Pune’s Scottish Mission Schools to Celebrate Jotiba Phule’s Birth Anniversary

By Camil Parkhe
Pune, 9th April 2025: How many schools and colleges are privileged to celebrate the birth anniversaries of their pupils? Very few. The four ‘Scottish Mission schools’ in Pune Camp are among such rare schools.

St. Margaret Primary School, located just adjacent to the now non-existent mansion of Ghashiram Kotwal and the sports grounds of the Bishop’s School, are among such rare schools.

St. Margaret Primary School, established on January 6, 1827, is also one of the oldest and still functional educational institutions in the country.
The Scottish Mission established many schools in Pune in 1820s, and in the later period.

Available documents reveal that Jotiba Phule, the father of social revolution in India, had studied in one of these schools in the city from 1841 to 1847. Jotiba studied in the schools run by Scottish missionary James Mitchell.

Later, after establishing his schools for the girls and the downtrodden in Pune, Phule also worked for a few years as a teacher in a school run by James Mitchell and his Scottish Missionary colleague John Murray Mitchell.

During that period, John Murray Mitchell had also functioned as the principal (visitor) of the Sanskrit College, now Deccan College. Many of these Scottish Mission schools in Pune were scattered in various parts of the city. Some of these schools were probably later handed over to the government or closed.

For the past three years, I have been conducting research on the association of Savitribai and Jotiba Phule with the Christian missionaries in Pune, Nagar and Mumbai.

This study led me to the work of the American missionaries in Mumbai, Pune and Nagar. Savitribai Phule had taken lessons in teaching from American missionary Miss Cynthia Farrar at Nagar.

Jotiba Phule himself has written that he was inspired to start a girls’ school in Pune after visiting Cynthia Farrar’s school in Nagar. However, I had almost come to the conclusion that presently there is no existence of the ‘Scottish Mission’ in Pune.

It was only recently that I realised that there are four ‘Scottish Mission’ institutions in the city, albeit under a different banner. All of these four ‘Scottish Mission Schools’ are in Pune Camp. Presently these schools are run by the Mumbai-headquartered John Wilson Education Society.

John Wilson perhaps needs no introduction.

The history of education is incomplete without mentioning the names of John Wilson and his wife Margaret Wilson. The young Wilson couple, soon after their marriage in 1829, had sailed from Scotland to Mumbai, and devoted their whole life, besides evangelization, to education and social reforms in India.

Margaret Wilson who established the now famous St. Columba School for girls in Mumbai in 1832 died soon after in 1836. Wilson lived long to establish the Wilson College in Mumbai and also worked for the establishment of the Bombay University in 1857. For his contribution, he was also honoured with the post of vice-chancellor of this university.

Jotiba Phule was thus closely connected to the Scottish missionaries James Mitchell, John Murray Mitchell, John Wilson and his missionary colleague Robert Nesbit.

Margaret Shaw Mitchell, wife of James Mitchell, in her teachers’ training institute, trained Savitribai Phule, helping her to be the headmistress of the schools run by the Phule couple.

Now it is difficult to know exactly in which of the Scottish Mission Schools Jotiba studied and later worked as a teacher.

Similar is the case with the Margaret Shaw Mitchell’s Institute where Savitribai Phule became the first Indian qualified, trained woman teacher during the British era.

There are four ‘Scottish Mission Schools’ which are still functional in Pune.
They are John Wilson Education Society-run Marathi medium St. Margaret Primary School, St. John Secondary School near the Market in Pune Camp, St Andrew’s Girls School opposite the petrol pump and near the Lal Deul (synagogue) in Pune Camp and the Ethel Gordon Primary School and Junior College, located at the Quarter Gate.

It is safe to assume that Savitribai and Jotiba Phule studied in one of these schools.

The former students of St. Margaret Primary School, St. John Secondary School, St Andrew’s Girls School and the Ethel Gordon Primary School, have joined hands to celebrate the birth anniversary of one of the greatest social leaders and philosophers the Scottish Mission schools have given to India.

The birth anniversary of Jotiba Phule will be celebrated at St. Margret Girls School on April 11 morning.