For this session, we decided to speak on the Armenian genocide. An event that is sometimes considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century, has been systematically erased from memory. Our first challenge was to make the students familiar with Armenia: a country they did not know exists. After a brief introduction to…
On the 5th of March, as part of our ongoing discussion about genocides in the African continent, we focused our attention on Rwanda and Sudan. After shedding some light on the history of the relationship between the Hutus and Tutsis, we played a video by Step Back History, a popular history channel on YouTube, on…
Having only substituted in the temporary absence of interns under the Human Rights Defenders Programme before, Akshar—among Kolkata’s best known integrated schools, would technically be ‘my first’ school and class. Forty-five students in a post-lunch (read: siesta time) session—I had my fair share of doubts regarding how the first class would go. A few minutes…
Like the unravelling of a detective plot backwards, this year, for our fifth annual history conference, it seems only logical that the Idea of Nationalism, the Idea of India and the Idea of Culture should pave the way for a conference around the Indian Constitution. We live in times when critical thinking and questioning have…
The advantages of having the scope to teach the same set of students over successive months under the Human Rights Defenders Programme, are manifold. Covering the geographically expansive range of genocides that the module does, any shorter an engagement would leave little room for the thought generation and discussions essential to developing a critical, sensitive…
