Vidya Bharti
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| Formation | 1977 |
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| Legal status | Active |
| Purpose | Educational Institution |
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Region
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India |
| Website | vidyabharti |
Vidya Bharati, short for Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, is a non government educational organization which runs one of the largest private network of schools in India. It is the educational wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It has its registered headquarters in Lucknow, a functional headquarters in Delhi and a sub-office in Kurukshetra.
RSS established its first Saraswati Shishu Mandir brand of school in Gorakhpur in 1952, under the leadership of Nanaji Deshmukh. Prior to that a Gita school was established at Kurukshetra in 1946 with the initiative of the RSS chief M. S. Golwalkar. The ban on RSS in 1948 put a damper on the spread of the Gita school model. However, the Saraswati Shishu Mandir model was quickly replicated in several locations. As the number of schools increased, a committee Shishu Shiksha Prabandak Samiti, was set up to coordinate activities at the state level. Similar schools and committees were subsequently set up in Delhi, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. In 1977-78, an all-India apex body, Vidya Bharati was set up to coordinate the activities between the state committees, headquartered in Delhi. This coincided with the Bharatiya Jan Sangh coming to power in Delhi as part of the Janata Party. Vidya Bharati had an associated National Academic Council with educationists who were not necessarily associated with RSS and enjoyed the trust of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). By the early 1990s, the network had grown to 5,000 schools and, by 2003, further grown to 14,000 schools with 1.7 million pupils. This expansion was facilitated by the growing demand for education in India and the disaffection with the state school system. It was also helped by patronage by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whenever it was in power in the states, or in the Centre during 1999-2004 with Murli Manohar Joshi as the education minister.
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