Put him down for Doon

A near-perfect rendition of Schubert’s ‘Impromptus’ rings out of the music room’s colonial-era windows, the sound carrying all through the school’s pristine grounds. Even in India, a country famed for its sharp inequalities, there are few places where privilege is so obvious. Set in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Doon School, a private boarding school for boys aged 12 to 18, is probably India’s most elite institution.

A short walk away from the school’s main gate, children live in slums plagued by dengue fever. But here you’ll find a campus which last year won a Unesco award for cultural heritage conservation, one equipped with its very own hospital. Although the school rejects the label, there’s a good reason that many describe it as the ‘Eton of India’. Here, heirs to business empires brush shoulders with the sons of India’s political elite. Their names are put down for the school as soon as they’re born, leading to admission tests which are held in seven cities.

Founded by an Indian lawyer in 1935, the Doon School’s mission is clear and unashamedly elitist. The words of the first headmaster, Arthur E. Foot — a former Eton ‘beak’ and a relative of former Labour party leader Michael Foot — are inscribed on the wall of the foyer. The school will create an ‘aristocracy of service’ to lead a free, democratic and secular India.

‘There are very few schools in the world that have set themselves that kind of mission and have actually achieved it’, says Matthew Raggett, the current headmaster and also a Briton.

From politics, industry and banking to journalism and the military, the school’s alumni have left their mark on modern India. In the 1990s the Economist reported that after Harvard Business School, the Doon School’s alumni network was the strongest in the world. The ‘Doscos’, as old boys are known, go on to dominate public life.