by Alisha Patil, Grade 11
‘We, the People of India’ was a session that happened at the Kathashala on Day 1 of NLF. Featuring Ashok Rajagopalan, the illustrator of 5 Fantastic Facts about the Indian Constitution, this session’s purpose was to make the history and ways of our people accessible to young children, between the ages of 6-8.
He engaged the children in the audience throughout the session, asking them about rules (what rules they had to follow, which ones they liked or didn’t, which ones were objectively ‘good’ rules, and which were ‘bad’), the people they knew (from next-door babies to housekeepers), and about their unique qualities (language, food, traditions, etc.)
Building on the responses to these question, Mr. Rajagopalan imparted nuggets of both knowledge and words of wisdom to our young learners during the session, including the fact that the Indian constitution is the longest in the world; that it—unlike others—did not give special credence to any one god, promoting inclusivity and fairness from the start; and that it gave everyone over 18 the right to vote, never barring women from this chance to voice their opinions.
At the end of the session, Mr. Rajagopalan carried forward all he had said, assigning the children an activity: each child was to go home, draw themself and their friends, and write what was similar between them, what was different, and what about those friends and their own practices was unfamiliar to them. A child even said, towards the very end, that “everybody is unique, that is good”, which seemed to me an apt summary of the ideas that came up during the session.
