harmony. Al-Ameen, a predominantly Muslim school where girls move around with head scarves, he said, wanted to pen its own story when it comes to building bonds of brotherhood between different communities. Would the President be willing to launch the programme? True to his style, the President agreed to come but only to meet the students of Al-Ameen, the school's claim to fame being the highest board exam score for a minority's school in the country.
Even as the civics teacher reads out the Constitution and educates her class about secularism, the management felt the term secularism needed to be embodied in a real life setting. As a first step it encouraged students to call and visit each other's families, be it Hindus, Christians or Muslims. Boarders are routinely given leave to spend time in the homes of their day-scholar friends. Next, periodic family get-togethers in the schools are scheduled at least once every quarter. Parents bring packets of food, which are handed over at the gate to students assigned the task of bringing it all together in the school kitchen. They now get on with the task of preparing plates of food, which has little bits from every family's parcel. As they go around the campus getting introduced to other parents, students serve them tea and snacks.
What gets ignited over spoonfuls of semiyan, munching hot samosas and delicious snow top icing cakes is a spirit of bonhomie, hopefully strong enough to ride over the differences of religion and creed. Clearly families that eat together, stay together.
Parents in the programme felt they had come to a better understanding about each other and gained an insight into their history; in a sense it bridged generational divides. Meanwhile, in conformity to an adolescent's mindset, friends and peers constituted a student's entire world. What mattered was the friendship and closeness he shared with his classmates; issues of divisions based on religion didn't in any way sully his horizon. Refusing to even get drawn into such talk, at the end of the day he had conceptualised secularism as a value in life.
Take a high five, Al-Ameen.
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