| Presidency College | |
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| Established: | 20 January, 1817 |
| Type: | Public |
| Principal: | Dr. Sanjib Ghosh |
| Students: | 2202 (in 2004) (951 male, 1251 female) |
| Location: | 86/1 College Street, Kolkata |
| Campus: | urban |
| Affiliations: | University of Calcutta |
| Website: | http://www.presidencycollegekolkata.ac.in |
Presidency College, Kolkata is a co-founding and affiliated college of the University of Calcutta. Initially called Hindu College, it is the oldest college in India. It continues to be one of the leading Indian institutions for undergraduate and post-graduate studies. It has been consistently rated as one of the top ten Indian colleges. It was ranked the number one liberal arts college in India by the weekly newsmagazine India Today in 2002. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree and Ph.D courses in natural sciences, humanities and the social sciences.
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| Principals |
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With the creation of the Supreme Court in Calcutta in 1773 many Hindus of Bengal became eager to learn the English language. A remarkable Scot watchmaker, David Hare, in collaboration with Radhakanta Deb had already taken steps in that direction. Babu Buddinath Mukherjee advanced it further by enlisting the support of Sir Edward Hyde East, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who called a meeting of 'European and Hindu Gentlemen' in his house in May 1816. The purpose of the meeting was to "discuss the proposal to establish an institution that for giving a liberal education to the children of the members of the Hindu Community". The proposal was received with unanimous approbation and donation over Rs. 100, 000 was promised for the setting up of the college. Raja Ram Mohan Roy had full sympathy for the scheme but chose not to come out in support of the proposal publicly for fear of "alarming the prejudices of his orthodox countrymen and thus marring the whole idea".
The College formally opened on Monday, January 20, 1817 with twenty 'scholars'. The control of the institution was vested in a body of two Governors and four Directors. The first Governors were Maharaja Tejchandra Bahadur of Burdwan and Babu Gopee Mohan Thakoor. The first Directors were Babu Gopeemohan Deb (father of Raja Radhakanta Deb of Sobhabazar), Babu Joykissen Sinha (grandfather of Kaliprasanna Sinha, the translator of Mahabharata into Bengali), Babu Radha Madhab Banerjee and Babu Gunganarain Doss. Babu Buddinath Mukherjee was the first Secretary of the college. The foundation committee of the college was headed by the great social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy. It admitted non-Hindu students like Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Brahmo Samajists.
The classes were held at first in a rented house belonging to Gorachand Bysack at Garanhatta (later 304 Chitpore Road). In January 1818 the new Hindu College moved to 'Feringhi Kamal Bose's house' that was located nearby. The building is a historic one because Raja Ram Mohan Ray inaugurated his Brahma Sabha there and Reverend Alexander Duff of the Scottish Missionary Board started his educational establishment, the General Assembly's Institution there as well a few years later in 1830. From Chitpore, the Hindu College eventually shifted to Bowbazar and later to the building that now houses the Sanskrit College.
The increasing realization of the value of western education made the Hindu College a coveted destination for scholars from all over India. Pupils came from Behar, especially Patna, Assam, Vizagapatnam and by 1828 enrolment of students rose to 400. The obvious question, which was raised, was whether it would not be wiser for government to establish a new 'English College' open to all classes and community and leave the Hindu College to its fate. Incidentally, facing financial problems, the Committee of Managers of the Hindu College had become dependent on subsidy from the government which, as expected, began to play a greater role in running the affairs of the College.
By mid-19th century the Hindu College had outgrown the plans of its original founders. Not only did it attract an ever-increasing number of scholars from far and near, but it had also introduced courses in Law, Drawing, and Engineering, which catered to the needs of all classes of students - Hindus as well as non-Hindus. The government had also to consider whether this growing institution, spending a good deal of public money could be retained as a non-governmental institution, particularly when Calcutta had no general college managed exclusively by the Council of Education. In the fitness of things, when smaller towns in Bengal had government colleges, it became imperative that the metropolis should also have one.
The proposal to set up a new college called the Calcutta College, or the Metropolitan College, open to students from all communities was already in the air, but this would have meant greater financial liability on the government, which would also have to provide it with a competent faculty. A viable alternative was to convert Hindu College into a general institution open to all communities, managed by the government. On October 21, 1853, the then Governor of Bengal suggested that
| “ | a new general college should be established at Calcutta by the government and designated "The Presidency College" .. the College should be open to all youths of every caste, class or creed. | ” |
Accordingly, the Committee of Management for Hindu College met for the last time on 11 January, 1854. The Court of Directors renamed the College as Presidency College. It started functioning formally on 15 June, 1855. The 'scholars' of the College Department of Hindu College were transferred to Presidency College and 101 new admissions were made. Of these 101 pupils, two were "Muhammadans", while the rest were Hindus.
