An elderly Sikh guards a basement religious university
An elderly Sikh guards a basement religious university outside the Harmandir Sahib/ Golden Temple. Dozens of bungas (choultries or rest houses) were constructed around the holy tank of the Golden Temple to lodge pilgrims. Some of these came to serve as centres of learning as well. If these akharas and bungas (both meaning choultries) served as centres for elementary Sikh education, pathshalas and maktabs (traditional informal schools) catered to the need of learning elementary arithmetic and account keeping, and of rudimentary acquaintance with Arabic and Persian. The number of literate persons in any case was not large. Informal learning remained more important than formal education. Men of high learning were few and they were honoured in inverse proportion to their numbers. So this is one of those informal schools we are about to enter now.
(Amritsar, Punjab, northern India, Nov. 2017)
An elderly Sikh guards a basement religious university
An elderly Sikh guards a basement religious university outside the Harmandir Sahib/ Golden Temple. Dozens of bungas (choultries or rest houses) were constructed around the holy tank of the Golden Temple to lodge pilgrims. Some of these came to serve as centres of learning as well. If these akharas and bungas (both meaning choultries) served as centres for elementary Sikh education, pathshalas and maktabs (traditional informal schools) catered to the need of learning elementary arithmetic and account keeping, and of rudimentary acquaintance with Arabic and Persian. The number of literate persons in any case was not large. Informal learning remained more important than formal education. Men of high learning were few and they were honoured in inverse proportion to their numbers. So this is one of those informal schools we are about to enter now.
(Amritsar, Punjab, northern India, Nov. 2017)