“I want to become a teacher so I can teach the children of my community—just like Papa does,” says 16-year-old Safeena, flipping through her notebooks as she prepares for her Class 8 examination in Aragam village of Bandipora district.
Every year, Safeena treks nearly 45 kilometers uphill to the Langmarg meadow, where her father, Muzaffar Ahmad, a mobile school teacher, sets up a tarpaulin tent classroom under the open sky, amid the bleating of livestock and the whispering winds of the highland pastures.
Mr. Ahmad teaches 35 children including his daughter, Safeena—ensuring that education travels with the tribe wherever they go. “I teach all the subjects individually and make sure no student is left out. We carry the tents on our shoulders wherever we go”, says Mr. Ahmad.
Mr. Ahmad who has been a seasonal teacher for a decade now, is one among the thousands of tribals who lock their homes for six months from April to September and make the mountains and high land pastures their abode where they earn, learn, teach and sleep.
Travel while teaching and teach while travelling
Every year, Gujjar Bakerwals, pastoral communities, whose literacy rates have historically lingered around 30% and make up 11.9 per cent of Jammu and Kashmir’s overall population, migrate with their families, sheep and goats to the highland pastures of the Himalayas to graze their livestock.
The teachers leading these tarpaulin classrooms also serve as mentors and role models for the students. | Photo: Special Arrangement
In 2003, the government launched an initiative to appoint seasonal teachers, for a period of six months, from within the Gujjar and Bakerwal community to educate their children who remain in constant movement throughout the year, April to September in the mountains of Kashmir, while October to March in the plains of Jammu.
“With the onset of January, we start packing our accessories to leave”, says Pervaiz Ahmad, a seasonal teacher who has been migrating every year from Rajouri to Kanzalwan Gurez over 300 km since 2010 with the flocks to teach his community’s children. “Whether it rains or snows or be it day or night; we have to travel while teaching and teach while travelling.”
Learning academics with life skills
There are currently a little over 1,800 seasonal schools in the 15 districts of J&K where more than 1,500 teachers are appointed as seasonal educators. More than 30,000 students from the nomadic families receive an education in these tents during the period of migration.
These schools follow a curriculum that combines traditional academics alongside lessons on life skills, environmental awareness, and cultural heritage. The teachers leading these tarpaulin classrooms also serve as mentors and role models for the students. Belonging to nomadic tribes themselves, they make learning more accessible and quickly build strong bonds with the community.
Kulsuma Bii (35) never attended any school in her childhood, but she loves watching her daughters, Tooba (16) and Ajba (11), flipping through the pages of their books instead of roaming in the meadows. “This is our only hope — to see our children learn what we couldn’t,” Ms. Kulsuma murmurs as she stitches Toooba’s torn school bag while the girl practices her multiplication tables. “The best part is that their teachers come from our own community, so there’s no barrier of language or class.”
Through all the difficulties
Many students from these mobile school tents—where rain often suspends classes and proper seating arrangements are lacking—have excelled and secured good results over the years in Classes 10 and 12. In May this year, celebrations filled the mountains of Kathwad village in Tral, when 17-year-old Shabnam Sadik, a tribal girl, secured an impressive 92% in her Class 12 Arts stream.
“I used to walk miles by foot to the mountains to join the classes in a tent”, says Shabnam who has studied under the constant shadow of uncertainty—no roof, no private space, no proper sitting place, no electricity. Shabnam now aspires to clear the UPSC exam. “There were times when the rain would seep through, or the cold would make it difficult to even hold a pen, but I knew I had to keep going.”
Uncertainty for teachers
Yet in these mountains lie many uncertainties. With each passing year, new hardships creep into their journey. The teachers are not only mentors but also guards, nurses, counsellors, and guides. Yet, their wages barely cross the threshold of survival.
“For six months we are teachers and for the other six we ourselves don’t know what we are”, says Ferdous Ahmad, a teacher in Khag Tosamaidan. “We only receive the wages when we go back to the plains, for these six months we have to carry and manage everything on our own.”
“There is no certainty, no pension, no future—only responsibility”, Mr. Ferdous sighs, as he prepares the logbook of the children where 35 students are enrolled.
The absence of Mid-Day Meals — a lifeline in other government schools—makes things worse. Many children come to class with empty stomachs after walking miles uphill.
Shafia Jan has to walk 3-kilometers every day from her Kotha to attend the class, yet she leaves on an empty stomach and eats only after finishing the class. “I can’t miss the class or else I will fail”, says Shafia, a Class 6 student. “If our tent school had the mid-day meal like the big schools in town, more of my friends would come every day.”
Infrastructure woes
Infrastructure remains another ghost they live with. There are no proper boards, no mats, no toilets. On windy days, the tarpaulin flutters so violently that the teacher’s voice disappears into the mountains,
“When it rains, our school becomes like a sieve. Water seeps through the roof and we sit holding our books high so they don’t get wet”, says Faisal, a student in Ketsan Bandipora. “ Sometimes we just wait for the sun to come out to start class again.”
Despite high hopes to learn what their ancestors mostly haven’t, these children fear that after the middle school examinations, many drop out because their families can’t leave them alone in the plains while they migrate to the mountains.
“I had to drop out in Class 8 because after that I needed to secure admission to a proper school, but my family couldn’t afford the accommodation—and there was no one to take care of me,” says Mumtaz Ali, a young shepherd grazing his flock in the nearest meadow at Ketsan.
Yet, Safeena remains optimistic that even after miles of trekking and years of trials, she will make her dream come true—to show the world that even in the mountains, someone learns, someone teaches, and someone ascends.
“They call us pahadi bachay,” says Safeena quietly. “They say we are behind—but how can we be ahead when our classrooms have no walls?”
“One day,” she whispers, “I’ll build a classroom that the wind can’t tear down.”
(Rabia Khaki and Ifat Amin are freelance journalists based in Srinagar.)
