Taking baby steps into the post-independence era, India as a country, was in a reformative stage. While a nationwide flux was happening across domains, education as a formal and basic policy was still teething. Also, coming out of the shadows of about 200 years of tyranny of the British rule, the society and its components were being reformed in its structure, thinking and recognition of equality across masses. At such a turning-point juncture, Miraj, as an important part of the history and culture of Maharashtra, was lacking in basic educational facilities.
This adversity became an opportunity for a few courageous, progressive, and industrious women! Just a few years post-independence, in 1952 a small group of women came together to pioneer education in Miraj in the form of ‘Sanskar Varg’ – classes to mould early childhood impressions & values. Thereafter, upon realizing the need for formal education, this group of women started a pre-primary Marathi Medium School. A hearty zeal, a vision and an unshakeable sense of mission drove these women to spread the message of education individually, personally, and collectively in & around Miraj. The pre-primary school was then named ‘Adarsha Shikshan Mandir’.
From then on, all the hard work had to yield only positive and progressive results. The first milestone of extending the facility to a primary education was achieved in 1962. A compounded growth of student strength and the need for higher education brought about establishment of the school building in 1973. The land for this was donated by yet another progressive, pro-education, and benevolent personality, the late Shri. Bandopant Deval.
Growing from strength to strength, adding higher education standards and becoming a bi-lingual educational institute, the ‘Adarsha Shikshan Mandal’ is now an umbrella Educational Society & Public Trust, registered as such and running multiple schools under its aegis. It boasts of self-owned school buildings and a modern infrastructure today, resulting purely out of a clear education-oriented vision of a group of women with focused on-the-ground efforts to convert that into reality!
