University of Calcutta

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History

Year of Establishment : 1919

History of the department : The department of Bengali Language and Literature has a long prestigious heritage and it has been working continuously to explore and expand human resource in its multiforus potentiality and manifestation by various ways of learning and intellectual activities. This department was known as the department of Modern Indian Languages and it was initiated by then respected Vice Chancellor Sir Nilratan Sirkar in 1919. Since its inception, the department has been growing day by day and it is one of the oldest and largest department of Bengali Language and Literature, not only in India, but also in the world. The department has a great history. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore was associated with this department as Ramtanu Lahiri Professor in the year 1932. Under the leadership of Acharya Dineshchandra Sen an enormous numbers of Eastern Bengali ballads were collected since 1921 and that was published by the University of Calcutta in 4 volumes. Initially the thrust area of the department was Pre-modern Bengali Literature, There After, various domains like Modern Bengali Fiction: Art & Craft, Modern Bengali Poetry, Tagore : Biography and Literature, Comparative Literature and multi dimensional aspect of modern theory have also been included in the syllabus. The department is highly glorified for its academic brilliance achieved by the former renowned and devoted teachers, like Prof. Srikumar Bandhopadhyay, Prof. Sashibhusan Das, Prof. Narayan Gangopadhyay, Prof. Asutosh Bhattacharya, Prof. Kshudiram Das, Prof. Haraprasad Mitra, Prof. Asitkumar Bandyopadhyay, Prof. Sankariprasad Basu, Prof. Pareshchandra majumdar and so on. This department is having many prestigious endowment lectures, which are as follows : D.L Roy Lectures, Lila Lectures, Dineshchandra Lecture, Saratchandra Chatterjee Lecture etc. Many prestigious medals such as Jagattarini, Sarojini, Lila, Bhubanmohini are conferred to the eminent personalities in every year. Apart from its heavy academic workload and activities the department in the years 2015 and 2016 has organized many special lectures and seminars not only on conventional issues of Literature, but also in most of the valuable areas of literature beyond the prescribed syllabus of different courses. Interactions between the students and resource persons and network with various inter-disciplinary domains are always encouraged by the department. The academician and faculty members of the department are always enthusiastic to carry out intensive research work in various areas of language & Literature and its multi- disciplinary components. The research works of the department are always appreciated by the intellectuals.