For 55 years, he has taught a village for free

By 10 in the morning, the courtyard of a Hindu temple in southern Bangladesh has become a classroom.

Children sit in small groups at the Rangta Sarbojanin Durga Temple in Agailjhara, a rural subdistrict of Barishal. Some sound out their first Bengali letters. Others recite rhymes. When their attention begins to wander, the man sitting before them tells a story.

There are no desks arranged in neat rows, no smartboards and few of the trappings of a modern school. The teacher, Ramani Kanta Bepari, is nearly 70. He has been doing this for most of his life.

Long before tablets and smartphones reached Bangladeshi villages — and even before Bangladesh itself existed as an independent country Ramani Kantai began teaching children in Rangta. He was a student then, not much older than some of those he taught.

Nearly six decades later, he is still there. His hair is now gray, and age has slowed him. But each morning, except Friday, he returns to the temple courtyard. Classes continue until noon. The children begin by singing Bangladesh’s national anthem and then move on to letters, words, rhymes and stories.

Ramani Kanta has never charged them for it.

His school is an unusually durable institution in a village where generations have passed through his lessons. Some of his earliest students grew up, married and sent their own children to him. Now, in some families, a third generation is learning its first letters from the same man.

Shyamal Bepari and Renuka Bepari are among the parents who describe that succession to Daily Waadaa. 

“Our fathers studied with Ramani sir. So did we,” said Shyamal, “Now our children sit in his class.”

The continuity is all the more striking because Ramani Kanta never had the opportunity to go very far in formal education himself.

The son of Rakhal Bepari, he grew up in Rangta in a family of limited means. He passed his Secondary School Certificate examination from Chandshi Ishwar Chandra Secondary School in 1973, two years after Bangladesh's independence, and enrolled at Government Gournadi College.

Then money ran out. He could not complete higher secondary education. At one point, he had an opportunity to take a job at a primary school, which would have offered the prospect of a regular income.

He did not take it. Instead, he continued the informal work he had begun as a schoolboy: teaching children in his village, particularly those from families for whom even a modest education expense could be difficult.

“I did not take any money from anyone. I did that out of my civic duty,” Ramani Kanta told Waadaa.

Kanta said the arrangement remains basic. The temple courtyard serves as the classroom, and the pupils range from children preparing to enter school to those working through primary lessons. 

Bikram, Nirjoy and Tabassum, three of his pupils, describe “Ramani Sir” less in terms of curriculum than temperament. “He tells us stories. He explains an answer again when we get it wrong. He praises us when we get it right,” they said

Sometimes he goes to the family’s home himself to find out whether the child is sick or whether some other problem has kept the student away.

In a country where poverty has long pushed children out of classrooms, that persistence has mattered. Bangladesh has made enormous gains in expanding access to primary education since independence, but the costs surrounding schooling — books, transport, tutoring and the income lost when a child cannot work — can still weigh heavily on poorer households.

Ramani Kanta’s answer, at least in his corner of Rangta, has been uncomplicated: there is no tuition bill.

His own circumstances are modest. He lives with his wife, Rumpa, in a tin-roofed house and owns some agricultural land. Their only son, Tapas Bepari, works for a private company in Dhaka.

Ranjit Baidya, president of the committee that oversees the Rangta Sarbojanin Durga Temple, told Waadaa that Ramani Kanta had been teaching local children since before independence and had helped many from poor families begin their education.

He has done so, Baidya said, without expecting payment or much public recognition.

Ramani Kanta is almost criminally nonchalant about any material gain. Talking with Waadaa, he speaks simply about what he wants from the years he has left: as long as he is able to come to the courtyard, he would like to keep teaching.

“There is no retirement date,” he smiled.

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