Who among the following was associated as Secretary with Hindu Female School which later came to be known as Bethune Female School?

Answer: C. ISHWAR CHANDRA VIDYASAGAR was associated as Secretary with the Hindu Female School, which later came to be known as the BETHUNE FEMALE SCHOOL. The HINDU FEMALE SCHOOL was founded in CALCUTTA on 7 May 1849 by JOHN ELLIOT DRINKWATER BETHUNE, the legal member of the Governor-General's Council. Bethune founded the school to promote modern secular education for upper-caste Hindu girls — a radical step in mid-19th-century Bengal. ISHWAR CHANDRA VIDYASAGAR (1820-1891), the great Bengal Renaissance educationist, social reformer, and Sanskrit scholar, was deeply involved with the school from its earliest days. He served as a SECRETARY (Honorary Secretary) of the Hindu Female School in 1850. His association lent the school respectability and helped overcome conservative Hindu opposition to women's education. After Bethune's death in 1851, the school was RENAMED THE BETHUNE FEMALE SCHOOL in his honour. It later grew into the BETHUNE COLLEGE (1879) — the OLDEST WOMEN'S COLLEGE IN INDIA AND ASIA, affiliated with the University of Calcutta. Vidyasagar's broader contribution to women's education and reform: - Authored 'Vidyasagar Charit' and 'Barnaparichay' (the standard Bengali primer). - Successfully campaigned for the HINDU WIDOWS' REMARRIAGE ACT, 1856. - Worked to abolish polygamy and child marriage. - Founded numerous schools for girls in rural Bengal. Distractors: (A) Annie Besant — founded Central Hindu College (1898), later BHU. (B) Debendranath Tagore — Brahmo Samaj reformer, founded Tattwabodhini Sabha; involved in education but not specifically with this school's secretaryship. (D) Sarojini Naidu — born in 1879 (the school renaming happened in 1851), so chronologically impossible. Source: NCERT Class 12 Themes in Indian History Part III references / Sumit Sarkar, Modern India.