Sri Ramakrishna was born on 18 February 1836 in the village of Kamarpukur about sixty miles northwest of Kolkata. His parents, Kshudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandramani Devi, were poor but very pious and virtuous. As a child, Ramakrishna (his childhood name was Gadadhar) was dearly loved by the villagers. From early days, he was disinclined towards formal education and worldly affairs. He was, however, a talented boy, and could sing and paint well. He was fond of serving holy men and listening to their discourses. He was also very often found to be absorbed in spiritual moods. At the age of six, he experienced the first ecstasy while watching a flight of white cranes moving against the background of black clouds. This tendency to enter into ecstasy intensified with age. His father’s death when he was seven years old served only to deepen his introspection and increase his detachment from the world.
When Sri Ramakrishna was sixteen, his brother Ramkumar took him to Kolkata to assist him in his priestly profession. In 1855 the Kali Temple at Dakshineswar built by Rani Rasmani was consecrated and Ramkumar became the chief priest in that temple. When he died a few months later, Ramakrishna was appointed the priest. Ramakrishna developed intense devotion to Mother Kali and spent hours in loving adoration of her image, forgetting the rituals of priestly duties. His intense longing culminated in the vision of Mother Kali as boundless effulgence engulfing everything around him.
Sri Ramakrishna’s God-intoxicated state alarmed his relatives in Kamarpukur and they got him married to Saradamani, a girl from the neighbouring village of Jayrambati. Unaffected by the marriage, Sri Ramakrishna plunged into even more intense spiritual practices. Impelled by a strong inner urge to experience different aspects of God he followed, with the help of a series of Gurus, the various paths described in the Hindu scriptures, and realized God through each of them. The first teacher to appear at Dakshineswar (in 1861) was a remarkable woman known as Bhairavi Brahmani who was an advanced spiritual adept, well versed in scriptures. With her help Sri Ramakrishna practised various difficult disciplines of the Tantrik path, and attained success in all of them. Three years later came a wandering monk by name Totapuri, under whose guidance Sri Ramakrishna attained Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the highest spiritual experience mentioned in the Hindu scriptures. He remained in that state of non-dual existence for six months without the least awareness of even his own body. In this way, Sri Ramakrishna relived the entire range of spiritual experiences of more than three thousand years of Hindu religion.
With his unquenchable thirst for God, Sri Ramakrishna broke the frontiers of Hinduism, glided through the paths of Islam and Christianity, and attained the highest realization through each of them in a short span of time. He looked upon Jesus and Buddha as incarnations of God, and venerated the ten Sikh Gurus. He expressed the quintessence of his twelve-year-long spiritual realizations in a simple dictum: Yato mat, tato path “As many faiths, so many paths.” He now habitually lived in an exalted state of consciousness in which he saw God in all beings.
Sri Ramakrishna’s name as an illumined saint began to spread. Mathur once convened an assembly of scholars, and they declared him to be not an ordinary human being but the Avatar of the Modern Age. In those days the socio-religious movement known as Brahmo Samaj, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was at the height of popularity in Bengal. Sri Ramakrishna came into contact with several leaders and members of Brahmo Samaj and exerted much influence on them. His teaching on harmony of religions attracted people belonging to different denominations, and Dakshineswar became a veritable Parliament of Religions.
As bees swarm around a fully blossomed flower, devotees now started coming to Sri Ramakrishna. He divided them into two categories. The first one consisted of householders. He taught them how to realize God while living in the world and discharging their family duties. The other more important category was a band of educated youths, mostly from the middle class families of Bengal, whom he trained to become monks and to be the torchbearers of his message to mankind. The foremost among them was Narendranath, who years later, as Swami Vivekananda, carried the universal message of Vedanta to different parts of the world, revitalized Hinduism, and awakened the soul of India.
