Explained: 100 years of DU, the story of a university’s birth

The idea of a university

The idea for the university began taking shape in 1911 when it was decided to shift the capital of India to Delhi from Calcutta. The onset of World War I, differences over the nature of the would-be university, and lack of funds kept the idea from coming to fruition for another 11 years.

On January 16, 1922, the Delhi University Bill was introduced in the Imperial Legislative Assembly with the objective of establishing a unitary teaching and residential university in the capital of British India. At that time, Delhi had three arts colleges — St Stephen’s College, which was founded in 1882 by the Cambridge Mission; Hindu College, which was founded in 1899; and Ramjas College which was founded in 1917 — and Lady Hardinge Medical College. These three colleges were to become the first constituent colleges of the university.

The Bill was passed by the Assembly on February 22, and by the Council of States on February 28. The Viceroy gave his assent on April 6, and the DU Act came into force on May 1, 1922, with Viceroy Lord Reading as the first Chancellor and Hari Singh Gour as the first Vice-Chancellor.

DU began with just two faculties — arts and science — and eight departments — English, history, economics, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, physics, and chemistry.

At the university’s first convocation in 1923, Vice-Chancellor Gour said that at “the new Delhi now to be the Imperial capital of a reformed and regenerated India…a new university should be created which should serve as an inspiration to its new hopes and signpost to its new born aspirations”.

Struggle in the early years

During the its first decade of its existence, significant additions were made to the university: the Faculty of Law was established in 1924; Delhi College — which traced its history to the 17th century — was revived as Anglo-Arabic College that same year and was affiliated with DU (today’s Zakir Husain Delhi College); Commercial College, today’s Shri Ram College of Commerce — began in 1926; and Lady Irwin College was inaugurated in 1932.

In this transitional phase, the university shuffled between rented buildings — it was housed in the Ritz Cinema building, in Curzon House on Alipur Road, and in a portion of the Old Secretariat building. It was finally allotted its current home in the Viceregal Lodge and Estate near the Ridge in 1923.

DU was beset with troubles in these early years. In her essay ‘The Foundation and Early History of Delhi University’ in the volume ‘Delhi Through The Ages’ (ed. R E Frykenberg), historian Aparna Basu wrote, “Delhi University had failed to receive any substantial measure of public confidence because of competition and rivalry between the colleges and because of internal strife and factionalism in university affairs.

“As a result the university played a very small part in the life of the capital and no part in the life of India as a whole. It did not attract undergraduate or postgraduate students from other parts of India, and had very little academic society of its own. It remained scarcely known outside Delhi, and even there, it inspired little confidence.”

Maurice Gwyer and his vision

In 1938, Sir Maurice Gwyer, who was appointed Vice-Chancellor in 1938 and after whom the university’s oldest men’s residence, Gwyer Hall, is named, presented a memorandum to the Government of India, outlining a vision for an all-India character for the university. Basu wrote that he conceived of DU as a “miniature Oxbridge” with a “cluster of small residential colleges around the core of the university”.

According to Gwyer, “Such a University might and should prove one of the greatest unifying influences in the New India. It would promote the wider outlook which contact with the life of a capital city can alone provide; it would become a clearing house of ideas and of intellectual progress; and it might profoundly influence those who may in future become responsible for the Government of India.”

Among the measures Gwyer suggested were the establishment of a number of professorial chairs and readerships; scholarships to encourage “young men of real ability” to come to Delhi from different parts of India; the transfer of constituent colleges to the University area; and fixing three years as the length of the ordinary degree course. These had a lasting impact on the nature and character of the university.

St. Stephen’s moved to the new site of its college in what would become North Campus in 1942, and was soon followed by Hindu, Ramjas and SRCC.

Post Partition, growth and spread

With Partition, the city’s demography and character underwent major changes.

The need to accommodate displaced students from West Punjab led to the start of new colleges like Hansraj College (1948), SGTB Khalsa College (1951), Deshbandhu College (1952), and Kirori Mal College (1954).

As colleges were added over the years, some of the most recently founded were intended to cater to students living far from the centre of the university’s centres — Aditi Mahavidyalaya in Bawana, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College in Dwarka, Keshav Mahavidyalaya in Pitampura, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College in Yamuna Vihar.

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