This school at Agra temple has mostly Muslim students

Agra: In a story of perfect communal harmony in the otherwise communally sensitive Agra, a temple which opened its door for educating poor children last year in September has nearly 70% of its students from the Muslim community today. The school, Meri Pathshala, which runs at Pathwari Mandir in Bagh Muzaffar Khan has 47 students and is financed and run by five young and inspiring Hindus.A visit to the school on a Sunday morning was an experience in itself. Forty-odd children (between 5 and 15 years), with some girls wearing hijabs, sang a devotional song in perfect harmony. The prayer was followed by the National Anthem. Unmindful of the bitterness that keeps cropping up between these two communities, the latest one sparked off by the killing of local VHP leader Arun Mahor, these children spend three to four hours every day together inside the temple premises without any signs of animosity between them. The school, a brainchild of five professionals — Pintu Prateek Kardam, Kapil Choudhary, Jitendra Singh, Nitesh Agarwal and Neha Aiswal — was started in September 2015. “Every day I used to see children from this locality not going to school and spending their time on the streets doing nothing. It was my duty to teach them, at least enough to make them understand the difference between right and wrong. I discussed this idea with some like-minded friends,” Kardam, a teacher at a private school told TOI. When Choudhary and Singh, who work for private companies, and Agarwal, a wholeseller of medicines and Aiswal, a housewife with an MA degree in Arts agreed to join hands, Apni Pathshala was born. “When we started the school, it never crossed our minds that even Muslim children would start coming to a temple to learn. Now 33 of our students are Muslim. Their parents come to drop them every day and they do not have any qualms about the classes being held at a temple,” said Kardam. Classes are held every day of the week from 9 am to 12 noon. Kardam said their aim is to provide basic education — the three R’s of reading, writing and arithmetic — to these children and prepare the ones who have the potential to take board exams through open schools or other available modes. Aiswal, who teaches daily in the school, said initially some Muslim families showed some reluctance to send their children to the temple for classes but they overcame it once they saw other children going there. Nausheen, a 10-year-old girl, who has been attending the school for the last couple of months, said, “I’m very happy to be here with my friends. We learn many new things every day,” she said, adding that she loves celebrating festivals and birthdays with her friends. Tamanna, who too joined the school because her family could not afford to send her anywhere else, said that she looks forward to coming here every morning. “Education is very important for me,” said the girl, who dreams of becoming a teacher herself one day.