Delhi University marked the beginning of its centenary celebrations on May 1. The varsity started with 750 college students in three faculties in 1922, rising to 90 faculties and 86 departments with greater than 6 lakh college students enrolling from throughout India. Through its 100-year historical past, the college has turn out to be deeply intertwined with the evolution of town.
IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY
The concept for a college in Delhi started in 1911 following the choice to shift the capital of the British Raj to Delhi from Kolkata (then Calcutta). However, World War I, variations over the varsity’s nature, and lack of funds stored the concept dormant for an additional 11 years.
On January 16, 1922, the Imperial Legislative Assembly launched the Delhi University Bill with the goal to determine a unitary instructing and residential college within the British Indian capital. At the time, Delhi solely had three arts faculties — St Stephen’s College, based by the Cambridge Mission in 1882; Hindu College, based in 1899; and Ramjas College, based in 1917 — and Lady Hardinge Medical College. These three faculties grew to become the varsity’s first constituent faculties.
The Assembly handed the invoice on February 22, whereas the Council of States authorised it on February 28. The Viceroy accorded assent on April 6 and the Delhi University Act got here into pressure on May 1, 1922. The Viceroy, Lord Reading, grew to become the primary Chancellor of the varsity, whereas Hari Singh Gour was the primary Vice-Chancellor.
Delhi University started with two colleges — science and humanities — and eight departments — English, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, historical past, economics, physics, and chemistry.
EARLY STRUGGLES
During its first decade, the varsity made important additions: the Faculty of Law was arrange in 1924; Delhi College, tracing its historical past to the seventeenth century, was revived as Anglo-Arabic College and affiliated to the varsity that very same yr (the faculty is now Zakir Husain Delhi College); Commercial College (Shri Ram College of Commerce) began in 1926; and Lady Irwin College was began in 1932.
During this section of transition, the college functioned from rented buildings — being housed within the Ritz Cinema constructing, Curzon House on Alipur Road, and within the Old Secretariat constructing. It was allotted its present residence within the Viceregal Lodge and Estate near the Ridge in 1923.
However, the varsity continued to undergo from issues in its early years. In her essay The Foundation and Early History of Delhi University in Delhi Through The Ages, historian Aparna Basu wrote that Delhi University didn’t obtain substantial measure of public confidence due to rivalry between the universities and inner strife and factionalism.
MAURICE GWYER’S VISION
The tide turned for the varsity following the appointment of Sir Maurice Gwyer as Vice-Chancellor in 1938. Gwyer Hall, the college’s oldest males’s residence, is known as after the person, who offered a memorandum to the federal government with a imaginative and prescient for an all-India character. Basu wrote that he envisioned the varsity as a “miniature Oxbridge” with clusters of small residential faculties across the varsity’s core.
Among his measures had been the institution of professorial chairs and readerships, scholarships to encourage younger males with actual potential to come back to Delhi from throughout India, switch of constituent faculties to the varsity space, and fixing three years because the size of an atypical diploma course.
In 1942, St Stephen’s moved to its new website in what would turn out to be North Campus, quickly adopted by Hindu, SRCC, and Ramjas.
POST-PARTITION GROWTH
Partition modified town’s demography and character. The have to accommodate college students from West Punjab led to institution of latest faculties similar to Hansraj College (1948), SGTB Khalsa College (1951), Deshbandhu College (1952), and Kirori Mal College (1954).
With faculties being added through the years, probably the most lately based ones had been supposed to cater to college students from far-flung areas — Aditi Mahavidyalaya in Bawana, Keshav Mahavidyalaya in Pitampura, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College in Dwarka, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College in Yamuna Vihar.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”