Sri Ramakrishna did not write any book, nor did he deliver public lectures. Instead, he chose to speak in a simple language using parables and metaphors by way of illustration, drawn from the observation of nature and ordinary things of daily use. His conversations were charming and attracted the cultural elite of Bengal. These conversations were noted down by his disciple Mahendranath Gupta who published them in the form of a book, Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita in Bengali. Its English rendering, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, was released in 1942; it continues to be increasingly popular to this day on account of its universal appeal and relevance.
The intensity of his spiritual life and untiring spiritual ministration to the endless stream of seekers told on Sri Ramakrishna’s health. He developed cancer of the throat in 1885. He was shifted to a spacious suburban villa where his young disciples nursed him day and night. He instilled in them love for one another, and thus laid the foundation for the future monastic brotherhood known as Ramakrishna Math. In the small hours of 16 August 1886 Sri Ramakrishna gave up his physical body, uttering the name of the Divine Mother, and passed into Eternity.
Endearingly known as ‘Holy Mother’, Sri Sarada Devi, the spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna, was born on 22 December 1853 in a poor Brahmin family in Jayrambati, a village adjoining Kamarpukur in West Bengal. Her father, Ramachandra Mukhopadhyay, was a pious and kind-hearted person, and her mother, Shyama Sundari Devi, was a loving and hard-working woman.
As a child Sarada was devoted to God, and spent most of her time helping her mother in various household chores like caring for younger children, looking after cattle and carrying food to her father and others engaged in work in the field. She had no formal schooling, but managed to learn the Bengali alphabet. When she was about six years old, she was married to Sri Ramakrishna, according to the custom prevalent in India in those days. However, after the event, she continued to live with her parents, while Sri Ramakrishna lived a God-intoxicated life at Dakshineshwar.
At the age of eighteen she walked all the way to Dakshineshwar to meet her husband. Sri Ramakrishna, who had immersed himself in the intense practice of several spiritual disciplines for more than twelve years, had reached the highest state of realization in which he saw God in all beings. He received Sarada Devi with great affection, and allowed her to stay with him. He taught her how to lead a spiritual life while discharging her household duties. They led absolutely pure lives, and Sarada Devi served Sri Ramakrishna as his devoted wife and disciple, while remaining a virgin nun and following the spiritual path.
Sri Ramakrishna looked upon Sarada Devi as a special manifestation of Divine Mother of the universe. In 1872, on the night of the Phala-harini-Kali-puja, he ritualistically worshipped Sarada Devi as the Divine Mother, thereby awakening universal Motherhood latent in her. When disciples began to gather around Sri Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi learned to look upon them as her own children. The room in which she stayed at Dakshineshwar was too small to live in and had hardly any amenities; and on many days she did not get the opportunity of meeting Sri Ramakrishna. But she bore all difficulties silently and lived in contentment and peace, serving the increasing number of devotees who came to see Sri Ramakrishna.
After Sri Ramakrishna’s passing away in 1886, Sarada Devi spent some months in pilgrimage, and then went to Kamarpukur where she lived in great privation. Coming to know of this, the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna brought her to Kolkata. This marked a turning point in her life. She now began to accept spiritual seekers as her disciples, and became the open portal to immortality for hundreds of people. Her great universal mother-heart, endowed with boundless love and compassion, embraced all people without any distinction, including many who had lived sinful lives.
When the Western women disciples of Swami Vivekananda came to Kolkata, the Holy Mother accepted them with open arms as her daughters, ignoring the restrictions of the orthodox society of those days. Although she had grown up in a conservative rural society without any access to modern education, she held progressive views, and whole-heartedly supported Swami Vivekananda in his plans for rejuvenation of India and the uplift of the masses and women. She was closely associated with the school for girls started by Sister Nivedita.
She spent her life partly in Kolkata and partly in her native village Jayrambati. During the early years of her stay in Kolkata, her needs were looked after by Swami Yogananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. In later years her needs were looked after by another disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Saradananda, who built a new house for her in Kolkata.
