My books, your books, our books…
- Independent Ink
- Sep 6
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 7
The libraries in these schools are extraordinary. Public libraries offer memberships to 6-month-old babies! I saw this in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, Canada. Even 4th and 5th graders are used to ‘heavy books’. In summer, children are encouraged to read and write, and discover their independent minds.
By Ramsharan Joshi, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
– Nelson Mandela
“Education is the practice of freedom.”
– Paulo Freire
Photo courtesy Wikipedia.
According to government data, around 92,439 government schools have been shut down across the country, with the highest number in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the BJP since years.
Our society is going through a terrible time since the summer of 2014. Even evident truths are being twisted into falsehoods. History is being rewritten. Mumbo jumbo goes in the name of science. The knowledge society is being systematically dismantled.
To guard against such manipulations, we must learn to nurture a culture of libraries — in every neighborhood, in every locality, inside homes and classrooms — and demand quality textbooks. In hyper-consumerist capitalist societies, such a library culture should thrive vibrantly, especially with a focus on children’s books. Libraries should make special arrangements for children because they are going to be our enlightened, thoughtful, discerning citizens. They will make the world a better place.
A Personal Experience
Speaking of libraries, allow me to share a personal and joyful piece of news. Two of my books — my autobiography, The Bonsai of My Time, and The Islands of Deprivation — have been given their due place in the Harvard University Library in Boston, USA. Naturally, this makes me happy. There's a reason for this happiness.
The news of my books being housed in Harvard gave me a sense of fulfillment. It is a natural emotional response of any ‘biological being’. Surely, a ‘non-biological being’ does not experience such emotions.
The story is that one day, my eldest daughter, Dr Manasvita Joshi, a scientist now working in Harvard, informed me that two of my books were available in the Harvard library — information she received from a Jewish colleague. Both work in the university's data center. One book was issued from the central library; the other, related to tribal communities, from a specialized anthropology library. A library worker of Indian-Malayali origin facilitated access.
Harvard had purchased the books it has a strict selection criteria. This proves that even the most advanced capitalist countries keep a sharp eye on what they consider important literary and works related to social sciences/anthropology/politics from developing countries, so as to stay informed.
Open societies keep their doors open to knowledge from other societies. I am reminded of what Gunnar Myrdal (author of Asian Drama) once said: In the Middle Ages, Western colonial powers wielded four weapons — ships, the Bible, the sword, and anthropology.
A university’s role is not merely to distribute degrees; it is to create knowledge. Knowledge that liberates. That is why institutions like Harvard resist authoritarian regimes like the Trump administration. That is why, its students, like most American universities, have protests in thousands against the genocide in Gaza, even in their convocation functions, holding the Palestinian flag and placards. Some have suffered, even jailed.
It confirms that doors to knowledge should never be closed. Remember McCarthyism in 1950s America, when Marxist, socialist, liberal and dissenting literature was banned? Many writers, actors, filmmakers and artists were imprisoned or hounded. But the backlash forced change, and Senator McCarthy himself fell from grace. A healthy capitalist democracy learns from its mistakes and creates new tools for self-preservation — unlike many communist regimes, which, assuming a totalitarian character, failed so starkly.
Remember how The Little Red Book of Mao sold in the West, while it was banned in India? Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is widely sold in the US and Europe, but almost impossible to find in India.
Today’s India: Education Under Siege
In India, textbooks are being systematically purged; books that encourage critical thinking. Under the guise of rewriting history, history itself is being polarized. Even figures like Tipu Sultan, who fought fiercely against the British, are being erased. Prominent medieval Muslim rulers are being marginalized.
That is why globally respected historians like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, DD Kosambi, RS Sharma, and DN Jha are being sidelined in the course structures.
A recent tragedy in Uttar Pradesh illustrates this. A teacher, Dr Rajneesh Gangwar, recited this poem to his students:
“Don’t carry the Kanwar, light the lamp of knowledge. Serve humanity and become a true human.”
This innocent poem landed him with an FIR. The poem encouraged students to become Bhagat Singh-like figures, reject superstition, and remain alert to capitalist and religious deceptions. But, as per the current regime, even this harmless poem seems dangerous.
Meanwhile, videos of Kanwariya mobs vandalizing public property are also surfacing. This is routine every year, even as the UP and Uttarakhand government, run by the BJP, looks the other way.
