The Tour

Introduction

With the advent of colonialism, the 19th century formed an era of tumultuous change in the culture and education, and Presidency College became an important centre of colonial pedagogy. Established as Hindoo College in 1817, the institution stands as a locus of great historical change in Bengal. But while the college becomes a body of history itself, multiple threads of historical narratives run within the campus, encased in the many statues and plaques it houses. Any monument has multiple underpinnings to it – of memory, history, community, memorialization and so on; it forms a crucial interface of materiality and ontology. It is at the same time a thing of the past, present and the future – embodying a sort of Heideggerian “having-been-ness [that] temporalizes itself only from out of and in the future”. The statues and plaques at Presidency University too open themselves to such complex interpretations – they are a gateway into the beings and memories of the past, as well as a call to read history in infinitely many ways. Spanning, even in their material existence, two centuries - some dating from the nineteenth century, some from the twentieth, some as recent as the first two decades of the twenty-first century, these monuments speak for the two-hundred-year-old legacy of this institution. The statues and plaques – many of them of individuals who came from distant lands to leave their mark in the institution – are proof of the global reach of Presidency, but more importantly they attest to the deep imprint that relationships between teachers and students leave – in this case, literally set in stone.

This website serves as a digital archive of the monuments that Presidency University has housed over the years, and in this, attempts to ensure that ‘they [do not] disappear at the mercy of chance accidents; [that they] shine, as it were, like stars, some that seem close to us shining brightly from far off’. It also becomes a subtle chronicle of the evolution of the institution – from Hindoo College to Presidency College to Presidency University – and of the countless lives that walked in and out through its gates for over two hundred years.

This archive offers the viewer a virtual tour across Presidency University. The first map provides an overview of the approximate locations of the various statues and plaques scattered across the campus. Keeping in mind the vitality of maps in any guided tour, this map is intended for audience both familiar and (especially for) unfamiliar with the expanse of Presidency University. Following this, the site navigates (via different pages) through the different buildings of the University. Owing to the large number of monuments housed in the Main Building, we have divided it into three subsections for the viewer’s convenience – the ground floor, the Arts Library (on the ground floor), and the first floor. Each entry offers a view of the statue/plaque in question, and offers an overview of the person or event it commemorates. The viewer is invited to a journey across history - across both space and time.

Notes:

  • A little may be said here of the sculptors who designed these monuments. P. Swaries & Co. was a funeral director and monumental mason business started in his family by Peter Swaries (1815-1889) in 1851, located at 69 Bentinck Street Calcutta, 5 Clive Street Allahabad, & 56 or 59 Kings Road, Howrah. Brown and Co. was a funeral and monumental mason business, the gravestones designed by whom may be seen at the Scottish Cemetery and the Greek Cemetery. Gravestones designed by the sculptor, Dowling, also abound in these cemeteries.

  • A database of these monuments in tabular form may be found in the following document, collated by our team: Presidency Statues and Plaques Archive.