Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal

The Mandal — ABGMVM for short, and often just "the Gandharva exams" — is not a single campus but a nationwide board for Hindustani music and Indian classical dance. It sets syllabi, registers teachers, affiliates schools and examines students, from Prarambhik for beginners to Sangeet Acharya at doctoral level. Its main teaching school, the Sangeet Vidyalaya, is at Gandharva Niketan in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, with a second office at Gandharva Niketan in Miraj. It should not be confused with the individual schools that carry the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya name — the Delhi school of 1939 is a separate institution that follows the Mandal's syllabi.

Students are graded through Prarambhik, Praveshika (Pratham and Purna), Madhyama, Visharad, Alankar and finally Sangeet Acharya, in vocal music, melody instruments such as sitar, percussion including tabla, and dance forms including Kathak, Bharatanatyam and Odissi. Examinations are held twice a year. The Mandal also publishes the journal Sangeet Kala Vihar and runs training workshops for teachers and examiners — one was announced at Gandharva Niketan, Vashi, for 26–27 September 2026.

Figures published on the Mandal's own site, as checked in September 2026: about 1,223 affiliated institutions, 930 examination centres, 14,685 registered teachers and 195,985 alumni, with more than one lakh students taking its examinations each year. Its general body draws members from across India and from abroad. Public contact as published: vashioffice@abgmvm.org, mirajoffice@abgmvm.org.

The Mandal tells its origin through Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, who in 1896 set out on a Bharat Yatra to carry Hindustani classical music to a wider public, and on 5 May 1901 founded the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Lahore — described by the Mandal as the foundation on which it was built. Paluskar later moved the school to Bombay and opened a new building in 1915, but financial difficulty closed it in 1924.

After his death in 1931 his students carried the work on: Shankarrao Vyas and N. M. Khare convened a meeting in Ahmedabad at which a coordinating board, or mandal, was agreed, and the Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal came into being. Paluskar's students went on to open Gandharva Mahavidyalayas across India — Vinay Chandra Maudgalya's Delhi school of 1939 among them — teaching to the Mandal's syllabi and entering students for its examinations. (The 1931 meeting and the post-1931 spread rest on secondary accounts; the Mandal's own site gives the 1896 and 1901 dates and describes itself as carrying Paluskar's legacy forward.)