TRUTIYA RATNA · STORIES OF IMPACT
Community Libraries & Knowledge Centres
Leadership Development
Sankit Kumari: Choosing Her Friends by How They Treat Others
She won’t stay friends with someone who looks down on others — a line she’s held to since her village’s community library and knowledge centre changed how she sees caste.
Sankit Kumari is from a small village in Jehanabad district, Bihar, in a Dalit hamlet, and belongs to a Scheduled Caste family. Her father studied up to Matric and works in agriculture and daily-wage labour; her mother, who never had the opportunity to study, manages the household.
In 2021, Trutiya Ratna opened a community library and knowledge centre in her village — for children from families too poor to afford schooling, particularly from SC, ST, and OBC backgrounds who wanted to learn but whose parents couldn’t send them. Sankit has studied there ever since, in a space she says treats everyone with equal respect, without caste discrimination or untouchability.
What she learned there changed how she moves through the world. She refuses to practise caste-based discrimination herself now, and pushes back at home too — telling her own family that these divisions were never natural but historically imposed, and that the superstitions many around her still hold onto simply aren’t true. Convincing her own family hasn’t been easy; she says she’ll keep trying.
“I will never take the wrong path myself. And if a friend or anyone around me is doing wrong, I’ll try to help them understand. If they don’t listen, I won’t stay with them — because they’re headed the wrong way. I’ll only keep the company of people who never look down on anyone.”
Her studies at Trutiya Ratna have been free from the start, with all materials provided at no cost. She did well enough that in 2025 she began helping support the centre’s younger children — a moment she describes as one of real happiness, finally given the chance to give back to the children who came after her. She continues to help out today, alongside her own studies, with the centre covering school admission and form costs as they come up.
Sankit sits her board exam in 2027. If she passes with strong marks, she plans to keep studying — determined, in her words, to bring honour to both Trutiya Ratna’s name and her parents’ name. She credits the organisation’s founders, Sunita Didi and Prasan Didi, by name, with the support that’s made all of this possible.