Cherishing diversity: In other rooms, other cultural wonders

St Joseph’s College organises World Diversity Day event.

KARACHI:

While the Ministry of Interior might be struggling to cope with the demand for passports, the students of St Joseph’s College offered people who visited it on Thursday little booklets of their own.

The guests could use the ‘passports’ to enter different classrooms which had been transformed into colourful spaces in which myriad artefacts from 11 Asian countries were on display. This had been done to celebrate World Diversity Day.

The event was the result of month-long efforts of around 200 undergraduate students, who surprised foreign dignitaries invited as the guests as well as students from schools and colleges located nearby.

At the entrance of Indian pavilion, two BSc students, Sana Benjamin and Bakhtawar Shabbir, clad in silk saris, held aarti plates in their hands. The Indian national song “Vande Mataram” blared in the background. Inside, a couple dressed in traditional Indian bride and groom clothing sat close to the sacred fire. Next to them was a dining table on which an assortment of Indian curries had been set in a thali. Apart from original Indian outfits on display, an art gallery was also set up with sections on monuments, festivals, film industry, history, politics and government.



“We want to show that even though we all have our differences, we share many more similarities,” said Benjamin. “And because we all share a common goal of a better world and life, we can work together and appreciate each other’s efforts.”

In an adjacent pavilion, the Bangladeshi culture was on display with decorative designs of alpana [motifs] on the floor as well as the depiction of the Pohela Boishakh [Bengali New Year] celebrations. Guests visiting the area were offered rusgullas - a popular Bengali sweet.

One of the most enthusiastic guests was the Japanese acting consul general, Masamichi Abe. As he went around the Japanese pavilion, he even shared snippets of information, including the historical context for the items on display. He even sat on a table and taught students how to make paper models of cat and cranes using the Japanese art of origami.



To gather enough information to cobble together the event, students had formed groups and headed to all consulates in the city. For a month, they sifted through mass of information and used their creative juices to come up with ways to present it in an appealing manner.

Even the principals of the BVS Parsi High School and the DHA Public School, both of whom were judges, seemed impressed by the effort put in by the students.

The college’s principal, Bernadette L Dean, told The Express Tribune that most educational institutions only focus on preparing students for exams. But she didn’t think that this is what education should be all about - especially at the higher levels. “Education is meant to open up the minds and hearts of students,” said Dean. “Many things we only theoretically teach in classrooms can be practically taught through extracurricular activities.”

She added that one of the issues that Pakistan faces is that people have yet to learn to accept and work with each other.

“We have a great deal of diversity in culture, language and religion but we do not seem to be able to accept this multiplicity and deal with the conflicts we have. To achieve this end, we have to really change the way we educate our children.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2013.