BS Moonje: I was born in Bihar in the 1990s, where access to quality education was a major concern for the general public. As a Bihari, I understand the difficulty in finding a good school better than the rest of my countrymen. It was then that the significance of good schools became more apparent. And as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. My quest for a quality school eventually led me to learn about Sainik and military schools.
But the question is, who was the man whose dream gave birth to the beautiful institution, such as that of Sainik schools and Military schools, and when was the Military School established in our country? If someone has studied history, it was established in the 1960s, according to them, with the late Defense Minister V.K. Krishna Menon as its “founder.” But what if I told you that the idea and creation of the military schools was originally framed by someone else?
Yes, you read it right. In reality, it was Moonje’s ideas that helped in shaping one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, Sainik school.
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BS Moonje – Life and Decision
BS Moonje was born in 1872 in Bilaspur to a Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin couple. After his formal education, he went on to pursue a medical degree from Grant Medical College of Mumbai in 1898 and later worked as a medical officer for the Bombay Municipal Corporation.
After a good number of years serving as an officer, life didn’t remain the same for BS Moonje. Life took a tectonic shift, and he left his well-deserved job and went to participate in the Boer War in South Africa as a King’s Commissioned Officer in the medical wing.
In the midst of political and patriotic movements across India, BS Moonje joined Congress, and his status within the party grew in no time. However, after the tragic death of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1920, a spark of friction cropped up between Moonje and Gandhians.
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The misunderstanding coiled to the point where BS Moonje himself distanced himself from the Congress due to his disagreement with Gandhi’s policies of non-violence and secularism. Instead, he strengthened his ties with the Hindu Mahasabha and became a political mentor to Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, in 1925.
BS Moonje served as the All-India President of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1927 until he passed the leadership on to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1937. Despite opposition from Congress leaders, he continued to be active in the Mahasabha until his death, touring all over India and supporting Savarkar strongly. He also attended the Round Table Conferences in London twice.
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