Jadavpur University 50th Anniversary 21.12.2005

Jadavpur University or JU is a public state university located in Kolkata, West Bengal. One of the three universities in modern India, set up by the British in Calcutta in 1861 as a means of spreading western philosophical thought among the elite in India and to create in the words of Lord Macaulcay, “a class of Indians who would be Indian in blood and colour but western in thought and ideas.” This initiative was furthered by the passing of the Universities Act of 1904. This resulted in the reorganization of the Calcutta University’s Senate and Syndicate by the nomination of more white members into them, which in turn would enable the government to control its policies. The government also decided to disaffiliate many private Indian colleges, which had come up lately and were regarded by the Government as hot beds of nationalist agitation. The measures stirred the educated middle class to move for alternative systems of education.