MR MN TANKHA, ARPS LAITKOR

Mr MN Tankha
Visionary, inspirational Headmaster who empowered a generation and proved that good people can be empowered anywhere.



As I sit in the lobby of Buxton Palace Hotel in the sublime surroundings of the peak district in the UK, my thoughts go back twenty five years back and I think about Shillong and particularly about one person who made such a huge difference to the life of a whole generation. We were lucky to train under Mr MN Tankha. He was the first Principal of the Assam Rifles Public School.
The immediate provocation of thinking about Mr Tankha has been the penetration of facebook into our lives and old school mates linking up after nearly twenty five years. What I have noticed on the discussion boards has been that the one factor which links together the Laitkorian family is the abiding love and respect they have for Mr Tankha.
So what was so striking about him? The first thing which would have struck anyone was his height[quite a few inches over six feet].My abiding memory of him remains the sight of him coming down the hill from his office for assembly dressed in a suit and wearing the black master’s robe flying behind him in the wind. Here comes’Budo’ [ Old man] the whispers would fly. He of course knew his nick name and often joked about it.
To understand Mr Mukut Narain Tankha’s work, one has to understand the socio-political milieu of the Northeast in the late seventies. The Northeast at that time was a far off corner of the Union of India with a million mutinies brewing within the seven sister states. Amongst all this unrest, the most powerful confrontation between the citizens and the Indian Union had been started in Assam. The Assam agitation was initially powered by the students and soon acquired substantial public support. The basic issue was the state of Assam in particular was being overrun by ‘foreigners’ from Bangladesh. As part of their strategy, the agitationist resorted to blocking oil refineries from sending oil to the Indian mainland; blocking government functioning and closing down schools.
My father worked as a banker and in 1979 he was posted at Gauhati [now Guwahati]. I was studying at the Don Bosco school. By March 1981,the agitation had intensified and I had not been to school for a full year! I was promoted to the next class without ever having set foot inside the class. A most unsatisfactory state of affairs and that was when my father who had heard of a promising boarding school in Shillong, decided to send me there. There were plenty of parents thinking the same and as a result there was a substantial number of students who turned up at the Assam Rifles Public School at Laitkor, Shillong [ARPS].
ARPS had been conceptualised by Gen Sushil Kumar whom we often met in our first few years in the school. Gen Kumar was the Director General of Assam Rifles.

The Assam Rifles are one of the Paramilitary forces of India. Originally called Cachar Levy,this force has a proud 175 year history. The 46 battalions perform many roles including conduct of counter insurgency and border security operations. The soldiers and Officers of Assam Rifles had to be on the move due to the nature of their jobs and Gen Kumar observed that their children did not have access to quality education and he founded the school at Laitkor, Shillong. Situated about 6000feet above sea level on Assam Rifles land, he wanted deserving children of Assam Rifles personnel to have access to education.
It is alright to have grandiose ideas but it is another thing to be able to successfully implement those ideas. In order to have a School at par with public schools in India, Gen Kumar needed a visionary as the head of his school and selecting Mr Tankha was a master stroke. Once Mr Tankha came on board, the school took wings. Mr Tankha arrived from St Pauls Darjeeling with a formidable reputation and experience.
The next requirement for success is to have a successful team around you. A good Chief Executive gives shape to a project by his hiring and firing decisions. Mr Tankha succeeded in attracting top teaching talent from St Paul’s initially. Mr SK Bannerjee [ Maths,later Principal],Mr Julian Egbert[Physics],Mrs Sharmistha Sen and Mr T Dasgupta [Biology],Miss Indie Sondhi [English],Mr Mazumdar[Music],Mr Gogoi[Arts], Mr Pramod Kumar[Chemistry]and Mrs Tankha [Hindi] came from pedigreed backgrounds .What was truly more amazing was that as students we saw great teamwork amongst the staff as they truly worked hard to get our first few batches up and going and competing against the best in the region. We students felt part of a family. For example, I can remember us doing English homework sitting in Miss Sondhie’s kitchen or Mr Thomas’s living room. We could knock on most teacher’s rooms for help even out of hours. The housemasters were very supportive and once I even had to do baby sitting duties at one of our teachers!!The teachers, we students believed had a great social life I believe due to primarily Mr and Mrs Tankha’s belief in playing hard and partying hard. The staff party news was often leaked to us the senior students by a certain gentleman who was nicknamed after an Italian poet. Many of you would have guessed by now. There were lots of picnics, movies and plenty of fun to be had.
The most important role of a Headmaster has been said to be that of a head master. He should be a master teacher. Mr Tankha’s classes in Geography were master-classes in succinctness, brevity and clarity in style. An important aspect of his class was his emphasis what we call in Medicine as outcome measures. It was not enough for him teach. He wanted to know whether we had understand the principles and the home work he asked us to do was quite similar to the problem based learning model we use for medical students today.
He also served as model for integrity and fostered empowerment. Mr Tankha had a great ability to instill self esteem which is an essential prerequisite for success. This he did in many ways but the most innovative one was the meeting of class prefects with the faculty and Head master present. A class 4 prefect’s statement was taken as seriously as a class 12 or School Captain’s presentation. This was democracy and consensus building at its best.



