For parents considering The Doon School for their son, the alumni record is one of the most compelling arguments the school makes, not through any prospectus claim, but through the sheer weight of what Doscos have gone on to achieve. A former Prime Minister. An Olympic gold medallist. One of India’s greatest novelists. The founder of NDTV. The sculptor behind Chicago’s Cloud Gate. These are not coincidences. They are the product of a specific kind of education, one that has been running on the same 70-acre campus in Dehradun since 1935.

Alumni of The Doon School are known as Doscos. The alumni body is represented by The Doon School Old Boys’ Society (DSOBS), founded in 1959. The names below are grouped by field and verified from Wikipedia individual pages and the Wikipedia List of The Doon School alumni.

Politics and Public Service

Rajiv Gandhi
India’s sixth Prime Minister studied at The Doon School from 1954 to 1961 before going on to Cambridge. His inner circle as Prime Minister was famously nicknamed the “Doon Cabinet”- a reflection of how deeply the Dosco network ran through Indian public life in the 1980s. He remains the most prominent political name associated with the school.

Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi attended The Doon School from 1981 to 1983, studying alongside Jyotiraditya Scindia and other contemporaries, before being home-schooled for security reasons following his father’s assassination in 1991. He is included in the school’s alumni record on that basis.

Jyotiraditya Scindia
From one of India’s most storied political families, Jyotiraditya Scindia studied at The Doon School in the early 1980s alongside Rahul Gandhi before attending Harvard and Stanford. He serves as a Union Cabinet Minister and is also on the Board of Governors of The Scindia School, Gwalior.

Kamal Nath
A veteran Indian National Congress leader and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath studied at The Doon School in the early 1960s. He has remained one of the most recognisable names associated with the school’s political alumni.

Naveen Patnaik
Former Chief Minister of Odisha and founder of the Biju Janata Dal, Naveen Patnaik studied at The Doon School in the 1960s. He went on to govern Odisha for over two decades, making him one of the longest-serving Chief Ministers in Indian history.

Karan Singh
Son of the last Dogra ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Karan Singh studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1949. He went on to serve as Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Union Cabinet Minister, India’s Ambassador to the United States, and a published poet and philanthropist. He was a Rajya Sabha member for several terms.

Sport

Abhinav Bindra
India’s first individual Olympic gold medallist, Abhinav Bindra won the 10-metre air rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Games, a moment that changed the history of Indian sport. He studied at The Doon School in the late 1990s. After retirement, he founded the Abhinav Bindra Foundation, which works to integrate sports science and technology into Indian athletics. He carried the Olympic torch at the 2024 Paris Games.

Literature, Journalism and the Arts

Amitav Ghosh
Born in Calcutta in 1956, Amitav Ghosh studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1973. His contemporaries at Doon included historian Ramachandra Guha and author Vikram Seth. While at school, he contributed fiction and poetry to The Doon School Weekly and co-founded the magazine History Times alongside Guha. He went on to earn a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford and is now one of India’s most celebrated novelists, receiving the Jnanpith Award which is India’s highest literary honour.

Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha studied at The Doon School alongside Amitav Ghosh in the early 1970s. He is one of India’s foremost historians and public intellectuals, whose works on Indian cricket, environmentalism, and post-independence history are widely read and cited across India and internationally.

Anish Kapoor
British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1970. He moved to London and built one of the most internationally recognised artistic careers of his generation. His public works include the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago and the Sky Mirror installations. He is a Turner Prize winner and was knighted for services to visual arts.

Karan Thapar
One of India’s most respected television journalists and interviewers, Karan Thapar studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1971. He has conducted landmark interviews with senior politicians and public figures over a career spanning four decades.

Aroon Purie
Founder-publisher and former Editor-in-Chief of India Today, Aroon Purie studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1967, before going on to the London School of Economics. The India Today magazine he founded in 1975 transformed Indian news journalism and grew into one of the country’s largest media groups.

Swaminathan Aiyar
A noted Indian journalist and economist, Swaminathan Aiyar studied at The Doon School. He wrote for the Economic Times and The Times of India on economics and public policy for several decades and is a familiar name in Indian financial journalism.

Entertainment and Film

Ali Fazal
Ali Fazal studied at The Doon School in the 2000s before establishing himself across Indian and international cinema. He is known for films including Fukrey and its sequel, the Hollywood production Fast and Furious 7, and the BBC period drama Victoria. He represents the school’s presence in contemporary Indian and international popular culture.

Chandrachur Singh
Indian actor Chandrachur Singh studied at The Doon School and went on to appear in a range of Bollywood productions across the 1990s and 2000s.

Vivaan Shah
Son of actor Naseeruddin Shah, Vivaan Shah graduated from The Doon School in 2009 before pursuing a career in theatre and film. He has appeared in several Bollywood productions and continues to work across theatre and screen.

Social Enterprise and Fashion

Bunker Roy
Bunker Roy studied at The Doon School from 1956 to 1962 before making one of the most unconventional choices of any Dosco. He moved to a drought-stricken village in Rajasthan and founded the Barefoot College, an institution that trains illiterate and semi-literate rural adults in solar engineering, water management, and education. The Barefoot College has operated in over 90 countries. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Tarun Tahiliani
One of India’s most celebrated fashion designers, Tarun Tahiliani studied at The Doon School, graduating in 1980. He opened India’s first multi-designer boutique in 1987 and founded his eponymous label, which has become one of the most respected names in Indian bridal and couture fashion.

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