A tiny classroom captured my heart! Recently we had visited the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village in Manipal. It is a museum that has reconstructed 24 heritage houses of Karnataka for preservation(similar to DakshinaChitra in Chennai). The whole place was a magical mix of intricate architecture, material culture and re-created shops from the 19th and 20th centuries. In between these palatial houses, there was one small room also preserved with the title - Basel Mission Elementary School. I was blown away seeing that. I commend the curators of the museum who have thoughtfully included a vintage mission school classroom as part of their museum. Basel Mission was a Protestant Evangelical missionary organization from Germany that worked extensively in the Malabar coast since 1834( Karnataka, Kerala). The small classroom that was showcased in the museum is a beautiful testimony to the egalitarian nature of education that was brought in by these missionari
