Bandh

After a week off from regular teaching duty for Activity Week, we thought we were in store for a normal week. It turns out that the BJP called a bandh for the day, so we got to come home this afternoon. Now, our readers are probably as unfamiliar with these terms as we were this morning. The BJP is the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party). This is a political party that used to control the government, but is now in the opposition. A bandh is something like a general strike called to protest something. In this case, the youth wing of the BJP called the bandh to protest recent bombings in the Indian state of Assam in the north east (far from Mussoorie).

The calling of the bandh was a completely political move designed to get people to vote for the BJP in the next election, and Woodstock was certainly not required to honor it. The school talked to our local magistrate, though, and decided that we probably should. Apparently the BJP youth wing has a large presence in Mussoorie and if they had found out we were having school, they may have come up and tried to vandalize us or something. So after first period, we sent all the students down to the dorms for the rest of the day. We went home and played board games all afternoon with our friends, the Hatches. Perhaps next week we will finally have a "normal" schedule for five days in a row.

Dave and Beth