former pupils of Doon are the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, his son Rahul Gandhi, artist Anish Kapoor, authors Vikram Seth, Ramchandra Guha and Amitav Ghosh, fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani, mountaineer Nandu Jayal, Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, and social and environmental activists, Bunker Roy and Lalit Pande. History Origins Doon was the culmination of some considerable lobbying and efforts by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta and advocate-general of Bengal, who in 1927 became a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council of Lord Irwin. He envisioned a new kind of Indian public school that was modelled on traditional British public schools, but was "distinctively Indian in their moral and spiritual outlook and open to all castes and communities". While Jawaharlal Nehru welcomed the idea of such a school, there were many, like Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, who were opposed to it, considering it inegalitarian. Das travelled widely in India with the goal of collecting 4 million, but at the time of his death in 1928 had raised only 1 million in cash and a further 1 million in promises. With the money, Das formed the Indian Public Schools' Society (IPSS), with the objective of founding new public schools in India that would admit students regardless of caste, creed or social status. After Das's death in 1928, the IPSS accomplished little, and by 1934 some of the original lenders had begun to inquire about the return of their money. To solve this problem, Sir Joseph Bhore, then Railway Minister of Lord Willingdon's Council, became IPSS chairman, and along with Sir Frank Noyce and Sir Akbar Hydari as secretary, worked to obtain the former estate of the Forest Research Institute, in Dehradun, from the government on favourable terms. Lord Halifax, then President of the British Board of Education, led a selection committee that nominated Arthur E. Foot, a science teacher at Eton College, to be the first headmaster. The school admitted its first pupils on 10 September 1935, and on 27 October 1935, the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, presided over the formal opening of the school. Seventy boys enrolled in the first term, and 110 more signed up for the second. Early years: 1935–1970 Foot had never visited India before accepting the position of headmaster. He noted that the school appeared to be surrounded by forests and close to mountains, and the possibilities of outdoor recreation and mountaineering seem