Savitribai Phule Pune University
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Campus
Alice Richman’s grave
The lone grave on the Pune university’s campus has been a subject of great intrigue and much discussion for years. Several stories have been woven around it, including the expected one of failed love. The tombstone mentions that the woman buried there, Alice Richman, died during the cholera outbreak in 1882. But no one knew who Alice was and how she came to be buried in a garden at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).
Ten years ago, Delhi researcher Amit Ranjan visited Alice garden, named after the woman, and embarked on a mission to unravel the mystery, which took him to Australia and Britain too.
Ranjan, a Fulbright scholar who had completed his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, painstakingly managed to join the dots to establish that Alice was the niece of Sir James Fergusson, who was the governor of Bombay in 1882 and, when in Pune, lived at the governor’s house which later was established as the university. She had come to visit Fergusson and his wife, Olive, and died of cholera. Olive too was afflicted by the cholera but died in Bombay where she was shifted for treatment.
Incidentally, Pune’s prestigious Fergusson College, which has now got university status, was named after Sir Fergusson.
Ranjan told TOI, “When I enquired around the university, some people said Alice had committed suicide because of an unrequited love affair with a local boy. Others said her ghost, clad in white robes and holding a candle, roams around the corridors of the university at night.”
During his decade-long research, Ranjan began coming to the university from Delhi regularly. With very little mention in the history books of any Australian connection with India in the 19th century, Ranjan had to dig deeper. During one of his visits to Mussorie for his PhD work, he walked into a bookstore selling discarded books from school libraries. One of his finds there was a book on the works of Australian poets in the 19th century.
“It was exactly the period I was looking for. As I started leafing through the book, I found a poem, ‘In Memoriam: Alice Richman’, by Margaret Thomas. I had no doubt that this was the same Alice,” Ranjan said.
Ranjan says from then it was not difficult to establish that Alice was connected to someone influential. He went through online and offline archives to finally establish that she was the niece of Sir James Fergusson and that she had come to Pune to visit her uncle and aunt. Incidentally, Fergusson himself escaped the cholera outbreak as he away in Baroda.
“Alice fell ill along with Olive. Olive died on January 8 in Bombay and Alice on January 14 in Poona. The present-day main building of the Pune university, built in 1864, was the governor’s house,” he said.
Ranjan said that since Sir Fergusson was an important official, the news of the death of his wife and Alice was carried in prominent newspapers across the world.
Ranjan said he had assumed Alice had sailed from South Australia, given that Olive and Sir Fergusson were married there. However, a document that he found at the Victorian Public Records Office in Australia had a mention of the Richman family that left for England when Alice was nine years old.
“It was clear from this document that in 1866, when Alice was nine, she moved with her family to England. She was born in Melrose, but spent her teenage years in England. She came to India when she was 24 to visit Olive in Bombay and visited Poona thereafter,” said Ranjan.
Ranjan is currently writing a creative non-fiction book, centred around Alice, which is to be released next year in Australia.
Sutapa Majumdar, who studied at SPPU for 16 years as a scholar and who first took Ranjan to Alice’s grave, said, “Like many others, I knew Alice as a one who was in love with a local boy. The story goes that they knew their relationship would never be sanctioned. He committed suicide and Alice followed suit. As a symbol of unfulfilled love, Alice was buried there. I had no clue about her origin until Ranjan told me the reality.”
Majumdar said this was a common fable that everyone at the university knew and that’s why one can find, even today, lovers sitting by the side of her grave.
Lalit Kala Kendra
2024 Feb: Controversial play
Partha Sarathi Biswas, February 5, 2024: The Indian Express
Students at the Lalit Kala Kendra under Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) live by a unique ethos – ‘they’re granted the freedom to make mistakes but must shoulder the consequences’. Situated on the university campus, the Kendra found itself at the centre of a controversy when members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) objected to a play (Ram Leela) staged on Friday night as part of a student exercise, leading to the arrest and subsequent release on bail of the centre director, Pravin Bhole, and five students. On Saturday, members of the BJP youth wing – Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) – protested outside the colonial-era building that houses the centre and defaced the signboard.
