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Vinod Raina: A Dreamer and a Fighter
Educationist and champion of the Right to Education Act, Vinod Raina, who passed away recently, engaged tirelessly with the state even as he worked at the grass-roots level to take education to the most marginalised. While doing this, he helped to evolve child-friendly and activity-based methods of teaching science and set up the Eklavya Foundation to implement the innovations,field-tested at the micro level, on a larger scale.
Opinions expressed are personal and not that of the Eklavya Foundation.
Vinod Raina passed away on 12 September this year after aprolonged fight with cancer, leaving behind a large and varied legacy of work and a legion of comrades he had inspired and groomed. Vinod was a dreamer and a fighter, and his legacy has aspects of bold imagination, deep controversies and structural solutions, firm, nebulous and contested at the same time. This is an attempt to recall some of these and remember a great friend and comrade who was as human as any of us.
Vinod Raina grew up in Srinagar and was a proud Kashmiri. He often recalled the respect with which the communities in the Valley handled their diversity and the bonding brought about by the landscape, architecture, cuisine, language, music and shared popular religious legacies. He carried the scars of Kashmir deep within – the violence unleashed by the state, the attack on Kashmiriyat by acts of militancy and the exile of the Pandits from the Valley.
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