SRI. S.R. KANTHI

Guiding Spirits

In Sri. Shivarudrappa R. Kanthi, Karnataka had the greatest of visionaries devoted to the course of the women of the state. He was one of the every few that saw his dream take tangible shape in the founding of an excellent institution dedicated to the education and empowerment of women.
In the mid Sixties, he was Minister for Education and for a short spell, Chief Minister of the State. He was painfully aware of the short sighted education of women in the State and of the consequent lack of drive and patriotic zeal in them. Shortly after the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, he visited the Northern states and was deeply impressed with the bravery and daring displays by women who had been through the shelling and bombing in border towns and villages. He came away determined to found a residential school exclusive to girls on the pattern of sainik schools in the country so that some of the fire that seemed to have died with gallant Rains of Kittur and Jhansi was rekindled in Karnataka; and selected the location of the verdant green hills where Rani Channamma herself lived, reigned and fought the powerful British Army and its intriguing local allies.
So, here to Kittur, he came and walked the hills around the fort till he finally selected the ridge on which this school now stands. In no more than one year from laying of foundation , the school was declared open in 1969 by sri VKRV Rao, Union Minister for Education. Such was the energy and drive with which the founder got this school going.