HGC funds Rationalist Library in Uttar Pradesh

HGC is providing funds to Arun Pate, a PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, to start a Rationalist Library.

Arun is from a poor village in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India. He used to live in his joint-family house, with his grandparents, parents and younger brother - all of them belonging to the OBC: other backward castes. Currently, he is living in a student hostel in JNU as he is doing his PhD in the field of theatre and performance studies. He is an ex-Hindu: through education he became atheist and now is part of a “performance thinking” group, an academic group of scholars in the field of cultural studies. He has performed in streets and parks of slum areas in Delhi to spread rationality and to criticize the rise of the Hindu-nationalist BJP to power in general elections of 2019. He believes progress is only possible through education and that’s why he would like help to improve the private school of his village (that is owned by his family). His grandparents built a very simple school for the kids, but this school is facing financial trouble as the fee is too low, since it is in a very poor village.

With the HGC grant he will develop a small library buying books that instigate rationality. The library will be open during school time, plus more three hours after it. On Saturday and Sunday the library would be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. He will receive help from his brother and his brother’s wife-to-be to take care of the books and the space. He also plans to organize study groups where the kids and kids’ parents would be invited to study the letters of Marty Bhagat Singh. It would be a space of discussion and debate as well. After his PhD he intends to go back to his village and provide better education to students belonging to the marginalized section of the society (i.e SC/ST, OBC, Girls). He wants the kids to be more rational; he also wants to create initiatives in theater and radio.