Student trips to Jang-e-Azadi launched
Tribune News Service
Kartarpur, September 3
In line with the “vigyan yatra” programme for taking government school students to Pushpa Gujral Science City, the Education Department has started a similar student tour plan for Jang-e-Azadi Memorial here.
The schools across Punjab are being sanctioned Rs 10,000 for taking a group of 50 students to the site, which includes Rs 30 ticket per student that the memorial staff charges, transport expenditure and day’s meal and refreshment that the staff arranges for the students. With this arrangement, the memorial has started making a nominal income to run the day-to-day expenditure incurred on staff, maintenance, electricity and other provisions.
The CEO of the memorial, Vinay Bublani, said the school trips got started about three weeks back. “We are getting a complete schedule from the Education Secretary. We had requested the government to get it started in line with tours for the Science City,” he added.
Besides students, the other visitors are being charged Rs 50 per person. The memorial has a footfall of 1,500 to 2,000 visitors a day, with numbers growing on weekends and holidays. Every visitor that makes it to the memorial usually spends about two hours, which includes watching a 30-minute movie of Bollywood film-maker Shayam Benegal on the memorial as well as freedom struggle and two of 10 minute duration – one in a 3-D immersive dome on 100 years of freedom struggle of India and another on Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s rule.
The second phase of memorial which came up recently, too, has many attractions. It starts with scenes of Anglo-Sikh war depicting 1840s conflicts between the British East India Trading Company and the Sikh Empire. The next major attraction is the scene of killing of butchers by the Namdhari Sikhs in Malerkotla, setting of cows free and hanging of Kukas in the case with complete historical description.
Next in the same gallery is the depiction of the agrarian unrest of 1907. The students find it interesting here to put wheat grains in an animal-driven flour mill, which activates a sensor leading to running of a short movie on the topic on an LED screen put up at the background.
Heritage tour
- A replica of India House, UK, and scene of killing of Assistant Superintendent of Police John P Saunders in Lahore in the next gallery, too, are fascinating for the students
- The bombing of the Assembly by Bhagat Singh has been captivated in a glass-covered box with miniature figures inside it
- The hanging of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev using full size statues on a huge raised platform with jail at the backdrop surely moves the visitors once