Initially, it was felt that the Civil Engineering College and Medical College, that were located nearby, should be associated with the new Presidency College. But with the formation of the new University of Calcutta, also located close by, the Council of Education, however, had to shelve such plans and allow for the expanding of the these three premier institutions into a full fledged university. The college was placed under the control of the University of Calcutta formally in 1857.
In 1856, Presidency College had one hundred and thirty-two students on its rolls. Ninety-four of them were in the General Branch and thirty-eight in the Legal Branch. Of them, eighty-two had paid tuition fees, forty-three were scholarship holders, and seven were enjoying free studentships. The Legal Branch was placed partly on a separate footing, its students being subject to examination by the Professors themselves. Two years later Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay of the Law Department earned the distinction of being one of the first two graduates in Arts of the University of Calcutta.
1857 was indeed a momentous year, for it saw the birth of Calcutta University. It became part of the University's task to determine the courses of studies for colleges affiliated to it. Since Presidency College was the first college to be affiliated to the University, it became an institution preparing candidates for the BA examination. At the first Entrance Examination, held in 1857, Presidency College sent twenty-three students. The MA degree was conferred for the first time on six students of this college in 1863.
The problem of space had been plaguing the College authorities even after the expansion of the Sanskrit College building. The process of the land acquisition for having its own campus started in September 1865 and by 1870 the Principal of the Presidency College was in a position to submit a plan for the erection of a building for the College on the premises where it is presently located now. The new edifice was opened on March 31, 1874 by the then Lieutenant–Governor Sir George Campbell in the presence of His Excellency of the Viceroy of India. The finishing touch was given to the dignity of the edifice by Babu Nuffer Chandra Pal Chaudhuri, who provided it with a turret clock, at a cost of nearly Rs. 5000.00 soon after its opening. Professor J. Sutcliffe was the Principal of the College when the new building was opened. The First Arts or FA Examination was introduced in 1861. The first candidate to qualify in this examination from Presidency College was Gooroodas Banerji, who later became the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. The ever-increasing rolls of the college were indicative of the keen interest shown by students from all over Bengal. The prestigious award of Gilchrist Scholarship for pursuance of further studies in England went to students of this college for four successive years since its introduction in 1868. The college soon expanded its campus and the present edifice was officially opened by the Lieutenant Governor on 31 March, 1874 in the presence of the Viceroy. Nuffer Chandra Pal Chowdhury provided the building with a turret clock. The new building enabled the extension of scientific studies. The chemistry department could thus introduce practical classes by 1875. Engineering classes, being held at the college, were discontinued in 1880 when the Shibpur Engineering College was set up.
In order to augment the Faculty of Science a professorship of Geology was instituted in 1892. The Department of Biology was founded eight years later and S.C.Mahalanabish was made a professor. The last two decades of the 19th century saw the appointment of distinguished scholars to teaching positions at Presidency College. For instance, H.M.Percival joined in 1880, Bipinvihary Gupta in 1883, Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1885, Prafulla Chandra Ray in 1889, and Manmohan Ghosh in 1896. It was one of the first colleges in India to admit female students with the first female student attending class in 1897. Between 1868 and 1900, twenty-five students of the college were awarded the Premchand Roychand studentship, the highest honour for academics given by Calcutta University. In 1902, Dr. P.K.Roy became the first Indian to take over as (acting) principal of the college. He served two more terms as acting principal in 1903 and from 1905-1906. Bhupatimohan Sen became the first Indian full-time principal of the college from 1934-1936.
Commerce classes were also started in 1903. Baker Laboratories, named after Edward Norman Baker, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal at that time, was formally opened on 20 January, 1913 and the Departments of Physics, Physiology, Botany and Geology were transferred to the new establishment. One of the biggest rooms in the Baker Laboratories accommodated the science library (the Peake Library, named after Professor C.W. Peake). The outbreak of World War I in 1914 interrupted plans for the building of an additional hostel and other facilities but the college continued to cross important milestones in the advancement of teaching and higher learning. New dimensions were added to the college with the reorganisation of the library in 1908 and the introduction of a College Union in 1914. The 1920s continued to see eminent teachers such as Professor Wordsworth, Professor Sterling, Professor Home and Dr. Harrison embellish the faculty.
During the non-cooperation movement and the civil disobedience movement, J.R.Barrow served as the Principal of the college. He set the highest standards of discipline and academic excellence, but also meted out punitive action to students participating in the nationalist upsurge. His objective, however, was never in doubt, and he earned the deep respect and appreciation of teachers as well as students. From the 1930s, Indian principals headed the college, though the Education Department retained the services of British officers until 1947.
