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Many of the familiar names among Delhi University colleges began taking shape after Partition, when the changing demographic in the city necessitated new educational institutions for young people from displaced families. Among them was Kirori Mal College, though it was yet to be named so.
There are at least two slightly differing narratives of the early history of the college, but both tie it to the Partition. According to the history the college management itself has put forward on its website and other forums, it dates back to 1951 when it was established by American Jesuits as Nirmala College. It functioned out of an evacuee building, which also doubled up as a place of shelter for displaced families, in Old Delhi’s Qutub Road, a bustling commercial area.
However, historian Aparna Basu has traced a longer and more complex journey leading to Nirmala College. In her essay, The Foundation and Early History of Delhi University, in the volume Delhi Through The Ages edited by R E Frykenberg, Basu wrote of an early college employing displaced teachers who migrated to Delhi.
“Panjab University began what was then called Camp College, employing the staff displaced from Colleges in West Panjab and North West Frontier Province and located for almost a decade in a number of buildings on Mandir Marg. Postgraduate classes from here were taken over by Delhi University as an evening college and located in the Arts Faculty Building, while undergraduate classes were shifted to Central College which was taken over by a Christian Mission and called Nirmala College. This was subsequently taken over by the Kirori Mal Trust and renamed Kirori Mal College in 1954,” she wrote.
In 1954, the college was taken over by Delhi University and handed over to the Seth Kirori Mal Charitable Trust, a philanthropic organisation from Bhiwani, Haryana. It was also allotted land on the periphery of the University Enclave, its current location, which the college website described was a “wild, stinking, hitherto uninhabitable tract of land”. And so the institute’s first full-fledged academic session as Kirori Mal College in the buildings designed by architects Anand Apte and Jhabvala started in 1956-57.
With principal Sarup Singh “scouting” for talent between 1956 to 1965, the college drew teachers who went on to become institutions, such as K M Ashraf, Frank Thakurdas, Arun Bose and O P Grewal, but by the 1970s, the college was dealing with a few issues. A couple of vital changes took place in the late 70s and early 80s. After an appeal to Delhi University by then Principal N S Pradhan over the college’s financial troubles, in 1982, Delhi University took over the management of the college and it became a complete University-run institution.
Renowned theatre artist Keval Arora was a student of the college from 1973 to 1976 and became a faculty member in 1980 till his retirement this year. According to him, another major change took place around that time under Pradhan’s leadership: the removal of wrestling from the college’s sports agenda.
“Kirori Mal was a ‘tough’ college. One was terrified being a student inside the college. Outside the college, you didn’t want to mess with someone who was from Kirori Mal. So many of the people who represented India in wrestling events came from Kirori Mal College. The sport had a season when the wrestling students would be in the Chandgiram Akhara. When they didn’t have anything to do, they would walk around the college being very tough. If you were in the hostel, you might have the added charm of being picked on. When Pradhan came in, he said we won’t support this sport anymore. Obviously, the then DPE was very upset, the college was on the national map for wrestling. But it was a vital change that happened, and brought about a big change in the student demographic,” he said, adding that the college used to be known as ‘the Jat college’.
But the enduring image of KMC is as a college with a rich cultural life, particularly in theatre. Arora places the formation of its famous theatre society, The Players, in 1957 under the stewardship of Frank Thakurdas — a Partition migrant from Lahore and brother of Miranda House’s first principal Veda Thakurdas.
Something distinctive that he recalls as nourishing the cultural life of the college is the “climate of cultural consumption”. “As a student performing in the college, there is of course hands-on support that, say, Frank Thakurdas would give. But there was also the support system of faculty as spectators. I can’t tell you how important that is. When you do perform, your front benches have faculty sitting there, who are not there by compulsion. They are there because they want to be there, they stay for the entire length of the programme and after that they come to discuss what you did. That sense of being cradled and enveloped and looked after. It’s something that is lost now,” he said. He added that KMC was one of the first colleges to admit a few students through theatre auditions under the till-then dormant provision for ECA admissions.
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