Century-old school rewriting education norms in Hyderabad

Sharada Vidyalaya started its innings on a chilly November day in 1922 when eight girls from the neighbourhood sat down to listen to their teacher

Inside a narrow lane branching off at Shamsheergunj, beyond Charminar, is Sharada Vidyalaya that started its innings on a chilly November day in 1922 when eight girls from the neighbourhood sat down to listen to their teacher. The children began to learn grammar, Pedda Bala Siksha, and Jantulu Neeti Kadhalu, according to records left by one of the first students who sat down in the classroom -- Kovuri Seetamma. Her classmates were Guda Andamma, Nayakamma, Rangamani, Kamalamma, Ramanujamma. The school which started as Sri Prasanna Gajanana Balika Pathashala in 1922, and became Sharada Vidyalaya in 1945, is now celebrating 100 years of its existence.

A hundred years later, the school has 1,450 students on its rolls. “It was started by Y. Satyanarayana as a Telugu medium school for girls and students were brought in purdah to the rented premises. Now the school has its own building, is co-educational and English medium,” informs Lalitha, the principal of the school who has been with the institution for the past 31 years. Satyanaryana was a product of Chaderghat High School.

“The founder, Satayanarayana, started this school in the aftermath of an epidemic, the 1918 Influenza. He and others evacuated people from this area to camps located outside the walled city. Later, he decided to start a school for girls with Telugu medium. A cart would go around and bring girls to the school by 10 a.m. and then drop them back at 4 p.m. in the evening,” says the principal. Starting a school for girls in Telugu medium was a revolutionary act in the Nizam’s dominion where Urdu held sway in the official circles, and the Osmania University was established in 1917 with Urdu as the medium of instruction. Equally revolutionary was the idea of vacating their homes to plague camps as most Indians resisted leaving their homes.

To put things in perspective, there were 687 girls schools in the whole of Nizam’s Dominion and 43,579 pupils in 1922. The Telugu medium school which was started after one pandemic is now English medium school after another pandemic. “The number of students studying in Telugu has come down. We cater to lower income group families. All of them want to study in English medium. Nobody is interested in reading in Telugu as they want jobs. So Telugu was dropped as medium of instruction in 2021,” says a teacher of the school.

By 1944, there were three teachers, four classrooms and students could study up to fourth class. “Satyanarayana was 22 when he started the school in Aliabad village where the family was living for 13 generations. Our family was in the construction business. We have expanded the school by adding Junior College in 1962, degree college and now we offer post-graduate courses also in the institution. A number of my cousins and aunts in the extended family studied there,” says Jayant Tagore, a scion of the family.

On May 24, 1947, the school came into its own when Sir Mirza Ismail, the Prime Minister of Nizam’s Dominion, inaugurated the Sharada Memorial Building. The art deco building was sited on a land with a massive playground for children to run around. Now, on the ground floor of the building, the school officials have fished out old photographs and memorabilia for an exhibition to mark the century.