Sainik School Bijapur Celebrates its 57th Foundation Day - Admiral Srikanth, our Classmate, was the Chief Guest.

 Sainik School Bijapur Celebrates its 57th Foundation Day - Admiral Srikanth, our Classmate, was the Chief Guest.

This day the - 16th September, marks an important day in the annals of the Sainik School Bijapur and I am privileged to be one the proud alumnus of this school, popularly referred to as SSBJ. It was on his historic day in 1963 that the Sainik School Bijapur was founded and ever since, this day is commemorated as the ‘Foundation Day’ and this year it is a special day for our batch - the batch of 1970-77, since our very own classmate Vice Admiral Srikant was honoured to be the Chief Guest for this years Foundation day. I am therefore motivated to write about our school SSBJ.

Before I attempt to sketch our school, permit me to start with a quiz question for all the readers. The Commanding Officer who led the final assault of the famous Tololing Capture that paved the path for the historic Kargil victory for the Indians during the Kargil conflict in 1999, the Revolutionary founder of the low cost Deccan Airlines, the current Corps Commander of Kashmir -  an extremely sensitive and a prestigious position, the CEO of National Rainfed Area Authority who is also the architect for the scheme for the doubling of farmers income, the Head of the erstwhile Karnatak Special Task Force who along with his men were ambushed by the Sandalwood mafia - Veerappan, but managed to survive his fatal bullet injury, and lastly the eminent Advocate who is currently defending Rhea Chakravarti and is hogging media headlines, have a common connect. Any guesses, what the connect could be? Yes you are absolutely right all the six of them - Col Ravindranath, Captain Gopinath, Lt Gen B S Raju, Ashok Dalwai, IAS, Gopal Hosur, IPS and Satish Maneshinde, respectively, are the alumni of our Sainik School Bijapur, whose 57th Foundation day was celebrated in a new norm. And our motto - Ajeet Hai Abheet Hai, reverberates in the hearts and minds of all the alumni - the Ajeets, of this school each day and every day of their life. Incidentally Honourable Pranab Mukherjee, the former President of India, was the chief guest for the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the founding of our school. 

I am blessed to be among those very few privileged alumnus of this prestigious residential school - the Sainik School Bijapur (SSBJ), in the state of Karnataka. There are a chain of Sainik School across India and the importance of these schools for the nation can best be contextualised with the recent events, which hogged national headlines - the Rafale fighter planes and the martyrdom of our brave soldiers in the Galwan Valley. Four of the five pilots who flew the Rafale fighter planes from France to India are the products - former students, of the Sainik Schools. One of them, Wing Commander Arun Kumar, is from our school, Sainik School Bijapur.  The Commanding officer of the Bihar Regiment - Col. Santosh Babu, who was martyred along with 21 of his men in a dastardly act by the Chinese PLA in the Galwan Valley, is also an alumnus of the Sainik School Korakunda, Andhra Pradesh.

The Sainik School scheme was launched by the government of India (Ministry of Defence) in 1961 to bridge the gap that existed in the rank of the military officers from  certain sections of the Indian society.  The scheme was conceived by V. K. Krishna Menon, the then Defence Minister of India, with an aim to rectify the imbalance caused by religion, class, and creed among the Officer cadre of the Indian Military and to prepare students for entry into the National Defence Academy (NDA). This scheme was a God sent scheme to most of the lower and middle class parents across India, who aspired for giving the best of education to their wards at almost no cost. I am one of the beneficiaries of the vision of Krishna Menon. My father, a primary school teacher, with a large family (seven children), could never have afforded education in such extraordinary schools had it not been for the free scholarship, which covered all our expenses. During my time, when I joined the Sainik School Bijapur in class 5, in the year 1970, at an young age of 9 years, our education was completely free and we had a scholarship of ₹ 2400/- per annum, which was quite substantial, later it was enhanced to ₹ 4800.  Most of the Sainik Schools, during our time, provided 100% scholarship to the students who were selected through entrance exam. These residential schools were meant primarily for boys ( fortunately they are now open for the girls as well) and were aimed at imparting the best of quality education with majorly military bias. 

