Soon, take a walk at Parel’s 136-year-old Mumbai Veterinary College

Mumbai: The lush campus of the erstwhile Mumbai Veterinary College (MVC) -- an island of calm amid the chaos of mid-town’s business district – will soon be open for public viewing

Mumbai: The lush campus of the erstwhile Mumbai Veterinary College (MVC) -- an island of calm amid the chaos of mid-town’s business district – will soon be open for public viewing. The Directorate of Tourism, Maharashtra government, has decided to conduct heritage walks within the campus.

Mumbai, India - September 28, 2022: Mumbai Veterinary College, at Parel, in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, September 28, 2022. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande/HT Photo) (HT PHOTO)

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the college and the directorate on Tuesday. Guides will be trained from the Maharashtra Tour Guide and Tourist Facilitators Association and information imparted to them about the history of various buildings on campus over the next two weeks. The walks, expected to begin in a month, will be conducted over the weekends.

Joint director at the Directorate of Tourism, Maharashtra, Dr Dhananjay Sawalkar, who is also an alumnus of MVC, felt three buildings on the campus which are more than 100 years old will be a prime attraction of the walk. “These include the present administrative building, the old hostel and the museum within the anatomy department of the college. The museum, which otherwise is used for academic purposes only, would be especially interesting for animal lovers as it contains skeletons of an elephant, a horse and a deer as well as preserved specimens of several other animals,” he said.

Associate dean of the college, Professor AS Ranade, is chuffed at the prospect of showcasing the campus where he has spent a significant part of his life – he was an undergrad here in 1980 and completed 35 years of service this year. His office is in the building which was constructed in 1910, and the old hostel where he resided as a student was built in 1909.

“I can proudly say that our college has produced bright alumni who have gone on to work in diverse fields. We count actors (Nitish Bharadwaj), renowned academicians (Dr CR Sane), army man (Brigadier Dr Mukund Kelkar) and civil servants as our students. In fact, four districts in Maharashtra currently have collectors who have studied at MVC,” he said.

Dr GS Khandekar, secretary of the college’s alumni association, said being a village boy, the chaotic big city of Mumbai seemed scary when he first came here in 1986. However, the college campus gave him, and others like him who came from rural parts, much solace. “The greenery of the campus made us feel right at home,” he said. He has been living in and around the campus ever since.

Dr Sawalkar observed that through this walk, the public will have the opportunity to understand how extensive the various disciplines are within animal sciences.

Looking back

Established in 1886, Bombay Veterinary College (BVC) is one of the oldest institutions set up by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Asia’s first veterinary college.

Housed inside the vast compound of Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals, the British government had built two large lecture rooms, a library, a museum, pharmacy, office rooms for the principal and professors and quarters for the resident veterinary officers on a 14-acre plot.

A three-storied building with Roman gothic architecture, called Patho-Bacteriological Laboratory, was built by Sir D M Petit and handed over to the government in 1891.

Doctors from the institute contributed in livestock development, especially during the White Revolution.

Today, it is a part of Nagpur-based Maharashtra Agriculture and Fisheries Sciences University (MAFSU) and conducts courses at undergraduate, postgraduate and diploma levels in all branches of veterinary and animal sciences.

It was renamed Mumbai Veterinary College in 2018. Other than the campus at Parel, the college has a satellite campus in Goregaon, spread over an area of 146 acres.