The red-arched central corridor of St Stephen’s College is a veritable walk of fame. These days, a notice board — permanently relieved of its informative duties — stands at one end of the passage, bearing a collage of photographs and write-ups on some of its better-known students to have trod the walkway in the past. Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Barkha Dutt, Montek Singh Ahluwalia — the list, without doubt, is both long and enviable.

There isn’t, however, a mugshot of a Blasius Murmu or an Edwin Khalko pinned up next to the well-known people, all of whom graduated from the 127-year-old Delhi college to take the world by its horns. Not yet. But thanks to a recent decision made by the college authorities, the case might just be so, give or take another 10 years.

The admission rules of St Stephen’s College — arguably the finest college for the liberal arts in India — have been rewritten. The college authorities said on June 13 that its new session would see the number of seats reserved for Christian candidates increase from 32 per cent to 40 per cent.

“It is an attempt on the college’s part to dispense social justice to the Dalit Christian community, and an effort to return to its original philosophy of providing education to the marginalised,” says the Reverend Karam Masih, bishop of the Church of North India and chairman of the supreme council and governing body of the institution. Clearly, it’s a move by a premier Christian college to take the seeds of education beyond city limits to the backyards of the country, and from leafy neighbourhoods to low-income group housing societies.

And not everyone is happy. Ever since the announcement was made, the press has been flooded with opinion pieces by scholars and journalists — many of whom happen to have studied at the college themselves — about how the induction of students on the basis of religion and not merit will lead to a dip in the high educational standards of St Stephen’s, and affect its secular image. “The major beneficiary of the blatant Christianisation of India’s finest college will be the Sangh Parivar,” says author-historian and former student Ramachandra Guha.

The college authorities, however, stand their ground, justifying the decision with fervour. “The new policy will balance merit with social benevolence and the Christian characteristics of the college,” says Vinod Chowdhury, senior reader in economics and media advisor to the principal. “Some would say the college is taking upon itself a cause to live up to by promoting social justice, but it might as well be so,” he adds.

Put these arguments in historical perspective, and they seem to hold enough water. The Baptist missionaries, who came to India in the footsteps of educationist William Carey through the 19th century, arrived with the idea of providing education to Indians. “They weren’t creating clerks to serve the imperial rulers, but were educating Indians to put them on an even keel with the British,” says A.K. Jalaluddin, former joint director, National Council of Education, Research and Training and now advisor to the UNDP. “Their contribution to humanity was founded on principles that sought to establish equality among people coming from different religious, social or economic backgrounds,” he says.

Missionary educational institutions tried to disseminate quality education to those who were historically denied a chance to learn. And though decades have gone by, and the reins of power changed hands, the quality of education handed out by missionary institutions remains unquestionable.

“Some of the best schools and colleges that were set up across India in the past were Christian institutions, and if the country has great thinkers, politicians, writers and bureaucrats today, it is because they imbibed the high standards of Christian education in the schools and colleges they went to,” holds John Dayal, member of the National Integration Council and president, All India Catholic Union.

That, in a nutshell, is the issue. The missionary-run institutes are considered the best in the country, which would explain why they have been hijacked by India’s elite, and why the question of who the missionary institutes were meant for is still being debated on.

The issue came up decades ago when Fr Piccachy of St Xavier’s College, Calcutta — who later became a Cardinal — pointed out that a college meant for the underprivileged was gradually being patronised by the rich and the famous of the city. “We believe in educating the marginalised,” its principal, Father P.C. Mathew, asserts. Currently, 600 out of its 4,500 students are Christians. Calcutta-based Brendan MacCarthaigh echoes Mathew’s sentiments. “If an institution was started with the idea of imparting education which is predominantly Christian in orientation and spirit, it is well within the rights of the institution to reserve seats for Christians.”

MacCarthaigh, of course, is referring to legal rights. While a Supreme Court judgement allows minority institutions to reserve up to 50 per cent seats for students from their communities, the Constitution of India guarantees them “the right to establish and administer educational institutions” without discrimination.

A simple comparison of Christian missionary institutions to those run by other minority communities proves the point that the missionaries have been making. Take madarsas, for example. “The question of reservations in madarsas doesn’t arise, since Muslim students constitute 100 per cent of the student population,” says Tanvir Ehmad, officer-in-charge of Madrasah College, Calcutta. “While there is no rule barring students of other religions to enrol, the system is actually geared for the study of Islam by those who belong to the faith.”

India’s intellectual elite, not surpris ingly, is not clamouring for opening up madarsas so that its children can study there. And no one blinks when Sikh or other minority groups reserve seats for people of their own religion in their institutes.

But, clearly, institutes such as St Stephen’s and St Xavier’s are in another league. Old students from colleges such as these today occupy positions of authority in the government, in the corporate world and the arts and sciences. And they are not going to let go of a good thing.

Ironically, the earlier principals of St Stephen’s were so particular about educating the underprivileged that they routinely sent out members of the staff to remote parts of Haryana and Rajasthan to scout for local talent. “It was only in the 1950s and 60s, when the Indian middle class took over, that the college became Delhi-centric,” says Chowdhury.

By then, the cyclic process of politicians and bureaucrats passing out and, in turn, sending their children back to the college had begun. Somewhere, somehow, people got used to the loop, says Chowdhury. “Human beings are never comfortable with drastic change. And it now seems to many that the college is unnecessarily rocking a boat that has sailed smoothly for so many decades,” he says.

Among them is former student and veteran journalist Swapan Dasgupta. “Religion was never an overriding issue with the church that spawned institutions such as St Stephen’s. And with the college having done a very good job on the academic front through the years of its existence, I don’t see any reason for a change in principles,” he says.

So is St Stephen’s being made to carry the burden of its own academic excellence, a trait which its principal, the Reverend Valson Thampu, writes of as a “smokescreen for masking the privileges of the socio-economic elite”? After all, would anyone have pointed fingers at the college for opening its doors to hoi polloi if St Stephen’s had no reputation to flaunt?

“Frankly, no one would have lost their shirts,” smiles Chowdhury.