Hindu College, Delhi

Hindu College

Motto	Music of Truth
Type	Public
Established	1899 (1899)
Principal	Dr. Anju Srivastava
Academic staff	120
Students	३०००
Location	Delhi , National Capital Territory of Delhi , India
Campus	North Campus, University of Delhi
Affiliations	University of Delhi
Website	hinducollege.ac.in

Hindu College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. Established in 1899, it is one of the oldest for arts and sciences in India. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in sciences, humanities, social sciences and commerce. In 2020, it is ranked 3rd nationally by National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) under Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India). It has been awarded 'Star College' status for its Department of Biotechnology by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Government of India). The college has produced many notable alumni in the fields of Law, Economics, Science, Psychology, Business, Philosophy, Literature, Media, Cinema, Military, Sports and Politics. Notwithstanding its name, students from all religions are admitted to Hindu College.

History

A 1999 stamp dedicated to Hindu College

Hindu College was founded in 1899 by Krishan Dassji Gurwale in the backdrop of the nationalist struggle against the British Raj. Some prominent citizens, including Rai Bahadur Amba Prasad, Gurwale Ji, decided to start a college that would provide nationalist education to the youth, while being non-elitist and non-sectarian. Originally, the college was housed in a humble building in Kinari Bazar, Chandni Chowk, and it was affiliated to Punjab University as there was no university in Delhi at that time. As the college grew, it faced a major crisis in 1902. The Punjab University warned the college that the university would disaffiliate the college if the college failed to get a proper building of its own. Rai Bahadur Lala Sultan Singh came to rescue the college from this crisis. He donated a part of his historic property, which originally belonged to Colonel James Skinner, at Kashmiri Gate, Delhi, to the college. The college functioned from there till 1953. When the University of Delhi took birth in 1922, Hindu College along with Ramjas College and St. Stephen's College were subsequently affiliated to the University of Delhi, making them the first three institutions to be affiliated with the university.

Hindu College was a centre for intellectual and political debate during India's freedom struggle, especially during the Quit India Movement. It is the only college in Delhi to have a students' parliament since 1935, which provided a platform to many national leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Annie Besant, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Subhash Chandra Bose for motivating the youth. Responding to Gandhi's Quit India Movement in 1942, the college played a substantial role in India's freedom struggle and some of this college's teachers and students courted arrest. The college also closed its gates for several months.

Principals

1. B.B. Mookerji, 1899–1906
2. N.N. Roy, 1906–1911
3. P.B. Adhikari, 1911–1915
4. S. Sen, 1915–1917
5. N.V. Thadani, 1917–1928
6. S.K. Sen, 1928–1934
7. N.V. Thadani, 1935–1950
8. A. Bhattacharya, 1950–1957
9. R.N. Mathur, 1958–1964
10. B.M. Bhatia*, 1964–1971, 1973–1980
11. P.C. Verma, 1980–1995
12. S.N. Maheshwari, 1995–1997
13. Kavita A. Sharma, 1998–2008
14. S. Choudhary, 2008–2010
15. Vinay K Srivastava, 2010–2012
16. Pradumn Kumar 2012–2014
17. Anju Srivastava 2014–present

*Dr. B.M. Bhatia was on leave for two years, 1971–1973. During this period, Dr. P.C. Sood was the substituting principal.

Campus

The college is spread across a 25-acre campus. It has one auditorium, a seminar room and maintains a playground and a sports complex. Basketball, cricket, and table tennis are organised under the supervision of the director of physical education. The college has physics and chemistry laboratories, NCC and NSS rooms, a computer room, photocopier and stationery shop. A Students' Centre offers a bank and a canteen.

Library

Hindu College's library is among the oldest college libraries in the University of Delhi. It was set up in 1899, along with the foundation of the college. Also students as well as teachers can refer to various books in library.

Hostel

Hindu College's boys hostel is situated next to the sports complex of college. It has 119 rooms enclosing four lawns with rose beds and hedges (charbagh style). The hostel provides residential facilities to about two hundred undergraduate and postgraduate male students. A common room provides the residents recreational facilities such as Carrom-board, chess, and a separate TV room apart from the newspapers and magazines. Due to its limited capacity, only the highly meritorious among the college students get admission to the hostel. The college has a girls hostel, which has been working from 2017 strength of 190 students .

Organisation and administration

Departments

• Department of Botany
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Economics
• Department of English
• Department of Hindi
• Department of History
• Department of Mathematics
• Department of Philosophy
• Department of Physics
• Department of Political Science
• Department of Sanskrit
• Department of Sociology
• Department of Statistics
• Department of Zoology
• Department of Chemistry
• Department of Physical Science – Chemistry
• Department of Physical Science-Electronics

Academics

Rankings

College rankings

Hindu College is ranked ninth among colleges in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2021.

Student life

Student Societies

Every department has its own society which is tasked with organising the department-specific co-curricular activities. Ibtida is the dramatics society of Hindu College which performs both stage and street plays. It was formed by Imtiaz Ali while he was a student at the college. The women's development cell of the college has been very active in gender sensitisation and after the scrapping of section 377 successfully led pride parades to create awareness about LGBTQ+ rights.

