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By:

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

31 October 2024 at 3:00:19 am

The School That Changed India

In the closing decades of the 19th century, education in India was less a public good than a colonial instrument. The British administration had little interest in creating a broadly educated society. Inspired by the logic of the 1854 Wood’s Dispatch, it sought instead to cultivate a narrow English-speaking elite capable of staffing the lower rungs of the imperial bureaucracy. Schools and colleges produced clerks, not citizens. For the overwhelming majority of Indians, education remained an...

The School That Changed India

In the closing decades of the 19th century, education in India was less a public good than a colonial instrument. The British administration had little interest in creating a broadly educated society. Inspired by the logic of the 1854 Wood’s Dispatch, it sought instead to cultivate a narrow English-speaking elite capable of staffing the lower rungs of the imperial bureaucracy. Schools and colleges produced clerks, not citizens. For the overwhelming majority of Indians, education remained an unattainable privilege rather than a pathway to opportunity. Stifled Aspirations If men faced exclusion, women confronted near-total invisibility. The 1891 Census recorded female literacy at a microscopic 0.42 percent, compared with 8.44 percent for men. Formal education was largely confined to daughters of affluent, progressive urban households. For rural women and those from disadvantaged communities, schooling scarcely existed. Child marriage, rigid patriarchal customs and the confinement of women to domestic life combined to ensure that literacy remained a distant aspiration. Yet, history changes because individuals decide that prevailing assumptions deserve to be challenged. The latter half of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of Indian social reformers who questioned inherited orthodoxy. Figures such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy began attacking customs that denied women dignity and opportunity. Their campaigns met fierce resistance from conservative opinion while operating within the constraints of colonial rule. Nevertheless, they planted the intellectual foundations for one of modern India's most profound social transformations. Among those who carried that movement to its logical conclusion was Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve. Born in 1858 in Sheravali village in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, Karve’s early life offered little indication that he would become one of India’s greatest educational reformers. Raised in modest circumstances, he pursued learning with remarkable determination, graduating in mathematics from Mumbai’s Elphinstone College before teaching at Pune’s Fergusson College. It was there that he confronted the grim realities facing widows and women denied even the most basic educational opportunities. At a time when widow remarriage invited social ostracism and women’s education was dismissed as dangerous, Karve devoted himself to both causes. His conviction rested on the deceptively simple proposition that a nation could not hope to progress while excluding half its population from education. Women’s education was no charity but an investment in national development. That belief acquired institutional form in 1896 with the establishment of the Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha in Hingne in Pune’s Karve Nagar. Its beginnings could scarcely have been humbler. The institution functioned from a tiny hut, admitting just four girls, many of them child widows whom society had effectively abandoned. Resources were scarce, public support limited and opposition intense. Yet Karve understood that enduring reform begins not with grand declarations but with functioning institutions. Radical Experiment The experiment steadily expanded. A women's school followed in 1907, where Karve’s own widowed sister-in-law, Parvatibai Athavale, became its first student - a deeply personal affirmation of his ideals. His greatest achievement arrived in 1916 with the founding of SNDT Women’s University, India’s first university dedicated exclusively to women. Long before phrases such as “women's empowerment” entered official vocabulary, Karve had already translated the concept into educational practice. Today, the Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha educates more than 32,000 girls through dozens of institutions across Maharashtra, serving students from disadvantaged communities, tribal populations and economically weaker families. What began with four pupils in a hut has become one of India’s largest networks devoted exclusively to women's education. Its expansion tells a larger story about India itself. Educational reform succeeds not merely because governments legislate it, but because visionary individuals create institutions that outlive them. Karve’s legacy survived changing political regimes, economic upheavals and shifting social attitudes precisely because it rested on durable foundations rather than passing slogans. That legacy is preserved in the Maharshi Karve Museum in Pune, established on his 150th birth anniversary. The museum displays his personal belongings and chronicles a life defined not by dramatic gestures but by extraordinary perseverance. Visitors encounter more than the biography of a reformer; they encounter the origins of an educational revolution that quietly reshaped Indian society. India today debates artificial intelligence and global university rankings. These conversations risk obscuring a more fundamental truth. The country’s educational transformation began not with technology or policy frameworks, but with a moral conviction that every individual deserves the opportunity to learn. And Karve recognised that principle long before it became fashionable. (The author is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

Unrest within Mahayuti

Updated: Jan 21, 2025

Mahayuti

Mumbai: The state administration on Sunday stalled the appointments of guardian ministers in Raigad and Nashik districts. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had cleared the appointments before he left for Davos in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum on Saturday. They are believed to have been stalled on behest of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who heads the state in absence of the Chief Minister.


NCP’s Aditi Tatkare and BJP’s Girish Mahajan were entrusted with responsibilities of guardian minister for the Raigad and Nashik districts respectively, where Shiv Sena’s Bharat Gogawale and Dada Bhuse had staked claims. Gogawale is a first-time minister while, Bhuse had been the guardian minister of the district during previous government under Eknath Shinde.


Shiv Sena, NCP and BJP all the three constituents of Mahayuti have strong roots in both the districts. However, the Shiv Sena and the NCP had been particularly on loggerheads there. The Shiv Sena, which had been demanding the guardian minister’s post in Nashik district has managed to win only two assembly seats in the district where the NCP has Six and the BJP has Five MLAs. On the contrary, in Raigad the NCP has won only one seat while the Shiv Sena and the BJP both have Three MLAs each in the district.


Sunil Tatkare, MP from Raigad Lok Sabha constituency and the stat unit president of the NCP and father of Aditi Tatkare, had been the guardian minister of Raigad between 2004 and 2014. Gogawale had always been his political opponent before Tatkare joined the Mahayuti government under Ajit Pawar’s leadership in 2023. Gogawale claimed that all the Six Shiv Sena-BJP MLAs in the district had opined in his favour to be the guardian minister of the district and after the decision to appoint Aditi Tatkare was announced, his supporters resorted to violent protests. They burnt tyres in bid to stall traffic on highway in the district. Reacting to the developments, Tatkare said that the issue should be pondered over after CM Fadnavis returns from Davos on Saturday and settled amicably.


In Nashik Girish Mahajan had been the guardian minister of the district between 2014 and 2019 when Fadnavis was the Chief Minister.


The post of guardian minister doesn’t have any constitutional mandate and is considered to be a political appointment. Guardian ministers head the district planning and development councils (DPDC) that control the funds for development works being carried out in the particular district. This control wields much of political power to the minister in that district whereby spreading the party in the district becomes much easier. This is the reason why the grass root politicians seem to be very sensitive to such appointments.


While Gogawale and Bhuse are unhappy about not being appointed as guardian ministers, some others like NCP’s Hasan Mushrif and BJP’s Pankaja Munde are unhappy about not being appointed as guardian district in their home districts of Kolhapur and Beed respectively. DCM Shinde is learnt to have gone to his ancestral village Dare in Satara district after the decision and BJP’s firefighters Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Girish Mahajan are expected to meet him there to try finding a way out of the issue.

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