We Shall Overcome in Ramanattukara

The Muslim, Hindu, and Christian students stood together and sang We Shall Overcome in Ramanattukara. I think about these kids often. I hope it’s true.

The Seva Mandir School in Ramanattukara

Every year, 12,000 disadvantaged children receive a quality education in Seva Mandir schools. I had the chance to teach two classes at the Seva Mandir school in Ramanattukara, Kerala, India. We talked about reading and writing. We talked about how exhilarating and exhausting it is to write a book and revise it ad infinitum. We talked about how some of them might one day become journalists and authors. They asked questions by the dozens.

You can be anything you want, do anything you want. That’s what I told them the children.

But in India as in the world over, such statements feel airy and light. First-world advice for third-world living. Children who grow up in poverty are likely to be poor as adults, while those who grow up in more affluent families are likely to be affluent later in life. The world we’re living in, well, for a lot of people it’s damn rough.

At the end of one of the classes, the Muslim, Hindu, and Christian students stood together and sang We Shall Overcome, which they had practiced before our arrival. I was too moved to think about capturing it on video.

“We Shall Overcome” is a gospel song, a song of protest, a song forever linked with the Civil Rights Movement. Seva Mandir’s mission is to make real the idea of a society consisting of free and equal citizens who are able to come together to solve the problems that affect them. The school’s administrators and students abide by Gandhian principals of truth and nonviolence.

We shall overcome. I think about these kids, and I hope it’s true.