Presidency, Kolkata and a Nobel pursuit of knowledge & humanity
Two of the six Nobel winners produced by the city have come from this haloed institute
or the uninitiated, College Street is one of those places in the eastern Indian metropolis of Kolkata that will definitely not appear to be ‘in sync’ with the times. But if your definition of modernity and laissezfaire aren’t strictly codified in terms of steel-and-glass edifices and chic coffee shops then College Street will definitely rank on your bucket list when on a trip to Kolkata — a rather run-down Indian Coffee House, Calcutta University, Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, Presidency University and the umpteen number of make-shift book stalls dotting roughly a 1km stretch of the thoroughfare are reasons enough f or one to soak up life ‘as it is’ and not necessarily what ‘it should be’, as one J.B. Priestley would perhaps have said!
And talking of Presidency — deemed an autonomous university in 2010 — the lime-andwhite heritage structure is one of those institutions in a 329-yearold city whose heritage status as a seat of higher learning is legend – lending as much nostalgia to an alumnus’ fondness for his or her alma mater as it does to a time-traveller’s penchant to stop time in its tracks.
Founded in January 1817 by a glittering array of social reformers — foremost among whom were Raja Rammohan Roy, David Hare and Rani Rashmoni — Presidency University, earlier known as Hindoo College and then Presidency College, has produced two of the six Nobel laureates with unmistakeable links with Kolkata. Dr Amartya Sen, who had won the Nobel in Economics in 1998, and now Dr Abhijit Banerjee, the latest recipient of the coveted award for Economic Sciences, have both walked through the haloed portals on College Street as students.
Born in the days when the social reform movement was sweeping through Bengal in an audacious challenge to orthodoxy and regimentation, Presidency has stood its ground as a premier institute that has zealously guarded its blue-chip credentials even amidst the searing tumult of a bloody Naxalite movement of the 1970s or for that matter the anarchical throes of the heavily politicised student agitations that rocked the city in the 1980s and 1990s. With the vast majority of higher education institutes in the metropolis having grappled with socio-political turbulence of some sort or the other over the last five decades or so, it is indeed amazing how Presidency has still managed to steer clear of the cacophony and commotion to a large extent — producing two Nobel laureates within a span of roughly two decades bears testimony to its resilience in buffering the ravages of time and any form of socio-political or cultural decadence. True, Presidency, too, has had its anarchical portends, primarily in the form of student agitations — the most recent being the one last year when 50 students went on an indefinite hunger strike over their demand for hostel accommodation. But those have just been islets of transitory disruptions in an institute that has never lost sight of its primary objective: Pursuit of knowledge.
‘Grounding the euphoria’
The point was driven home by Presidency University alumna, Sucharita Sarkar, an associate professor with DTSS College of Commerce, Mumbai University. “The fact that several decades separate
Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee shows the consistency of Presidency’s excellence,” she told Gulf News over the phone from Vienna last Wednesday, where she is currently attending a seminar. However, Sarkar had this to add: “It may ground the euphoria a bit to remember that multiple institutions have shaped Sen and Banerjee, not just Presidency. But for now, that’s not stopping me from boasting about my college to my colleagues in Mumbai.”
And it is only in the fitness of things that Presidency University’s umbilical cord is attached to a city that has produced a total of six Nobel laureates, including Sen and Banerjee — Sir Ronald Ross, Rabindranath Tagore, C.V. Raman and Mother Teresa being the others. All six have called Kolkata home at some point of time in their careers.
As India celebrates yet another one of its ‘Nobel’ sons, Kolkata and Presidency University have enough reasons to celebrate.