The college continued to enjoy a great deal of prestige even at the time of India's independence. Before 1947 and soon after in the 1950s the college was still the numero uno of Indian education. Anybody who was somebody in India, and some of them are still working in India or abroad, had to be a student of Presidency College. The college represented the creme de la creme of Bhadralok society, which was both admired and envied by the intelligentsia of the rest of India. The old saying "What Bengal does today, India does tomorrow" seemed to apply to the high standards of academic excellence set by the college. In the 1950s one could easily claim that "What Presidency does today, the rest of Indian colleges do tomorrow". Such a high level of prestige was clearly evident in a limerick written by Phani Bhushan Chakrabarty, the first Indian Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and a former student of the college:
Chakrabarty like many others of his generation was expressing the awe with which the college was held in mid-twentieth century India. By the time of independence no other college in the country could boast of a alumus as distinguished as that of Presidency College, and it is very much doubtful whether any other college in today's India or any other country in the subcontinent can still boast of such a distinguished body of former students, even after sixty more years of academic excellence.
In the post-independence period the college had become a centre for left and far-left politics. The Marxist-Leninist Movement, also called the 'Naxalite Movement' of the late 1960s-early 1970s exerted great influence on the Bengali students and enjoyed considerable support from the bhadralok intelligentsia who had themselves been students of Presidency College. The Students Union, which has been active from before the 1950s, continues to play a constructive role in the day-to-day running of the students' affairs. It is pertinent to note that the Union has always been controlled by elected students' groups that seek to challenge and question policies framed and actions taken by the establishment, both inside the college and outside, especially at the state level. In the first decade after independence, when the college was starting off as a centre of excellence, wholly managed by Indians, and more specifically by Bengalis, the Union was firmly in the hands of forces not always friendly towards the Students Federation (SF). From the sixties until the end of the eighties, the Union was controlled by the Marxist-Leninists. After a brief period of students' apathy and indifference towards politics in the late eighties, the Union, in 1989, came under the control of a loosely formed group called the Independent Consolidation (IC), covertly formed by an assortment of progressive democratic elements, owing allegiance to left-of-center and the Marxist-Leninist parties which are hostile to the Students Federation of India (SFI). Barring a brief spell of a few years at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the IC has kept controlled of the students' body since its inception.
This period will also remain significant because in 2005 Mamata Roy became the first woman principal of the college.
Hindu College features in Sunil Gangopadhyay's bestseller novel Shei Somoye (Those Days), which is an account of nineteenth century Bengali society.
Presidency College features in the popular Bollywood blockbuster Yuva starring Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee. It is the college where Devgan, called Michael in the movie, is a student leader.
Medals (19), Cash Prizes (33), Book Prizes (50), National Scholarship (14), Presidency College Graduate Scholarships (06), T.S.Sterling Scholarships (16), T.S.Sterling Onetime Grant (17), Lump Grant (09), Hindi Scholarship (06), Hostel Stipend (14), B.C.Law Free Studentship (185), FAEA Scholarships (5)
Bengali - Biochemistry - Botany - Chemistry - Economics - English - Geography - Geology - Hindi - History - Law - Mathematics-Molecular Biology & Genetics - Philosophy - Physics - Physiology - Political Science - Sanskrit - Sociology -Statistics - Zoology
Perhaps the most illustrious of all the departments of the college, and only second to Physics, both in terms of the quality of work done by the faculty as well as the students who have spread out to the corners of the world. The old saying "Once a Presidencian, always a Presidencian" holds especially true for this department. A student when he/she joins this department is "Welcomed into a Brotherhood",one no less strong than "Blood Ties". Many former students and teachers of this department are legendary and some are justifiably considered to be world-beaters. Some of them are: Bhabotosh Dutta, Tapas Majumdar, Mukul Majumdar, Amartya Sen, Sukhomoy Chakroborty, Amiya Kumar Bagchi,Chanakya Narayan Haldar, Dipak Banerjee, Bimal Jalan,Mihir Kanti Rakshit,Pranab Bardhan,Dipankar Dasgupta, Amitava Bose,Bhaskar Dutta, Sanjit Bose,Dilip Mukherjee, Ashok Lahiri, Tapan Mitra, Avirup Sarkar, Kalyan Chaterjee, Anindya Sen, Soumen Sikdar, Bibek Debroy, Amit Bhaduri, Supratik Sen, Debraj Ray, Subhasis Gangopadhyay, Kunal Sengupta, Abhijit Banerjee, Moitrish Ghatak, Basubeb Biswas, Udayan Mukherjee.
One of the most popular and well known departments of the college, it boasts of Peary Charan Sarkar, the nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance personality. It also boasts of such legendary names as Taraknath Sen, Subodh Chandra Sengupta and Amal Bhattacharya, all of whom taught here from the first half to the middle of the twentieth century. Other equally popular and erudite teachers of this department include Arun Kumar Dasgupta, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Supriya Chaudhuri, Kajal Sengupta and Pralay Kumar Deb. Most of those mentioned here were both students and teachers of this department.
