Mahatma Gandhi College is a college inThiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.[1] It was founded byMannathu Padmanabhan, the founder of theNair Service Society.[2] The college is affiliated toUniversity of Kerala[3] and is managed by Nair Service Society.It was awarded "College with potential for excellence" certificate byNAAC.[4] As per the 2019NIRF rankings, Mahatma Gandhi College stands at 68th rank in India and fourth rank in Thiruvananthapuram.[5][6]
The college started functioning at Vadassery Amma Veedu at Perunthanni in 1948 and was later shifted to the present site[7] at Kattachakkonam, now known asKesavadasapuram.C. Rajagopalachari, the lastGovernor General of India, laid the foundation stone for the new building on 22 August 1948.[7]
The Arts section was shifted to the building in 1949, and the Science section in 1950.[7] The main building was completed in 1958 and was inaugurated byPandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the firstPrime Minister of India, on 24 April 1958.[7][8] The college celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1974–75.[7] The foundation stone of the three-storeyed Mannam Memorial Block was laid byP. K. Narayana Panicker, General Secretary of the Nair Service Society (NSS) on 23 April 1989[7] and the block upon completion was inaugurated bySwaroop Singh, the thenGovernor of Kerala, on 02 October 1990.[7]
The college has 2,000 students, 13 degree and 10 postgraduate courses.[9] Besides providing research facilities in various disciplines, the college has started an Instrumentation course attached to the Department ofPhysics.
In April 2013, the principal of Mahatma Gandhi College objected to theAkhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) college unit collecting money for an "evening farewell money".[11] In a related event, the Kerala Women's Commission, after learning that student activists had detained a girl student for more than seven hours, launched its own inquiry.[11]
On 29 July 2013, starting at around 10:30 am, several students and outsiders, suspected to be ABVP activists and sympathizers, hurled crude explosives and damaged college property at Mahatma Gandhi College.[11][8] Police swung batons to disperse the students and detained 10 of them (though some of those detained could have been innocent).[11] Following the incident, a "Special Investigation Team" was set up to investigate the incident, andThiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan visited the college to see the damage.[8] Due to clashes between theStudents' Federation of India (SFI) and the ABVP, campus politics is banned as of 2019 per aKerala High Court order.[12]
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