Every Sainik School is affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi and has a common curriculum, system of selections and examinations. The primary aim of the Sainik Schools are to prepare boys academically, physically and mentally for entry into the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla (Pune) and also to be the leaders in other walks of life. Currently there are about 31 Sainik schools in India where an estimated 3000 students join every year. The entry into the Sainik Schools is through a competitive entrance exam for admission to 6th class and few for 9th class. Every year, entrance tests are conducted all over India for entry into any one of the 31 Sainik Schools and over 8-10 Lakhs children, from across India, appear for the Sainik School Entrance Exams. The premiership of the Sainik schools can best be seen when we compare the competition for entry into these schools to that of the internationally acclaimed Indian Institute of Technologies - the IITs - in India. There are a total of 23 IITs and for the session 2019, they offered 11289 seats. The number of students who appeared in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the entrance test for the IITs is around 10 lakhs each year, which means the competition for entry into the Sainik schools is as stiff or more stiff than the IITs.

Although the scheme for starting of the Sainik school was announced in 1961 but it took two years for the Sainik School to start functioning in Karnataka. The first choice for the location of this prestigious school in the state of Karnataka (then the state of Mysore) was obviously the city of Mysore itself, the capital of the Wodeyar kingdom, which incidentally was fairly well developed in comparison with parts of the state primarily due to the extraordinary works done by the Nation Builder Deewan of Mysore - the legendary Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. Fortunately for many of us, particularly from the relatively less developed north Karnataka region including least developed districts in the Hyderabad Karnataka area - Raichur, Gulbarga and Bidar, which were under the Hyderabad Nizam, that one of the political leaders of North Karnataka, Shri S R Kanthi expressed his strong views that this school should not be established in the already developed city of Mysore and instead must be located in the lesser developed city and thus was chosen the city of Bijapur for housing the prestigious Sainik School in the then state of Mysore. 

The SSBJ started its operations on this historic day, 16th September, 1963, from the make shift shelters in a small corner of the Vijaya College Campus in Bijapur. The management of the college were kind enough to lend a small section of their building where the facilities like the morning assembly of students, library and the classrooms for the students were housed. The foundation stone for the SSBJ was laid by Smt. Indira Gandhi on 2nd July 1963 and the school started its operation from this make shift building on 16th September, 1963. Courtesy the local political class in Bijapur and the visionary, Shri S R Kanthi and others, land measuring 406 acres was chosen for permanently housing the SSBJ in the current campus on the Athani Road. The students who were initially enrolled in the SSBJ in the Vijaya College campus moved to this new site in November 1966, and this new school campus, where we joined, was formally opened on 17th December, 1966 by Dr Zakir Hussain, Vice President of India. 

The SSBJ, spread across a vast campus of 400 plus acres, provides an outstanding infrastructural facilities, which include among others the best os sporting grounds in the country, athletics, swiming and gymnastics, horse stable, International quality cadets mess, six houses named after the six dynasties that ruled the state of Karnataka - Chalukya, Hoysala, Adilshahi, Vijayanagar, Wodeyar and Rashtrakutas ( there were five when we joined) where around 500 plus cadets are housed and innumerable other facilities that help students hone their intellectual, artistic, creative, scientific and to top it all, military skills. The rigours in which the cadets are trained from a very young age helps them live that often spoken adage - when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Every batch of the alumni of the SSBJ will have scores of tales to tell including some of the most heroic acts of their batchmates who have joined and are serving in the army and so has it been for our batch where several of our batchmates have joined the defence forces and Vice Admiral Srikant, who was given this years honours to be the chief guest of the Foundation day ceremony of SSBJ, is continuing to serve the Indian Navy. One of our batch mate, Col Ajit Bhandarkar, Shaurya Chakra awardee, made the supreme sacrifice in service of the nation in the true spirit of our motto Ajeet Hai Abheet Hai. Incidentally two years back all of our classmates joined hands in paying our respect to Col Bhandarkar. As a mark of our remembrance, our batch came together to construct a separate entrance dwar, the Ajit Dwar, in memory of our classmate Col. Ajit Bhandarkar, Shaurya Chakra, who was martyred in service while fighting the terrorists in Kashmir. I have separately written a blog where I have described about the valour, which he exemplified while making that supreme sacrifice before he was martyred. 

