This article discusses Chitta Ranjan Das’s attempt at building a forest school which created an ecology of creative freedom for the learners, inspired by Gandhi’s concept of naitalim ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nai_Talim . See also: http://home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/soc748/sykes_story_of_nai_talim.html ) or basic education, in 1954 he started his ‘forest school’ in Champatimunda in Odisha. He recounts the experience in a series of evocative letters and reflection. For Das, an authentic India needed to reimagine the future not as a version of the immediate colonial past, but as an expression of a deeper autochthonous past which was fully engaged on the global stage in reinventing the future. I see in this work the powerful tension of a local praxis in dialogue with the global forces modernity has unleashed. In this sense it is to an indigenous modernity that Das turns as he nurtures his educational vision. The forest school is an ashram of sorts and thus an example of creative traditionalism in action. This article explores some of these issues.