The students felt part of the management team and had ownership of the organisation. Today when in the NHS in the UK there is plenty of bemoaning of the fact that management don’t work in sync with Clinicians, there is a lesson to be learnt from Mr Tankha’s inclusive team meetings[Its rare to find a clinician who knows how the Chief Executive of the trust looks like!!].
Mr Tankha was a great communicator and all parents of that era would vouch for it. He had a great feel for the moment. Laitkor is located close to the wettest place on Earth,Cherrapunjee. So after weeks of rain, the mood turned gloomy and sullen all round. When the sun opened up and Mr Tankha announced that the choir would be singing ‘All things bright and beautiful….’,we knew a ‘Sunshine holiday’ was on the cards.
Everyone knows the importance of marketing today. When you have started a school and wish that it’s success breeds more success, its probably important to spread the word. We were lucky that Mr Tankha could attract top talent from across societal spectrum to visit the school. Whether it was Brigadier Gyan Singh telling us about his role in the first Indian expedition to Everest or General Vaidya the C in C of the Army or a United Nation representative, a North east Council member or a sportsman/ politician, this gave the students a chance to meet top performers from diverse fields during their formative years.
When Gen Sushil Kumar retired, there was a real danger of losing support of the next Assam Rifles DG. To Mr Tankha’s credit, his messiahnic zeal and belief in the project saw to it that the transitions in the power structure did not affect the school and in a few years he succeeded in institutionalising the administrative structure of the school.
The ICSE examinations of the first batch would decide the school’s reputation and there was quite a bit of pressure on the teachers.I remember Mr Egbert asking me after the exams whether I would be able to get 70% at least. The first batch surpassed those expectations. Going back to the beginning of the ICSE examinations, I remember Mrs Tankha coming into what was our dugout in those days[Holding House] and stuffing rasgullas into our mouths and blessing each one of us individually. Where else would you feel like family except at Laitkor?Behind every successful man is a woman. In this case it was the graceful Mrs Asha Tankha. She kept the wheels moving especially on the social side of things apart from being a teacher. I can still hear her laughter in the staff room. She lives currently in Canada and the US with her sons Timmy and Monty.
Long before ‘Environment’ had become a buzz word, Mr Tankha had involved the students in ‘Shram daan’ and we planted all those thousands of trees which sway in the wind today. He was truly way ahead of his time.
I did not get to meet him after 1986 and he died a few years back. I have always missed his presence long after leaving school and I am sure there are many of us who feel the same. Some people are born to be greater than life and Mr Tankha was one of them. Men like him come along once in a few generation.
Like I said at the beginning, facebook has linked us together after a long hiatus and I can still sometimes hear some where in the background the strains of the choir singing..
‘When the old school cry resounds
We come running to the mound
Joyous and we celebrate
…………