In today’s India, the aggressive image of the Kanwariya is a tool for cultural and communal polarization, supported by the ruling powers. The real crime of the teacher was that he was promoting critical thinking and humanism — something the BJP-RSS ideology actively opposes. They want to erect barricades of myth around the public. One culture, one nation, one religion – is that possible in a vast and plural country with multiple cultures, languages, identities, where our doctrine has always been ‘unity in diversity’.
Government Schools: Victims of This Barricade
At one time, committed educators like Dr Anil Sadgopal led movements for a common school system — one curriculum and shared space of learning for all until higher secondary level, with free education for all. My three granddaughters are part of this system — where even the children of daily wage workers and the poor can attend the same schools, learn the same skills, and ride the same buses.
Even countries like the USA and Canada follow such egalitarian education models. Indeed, the libraries in these schools are extraordinary. Public libraries offer memberships to 6-month-old babies!
I saw this in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, Canada. Even 4th and 5th graders are used to ‘heavy books’. In summer, children are encouraged to read and write, and discover their independent minds.
In contrast, Indian government schoolteachers say they receive irrelevant and dull books, which students quickly lose interest in. The method of teaching is often top-down, pedantic, repetitive, and boring. School students are taught, as if from a pulpit. Rote learning is encouraged – discarding original knowledge systems and free thinking. Many of these books rot away, unused.
In capitalist countries, even during COVID, book sales didn’t dip. In Boston, I saw queues in bookstores. The same in New York and Washington. Despite the digital revolution, the craze for books remains strong. People of all ages read books on escalators and subways, sitting on benches in public parks, inside coffee shops, outdoors, indoors. It’s a lovely sight.
In India, especially in the Hindi-speaking belt, we don’t see this phenomena; hardly. Instead, we see massive crowds thronging in over-crowded religious pilgrimages, where accidents routinely happen. Teachers now earn decent salaries — yet, how many spend even a fraction on books? Or, do they ever gift books to their students? Instead, their homes are decorated with luxury sofas, big television sets on the walls, and huge refrigerators — but, what about bookshelves?
Gone are the days when magazines like Chandamama, Champak, Parag, Balak, Kalyan, Sarita, Sandesh, and others were found even in villages. I say this based on my rural upbringing in a poor household. Today, you see mobile phones glued to palms, not books.
A Way Forward: Neighborhood Libraries
Cities are now filled with gated apartment societies, or palatial bungalows, as in Noida and Gurgaon. With their affluence, why can’t they run cooperative libraries? Many of them have two or three cars, even huge SUVs (only meant for highways), but not one book in their homes. Someone told me such models exist in Maharashtra and some non-Hindi states. But my experience is depressing with Hindi-speaking regions; and now, I hear from friends, that this sad trend has even entered cities like Calcutta with its ‘rich cultural heritage’.
In Edmonton, I saw volunteer-led sidewalk libraries — simple stands with book boxes. Anyone can take or leave a book. Cafés have bookshelves. You sip coffee and read. In a pleasant departure, in India too, this trend is beginning — a few cafés in Delhi, Noida, and Mayur Vihar have books.
I visited one such café in Shaheen Bagh near Jamia Millia Islamia Central University in Delhi, where mothers, sisters and daughters led a historical peaceful struggle against the polarizing CAA; it had literature by Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Romila Thapar, DD Kosambi, Munshi Premchand, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ismat Chughtai, and others. Young readers gather everyday here, interact socially and read. They are not eternally hooked on their mobiles.
Even the Shaheen Bagh struggle site, with women as vanguard, had a make-shift library, named, if I remember correctly, on Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh, pioneers of education for girls in Maharashtra, against all odds. They were derided, dirty mud was thrown at them when they went to teach, hounded and abused, but they refused to backtrack.
This particular café, a place of joy and learning, run by a former JNU student from a minority background, was shut down. I had been there twice. The bookshelves were beautiful. But the regime fears critical thought. So the outcome was inevitable.
Those at the helm of power in India, with their patriarchal and conservative mindset, don’t seem to like the seeds of modernity and enlightenment flowering in our young minds.
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Indeed, under Trump, too, Harvard and other universities are under attack. But the libraries continue to stay steadfast and flourish. Because every book tells a story. And no regime, however dictatorial, can ever kill the flowering of ideas. And dissent.
Ramsharan Joshi is an eminent author, academician and a seasoned journalist based in Delhi.
Photos of Edmonton and Calgary City Library: Ramsharan Joshi.