Sunita Biswas and Ishaan Rajabali from History for Peace conducted a workshop with the fellows of Teach for India, Calcutta, as part of TFI’s Annual Conference. HfP led an interactive session that drew on articles and short stories that delved into the relationship between food, memory, culture, politics and history. The purpose of the exercise was to explore creative and meaningful teaching methods to encourage critical and analytical thinking within classrooms through everyday themes.

After a quick icebreaker activity, Sunita introduced HFP's institutional mission and on-the-ground activities, as well as the goals of the workshop. The fellows were then divided into two groups (each containing three sub-groups), each led by a one of the facilitators, for the reading exercises. Groups 1, 3 and 5 were given different short stories and a Ishaan facilitated the conversation and summarized key takeaways and conclusions. Groups 2, 4 and 6 received shorter articles and engaged in a wider discussion across all their assigned readings with Sunita. The fellows were first asked to discuss relevant thematic details about the stories/articles to mimic a classroom conversation on interpretation and critical thinking. The discussion then turned to teaching methodologies regarding difficult, maybe even controversial topics and how interweaving popular culture (here, stories and reading) can make such ideas more accessible to school students.

The readings assigned to groups 1, 3, and 5 were as follows: 'Mrs. Sen' from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri; 'Hell-Heaven' from Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri; 'They Eat Meat' from The Adivasi Will Not Dance by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. The overall purpose was to examine how food can both unite and divide; the first two short stories examined food within the context of familial, cultural and racial difference, while the third drew on more 'explicit' political themes of religious divides and societal norms. However, all three groups analyzed their various stories within the framework of patriarchy and class hierarchies, allowing them to observe parallels across their various texts. Many of them drew in personal experiences with witnessing or experiencing microcosmic forms of discrimination or alienation that they felt the characters encountered and also reflected on how they were able to sometimes foster cross-cultural understanding in such moments.

The workshop was a meaningful opportunity to learn about the approaches and perspectives that inform TFI’s work. I really observing and contributing to the fellows’ discussions, which demonstrated their enthusiasm and passion for teaching. The critical thinking and interpretive aspects of the workshop unfolded productively, as the participants interwove questions of greater social realities and injustices into their analysis of their respective short stories. They then connected these complex topics to the classroom and explained how they aim to incorporate such exercises (like the reading circle) into their teaching methodologies. They reflected on the potential for interactive and interpretive activities to encourage students to ask difficult questions about their everyday experiences and circumstances.

Groups 2, 3 and 6 led by Sunita discussed excerpts from Mangoes and Manners by Abhijit Banerjee and Civilising the Tastebuds by Techi Nimi. Fellows were encouraged to explore how everyday themes around food and eating habits can become entry points into larger questions about history, culture and society even without an explicitly ‘historical’ topic. Familiar experiences such as what we eat, how we remember food, or the cultural meanings attached to everyday practices carry many possibilities for classroom conversations that question assumptions, recognise different perspectives and make connections between the personal and the political. The readings also demonstrated the value of leaving room for ambiguity and disagreement rather than directing students towards a single predetermined interpretation.