Roots and Wings : Welham Girls' School

The year: 1957. India is completing its first decade of independence. Two elderly English ladies hire a local nawab’s estate and with the sum of ten thousand rupees, decide to set up a boarding school for girls in the quiet, leafy town of Dehra Dun. The names of these indomitable women: Miss Hersilia Oliphant and Miss Grace Mary Linnell, the founder principal.

A core group of teachers, who quickly share the excitement, also join. The school opens its doors. Ten students arrive to participate in this admittedly uncertain venture.

From that small, hopeful first step has grown an institution which can justly take its place among the foremost schools for girls in India. Its alumni now run into thousands, in India and abroad, many of who are prominent in a wide range of professions. Almost all the girls who have passed through its portals give the school credit for making them strong and confident, and able to tackle the challenges life has thrown at them.

For an institution set up by two Englishwomen, Welham has paradoxically always been proud of its Indian roots, just as much as for its global wings. When students of most girls’ schools wore tunics or skirts, Welham Girls School chose to select the loose and comfortable salwar kameez, better suited to the Indian climate. From the outset Indian music and dance have formed an integral part of the overall curriculum; this has later been expanded to include yoga as well. Indian languages have never had a “second language” status in Welham. It was a student’s initiative to start a Hindi magazine, rather than have a Hindi appendage of the regular English magazine, News and Views. Today “Kshitij” is as avidly read for its lively content as its English sister.

Like Topsy, Welham in some ways “just growed” in its early years, expanding into scattered buildings over the residential colony of Dalanwala, and could never boast of the luxury of a purpose-built campus. However, in the last two decades, there has been a concerted effort to integrate the campus. The core of the main school is still the majestic old building “Nasreen” – but the campus has changed so much that the early students now have difficulty in recognizing their old haunts. New dormitories, spacious laboratories and playing courts have appeared. But the essence of Welham remains unchanged over the years. In the words of Tennyson “though much is taken, much abides.”

The strength of Welham Girls’ has been in its intangibles: the close student-teacher relationships, the intensity of its student friendships and the feeling of belonging to a very large family. But we also know that these “intangibles” are not immediately apparent, and the school needs to build up its “tangibles’, by way of its infrastructure and equipment. As Welham approaches its first glorious half-century, it is time to take stock and prepare for the next. We all – students, teachers, parents, ex-students, in fact all who have a stake in the school – are aware of how much needs to be done. The efforts of our beloved ex-students are a first momentous step in this direction. To paraphrase an old saying: “You can take a student out of Welham, but you can never take Welham out of a student.” May God bless Welham and Welhamites.

Jyotsna Brar