The University of Calcutta: Foundation and Early Examining Functions

On January 24, 1857, British India passed Act No. II, incorporating a university in Calcutta. The preamble defined its purpose as identifying proficiency in literature, science, and the arts through examinations and awarding degrees. This founding date marks legal establishment, not simultaneous completion of a campus containing every teaching facility.

Looking back in 1902, the Indian Universities Commission noted that the Bengal Council of Education had proposed a university modeled on London as early as 1845, with the educational dispatch of 1854 accepting that direction. Preparations required coordination of degree standards in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. The first vice-chancellor, James William Colvile, had chaired the preparatory committee and promoted the founding bill in the legislative council. Colonial administration and university organization were intertwined from the outset.

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The act made India’s governor-general chancellor, initially Viscount Canning, with Colvile as vice-chancellor. The chancellor, vice-chancellor, and fellows constituted the Senate, with at least thirty other fellows. Its members included administrative, judicial, military, and ecclesiastical figures, alongside Indian scholars such as Vidyasagar, head of Sanskrit College. The university depended on assessment expertise from different fields rather than one founder alone.

The bylaws reproduced in the 1858 calendar divided the Senate into faculties of arts, law, medicine, and engineering. An executive committee consisted of the vice-chancellor and six members elected by the faculties. It usually met monthly to arrange examinations, appoint examiners, manage accounts, and conduct correspondence. University bylaws required approval by the governor-general in council. Division of academic responsibilities thus coexisted with ultimate colonial governmental oversight.

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The early university’s key resources were not concentrated in its own classrooms but in the teachers and courses of existing institutions. The 1858 calendar listed Presidency College, Medical College, and the Civil Engineering College in Calcutta, institutions in Hooghly and Dacca, and nongovernment establishments such as Serampore College. Affiliation brought them into a common degree system while they retained separate teaching premises.

Applicants for affiliation had to report on teaching staff and instruction in each subject. Institutions operating for more than two years also had to describe at least the preceding two years’ courses. Their heads had to declare that they could prepare students to BA level and obtain signatures from at least two fellows. The founding act generally required degree candidates to present evidence of study at an approved institution. University examinations were therefore not entirely detached from teaching: eligibility conditions and course standards indirectly influenced colleges.

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The calendar’s arts entrance regulations allowed candidates aged sixteen or older to apply regardless of where they had been educated, provided they supplied evidence of age and character. Examination centers could be established in Dacca, Patna, Delhi, Lahore, and other places as well as Calcutta, all using the same printed papers. Local officials sealed answer scripts after each day’s examination and immediately sent them to the university registrar. Printing, post, and shared examiner standards sustained the educational network.

Candidates had to choose two languages, one necessarily English and the other selected from options including Sanskrit, Bengali, Arabic, and Persian. History, geography, and mathematics were also examined. The 1858 BA English paper asked candidates to discuss Macbeth’s date of composition, textual versions, and characters, and compare its structure with Hamlet. Specific questions show that knowledge exchange involved linguistic transitions and brought topics of British literary criticism into Indian qualification examinations.

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The founding act authorized reasonable fees with government approval, placing receipts in a common fee fund for university expenses. Annual income and expenditure accounts had to be submitted to the governor-general in council for audit. The law gave the institution the capacity to hold property but did not specify an amount in these provisions that could be treated as total founding capital. Funding must be understood through actual charges and their uses.

The 1858 rules set the entrance examination fee at five rupees and the BA examination fee at twenty-five, nonrefundable on failure. The calendar separately listed medical scholarships of sixteen rupees per month for up to three years, in fields including anatomy and surgery, materia medica, chemistry, and botany. Such targeted assistance does not mean all students received equal support, nor do examination fees represent the full tuition charged by affiliated colleges.

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The BA pass list in the 1858 calendar contained only Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Joddu Nath Bose, both in the second division, with their departments at Presidency College specified. This contemporary record connects degrees, examination results, and previous institutions more clearly than a later list of distinguished names, showing how the early university certified learning.

By 1902, official investigators were still debating whether universities should directly appoint professors and establish libraries and laboratories. The commission advocated leaving most undergraduate teaching in colleges while universities gradually developed advanced courses, acknowledging limited funds and dispersed institutions. These were reform proposals made decades later, not a research system already present in 1857. They also show that organizing colleges through examinations and undertaking teaching directly were related but different tasks.

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