Imagine a community far from their home, who are coming to terms with their new identity after their country, India, emerging victorious from a historic freedom struggle with one of the mightiest powers of the world.
They – especially the Bhatias, who made up a large portion of the Bahrain community – also navigated the horrors of loved ones caught in the ‘Partition’, the dreaded loss of everything they held dear in Thatta and Karachi and the trek across the border to Indian refugee camps and homes of relatives.
Those were days without mobile phones and SatNav and news was painfully slow to percolate.
In the midst of all this, there was also the spark of hope.
In just five years, the new republic got a broad and detailed constitution that talked of the guarantee of citizens’ rights and laid the foundation for a deep-seated democratic order. Meanwhile, the families in Bahrain called their displaced loved ones to join them in this part of the world in their business, newly-wed brides came to make the kingdom their home and, inevitably, a growing gaggle of children were running wild.
There was no child-friendly infrastructure and since most of the women were barely educated or studied in Hindi or Sindhi languages, home-schooling was not possible.
That was when, community memory says, the news of an Indian teenager being nearly run over in daytime while playing in the street, galvanised Seth Damodar Issardas, an influential merchant to start an Indian community school.
And so, just six years after the emergence of the Republic of India, fully armed with freedom and a comprehensive constitution to safeguard it, the Bahraini Indian community got itself The Indian School.
Today, with more than seven Indian-curriculum based schools offering quality education, it is difficult to imagine the lonely furrow that the ISB ploughed as a sole community school. The school’s founding parents declared that every Indian child who sought admission should be accommodated. People scoffed at first but the school thrived. And as students poured in, it continued to outstrip the spaces found for it.
When in the late 1970s Atma Jashanmal, another giant of a community leader, told the community that the school should have a permanent campus, there were roars of dissent. “We are expats who will go back – why should we invest in a brick and mortar school?” people asked. But Jashanmal was a visionary and as influential as the original founder. He got the school a large chunk of land in the new Educational District and energised the community into funding and building an impressive school premises.
This year, the ISB celebrates 70 glorious years in service to the community. And how apt that its does so in the gentle shade of India’s Republic Day.
Its students have built success across the globe in so many career streams – surgeons, architects, food scientists, movie stars and artistes ... there is an ISB student wherever you turn.
But its biggest gift to the community is that its holds families together. Parents are not faced with the choice of sending children to boarding school or maintaining a home in India to facilitate their child’s education. Its other gift is that it showed the way communities and nationalities could integrate in Bahrain with their own schools.
Here’s to the ‘Big Brother’ of community schools in Bahrain – long may ISB thrive.
meeraresponse@gmail.com
&uuid=(email))