{"id":120426,"date":"2018-10-22T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=120426"},"modified":"2018-10-16T16:07:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T15:07:08","slug":"st-stephens-college-a-distinguished-academic-institution-of-delhi-university-with-a-glorious-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/st-stephens-college-a-distinguished-academic-institution-of-delhi-university-with-a-glorious-past\/","title":{"rendered":"St Stephen’s College — A Distinguished Academic Institution of Delhi University with a Glorious Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like some other prestigious academic institutions of the World — Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Sorbonne and others, St Stephen\u2019s College in India enjoys a well deserved reputation. It has, by Indian standards, a relatively long historical background. It was\u00a0started in Delhi as St Stephen\u2019s High School by\u00a0Reverend Samuel Scott Allnutt, Chaplain of Delhi\u00a0in 1854 and then over the years after attracting some students to study in it, it became a College, called St Stephen’s College\u00a0\u00a0on 1 February 1881,\u00a0\u00a0The college was named after\u00a0Saint Stephen<\/em><\/a>, who was adopted by the\u00a0Anglican Church<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as the\u00a0Patron Saint<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>of Delhi.<\/p>\n

The aim of the College was to provide English education to Indians and also for the propagation of the Go<\/a>spel.\u00a0Samuel Scott Allnutt<\/em> served as its first principal. In the beginning the College was located in the Mughal area of Chandini Chowk<\/em> and had just five students and three teachers. The College was affiliated\u00a0to\u00a0Calcutta University<\/em>\u00a0but subsequently in 1882, it became\u00a0affiliated\u00a0to\u00a0Punjab University<\/em>\u00a0(in Lahore) and moved to a more spacious location in\u00a0Kashmiri Gate<\/em>\u00a0not too far from its earlier location.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, the College admitted girl\u00a0students also since there was no girls College in Delhi. Then after a gap of a few years, the admission of girl\u00a0students was stopped. However, girls are again being admitted to St Stephen’s\u00a0College and recently a girls Hostel within its large campus has been constructed. Another College that also came up in Delhi not too far from St Stephens was Hindu College.<\/p>\n

The University of Delhi was formally instituted in 1922 with three constituent\u00a0Colleges — St Stephen\u2019s, Hindu College and Ramjas College<\/em>.\u00a0 Delhi College was affiliated\u00a0to the University later.\u00a0 \u00a0This latter College also had an interesting past; it was a madrasa <\/em>for imparting Muslim students, elementary education and teachings of the Koran. It is said that once Mirza Ghalib<\/em> who had become quite famous as a poet, had been invited to come to Delhi College. On arrival at the main gate, Mirza Ghalib found that there was nobody to receive him, whereupon he went back to his home in his palanquin.<\/p>\n

St Stephen’s College shifted to its new campus in North Delhi in 1941; it is built in gothic style in a large 25-acre plot with several classrooms, a grand library, several laboratories, and a small church within the college premises itself. A large auditorium invites students and teachers with the following words of Jesus Christ:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the Light of the World: He that followeth me shall not walk in Darkness. But shall have\u00a0the Light of Life\u00a0\u201c<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As \u00a0 mentioned earlier, St Stephen’s enjoys a high reputation and many famous men and women have studied here or have been associated with it in some manner. Some of the\u00a0famous students are the former President of India\u00a0Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is hard to believe but the former President of Pakistan — Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was also its student.<\/p>\n

Diplomats such as Mani Shankar Aiyar, Swapan Dasgupta, Salman Khurshid<\/em>, \u00a0writers Khushwant Singh, Arun Shourie, Ramachandra Guha, Barkha Dutt<\/em> and countless other well-known names were its students.\u00a0Shashi Tharoor<\/em>, Member of Parliament and former Under-Secretary-General of the UN also studied here.<\/p>\n

Another person Rahul Gandhi<\/em> who is the son of former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, and is now the President of the Congress Party also studied in his College for a year but did not complete his studies in this college.<\/p>\n

The Nobel Prize winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore<\/em> also visited the College and stayed here for some time while he was translating his poems from Bengali into English<\/p>\n

Mahatma Gandhi is also associated with the College by his association with\u00a0Reverend C. F. Andrews<\/em><\/a>, a distinguished\u00a0lecturer in the college and a member of the\u00a0Cambridge Brotherhood<\/em><\/a>. He was active in the\u00a0Indian independence movement<\/a>\u00a0and Gandhi used to call him\u00a0Deenbandhu<\/em>\u00a0because he worked for the poor of India. The College Library possesses a few letters of Gandhi and Andrews and their correspondence demanding independence of India from British rule. . .<\/p>\n

Not only did the College excel in academics and teaching, it also encouraged sports. Cricket was very popular and in the annual cricket tournament of Delhi University, the College usually made the finals of the tournament. Who was its opponent? On several occasions it was Hindu College that stands opposite it in the University Campus. On a few occasions, I used to see the hotly contested Cricket matches between these two great Colleges.<\/p>\n

On a personal note when I was a student of Delhi University about half a century ago, there used to be a brilliant student\u00a0studying Physics in St Stephen\u2019s. Let me call him Ashok. He was not only a brilliant student\u2014he broke the existing record of marks obtained in the final examination of Delhi University. He also had a fantastic memory and could remember the days and timings of various trains that passed through Delhi and other metro towns such as Bombay, Calcutta etc.<\/p>\n

Ashok was\u00a0a genius but sometimes being a genius can be injurious to one’s mental health. He often played some mischief and did some queer antics when he was in the College and also when he started working as a teacher in a school. No wonder he was therefore thrown out by his Principal. But that hardly made a dent on his eccentricity.<\/p>\n

Can one hold the College responsible for my friend\u2019s eccentricity? No, but any grand institution should house not only brilliance, but also accommodate an element of quirkiness.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr Ravi P Bhatia is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, an<\/em> educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University. His new book, <\/em>A Garland of Ideas\u2014Gandhian, Religious, Educational, Environmental was published recently in Delhi.<\/em> ravipbhatia@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like some other prestigious academic institutions of the World — Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Sorbonne and others, St Stephen\u2019s College in India enjoys a well-deserved reputation. Nobel Literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi are associated with the College as are the former President of India, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, and the former President of Pakistan, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":70777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}