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The evolution of colleges in Delhi

R.V. SMITH traces the fascinating history of Delhi's colleges from the time the first college was set up almost 700 years ago by Firoz Shah Tughlak

Firoz Shah Tughlak built the first college in Delhi - an L-shaped structure adjoining the Hauz Khas of Alauddin Khilji. Of course, before that there were madarsas for teaching the Quran but no college as such. The college built in the third quarter of the 14th Century is, therefore, the precursor of the educational institutions that came up in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries - and now the 21st. That means seven centuries in the long saga of education and its development into its present complex system of specialised teaching and research.

Modern educational institutions came up in North Delhi much before any other part of the Capital. The oldest institution is the Delhi College, which has been there since the 1830s, though one could stretch the date to the Anglo-Arabic Madarsa started by Ghaziuddin Khan, one of the prominent generals of Aurangzeb and the forebear of the Nizams of Hyderabad, in the first decade of the 18th Century. It was to Delhi College, then temporarily shifted to Kashmere Gate, that Mirza Ghalib came for a job as a teacher, but went back in his palanquin as Principal Thomson did not come out to receive him. That was in the mid-19th Century. Now renamed Zakir Husain College, the institution has been moved to a site in J.L. Nehru Marg nearby and the old building vacated by it occupied by the Anglo-Arabic School.

Delhi colleges

St. Stephen's College came up in 1882 thanks to the Cambridge Mission Society, which had earlier set up St. John's College in Agra before the Mutiny. The college was housed in a haveli in Kucha Kushal Rai, Chandni Chowk, before being shifted to Kashmere Gate, from where it moved to its present site much later. Hindu College came up as a counter to St. Stephen's in 1899 and the rivalry between the two institutions led to a healthy development of both.

Miranda House owes its inception in 1948 to Sir Maurice Gwyer, famous Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University. However in 1911, after the Capital was moved to Delhi from Kolkata, there was a plan to open a Government College and later a university but the outbreak of World War I put paid to these plans. After the war ended in 1918 it was felt that to counter the pan-Islamic nature of Aligarh University, a Government College was a must. But the move was opposed by Hindu College and Ramjas College, that had come up in 1916, though Principal Sushil Rudra of St. Stephen's was a member of the three-man panel constituted to work out the blueprint for a university. It was started in 1922, with H.S. Gour as first Vice-Chancellor.

The university was housed in a number of buildings in the Walled City and the Civil Lines until it moved to its present site. Incidentally, it was in the Register's Room that Lord Mountbatten had proposed to Lady Edwina and she agreed to become his wife and they were married in 1922, the same year as the varsity was set up. When Delhi University shifted to its new site, St. Stephen's, Hindu College, Ramjas College and the College of Commerce also shifted to the same area to form the varsity campus.

Came Partition and an influx of refugees, which saw the setting up of Hansraj College and Nirmala College, run by the Jesuits which, in 1956, became Kirorimal College administered by the Kirorimal Trust. Indraprastha Women's College, which actually started off as a school in the area behind the Jama Masjid in 1904, in 1938 shifted to its new site. In Indraprastha School pardanashin girls studied, though surprisingly enough among them were Kamla Nehru and many other outstanding figures including Kapila Vatsayan, Sarla Sharma and Sharan Rani Bakliwal. Khalsa College also came up after Partition in Karol Bagh. Now the building is occupied by the Khalsa School while the college has moved to the campus site.

St. Xavier's School was established in 1959-60 in the old Cecil Hotel by the Jesuit fathers but United Christian School, run by the Baptist Mission, in Raj Niwas Marg is much older. Close by is the erstwhile Ludlow Castle School, now known as Govt. Model School.

The Anglo-Sanskrit School came up in the aftermath of the "Mutiny" of 1857. Now situated in Daryaganj, it was earlier housed in the Kuchas of Chandni Chowk. Queen Mary's School is also a very old institution, which was set up after the Victoria Zenana School of the Jama Masjid area. The Victoria Zenana Hospital that came up at the same time, is now known after Kasturba Gandhi. This in short is the history of the growth of educational institutions in North Delhi. And it's a chequered one too, right from Aurangzeb's time to the present day.

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