12/05/2018
The Armenian school in Kolkata founded by Iranian-Armenians invited to India by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 1600s.
Today it is a refuge for Armenian students from across Asia, taking in students from Iraq, Burma, Iran, etc. Interesting piece by Jenny Gustafsson:
“It’s a school unlike any other. It is Armenia, but outside of Armenia,” says Razmik Hakobian, another student at the academy. He looks up from the table where he is placing medals in gold, silver and bronze in long, neat rows. He came to the school in 2005, from a small, but long-established Armenian community in Baghdad. It had never been a plan to send him to India, but as the situation grew worse in Iraq, his family saw no better option. “It was very bad at the time, with bombs and fighting everywhere. My parents got to know about the school from an Armenian who came to Baghdad, and decided to send me,” he says.
Children arriving alone, from a country far away, is typical at the Armenian College and Philanthropic Academy. It welcomes Armenian children from all over the world, and offers entirely free education and boarding. Most students come from Armenia, but there are also children from Iran and Iraq, three sisters from Russia and, as of August this year, a girl from Myanmar.
“She is only seven and doesn’t speak Armenian yet, her family only speaks Burmese. But she is learning,” says Movses Sargsyan, one of two priests employed by the college. He sits in a chair inside his office, on the first floor overlooking the yard outside. There are stacks of paper on his desk, and a plate with black sesame sweets, brought back from Yangon where he goes twice a month, to serve the tiny Myanmarese-Armenian community. “They are only 20 people now, but there is a church. And we have to maintain it,” he says. ...
Asia housed a number of Armenian communities throughout history, as a result of wide-stretching trading networks. Some are gone today, such as those of Kabul and Dhaka. Others are marginal in size. But it was Kolkata, then the capital of the British Empire in India, that had the region’s most prosperous and sizeable community, with numbers once in the several thousands. The very first Armenians had arrived in India in the 1600s, after an invitation from the Mogul emperor Akbar to “come and settle in his dominions.” They reached Bengal in 1645, before any of the European colonisers.”
'It is Armenia, but outside of Armenia': the school welcomes Armenian children from all over the world, and offers entirely free education and boarding
