St. Stephen’s College, which celebrated its 125th anniversary early this year, has inspired extreme emotions over the years, ranging from pure unadulterated devotion, verging on the religious, to undisguised resentment, even hostility.
St. Stephen’s College A History: Celebrating 125 years of Excellence
Publisher: Roli Books
Price: Rs 395/-
Pages: 141
The texture and intensity of emotions expressed depended on whether you were lucky enough to be the chosen few who passed through its hallowed precincts or you were an outsider bemoaning your outcast fate. For Stephanians, as popular prejudices go, tended to have a George Bush-like simplistic view of the world – either you are one of us or you are one of them.
Elitist, insular, self-obsessed “cynical brilliant undergraduates hyped up by their gonads and their wit,” with chips on their shoulders—this is how the demonology contrived by Stepehen’s baiters conjured them. But such stereotype-mongering simply does not square with real, all-too-real achievements of Stephanians in just about every field – be it academics, politics, bureaucracy, literature, sports or the world of entertainment and showbiz, argues Ashok Jaitly in his “St. Stephen’s College: A History” (published by Roli Books).
Not many, for instance, know that “Mahatma Gandhi, or plain Mr. Gandhi as he was then” came to St. Stephen’s early in 1915 soon after returning from Natal in South Africa and how the house of then principal Sushil Kumar Rudra became the rendezvous for iconic nationalist leaders like Rabindranath Tagore, Madan Mohan Malviya, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Surendranath Banerjee. Or for that matter, Rabindranath Tagore completed his English translation of Gitanjali at Rudra’s house.
Gopal Gandhi, governor of West Bengal, aptly captures the quintessential St. Stephen’s ethos: “If St. Stephen’s meant something special to me, it was this, that it enabled you to think for yourself, speak for yourself, and do both mindful of the other person being more important in the scheme of things rather than yourself. Not least because the ‘others’ were more numerous than ‘your’ kind, But let not the others’ strength – numerical or otherwise – overawe you into silence or petrification.”
A passionate believer in Stephania—no, it is not simply a college, but is a state of mind and feeling, the author would have us believe—Jaitly takes a critical look at the myths that have clustered around the College with the capital C, as its alumni fondly call it, by delving deep into inspirations and concerns that have powered the college over the last 125 years.
Jaitly, a former bureaucrat and old student, relentlessly interrogates a popular charge levelled against the college that that its students inhabited some kind of blessed isle cut off from the currents of political and social change around them.
In his book, which is divided into three sections – ‘The Making of the College’, ‘Institutions within an Institution’ and ‘Beyond the College Walls’ – the author cites numerous examples from the early years of the twentieth century to more recent history to show that the college was radical in its deeper impulses than just a haven for status quoists.
Retracing the college’s connection with the freedom movement, Jaitly writes movingly about Har Dayal, Syed Hyder Raza, Amir Chand and Awadh Behari who left the sheltering confines of the college and safe careers to the tumult of heroic revolutionary activity. The author’s account of the struggles of the college to define itself in relation to seminal moments in the history of a nation like the freedom movement, the Partition, the Naxalite revolt of the 70s, and more recently, the Mandal agitation of the 90s, is full of revelations and little-known facts.
Not many, for instance, know that “Mahatma Gandhi, or plain Mr Gandhi as he was then” came to St. Stephen’s early in 1915 soon after returning from Natal in South Africa and how the house of then principal Sushil Kumar Rudra became the rendezvous for iconic nationalist leaders like Rabindranath Tagore, Madan Mohan Malviya, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Surendranath Banerjee. Or for that matter, Rabindranath Tagore completed his English translation of Gitanjali at Rudra’s house.
It was the same radical impulse that fired the imagination of some students in the heyday of Naxalite uprising who left the college suddenly and dramatically—”studies, belongings, everything”—to express their solidarity with the poor and the dispossessed.
Critics would still say that a few radical swallows does not a revolutionary summer make, but then it’s sometimes hard to dismantle thick walls of prejudice with mere reasoning.
In short, what makes the college special is its “eclectic, polychrome culture,” in the words of Shashi Tharoor, a Stephanian, and an aspirant for the post of UN Secretary General, that provides space to just about every possible type—boxwallahs, bureaucrats, writers, artists, thinkers, revolutionaries and rebels without a cause to express themselves and achieve their full potential.
Jaitly had wanted to write a “fun history” of the college,—not that it doesn’t have its fun moments—but he has ended up writing a serious, probing and passionate book that locates St. Stephen’s so-called elitism and exclusivism in the social and historical context and illuminates in great detail why the college inspires such fanatical devotion among its alumni.
Gopal Gandhi, governor of West Bengal, aptly captures the quintessential St. Stephen’s ethos: “If St. Stephen’s meant something special to me, it was this, that it enabled you to think for yourself, speak for yourself, and do both mindful of the other person being more important in the scheme of things rather than yourself. Not least because the ‘others’ were more numerous than ‘your’ kind, But let not the others’ strength – numerical or otherwise – overawe you into silence or petrification.”
Author Profile
- Manish Chand is Founder-CEO and Editor-in-Chief of India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and India and World, a pioneering magazine focused on international affairs. He is CEO/Director of TGII Media Private Limited, an India-based media, publishing, research and consultancy company.
Latest entries
India and the WorldNovember 17, 2024From Delhi to Rio: A Shared Agenda, Rise of Global South- India and the WorldOctober 27, 2024Reshaping the world order in Kazan, the BRICS Way
- DiplomacyOctober 24, 2024Jaishankar unveils 5-point agenda for South-friendly world order
- India and the WorldOctober 24, 2024Thaw in Kazan: Modi, Xi unveil roadmap for reviving India-China dialogue
