Ravenshaw College 24.12.1978

Ravenshaw College (now Ravenshaw University) is located in Cuttack, India. The college was established in 1868 for Thomas Edward Ravenshaw, a descendant of William Withers. Thomas and his wife, Mary Susannah Symonds Ravenshaw, were residents of India and were successful in the Indian Political Service.

Ravenshaw College is an alma mater of different colleges. Its Assembly hall was the venue of the Legislative Assembly of the newly carved state of Odisha. It witnessed the debates of the legislators framing laws to govern the state. It remained so until the capital was shifted to Bhubaneswar. All the significant cultural, intellectual and political movements of the state have sprung from its portals. It has nourished such great and kindered souls as Utkal Gourab, Madhusudan Das, Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das, Acharya Harihar Das, Pandit Nilakanth Das, Pandit Godabarish Mishra, Bhubaneswar Behera and Bhubanananda Das. It had on its staff such great scholars as Artaballav Mohanty, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Sir Ross Masood, Prana Krushna Parija,  Balabhadra Prasad, Acharya Jogeschandra Vidyanidhi, Mahendra Kumar Rout, Baba Kartar Singh, Parasuram Mishra, P.A.Sunderam and A.K.Dasgupata etc., to name a few. Most of the prominent political leaders of the state such as Biswanath Das, H.K.Mahatab, Nityananda Kanungo, S.N.Dwibedi, Biju Patnaik, Nilamani Routray, Smt. Nandini Satpathy, Janaki Ballav Patnaik and Rabi Ray etc., were Ravenshavians. The College produced such creative writers of yester years as Kalindi Charan Panigrahi, Ananda Shankar Ray, Gopinath Mohanty,  Sachidananda Routray and Surendranath Mohanty. In short, the College has been the major source of preparing manpower to lead every sphere of the society. In the Dimond Jubilee celebration address the then Principal Mr. H.R.Batheja righly observed:

“we have at last a temple of learning, fair to look on, stately in proportions which compares not unfavorably with the only other tempale – The temple of Jaganath for which Odisha is known all over India. The twin monuments represent Odisha to the outside world and are source of justice and pride to every Oriya”.