Boy Scouts Scouting was officially founded in
British India in 1909, first starting at the
Bishop Cotton Boys' School in
Bangalore. Scouting for native Indians was started by Justice
Vivian Bose, Madan Mohan,
Hridayanath Kunzru,
Girija Shankar Bajpai,
Annie Besant and
George Arundale, in 1913. Prior to this date, Scouting was open only for British and foreign Scouts. In 1916, a
Cub section was started, followed by the
Rover section in 1918. In 1916,
Calcutta's Senior Deputy Commissioner of Police
J. S. Wilson introduced
Scouting for Boys as a textbook in the Calcutta Police Training School. Colonel Wilson volunteered his services to the District Scout Commissioner,
Alfred Pickford, and in 1917 became Assistant Scoutmaster of the Old Mission Church Troop. Together the two struggled for the admission of Indian boys into the
Boy Scouts Association, which had not been admitted due to a
Government of India order against it because "Scouting might train them to become revolutionaries". Shortly Wilson was acting as Cubmaster and Scoutmaster, and succeeded Pickford as District Commissioner in May 1919 when Pickford was promoted to Chief Scout Commissioner for India. As a way of getting around the Government Order, the
Boy Scouts of Bengal was founded, with identical aims and methods. Many separate Scout organizations began to spring up, the
Indian Boy Scouts Association, founded in 1916, based in
Madras and headed by Annie Besant and George Arundale;
Boy Scouts of Mysore;
Boy Scouts of Baroda; ''
Nizam's Scouts
in Hyderabad; Seva Samiti Scout Association
(Humanity Uplift Service Society), founded in 1917 by Madan Mohan Malaviya and Hridayanath Kunzru and based in Allahabad; the aforementioned Boy Scouts of
Bengal'' and likely others. A conference was held in Calcutta in August 1920 in which Wilson staged a Scout Rally, and as a result the
Viceroy of India sent an invitation to
Lord Baden-Powell, by then Chief Scout of the World, to visit India. Lord and
Lady Baden-Powell arrived in
Bombay in late January 1921 for a short tour of the subcontinent before leaving Calcutta for
Rangoon. Alfred Pickford accompanied them and became one of their closest friends. The result of this visit was a union of all of the Scout organizations except the Seva Samiti Scout Association into
The Boy Scouts Association in India. In 1922 Pickford returned to England and was appointed Overseas Commissioner of The Boy Scouts Association at their headquarters in London, but his aim of adding Indian boys into the program had been fulfilled. In 1938, a number of members left the Boy Scouts Association in India after a wave of nationalism. They formed – together with the Seva Samiti Scout Association and the newly founded
India National Scout Association – the
Hindustan Scout Association, the first coeducational Scouting and Guiding organisation in India. In the same year, the Boy Scouts Association in India became a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement.
Girl Guides The first Girl Guides company was founded in
Jabalpur in 1911 at
Christ Church School. The movement immediately grew: In 1915, more than fifty companies existed with a membership of over 1,200, all of them directly registered with the
Girl Guide Association and all restricted to girls of European descent. These companies formed the
All India Girl Guides Association in 1916. In the same year the organisation opened for Indian girls.
J. S. Wilson provided transportation for Girl Guide rallies. The girls themselves were never quite sure whether they preferred to ride in police vans or in the riot truck. The former concealed them from public view, but were very hot; the latter, being cages of expanded metal, were cooler, but reminiscent of the
Calcutta Zoo! In 1928, the
All India Girl Guides Association joined the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts as one of its founder members. This membership was renewed in 1948 after the independence of India and its
partition. It was established in 1914, when Rustomji Edulji Sethna (1898–1954) came across the book
Scouting for Boys, written by Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement. He was enamoured by the book and formed one of India's first Scout groups for native boys. Prior to that, there existed some Scout groups, but they were primarily for the British expatriates in India. Sethna resisted joining one of the competing Scout associations and registering his troop until Scouting became open for all irrespective of color, caste, or creed. He wrote to Baden-Powell about this discrepancy. In 1921 the regulations were changed and all were allowed to become part of the Scout movement in India. The 18th West has been continuously running since the day it started. None of the World Wars or the
Partition of India stopped the group from functioning.
Notable members Vivian Bose was a member of the
World Scout Committee of the World Organization of the Scout Movement from 1947 until 1949. In 1969, Mrs.
Lakshmi Mazumdar was awarded the
Bronze Wolf, the only distinction of the
World Organization of the Scout Movement, awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting. ==Program==