Ode to Sharada Vidyalaya’s pioneering 95 years

Hyderabad: It was a trip down memory lane for several while the entire atmosphere was one of emotional bonding where the chord dated back to all of 95 years.

The completion of 95 years in existence makes for a momentous occasion and calls for celebration. If it is a school in a rundown area in a State capital, which has just achieved the feat, then that makes it even more uniquely heart-warming. One has to laud the institution, which has focussed on educating girls at a time when such a step was some sort of societal anathema given the purdah system that was in vogue in a pre-dominantly Muslim area.

Given this backdrop, the four-acre campus housing Sharada Vidyalaya, a group of educational institutions, in Hyderabad’s Shamsheergunj locality, wore a nostalgic atmosphere when it organised a memorable function to commemorate the completion of 95 glorious years in the noble field.

Established on a modest scale in 1922 by a visionary Yedati Satyanarayana, and known as Sri Prasanna Gajanana Sevaka Samajam, it had a strength of a mere eight girls as students. He envisioned a society whereby girls could get educated and be respected. Obsessed with the mission, he comforted the parents by hiring ayahs to bring the students from their homes and drop them after the day’s classes.

These moving accounts of the school’s initial years of struggle and the valour with which it went on to add one remarkable after another were recounted by the men of eminence who were present at the anniversary celebration.

Speakers from the founder-trustee Shakuntala Devi, Secretary, Jayanth Tagore, trustee Lakshmi Naik to President of Governing Council, Pradeep Chander Jain set the tone while recalling the days and how from eight students, the school had served as an alma mater to a whopping 66,500 students, who subsequently risen in several spheres in their adulthood.

Jayanth Tagore pointed out that, as one of the oldest schools in the city, Sharada Vidyalaya stands testimony to the history of Hyderabad. Pradeep Dev appreciated the stellar role played by the institution, particularly with regard to empowerment of the girl-child. The real empowerment starts with education, he told the 3000 plus gathering that graced the occasion.

It is only because of economic compulsions that the management had started charging modest fees after providing education free of cost for over seven decades. Over the years, the school had VVIP visits, including in 1947 by Mirza Ismail, the Prime Minister of Nizam, in 1963 by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and also Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Chief Minister of AP.

The management personnel informed that they were all set to further its qualitative and inspirational legacy even as they near the century mark. With its trail-blazing efforts, Sharada Vidyalaya occupied a pivotal status in the field of education, especially for its thrust on educating the girl-child.