Vidyasagar College named after Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, is a government-sponsored morning day and evening college, affiliated to the University of Calcutta in Kolkata, India. It was formerly known as Metropolitan Institution.
Vidyasagar College was founded in the year 1872. The birth of the first private and truly secular college in the Presidency of Bengal was hailed as a landmark in the academic and cultural ethos of India. It was the great Indian educationalist and social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who was associated with the College from its very inception in 1872.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE (26 September 1820 – 29 July 1891), born Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, was an Indian Bengali polymath and a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He was a philosopher, academic educator, writer, translator, printer, publisher, entrepreneur, reformer, and philanthropist. His efforts to simplify and modernize Bengali prose were significant. He also rationalized and simplified the Bengali alphabet and type, which had remained unchanged since Charles Wilkins and Panchanan Karmakar had cut the first (wooden) Bengali type in 1780.
He received the title "Vidyasagar" (in Sanskrit vidya means knowledge and sagar means ocean, i.e., Ocean of Knowledge) from Sanskrit College, Calcutta (from where he graduated), due to his excellent performance in Sanskrit studies and philosophy. Noted Bengali mathematician Anil Kumar Gain founded Vidyasagar University, named in his honour.
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