The Man Who Opened India's Classrooms

Recently, when Fr. Thomas V. Kunnunkal SJ passed away at 99, India lost more than a centenarian Jesuit. We lost the quiet architect of our most inclusive educational revolution, a man who spent decades proving that learning belongs to everyone, not just the privileged few. "Tom has run his race well," we who knew him often say. But Tom's race was never solitary. He carried millions with him: school dropouts, working youth, rural women, the marginalized, transforming their dead-ends into doorways.

Born in 1925 in Kerala's backwaters, young Thomas entered a world where education was already sacred. The ninth priest from his family, he joined the Jesuits and found his calling not in pulpits alone, but in classrooms. His ordination in Ireland in 1958 gave him a global perspective, but Kerala's literacy ethos gave him his mission: education must liberate, not merely certify.

Between 1962 and 1979, as Principal of Delhi's St. Xavier's Senior Secondary School, Tom demonstrated what Jesuit education could mean in independent India. This wasn't elitism with a cross on top. Under his leadership, St. Xavier's became a laboratory for holistic formation, where discipline served character, where extracurriculars built conscience, where academic rigour met social awareness. He called this Magis, the Jesuit impulse to strive for greater depth, greater justice, greater love.

But Tom was already thinking bigger. As President of the Jesuit Educational Association, he coordinated over 500 institutions, introducing the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP). Context-based learning wasn't jargon to him; it was respect for the learner's dignity. Start with the student's reality, let experience lead to reflection, let reflection spark action.

When Tom became CBSE Chairman from 1981 to 1987, many expected a churchman to preach. Instead, he listened. India's school boards were expanding chaotically; standardization threatened to crush souls. Tom stabilized the system while humanizing it, embedding value-education into CBSE's DNA. His message to bureaucrats: competence without conscience produces educated monsters. In a pluralistic democracy, character mattered as much as chemistry.

Yet his masterpiece was still to come. In 1989, when over half of India's secondary students dropped out, Tom didn't lament. He built an escape hatch. As founding Chairman of the National Open School, now NIOS, he created what seemed impossible: a flexible, dignified second chance. Self-instructional materials in regional languages. Decentralized study centres in villages. Vocational integration so a farmer's son could learn accounting and agriculture. On-demand examinations that respected life's interruptions.

Critics called it second-class education. Tom called it justice. Today, NIOS is the world's largest open schooling system. Its millions of graduates, rural women completing degrees at thirty-five, auto-drivers becoming teachers, dropouts reclaiming futures, testify to his vision. When NEP 2020 emphasizes lifelong learning and flexible pathways, it walks in Tom's footsteps.

Tom's classroom had no walls. As Director of the Indian Social Institute, he trained Dalit activists and tribal organizers, insisting on evidence over ideology. As President of the Islamic Studies Association during communal tensions, he built bridges when others built barricades. His interfaith dialogue was not theological debate; it was shared struggle for dignity.

His book A New Way of Being School critiqued the industrial model of education, factories producing compliant workers. Instead, he envisioned schools as communities of freedom, creativity, ethical leadership. Education for transformation, not transaction.

He was honoured with one of the highest civilian awards of India, Padma Shri.

Tom was a Policy architect, and an Institution-builder. However, he wore these honours and titles lightly. In retirement, he mentored young educators, wrote prolifically, and spoke of a spiritual age where intellect, ethics, and transcendence would integrate. At ninety-nine, his mind remained restless for justice.

What does Tom leave us? Not just NIOS or CBSE reforms or five hundred Jesuit schools. He leaves a question that haunts every Indian educator: Who is being left out of my classroom? The dropout, the working mother, the religious minority, the rural child for whom English is a fortress wall. Tom spent decades dismantling such walls.

India's education debates today NEP's flexibility, digital divides, inclusion, echo his voice. When we argue that learning must adapt to life rather than life to learning, we speak Tom's language. When we insist that examinations measure growth not just memory, we channel his spirit. When we emphasis that we cannot give education as ‘one-size-fit-for-all’ we are borrowing his language.

I had the privilege of serving as Secretary of the Jesuit Educational Association of South Asia (JEA SA) for 7 long years, carrying forward what Tom built. I interviewed him once about IPP education. You can find it online, a ninety-nine-year-old prophet discussing pedagogy with the urgency of a young teacher. That was Tom: always beginning, always Magis. A true Jesuit Educator for all times!

He ran his race well. But the track remains open. The baton is ours.

(Sunny Jacob SJ is a renowned Jesuit educator, and former Secretary of the Jesuit Educational Association of South Asia, and former Assistant Secretary of Global Jesuit Education (Rome). Currently he is the Director of Upasana Renewal Centre, Jamshedpur 831 012. Watch the author's interview with Fr. Kunnunkal on IPP Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF5zPZq00pU]

Blurb

Fr. Thomas Kunnunkal’s message to bureaucrats was: competence without conscience produces educated monsters. In a pluralistic democracy, character mattered as much as chemistry.