The Indian music society, Alankar, holds its annual festival Harmony every year. The English debating society, popularly known as the Desboc, is representative of an inquiring and active intellectual life on campus. Debsoc is the only debating society in Delhi University to organise four major debates in an academic year.

The Science Forum is a group of diverse science enthusiasts dwelling in Hindu College.

The Symposium Society is the policy and deliberation forum of Hindu College, University of Delhi. The organization follows a ‘General Body’ structure, with the President and Vice-President at the core. Among its many activities the prominent ones are the Prime Ministerial Debate and Interviews, Hindu Darbar, Hindu Mock Indian Parliament (HMIP), and Hindu Policy Forum (HPS). Furthermore, the society promotes independent student journalism through its bimonthly publication- Hindu College Gazette. The publication also reviews and publishes opinions and analyses from scholars and writers from across the country.

Other societies include Abhyas - The Internship Cell; The Finance & Investment Cell; Abhirang, the Hindi Dramatic Society; Adhrita, The Indian Dance Society, that works to maintain culture and heritage and conduct the only dance fest of DU; Abstraction, the Fine Arts Society; Aria, the Western Music Society; Manthan, the Quiz Society; Srijya, the Contemporary Dance Society; Scribe: The Literary Society; Masque, The English Dramatic Society; Vagmi, the Hindi Debating Society; and Vivre, The Film and Photography Society, the Entrepreneurship Cell, or more commonly just Ecell.

Students’ Parliament

The college has a Students' Parliament. The Hindu College Parliament is a unique student organisation in the country. All the students and teachers of the College are its members. The students elect the Prime Minister from amongst themselves at the beginning of the year. There is also a Leader of the Opposition. The Speaker of the Parliament is a teacher nominated by the Principal in his/her capacity as the President of the Hindu College Republic. The College Parliament is a forum for discussions on academic and other issues. It allocates funds to the various societies. The parliament is in continuous operation since 1935. Members of Cabinet of students' Parliament are elected by students. The students' parliament takes care of student demands.

Notable alumni

The alumni of Hindu College are called Hinduites.

• Eenam Gambhir, The First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations.
• Roshan Abbas, presenter
• Mira Aggarwal, politician; Mayor of Delhi
• Imtiaz Ali, film director
• Mirza Farhatullah Baig, Urdu writer
• Siddhartha Basu, businessman
• Rekha Bhardwaj, singer
• Vishal Bhardwaj, film director and music composer
• Shiv Panditt, actor
• Tahir Raj Bhasin, actor
• Manvinder Bisla, Indian cricketer
• Bipan Chandra, historian and former professor of Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Abhishek Chaubey, film director
• Brahma Chellaney, author; professor at Centre for Policy Research
• Aakash Chopra, Indian cricketer
• Tisca Chopra, actress
• Deep Dasgupta, Indian cricketer
• Prithvi Nath Dhar, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Office, India
• Gautam Gambhir, Indian cricketer
• Leela Gandhi, Professor of English at University of Chicago
• Papiya Ghosh, historian; Professor of History at University of Patna
• Arnab Goswami, former Editor-in-Chief of Times Now and Chief Editor and Co-founder of Republic TV
• Ajay Bijili, Founder and MD of PVR Cinemas
• Sanjeev Goyal, economist; Professor of Economics at University of Cambridge
• Ajay Jadeja, Indian cricketer
• Pema Khandu, Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh
• Ashish Kothari, environmentalist
• Amitava Kumar, journalist, professor of English at Vassar College
• Manoj Kumar, actor
• Mayanti Langer, journalist
• Meenakshi Lekhi, national spokesperson of Bhartiya Janta Party
• Ajai Malhotra, Indian Foreign Service Officer; Ambassador of India to Russian Federation
• Kadambari Murali, Editor-in-Chief of Sports Illustrated India
• Ila Patnaik, Principal Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance of India
• Hardeep Singh Puri, Cabinet minister, Indian Foreign Service officer; former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations (2009–13)
• Vinod Rai, 11th Comptroller and Auditor General of India and current Interim President of BCCI
• Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women
• Arjun Rampal, actor
• Mahesh Rangarajan, historian
• Luv Ranjan, film director
• Saqib Saleem, actor and model
• Adarsh Shastri, former sales head, Apple Inc. India; political activist, MLA, Dwarka, NCT of Delhi, National Spokesperson, AAP of Aam Aadmi Party
• Anil Shorey, Infantry officer in Indian Army; writer
• Rana Hemant Singh, titular Maharaj Rana of Dholpur
• Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State, India
• Rao Narbir Singh, politician
• Subramanian Swamy, economist, politician and former Minister of Commerce and Industry, India
• Tabu Ram Taid, author
• Sandeep P Parekh, securities and corporate lawyer
• Loveleen Tandan, film director
• Manish Tiwary, film director
• Ashish Vidyarthi, Indian film and TV actor and theatre personality
• Imran Zahid, actor
• Nitin Tyagi, politician
• Mallika Dua, comic and snapchat celebrity.
• Jasleen Royal, singer-songwriter
• Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, film director
• Aditya Tamang, Indian politician, Member of Sikkim Legislative Assembly
• Rajesh Talwar, writer and lawyer; works for the United Nations

External links

• Hindu College website