Banasthali Vidhyapith

To realize a dream which he had cherished since his boyhood, Pandit Hiralal Shastri, the founding father of Banasthali Vidyapith, resigned his prestigious post of Secretary in the Home and Foreign Department in the erstwhile Jaipur State in 1927 and selected the remote village of Banthali (as Banasthali was originally called) as the centre of his life’s work. His plan was to organize a programme of rural reconstruction on the lines laid down by Gandhiji and also to train public workers through constructive service of the people. The name ‘Banasthali Vidyapith’ was adopted only in 1943. This also happened to be the year when undergraduate courses were first introduced. The institution was granted the status of a deemed university in 1983 by the UGC. Prof. Sushila Vyas , the first student of Banasthali Vidyapith was appointed the first Director of Vidyapith. The UGC committee which recommended the conferment of University status on the institution kept the following points in mind: (i) Vidyapith’s definite and viable programme for restructuring courses at the undergraduate level and its eagerness to carry out various measures to make education more meaningful and practical, (ii) availability of opportunities to the students to develop their personalities, and (iii) Vidyapith’s initiative to inculcate spiritual and moral values in the students through various activities, emphasizing character-building and simplicity. With its autonomous status, the institute could now experiment, innovate and formulate its own curriculum and other activities.