“We had migrated for the sake of our children’s future but it hurts to see them turning their back on our culture”, says Manjit Kaur who traveled back to India two weeks ago to admit her children in Akal Acadmey Baru Sahib, Himachal Pradesh, India.

In an interaction with the correspondent of India Today, Manjit Kaur said, “It’s easy to earn dollars there but hard to shield the kids from decadent Western Values”.

In July last year, when Manjit Kaur of Chandigarh immigrated to Canada with her husband and two children, it seemed like their cherished dollar dream had come true. The nightmare began soon after from an unexpected quarter – her school-going kids. Much to her dismay, her son Avijit, 9, wanted to get his hair shorn to look more like his peers and daughter Japjit, 6, began expressing a dislike for the Punjabi language and claiming to hate India.

Manjit Kaur is not alone in feeling this. She represents a growing trend among expatriates of Punjabi origin who send their children back home to study. The rising number of NRI children studying in reputed schools in Punjab and neighboring Himachal Pradesh bears testament to this.

Leading the pack of private schools offering culture-packed quality education is Akal Academy, a boarding school at Baru Sahib in the picturesque interiors of Himachal’s Sirmour district. For a school that had only a handful of students when it began in 1987, it has come a long way today with over 200 NRI students from 16 different countries among the 1400-plus on its rolls.