The Doon School, locat­ed in Dehra Dun in Uttar Pradesh, is India’s most famous board­ing school for boys and has some­times been called »the Eton of India«. It was estab­lished by a group of Indian nation­al­ists in the 1930s to pro­duce a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers who would help guide the nation after Inde­pen­dence. It has been influ­en­tial in the cre­ation of the new Indian elites and has come to epit­o­mize cer­tain aspects of Indian post-coloniality. 

DOON SCHOOL CRONICLES is the first film in a five film study of the school. Filmed over a two year period, it looks at the life of mid­dle­class Indian boys coming under the influ­ence of insti­tu­tion­al and global pres­sures during their ado­les­cent years. The film explores the »social aes­thet­ics« and ide­ol­o­gy of Doon School through its rit­u­als, the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment it has cre­at­ed, and its effects upon sev­er­al boys of dif­fer­ent ages and tem­pera­ments. The film is divid­ed into ten »chap­ters«, each headed by a text taken from school documents.