At a time when several parts of the world are at war, school students from Kidderpore were taught about the futility of fighting each other, the destruction caused by modern wars and the human cost.
The session was held at Government Girls General Degree College in Ekbalpore on Friday. The land on which the college stands had a temporary army camp during World War II.
Kidderpore was among the places bombed during WWII, said Sabir Ahamed of Know Your Neighbour, a social initiative aimed at promoting harmony.
Shruti Ghosh, a performance artiste, had the students’ attention as she narrated the devastation of wars and why all wars ended up causing misery to humans. She narrated stories about wars through a solo theatrical performance.
“Keno lok-e juddho kore/Juddho keno hoy/keu bolte paro? (Why do people go to war/Why are wars fought/Can anyone say?)” was a line from her performance. She spoke about the bombing of Hiroshima and also Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971.
“Urdu was thrust on Bangladeshis, though Bengali is their mother tongue. They fought this war for their language, for their independence,” she said, trying to distinguish between a just war and an unjust war.
She added all wars led to destruction and deaths.
The students were also explained how modern wars differed from old ones. While people earlier used to fight with swords and spears, now they carpet bomb the enemy territory.
“The scale of destruction and devastation is multiple times more in modern wars. You are pressing a button sitting miles away and thousands are dying elsewhere,” said Santanu Sengupta, an assistant professor of history at Polba Mahavidyalaya in Hooghly.
The students were shown a video of Hiroshima after it was bombed. Footage of how air fighters drop a series of bombs from the sky was also shown to the students to explain how killing more and more people and destroying everything belonging to the enemy is the aim of modern wars.
Shabana Khatoon, a Class VIII student at Kidderpore Milani Girls High School, spoke about how wars from the past were restricted by nature.
She spoke about how Napoleon was forced to retreat from Russia because of cold weather. “Nowadays, war rages irrespective of summer or winter. We have seen how the Ukraine-Russia war went through the year. It’s now heading into another winter,” she said.
Answesha Sengupta, an assistant professor at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, said talking critically about war to school students was necessary because of the times in which we live.
“These are young impressionable minds. We are seeing how school syllabuses are changing and how propaganda is being peddled as history,” she said.
“We have tried to teach these students a little bit about why they should trust a trained historian over someone writing unverified stuff on social media. History is based on rigorous research and facts,” she said.
Ahmed, who led a heritage walk after the session, told the students that the area where they live was also a target of bombing during WWII as the port is close by.
“The Germans and their allies had tried to destroy it,” he said. “The lights were switched off and the entire area turned dark to avoid getting identified by airplanes from the sky.”
The session was jointly organised by Know Your Neighbour, the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, and the Government Girls General Degree College.