He may have casually taken this, but buried in this single photo is a nearly 200-year old fantastic history that connects the two texts in the picture: "Ridsdale Road" and "God's Own Country"
Samuel Ridsdale was a pioneer in educating Kerala, especially children from the underprivileged and lower-caste slaves (Yes, Kerala has a long history of slave trade). Such education reforms are the bedrock of all that made Kerala a God's Own Country eventually.
A CMS missionary sent by Church of England, Ridsdale arrived in Cochin back in the 1820s and engaged himself in the education of the local community, taking forward the work of his predecessor and CMS missionary Thomas Dawsons, who established a school for Jews at Mattancherry.
But Ridsdale did not restrict himself to educating the Jews. He opened six boys’ schools with an enrolment of 294 pupils and four girls’ schools with a strength of 64 pupils. These schools were one of the firsts in Kerala to admit everybody, irrespective of caste or class.
Imagine a classroom comprising the son of the local king to that of a backward-caste Pulaya slave, apart from Dutch, Portuguese and French pupils. His wife, referred simply as Mrs Samuel Ridsdale in research books, was in charge of probably what was Cochin's first girl's schools.
All of these schools were not only free-of-cost, but the students were also fed and clothed by the Ridsdales. Apart from the Bible, they were taught to read language, geography and maths. Here's an article in EPW where you can find more this topic. epw.in/journal/1999/3…
Much of what we know about those days is credited to a study by Eapen K. V, titled Church Mission Society and Education in Kerala. Wonders if this is the same Eapen, the son of Kandathil Varghese Mappillai, founder of Kerala's oldest& biggest newspaper, Malayala Manorama.
Afterall, Manorama's first editorial in 1888 was about the need to provide education for backward-caste Pulaya students. Cut to 2019: Will a newspaper launch today with an editorial backing some similar shock, say, reservation of backward castes in private sector companies?
