A School, Killed

Amid financial and existential uncertainty, one man is on a mission to save his tribe's children from illiteracy and poverty

- Barkha Mathur

WHEN Matin Bhosle insists that the Samruddhi Mahamarg route is the best way to reach his place, the irony is unmissable.

It was during the construction of the Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, which connects the districts of Vidarbha to Mumbai, that a bulldozer arrived at Matin's Prashanchinnha Pathshala in June 2019. It demolished the library, ten classrooms, staff quarters, and a 65ft deep well, which had taken Matin ten years to build on 10 acres of government land he had encroached.

It's been five years since that fateful day and he is still picking up pieces of what escaped demolition. The school, located in his village Mangrur Chavala, 35 kms from Amravati district in Maharashtra, is reduced to a single-storey building. The classrooms turn into dormitories in the evening where the children sleep. The verandah in front of the classrooms/dormitories serves as the dining hall.

In 2012, Matin Bhosle quit his job as a teacher in a Zilla Parishad school, to set up one of his own, for the Phanse Pardi community to which he belongs. His caste, which is at the 38th number in the list of scheduled tribes, suffers from a stigma that has stuck since the pre-independence era.

"The Britishers used our community to steal grains and other equipment from moving trains, to sabotage the freedom movement. When the instances of such robberies would increase, they would round up members of our community and put them in jail," explains Matin.

As a result, the Phanse Pardis tribe are not welcome inside villages. They live in makeshift homes outside the village periphery and move frequently. "To survive, they hunt, steal from farms, work as scavengers or beg," he says, not denying that stealing and hunting are traits associated with his tribe.