The Queen Behind the College Nobody Remembers

Shivani Vaid Sharma

vaidshiva@gmail.com

Some places are more than buildings. They are the beginning of a story. Government College for Women, Parade Ground, Jammu, is one such place and that story is slowly being erased, brick by brick, and name by name.

The college was started on June 1, 1944, as Maharani Mahila College, by Maharani Tara Devi, wife of Maharaja Hari Singh. Think about what that meant at the time. Women rarely studied beyond school. Sending a daughter to college was unusual, even unthinkable, in many homes. Yet one woman, a queen, decided that girls in Jammu deserved better. She did not wait for a government order or a policy file. She simply built the college.

For nearly 30 years, until 1971, it stood alone as the only college for women in the entire Jammu province. Every woman who wanted a college education from Jammu city, from Kathua, from Udhampur, from villages far away, passed through this one campus. The first woman teacher in many families. The first woman officer in many towns. Trace them back and you reach the same gate.

That is not small history. That is the foundation of women's education in this region. And yet, it is being forgotten through demolition, and through silence.

A part of our history has been pulled down

I studied at this college. I remember the old building that once served as the Commerce Department staff room, and the small park beside it. Nothing grand. No plaque, no photograph in a brochure. Just a quiet corner where students like me sat between classes, talked, prepared for exams, and built friendships that still last today. That old structure, and the green space next to it, have now been demolished to build something new.

Nobody is against growth. Colleges need more classrooms, more labs, more space for more students. That is fair. But growth does not have to mean destruction. A building over 70 years old, tied to the very birth of the college, was not simply old, it was a living witness to how the institution began. It could have been restored and kept standing beside the new construction, the way many old colleges across the country manage to hold on to both their past and their future.

Once such a building is demolished, it does not come back. No new structure, however modern, can replace what it meant to the people who once studied within its walls. We lost something that cannot be rebuilt with cement.

A name that quietly disappeared

There is an older, deeper loss too, one that has lasted almost 75 years. When the Jammu and Kashmir government took charge of the college on November 25, 1953, it renamed the institution Government College for Women, Parade, Jammu. Just a location. Just a ground. In that one stroke, the name of its founder, Maharani Tara Devi, vanished from the college's identity and it has never returned since.

Think about what this means. The woman who gave Jammu's daughters their first real chance at higher education has no name on the gate she built. A student walking in today learns only where the college is. She learns nothing about who built it, or why, or what it took.

The Dogra rulers, including Maharani Tara Devi, are often remembered only in history books, in the context of politics and power. But they also reformed society in real, lasting ways - building schools, colleges, and hospitals, and standing up for women's education long before it became common elsewhere in the country. A college that exists because of her courage should carry her name. Not the name of the ground it happens to sit on.

Why this matters, right now

A name is not decoration. It travels with an institution everywhere - on every certificate, every admission form, every conversation an alumna has when she proudly says where she studied. It becomes a small, silent history lesson, repeated for generations, without anyone even trying. Take the name away, and that memory quietly dies too.

Ask a student at GCW Parade today who Maharani Tara Devi was, and many will have no answer. That is not their fault. It is ours, for letting her name disappear. And it robs young women of something valuable - the pride of knowing that a queen once fought for people like them.

What must be done

Two things, and neither is impossible. First, any future construction on this historic campus, or any like it, must protect old heritage structures instead of bulldozing them. A basic heritage review before demolition should be the rule, not an afterthought. Second, the college administration, its alumni, and the state government must seriously consider restoring the name of Maharani Tara Devi to the institution - fully, or at least through a named heritage block, hall, or plaque that no student can miss.

Heritage cannot survive on memory alone. It must be protected in bricks, and honoured in names. GCW Parade owes both to the woman who gave it life.

(The writer is a CBSE Resource Person and an alumna of Government College for Women, Parade Ground, Jammu.)