It is a building that ought to be declared a heritage. Yet, its wooden rafters, which hold up the roof of Mangalore tiles, show signs of pest infestation. Laterite brick walls get damp with seepage during the monsoons.
Alterations over the years with little care for aesthetics have robbed the structure of its beauty. What is not so well known is that this 146-year-old building hosted Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first winner of the Nobel Prize, in 1922, and Chakravarthy Rajagopalachari, first Indian Governor-General of the country, as also chief minister of the erstwhile presidency of Madras, in 1951.
There are, however, moves to get the Central government to declare this building a heritage, so comprehensive restoration work can begin. “It is time for the building to get the heritage tag, what with the sesquicentennial of Rabindranath Tagore fast approaching in 2011,” says Union minister of law M Veerappa Moily,an alumnus of the college. The prime minister has been impressed by the special significance of the building.
“It is not vintage alone that makes this a heritage,” says Moily, “There are structures in the University College campus that are unique architecturally. The prime minister, who is also the chairman of the national committee on heritage structures, has agreed to examine the recommendations of the Archaeological Survey of India,” Moily adds. The Mangalore University has submitted a report on the antiquity of the college building, and appealed to the Centre to accord it the heritage tag. “The University Collegebegan as a school in 1866, to provide education to first-generation learners of that time,” former vice chancellor of Mangalore University, Prof KM Kaveriappa, said.
In 1864, a few citizens of Mangalore collected an endowment of Rs65,000 and put forward a proposal to start a provincial school. In 1866, a provincial school, up to matriculation-level, was started. In 1868, the Fellow of Arts (FA) course was introduced. From its inception, the institution was “open to all classes of the community without any distinction of caste or creed.” Women, however, were not admitted until 1902. In 1879, the provincial school became the Government College of Mangalore.
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