Day 1: Prevalence of Caste

We arrived at Guru Harkrishan School Nangal-Ghuman early Monday morning and were warmly welcomed by the students who greeted us with “Good morning sir” or “Good morning ma’am.” Our team for this trip consisted of 5 people: Pahulmeet Singh, Mauricio Najarro, Bhavakaran Kaur, Dilpreet Singh, and Harkiren Kaur. Today our team simply observed the school and the classes. We watched the beginning-of-the-day school assembly in which kids sang prayers and the national anthem. Afterwards, we sat in on some classes to observe the classroom dynamics.

After a day of observation at the school, our team drove back to the village we are staying in, Chone. We walked around Chone. We paid our respects to a local gurdwara and visited a local government school. We observed that caste continues to play a huge role as there are different places of worship for different castes. Similarly, the government school demographics consisted mostly of lower caste students. After talking to a teacher about the problems and concerns of the school, we headed home and retired for the day after planning for the following days.