February 19, 2004

Despite borders and boundaries, cultural commonalities serve as strong linkages between people who share the same vision, writes Zubeida Mustafa

On a recent visit to Mumbai, I discovered that social commitment, like language and ideas, knows no geographical boundaries. That is why migration — whether voluntary in search of greener pastures or due to violent uprooting — inevitably results in the dissemination of the culture and norms of the people who move to new climes.

There in the heart of the Maharashtran capital, I felt I was in familiar environs at a garden party where people around me were conversing in Sindhi. Here was the Sindhi community of Mumbai which had assembled at very short notice on the invitation of Mala and Suresh Vazirani to welcome us, the Pakistani delegates from Sindh to the World Social Forum.

The members of this community had migrated to India more than 50 years ago at the time of partition believing that they would return home shortly when charged emotions had calmed down. That never happened. Most of them stayed on in Mumbai and built a new life for themselves. The older members still nurse nostalgic memories of their birthplace. “I use to live in Rambagh,” one of them informed me and wanted to know if it was still there. Another remembered Clifton fondly and asked me to describe to her how it is now.

They had left their assets behind. But there was one who carried with him to his new home his most precious wealth — his commitment to social service. That was a gentleman called Nirmaldas Gurbaxani, who had founded the Kamla Girls’ School in Hyderabad in 1909 when he was driven by a strong desire to educate the girls in his city.

Gurbaxani left Hyderabad in 1948 never to return. But how could he leave his school behind? And so, up came a second Kamla School in Mumbai as well. Gurbaxani died in 1966 and now his granddaughter Rekha Shahani runs the school with the same devotion and commitment which her worthy ancestor had shown in nurturing his institution.

It was Rekha — the chic and smartly turned out principal — who we met at the garden party and it was at her insistence that we visited her school. That is how Sultana Siddiqui, the talented Pakistani television producer, who was in our group, and I spent a morning at the Kamla High School in Khar, a suburb of Mumbai. It turned out to be an experience to remember.

To borrow Tolstoy’s words from Anna Karenina, “happy families are all alike”. One can say the same about all well run educational institutions. But Kamla school has some distinct features and it offered me a lot of food for thought. With 2,000 students on its rolls, the school has grown and adapted to the needs of the times over the years. From a girls’ school it became co-ed so that its capacity was fully utilized. Initially it was Sindhi medium, as the migrants wanted their children to study in their mother tongue.

But as the younger generation turned to Hindi and English, which offered them better career prospects in a country where there were few Sindhi speakers, Kamla adopted English as the language of instruction. Sindhi is even offered today as an optional subject. Barely 18 out of 100 in the class appearing for the HSC examination this year are studying Sindhi. Interest in the language is waning, observes Neeta Punjabi, who is the language teacher and paradoxically hails from Sindh and not Punjab.

We also learnt that the children now learn to read and write Sindhi in the Devnagri script. The Arabic script is not used any more as is the case with Urdu in India. The Kamla school library boasts of shelves after shelves of Sindhi classics with only a dwindling band of old timers able to read them in their original script.

Kamla High School and Junior College, to use its correct nomenclature, exudes love and humanism which is quite striking. Thus the donations from the school alumni for needy students go into a ‘brotherhood fund’ and no fee is charged at the secondary level because the government pays the salaries of the secondary school teachers.

The neat and clean school premises have been made colourful with pictures and charts as any good school has. But the sayings on the wall are not the usual cliches one finds on school boards. “Without love, the world itself would not survive,” says one. “War can’t kill love. Love can kill war,” runs another. This love is reflected in the meeting we have with the teachers in the library. They want to know all about Pakistan and would love to visit. There is no sign of hostility and it is difficult to believe that these are people whose government was on the brink of war with ours.

The tiny tots in the Nursery class dance to the beat of music as the cassette player chimes, “Nanhey munney bachchey teri muthee mein kiya hai”, and takes me back in time to the years when this song was a hit with all mothers with toddlers.

Rekha tells me that most of her students come from low income families — they are the sons and daughters of “bhaji wallas, labourers and so on” but after leaving school “they make it big in life”, she tells me. Kamla alumni are now doctors, lawyers and professionals. They keep in touch with their alma mater and the “brotherhood fund” never runs out.

What bonds the Kamla children to the school? It is the human touch provided by the teachers. The students perform a dance for us and as we applaud them you can see the pleasure on their faces as their teachers glow with pride.

Rekha’s mother looks on happily. We are then introduced to Sita Samtani, an elderly woman in her eighties. She has come specially to meet us. She began teaching in the Kamla school in Hyderabad in 1936 and later on became the founder principal of the school in Mumbai. “My father allowed me to take up the teaching job on the condition that I don’t draw a salary. He said he didn’t want people pointing at him and saying, ‘he makes his daughter work for money’,” Ms Samtani tells me. She is now a director of the school and her interest in the institution continues to be deep, the frailty of age notwithstanding.

As we settle in Rekha’s car for the drive back to our hotel, she winds down the glass and tells the boys who are playing outside the school gate, “Now children, go home. Okay you can play for another 10 minutes, and when I return in 15 minutes not a single one of you should be around,” she warns them gently as one can sense the concern and care in her voice.

The words come back to me a fortnight later when at a college in Karachi, the teacher who sees me off to the car tells her student, “You will then go straight home after you have dropped Aunty to her place. No loitering around.” It is plain that a devoted teacher’s concern for her students knows no geographical boundaries.

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