What sets this centre apart is its emulation of the Gurukul tradition of Indian arts, wherein students reside with their instructors to absorb the essence of the art form. “After three years of training with a Guru, the student earns a degree encompassing both theoretical and practical knowledge,” explained a former student. Notably, Lalit Kala Kendra operates independently, ensuring affordable fees to facilitate admissions for students from distant parts of Maharashtra and India.
What sets this centre apart is its emulation of the Gurukul tradition of Indian arts, wherein students reside with their instructors to absorb the essence of the art form.
Alekar’s vision for the institute was that it should serve as a laboratory where students experiment with art rather than follow rote learning.
Former and current students attest that the institute’s syllabus and teaching approach encourage both experimentation and immersive learning. “If a student wishes to explore a remote part of the state to study a rare art form, the institute supports it, with examinations based on these experiences. During our viva voce, we are asked what we didn’t know when we joined and what we’ve learned throughout the year,” shared students. Alekar served as the head of the centre until 2009.
The institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Music, Dance, and Theatre (Gurukul System), as well as BA and MA degrees in music (vocal and tabla). Renowned figures from the performing arts industry serve as visiting faculty.
Students stated that the Kendra offers a dynamic learning environment, devoid of traditional classrooms, where learning occurs under trees, over cups of tea, or within the amphitheatre constructed during Alekar’s tenure as director. The sole building, a relic from the British era, serves administrative purposes.
While staging plays is a crucial aspect of the curriculum for theatre students, they stress that these performances are integral to their learning, and as such, none are ticketed. “The play that sparked the controversy was intended as an exercise in dialogue delivery, necessitating an audience. Unfortunately, the message got misconstrued,” explained a student.
Traditions
‘Vegetarians-only for medals’: rule dropped
Pune univ retracts ‘veggie’ condition for merit award, November 12, 2017: The Times of India
Following an uproar, the Savitribai Phule Pune University junked a 10-year-old circular stipulating that a gold medalist must be “a vegetarian, free of any vices”, said a top varsity official.
“We have withdrawn the 10-year-old circular after objections were raised from various quarters. Now we shall write to the Shelar family (which had endowed the two gold medals) to drop this particular stipulation,” registrar Arvind Shaligram said.
He added that in case the family doesn’t agree to the request, then the university would be compelled to initiate the process to cancel the two gold medals instituted out of the Shelar family’s endowment. “We have many other gold medals that can be awarded to the students,” said Shaligram
Intervening in the matter, Maharashtra education minister Vinod Tawde on Saturday wrote to all universities instructing that they should not bow down to any conditions/criteria which create inequalities for award of scholarships/medals sponsored by the donors.
“All universities have been directed to ensure that students should be selected on the basis of merits alone, without any discrimination or violating the fundamental rights in the Constitution,” Tawde said in a statement.
The 2006 circular was issued for an endowment of Rs 120,000, received from the Shelar family for instituting two gold medals to be awarded to the varsity's two top students in the science faculty.
Among the criteria imposed were the winners must be “vegetarians, and free of any kind of vices”, which recently came to the fore and was highlighted in local media and political circles.
The winners must have “excelled in singing, dancing, drama and oratory, must have participated in AIDS awareness programmes, environment protection and anti-pollution drives, donated blood, must be in the top two ranks in SSC, HSC and graduation levels”, are some of the other criteria.
The other conditions included the winners to possess “traditional thinking, follow Indian culture in his/ her daily life, should practice meditation... should have bagged maximum awards in different Indian and western sports/games”.
To a query on how the past winners were verified to be genuinely “vegetarians and free of vices”, Shaligram said it may have been done through the application process and at the interview stage, but declined to comment on how authentic was the outcome .
Several local organisations, individuals and the Aam Aadmi Party had opposed the circular as being “discriminatory” and threatened to launch an agitation against the university.
