The Doon School


The Doon School is a selective all-boys private boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India, which was established in 1935. It was envisioned by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta, as a school modelled on the British public school while remaining conscious of Indian ambitions and desires.
The school admitted its first pupils on 10 September 1935, and formally opened on 27 October 1935, with Lord Willingdon presiding over the ceremony. The school's first headmaster was Arthur E. Foot, an English educationalist who had spent nine years as a science master at Eton College, England.
The school houses roughly 580 pupils aged 12 to 18, and admission is based on a competitive entrance examination and an interview with the headmaster. Every year boys are admitted in only two-year groups: seventh grade in January and eighth grade in April. As of May 2019, boys from 26 Indian states as well as 35 non-resident Indians and foreign nationals were studying at Doon. The school is fully residential, and boys and most teachers live on campus. In tenth grade, students take the Cambridge IGCSE examinations, and for the final two years can choose between the Indian School Certificate or International Baccalaureate. A broad range of extra-curricular activities, numbering around 80, are offered to the boys, and early masters such as R.L. Holdsworth, J.A.K. Martyn, Jack Gibson and Gurdial Singh established a strong tradition of mountaineering at school. The school occupies the former site of the Forest Research Institute and is home to diverse flora and fauna. Doon remains a boys-only school despite continued pressure from political leaders to become coeducational. Old boys of the school are known as 'Doscos'.
Doon has been consistently ranked as the best all-boys residential school in India. Although the school has often been cited as 'Eton of India' by media outlets such as the BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, and Washington Post, it eschews the label. Doon often draws attention, and sometimes criticism, from the media for the perceived disproportionate influence of its alumni in spheres such as Indian politics, business, or culture. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's administration was criticised, and labelled "Doon Cabinet", following the appointment of his school acquaintances to major posts. The school has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including politicians, diplomats, artists, writers and businesspeople including late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra.

History

Origins

Doon was the culmination of some considerable lobbying and efforts by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta and advocate-general of Bengal, who in 1927 became a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council of Lord Irwin. He envisioned a new kind of Indian public school that was modelled on traditional British public schools, but was "distinctively Indian in their moral and spiritual outlook and open to all castes and communities". While Jawaharlal Nehru welcomed the idea of such a school, there were many, like Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, who were opposed to it, considering it inegalitarian. Das travelled widely in India with the goal of collecting 4 million, but at the time of his death in 1928 had raised only 1 million in cash and a further 1 million in promises. With the money, Das formed the Indian Public Schools' Society, with the objective of founding new public schools in India that would admit students regardless of caste, creed or social status.
After Das's death in 1928, the IPSS accomplished little, and by 1934 some of the original lenders had begun to inquire about the return of their money. To solve this problem, Sir Joseph Bhore, then Railway Minister of Lord Willingdon's Council, became IPSS chairman, and along with Sir Frank Noyce and Sir Akbar Hydari as secretary, worked to obtain the former estate of the Forest Research Institute, in Dehradun, from the government on favourable terms. Lord Halifax, then President of the British Board of Education, led a selection committee that nominated Arthur E. Foot, a science teacher at Eton College, to be the first headmaster. The school admitted its first pupils on 10 September 1935, and on 27 October 1935, the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, presided over the formal opening of the school. Seventy boys enrolled in the first term, and 110 more signed up for the second.

Early years: 1935–1970

Foot had never visited India before accepting the position of headmaster. He noted that the school appeared to be surrounded by forests and close to mountains, and the possibilities of outdoor recreation and mountaineering seem to have influenced his decision as much as the chance to create a completely new type of school in India. Foot's first action upon being offered the position was to recruit J. A. K. Martyn from Harrow School as his deputy. Although Martyn had not visited India before, he took up the offer because of the opportunity it afforded him to implement the ideas of German educator Kurt Hahn at Doon; it was something he had not been able to do at Harrow. Doon's ethos and guiding principles were determined early in its life by Foot, Martyn, R. L. Holdsworth and Jack Gibson, who went on to become principal of Mayo College, and Martyn acknowledged the influence of Hahn's ideas in the development of the school's ethos. They were soon joined in their efforts by Indians such as the artist Sudhir Khastgir and Gurdial Singh, a noted mountaineer who taught at Doon for several decades. In an essay entitled The Objects of Education published in the school magazine, Foot offered a template for a complete education for boys, which included teaching them to form a habit of choosing good over evil, think logically, express their thoughts and views clearly, and maintain a healthy body. At the opening of the school, he said, "Our boys should leave The Doon School as members of an aristocracy, but it must be an aristocracy of service inspired by the ideals of unselfishness, not one of privilege, wealth or position". The annual school fees in 1935 was 1,375, and by September 1946, had risen to 1,800. The per-capita income of India, then largely an agricultural society, in 1947 has been recorded as 252.
In 1947, there were around 300 boys studying at Doon, out of which 50-60 were Muslims, 15-20 Sikhs, 15-20 Parsees, 6-7 Christians, and the remaining two-thirds Hindu. The first cohort of students left school in 1938, and during the Second World War, about 65 Doon students served in the Army, Navy or Air Force. In 1948, Foot returned to England for "family reasons", and John Martyn became the second headmaster. After the Indian Independence, Martyn's friends suggested it would be a mistake to stay on in India, but he later wrote: "They could not have been more wrong. I have found my life much pleasanter than before...although no one had previously ever done or said anything to make me feel at all unwelcome, from now on it was often made quite explicit that I was very welcome." While Foot and Martyn were determined to model Doon on Eton and Harrow, they both agreed that Doon should cater primarily for Indian boys—and not the sons of British expatriates—in order to create a uniquely Indian public school rather than a transplanted British institution. Foot did not want Doon to be considered elitist. In a paper surveying the new school, presented to the Royal Society of Arts, London in 1947, Foot wrote: "In language we have never intended to base our instruction on the Classics in the way that Latin is still the centre pin of the English Public School. The great majority of boys take Urdu or Hindi." Martyn retired as headmaster in 1966 and became a managing trustee of Indian Cheshire Homes.

Middle years: 1970–2000

Headmasters

The school's first Indian headmaster was Eric Simeon, appointed in 1970. He came from a military background and laid great emphasis on disciplined living. Simeon's tenure of nine years was marked with financial difficulties for the school and the estate suffered, as the funds were not enough to maintain buildings and facilities. In 1971, Simeon introduced the 'Scholar's Blazer', an academic equivalent of the pre-existing prize 'Games Blazer', so that boys accorded academic excellence the same level of prestige as they did sporting achievements. In 1979, Gulab Ramchandani became the first alumnus to be appointed headmaster, and during his term the school regained financial stability. In 1988, Shomie Das, another alumnus and the grandson of school founder Satish Ranjan Das, became headmaster. Das's focus was on upgrading the school infrastructure, and during his time the Oberoi house was added to the original four houses. The next headmaster, John Mason, appointed in 1996, planned on making Doon more affordable to school pupils. The school did not raise its fees while Mason was in office.

Criticism of Rajiv Gandhi administration

In the 1980s, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an alumnus, drew criticism from the media for appointing many old boys to his administration. His inner circle was labelled a "Doon Cabinet" or "Dosco Mafia", and Washington Post reported,
The catch phrase around Delhi these days is that the 'Doon School runs India,' but that is too simple an analysis for a complex, chaotic country with so many competing spheres of influence.

Gandhi's reliance on Doon alumni for political advice later led Prime Minister Morarji Desai to remark, "If I had anything to do with this place, I'd close it down". Although any alumnus seldom held public office for some time afterwards, this changed with the political ascendance of Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia, Naveen Patnaik, and Rahul Gandhi.