A Worthy Educational Effort – Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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A Worthy Educational Effort – Mahatma Gandhi 

 

The Birla family has been running an institution called the Birla College at Pilani in Jaipur State. I have been often asked to visit it, but in spite of my keen desire to do so I have never been able to find time for it. Thakkar Bapa visited the institution and gave me a glowing account and pressed me to visit it. Seth Ghanshyamdas Birla has now issued a booklet to acquaint the public about the origin and growth of the institution. The object is to invite criticism and to present the public with its novel features may be for adoption. The writer has lavished on the booklet all his art of writing, aided by fine printing, beautiful illustrations alluringly arranged, making the whole thing very attractive. For two months Mahadev waited for a suitable opportunity to place it before me, and imagining that I should have some spare time on our journey to Simla he ventured to give it to me on the train. The moment I took it up to read, it gripped me. It is a quarto size booklet of 47 pages, and I could not give it up until I had read it from cover to cover. I would ask all interested in education to write for it to the Secretary of the Birla College, Pilani.

A brief history of the enterprise may be given here. The institution has grown out of a small school called Birlas Pathshala opened 40 years ago in an insignificant little building. Now it is an institution with an intermediate College, splendid buildings for school, college and hostels, and vast playgrounds. It has 33 staff quarters, and 5 hostels accommodating 295 students (including 27 Harijan). There are 18 playgrounds, a library with 3,608 Hindi and 6,772 English books. There is high school with 791 boys, a college with 165 boys, and a girls school with 157 girls. The Birla Educational Trust runs besides 128 village schools with 4,636 boys and 200 girls. Physical instruction and games are compulsory, and so is music. There is an agricultural farm with a dairy on modern lines. Among the crafts and vocations taught are spinning and weaving, carpentry, tailoring, dyeing, printing, book-binding, weaving, carpet-making, shoe-making and leather-work. The agricultural farm and dairy have numerous cows, sheep and goats. The basic education scheme is also being given a trial. Hardly anything has escaped the attention of those in charge prayer, intellectual and industrial training, balanced diet, health examination and health preservation. An endeavour is made to develop individual contact between the students and teachers on a family basis.

The whole institution has grown out of Seth Shivnarayanji Birla’s desire to provide for the education of his two grandsons Rameshwardas and Ghanshyamdas. He did not like the provision to be confined to the needs of his grandsons, and so he established a school in 1900 with a village teacher on Rs. 5 a month for all the children of the village. This was called the Birla Pathshala—the seed out of which has grown the vast tree that the institution now has become. It combines family interests with philanthropy which has now become a distinctive trait of the Birla brothers. But Ghanshyamdas, of all the brothers, made a special interest of education, health and kindred topics, and the growth of the institution at Pilani is mainly due to his perseverance, resourcefulness and interest in education. Sir Maurice Gwyer and other distinguished people have visited the institution and spoken in high terms about it. Ghanshyamdasji’s ambition is to make a Degree College of the Intermediate College, and he has been trying to do so for some years. But things move slowly in Princes’ India, and so his ambition still remains unfulfilled, it is hoped that the Jaipur State will lose no time in encouraging this worthy enterprise and accord permission to turn it into a full-fledged college. In my opinion there are few institutions in India run with such care and attention. If we assume the necessity for modern colleges, the Birla College has succeeded in combining several features which are scarcely to be seen elsewhere in India.

 

Reference:

Harijan, 28-7-1940