This department is one of the most well known departments of the college. Some of its legendary teachers were Kuruvilla Zachariah, Susobhan Chandra Sarkar, Amalesh Tripathi, Ashin Dasgupta and Rajat Kanta Ray. Some of its legendary students include all the names mentioned above, as well as Pratap Chandra Sen, Mohit Sen, Tapan Raychaudhuri, Sipra Sarkar, Partha Sarathi Gupta and Sumit Sarkar. In 1990, a lecture series entitled P.C.Sen Memorial Lecture, named after Pratap Chandra Sen, a former student of history, was started by the department. In 2004, Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who had just become the Governor of West Bengal, attended a class of the then Head of Department, Rajat Ray, one of the longest serving departmental heads of the college. The current faculty members of the department are mostly former students.
One of the notable departments of the college. It has had several luminaries (as students or as teachers) to be proud of, including Jagadish Chandra Bose, Amal Roy Choudhuri, Ashoke Sen etc.
This department emerged out of the Department of Economics and is in the early twenty-first century one of the finest departments of Political Science in India. A creation of the second half of the twentieth century, it already boasts of an alumus which is world famous. Among its ex-students are Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj, both extremely well known in Indian political studies. Yet another student was Amal Mukhopadhyaya, who was a Professor and Head of this department and also one of the better known Principals of the college at the time of its 175th birth anniversary.
Although the Department of Statistics is small in size and relatively young - it is only about 60 years old - it was at one time the premier statistics department in the country & is still glamorous as ever.Originally it was started as a Statistical Laboratory by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Later, it housed the ISI before that institute moved to Baranagar. Through the second half of the twentieth century, the department grew in stature under the tutelage of Professor Bhattacharyya and Professor Atindra Mohan Gun. Some of its famous alumni include Jayanta K. Ghosh, Pranab K. Sen, Malay Ghosh, among others.
The college has two halls of residence, one each for boys and girls. The boys hostel is the famous Eden Hindu Hostel, which was started in 1886. It stands on the opposite side of Peary Charan Sarkar Street, which separates the college's premises, especially the wing of the college which houses the Science departments, from the main buildings of the University of Calcutta, including the Darbhanga Building and the Ashutosh Building and the hostel itself. After 1990, the college administration also built a girls hostel in Salt Lake in Calcutta.
The former students of this college are still the best and the brightest in India and abroad. Until the middle of the twentieth century this college was widely considered to be the very best in higher education in the country. In the second half of the twentieth century it can still claim to be among the top five colleges in the country and is clearly still the most famous of all the Indian colleges. The college started with the expressed objective of encouraging boys of landed and aristocratic families of the Bengal Presidency to join it, but has also traditionally attracted extremely meritorious students from district schools and colleges to it since the nineteenth century. It has the distinction of being the college where Nobel Laureates Rabindranath Tagore and Professor Amartya Sen and Academy Award winner Satyajit Ray studied. In politics, it has amongst its students, some of the biggest names of the Indian national movement, such as four Presidents of the Indian National Congress, including Surendranath Banerjea, Romesh Chandra Dutt, Bhupendra Nath Bose and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad studied in this college. Since elections were first held in Indian provinces in 1937, and after independence, it has had one Prime Minister of Bengal, four Chief Ministers of West Bengal and one Chief Minister of Assam as its former students. They are the first Prime Minister of Bengal, A.K. Fazlul Huq, the second Chief Minister of West Bengal Dr. Bidhan Chandra Ray, subsequent Chief Ministers of the same state, Shri Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Shri Jyoti Basu and Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and the sixth Chief Minister of Assam, Shri Bishnu Ram Medhi. The college has had as its students a host of other politicians including governors, and central and state level ministers. The former Maharaja of Coochbehar, Maharaja Sir Nripendra Narayan Bhup Bahadur was a student of this college. There are several senior judges and civilians both at the central and state levels who were and are former students of this college. This college has had the distinction of educating a sizeable number of former ICS men. This college performed equally well in industry as well, Sir Rajen Mookerjee and Shri Rama Prasad Goenka being two of its students. In academics too, eminent intellectuals and vice chancellors, such as the scientist, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, the doyen of Indian history, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, and India's first planner, Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, have been students of this college. In literature, it has amongst its students, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sukumar Ray and Jibanananda Das. Amongst journalists, M. J. Akbar studied here. In the entertainment industry, this college can boast of such legendary names as Pramathesh Barua, Ashok Kumar, and Aparna Sen among other equally gifted and well known film and theatre personalities. Vece Paes, a member of India's hockey team was also a student of this college.
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