This post is about some of the other prestigious Indian Boarding Schools in India which we had never heard of while in Lovedale. All we were told was there was only one school superior to Lovedale and that was Doon. Lawrence Sanawar used to be mentioned merely in passing! The other schools were founded for the Indian elite and not as asylums founded on a shoe string budget for the European orphans of East India Company and British soldiers. By the very nature of things, pupils at these other schools would not have been as subservient to the British and the downmarket Anglo-Indians as were the pupils of Lawrence School Lovedale. I cannot for one moment imagine that the parents of pupils, if not pupils themselves would have acquiesced in basic amenities being as poor as they were in Lovedale. Certainly the sanitation arrangements would have been vastly superior; it is unlikely there would have been a shortage of water even in the toilets as there was at Lovedale! Most certainly the catering arrangements would have been vastly superior and vastly more hygienic. After all, one cannot expect members of erstwhile Royal families to accept anything less!
The list of schools set out here is nowhere near being exhaustive but merely gives examples of what would have been far better alternatives if only knowledge had been as widespread as it is today.
Note what the founder of Mayo College, Lord Mayo said about Indians:’We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race’ Earl Mayo, founder of Mayo College.
Buried statue of Lord Mayo who called Indians Inferior Race resurrected
Mayo College – Prince of Wales Visit
Scindia School was founded by and for Indian Royals. To this day it has on its Board members of the founding family. No question of grovelling to Anglo-Indians.
Below is a painting of Henry Daly, founder of Daily College. Ironically, he was one of Henry Lawrence’s ‘Young Men’. The school is located in Indore, birth place of the bogus sophisticate Wilfred Joseph McMahon. Mac, worshipped to this day as the legendary housemaster and English teacher wouldn’t have been allowed in as a pupil anywhere near the school as he would have been regarded as far too downmarket.
This is really the School I should have gone to as it would have been far more in my comfort zone. It was founded for Kathiawari Royals and I am of Kathiawari origin, albeit nowhere near being Royal! Located in Rajkot, in the state of Gujarat, it was designed by Colonel Keatinge who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in the suppression of the so called Mutiny. It was opened in 1870 by Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, literally a bastard! This is the school where the legendary Headmaster of Lawrence School Lovedale, K. I. Thomas got his first appointment as Principal before he moved on to his second appointment in Karachi.
Doon to Mayo College and Sanawar
Doon was meant to impress us. Reality was and perhaps is that in terms of size, location and aesthetics Doon was nowhere near Lawrence School Lovedale. However, Doon was probably superior in terms of infrastructure such as water supply, toilets and showers. The standards of hygiene and food would have been vastly superior. Lawrence School Lovedale aspired to be the Doon School of South India!
When we were youngsters, it was ingrained into us that ours was the best school in India and that only Doon could match us. Such bogus information was embellished when we were told that Indira Gandhi’s sons were there. Nobody had the nous to say ‘so bloody what?’. Doon was meant to be better than even our sister school in Sanawar.
The information we were fed was, of course, utter nonsense! Doon couldn’t possible have been better than Mayo or Scindia neither of which we had heard of! There were other, perhaps smaller boarding schools that were far happier places and were not, as Lawrence School, Lovedale was, a slum without adequate water for basic needs! Other schools were certainly not Railway Colonies as Lawrence School Lovedale was.
Here is the Wikipedia Link for Doon School.
As far as the what Doon has produced, some have done well and become respected Indians but this has been achieved despite, not because of a Doon education. What should be noted is the sheer number of utterly corrupt, downright sycophantic and entitled lowlife that has emerged. Here are just some examples:
Kamal Nath: Probably India’s most corrupt politician of recent times. One doesn’t need to do anything other than internet searches to trace this character’s history of corruption and underhandedness.
Mani Shankar Aiyar (see below sitting on left, with Shashi Tharoor on right): Aiyar is India’s most pompous politician and has made paying abject obeisance to Sonia Gandhi, an illiterate Italian of peasant stock and her dreadful offspring, an art form.
A character called Moin Qureshi, an Old Doon School boy (DOSCO) was up to his neck in a meat exporting scandal wherein he pocketed millions. He operated from the DOSCO office in Lutyens Delhi which was under the care of a DOSCO politician called RPN Singh.! Another DOSCO was Pullock Chatterjee who was PM Manmohan Singh’s Private Secretary. This Chatterjee character took Private and Confidential files for clearance to Sonia Gandhi, the barely literate and thoroughly corrupt widow of expelled DOSCO Rajiv Gandhi before the PM even knew they existed.
Only one master from Lovedale, Sanskrit teacher P.N. Raina was able to secure a job in Doon School in my time.
Here is an interesting glimpse into the products of Doon School.
The link above gives an idea of what Doon produces including the Gandhi boys who in reality had no merit whatsoever!
One of the most disgusting programmes I saw on British TV is detailed below. Just why Doon accepted scum from Britain and attempt to turn them round is a mystery.
TV Documentary of British ne’er-do-wells sent to Doon School
Below is an article related to Doon School. Three morons are mentioned: Karan Thapar (whose daddy General Pran Nath Thapar got our country thrashed by the Chinese in 1962), snotty-nosed, snivelling Ramachandra Guha an alleged Historian who specialises in writing about the bogus Mahatma, and Mani ‘The Moron’ Shankar Aiyar an unabashed lickspittle of Sonia Gandhi and her errant son Rahul. There was a time when Thapar was so powerful that he used to be able to TELL Ministers to be ready at a particular time to be interviewed by him. I knew he was nothing special as I watched him on UK TV when he was a trainee journalist decades ago. His snobbery knows no bounds as he can get away making such comments as ‘I am off to London to live in civilisation’ for a while’. Now that the corridors of power have been shut to him, he has been reduced to conducting YouTube interviews with known Modi baiters, asking leading questions and generally coming across as a down market troll.