Ever since the starting of our school - the SSBJ students are referred to as Ajeets, whose camaraderie remains exemplary and the umbilical connect that each of the Ajeets have with other is a given and remains for life long. Every student is given a roll number and is attached to a particular house, when they join the school and this roll number and the house, to which they belong, stays with them for life and the fighting spirit to win and bring laurels to their house and school is legendary. Our batch - the batch of 1970-77, was perhaps the largest at the time of joining (around 96), and our roll numbers were from 491 to 587. The batch consisted people from most parts of Karnataka, including few from neighbouring state of Maharashtra and a handful from North India as well. Ours was the first batch to join the fifth house in school - the Wodeyar house. The other four houses included the Chalukya, Hoysala, Adilshahi  and Vijaynagar. Our school was witnessing widespread construction when we joined and most of the buildings were on the verge of completion, which included the Wodeyar house, swimming pool, auditorium, Gymnasium and the horse stable. Our batch was lucky that most of these facilities were completed and thrown open for use by the cadets within one year of our joining, enabling us to enjoy every single of these facilities from almost the very start of our school days. I have already written about our batch in a separate blog and will not repeat it here. 

I am giving  herewith a you tube video link at the end of the article to the celebration of the 57th Foundation Day of our school and from the 37th minute onwards you can listen to the speech of our classmate Vice Admiral Srikant and I am happy to share a brief bio of admiral Srikant. Vice Admiral Srikant is an alumnus of the Sainik School Bijapur who studied from 1970-77 and was in the Hoysalas House. Srikanth was an all rounder and besides his interest and achievements in academics he also actively took part in school Drama and was very good in sports.  He was always adventurous and while at school he used to catch snakes alive and gave it to biology labs. Never say quits was his great attribute. He was also declared medically unfit post his SSB interview by the Command Hospital in Bangalore, which examined him medically. However he challenged this report by travelling all alone to Delhi where he was once again medically examined and declared fit and rest is history. He joined the NDA and rose to a very high level rank of Vice Admiral a three star General. 

Srikanth served as the Flag Officer, Submarines which again was a crucial position which he held. Srikant has also served in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, which is considered as one of the most prestigious postings for any military officer. He has also served as a naval attache to the Governor of Karnataka. Srikant has  commanded the destroyer, Indian Naval Ship Delhi. He also held many prestigious Command and Staff Appointments including Command of Submarine Shalki and Indian Naval Ship Ranvijay. His shore appointments include that of Deputy Director, Submarine Operations and Naval Intelligence. He served as Naval Advisor (Islamabad) and Project Manager, Advanced Technology Vessel Program, New Delhi. Srikant held the most prestigious position of the Commandant of  The National Defence College (NDC), Delhi a pioneering institute of its type in Asia. 

On this occasion of the 57th Foundation Day of SSBJ, on behalf of all my batchmates and so also all the Ajeets - our respected seniors and fellow Ajeets,  I take this opportunity to place on record our profound respect to all our teachers and other stakeholders of the Sainik School Bijapur who have been responsible in shaping our careers and ensuring that all of us succeed in life. 

Long live SSBJ and all other Sainik Schools and continue to shape men out of boys who can contribute to nation building.

Ajeet Hain Abheet Hain

Jai Hind and Jai Hind  ki sena. 

https://youtu.be/R3D5tPOQIYQ