The Revival Project in 2023

The Department of English that we are a part of is historic by multiple means. It is also the beginning of the history of institutionalised English teaching-learning. It is from here, this department and this college, that the Indian subcontinent encountered the ideology of the West through the letters. Though English was one of the first subjects to be taught at the Hindoo College, the department as we know it today was officially formed in 1826. Significantly, this was also the year when a flamboyant, rambunctious, charismatic, young Portuguese was placed in a teaching position. He was the Master of History and English or the Fourth Master or the Junior Master, he was called Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and he was only 17. Derozio, besides being known for his radical activism against social, cultural and religious orthodoxy and promotion of free-thinking practice, was responsible for the formation of the Academic Association, sometime around 1828-29, which was the first students' organisation in the subcontinent, and was formed to encourage academic discussions and discursive cultures within the students of the college.

Hindoo College was later consecrated as the Presidency College in 1855, two years before the foundation of the three universities for the three administrative presidencies in colonial India in 1857. By then, Presidency College of Calcutta had already become the premier institution of the subcontinent, possessing the best minds as students and foremost scholars as faculty members. From 1857 to 1917, it was the only institution that offered postgraduate teaching in the subcontinent in multiple disciplines. Postgraduate studies at our college always had a pro-research gusto and the UG course was qualified by the tutorial system, another innovation of the college. Most departments of Presidency College formed Seminar Societies for their postgraduate students, to provide a space for advanced academic and intellectual activities. There is much confusion regarding when the Seminar Societies were formed, because of scanty documentation and very few of the antique records have survived. We know for sure that the Philosophy Seminar was the first to be constituted at the college, followed by the History Seminar. Rough assumptions point towards 1909 as the year when the English Seminar Society was founded. However, all the Seminar Societies and other clubs and societies and their activities were regularised from 1914, under the aegis of Sir Henry Rosher James, a teacher at the Department of English and the 51st Principal of Presidency College. He was also the driving force behind the inception of the Presidency College Magazine. However, we don't have much scope to know about the proceedings of the English Seminar. Editors of the 1955 Presidency College Magazine Centenary Edition surmise a lack of effort in the historical documentation of the activities of the English Seminar. The hardbound register containing the proceeding reports of the Seminar is most probably lost, like most other valuable documents relating to the college's historicity. This is a sad state of affairs for a department that received the first computer system in the college, and that too for the seminar society, in 1999. 

Now to talk about the functioning of the Seminar back in the past days, we have not been able to gather much information. We do know though that the society had a very fragmented journey, going on and off through the almost 120 years of its speculative lifetime till now. The different Seminar Societies had their own modus operandi. Presumably, the English Seminar had two faculty members as guides for the students who engaged in deeply intellectual and thoughtful research, discussion, and argument. The Seminar arranged for invited lectures, talks and seminars followed by discussions and Q&A sessions. One outstanding achievement of the English Seminar is what you see beyond these two doors. English Seminar gave birth to the first departmental library of the College, and hence naturally, in the Bengal Presidency. Books were purchased from collected contributions or donated from personal collections. The library's collection has expanded ever since, regardless of fund allocations or central library transfers. The Seminar Library holds books from the 19th century, which are being archived right now. The library holds a book gifted by the illustrious Hugh Melville Percival sometime around the 1920s, the earliest editor of Shakespeare's works for teaching in the colonial educational network. I hope I have made my suggestion clear - please do come up, contribute and donate to the Seminar Library.

Well, that seems to be all. We are trying to find out more information and documented history from the publications from and about the Presidency College. So far, we have found out very unclear and fragmented documentation about the society. However, our aim is to reconstruct the history of the Department of English at Presidency, through dedicated efforts and historiographic research. It is our belief that the reconstructed history of the Department will prove indispensable in our understanding of the arrival and spread of Western Modernity in India in the colonial period. It is right from here, this Department where we all belong, that English spread across the subcontinent. Hence, of all the multiple attempts at the revival of the English Seminar, we consider ours fundamentally different and extremely potent. This department has created some of the best minds in the world - its history is worth documentation, and its legacy of research, intellectual activism and academic discussion must be preserved.

Now our vision is to revive the English Seminar Society. A handful few among us were working on it so far, following a casual adda at the Canteen one rainy day. Having realised the potential buried within the project, we want to seriously resume the Seminar and by default, according to its constitutive logic, the entire department is a part of it. We want to ask enthusiastic students to come forward and help in the reconstruction/revival project. We have to see that this revival is permanent. Prof. Upal Chakraborty from the Department of Sociology, Presidency University, has been extremely helpful and generous by providing us with a bunch of archival materials that need scrupulous inspection.

Those who are willing to contribute, participate and take the Seminar forward please stay back after this rather boring historical speech. For the rest, stay tuned, as we have some real planning going on as to what to do next. We hope we won't upset you.