Although she was highly venerated for her spiritual status, and literally worshipped as the Divine Mother, she continued to live like a simple village mother, washing clothes, sweeping the floor, bringing water from the pond, dressing vegetables, cooking and serving food. At Jayrambati she lived with her brothers and their families. They gave her endless troubles but, established as she was in the awareness of God and in Divine Motherhood, she always remained calm and self-possessed, showering love and blessings on all who came into contact with her. As Sister Nivedita stated, “Her life was one long stillness of prayer.”
In the history of humanity there has never been another woman who looked upon herself as the Mother of all beings, including animals and birds, and spent her whole life in serving them as her children, undergoing unending sacrifice and self-denial. About her role in the mission of Sri Ramakrishna on earth, she stated: “My son, you know the Master had a maternal attitude (matri-bhava) towards every one. He has left me behind to manifest that Divine Motherhood in the world.”
On account of her immaculate purity, extraordinary forbearance, selfless service, unconditional love, wisdom and spiritual illumination, Swami Vivekananda regarded Sri Sarada Devi as the ideal for women in the modern age. He believed that with the advent of Holy Mother, the spiritual awakening of women in modern times had begun.
Under the strain of constant physical work and self-denial and repeated attacks of malaria, her health deteriorated in the closing years of her life, and she left the mortal world on 21 July 1920.
Swami Vivekananda, known in his pre-monastic life as Narendra Nath Datta, was born in an affluent family in Kolkata on 12 January 1863. His father, Vishwanath Datta, was a successful attorney with interests in a wide range of subjects, and his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, was endowed with deep devotion, strong character and other qualities. A precocious boy, Narendra excelled in music, gymnastics and studies. By the time he graduated from Calcutta University, he had acquired a vast knowledge of different subjects, especially Western philosophy and history. Born with a yogic temperament, he used to practise meditation even from his boyhood, and was associated with Brahmo Movement for some time.
At the threshold of youth Narendra had to pass through a period of spiritual crisis when he was assailed by doubts about the existence of God. It was at that time he first heard about Sri Ramakrishna from one of his English professors at college. One day in November 1881, Narendra went to meet Sri Ramakrishna who was staying at the Kali Temple in Dakshineshwar. He straightaway asked the Master a question which he had put to several others but had received no satisfactory answer: “Sir, have you seen God?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: “Yes, I have. I see Him as clearly as I see you, only in a much intenser sense.”
Apart from removing doubts from the mind of Narendra, Sri Ramakrishna won him over through his pure, unselfish love. Thus began a guru-disciple relationship which is quite unique in the history of spiritual masters. Narendra now became a frequent visitor to Dakshineshwar and, under the guidance of the Master, made rapid strides on the spiritual path. At Dakshineshwar, Narendra also met several young men who were devoted to Sri Ramakrishna, and they all became close friends.
After a few years two events took place which caused Narendra considerable distress. One was the sudden death of his father in 1884. This left the family penniless, and Narendra had to bear the burden of supporting his mother, brothers and sisters. The second event was the illness of Sri Ramakrishna which was diagnosed to be cancer of the throat. In September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to a house at Shyampukur, and a few months later to a rented villa at Cossipore. In these two places the young disciples nursed the Master with devoted care. In spite of poverty at home and inability to find a job for himself, Narendra joined the group as its leader.
Sri Ramakrishna instilled in these young men the spirit of renunciation and brotherly love for one another. One day he distributed ochre robes among them and sent them out to beg food. In this way he himself laid the foundation for a new monastic order. He gave specific instructions to Narendra about the formation of the new monastic Order. In the small hours of 16 August 1886 Sri Ramakrishna gave up his mortal body.
After the Master’s passing, fifteen of his young disciples (one more joined them later) began to live together in a dilapidated building at Baranagar in North Kolkata. Under the leadership of Narendra, they formed a new monastic brotherhood, and in 1887 they took the formal vows of sannyasa, thereby assuming new names. Narendra now became Swami Vivekananda (although this name was actually assumed much later.)
After establishing the new monastic order, Vivekananda heard the inner call for a greater mission in his life. While most of the followers of Sri Ramakrishna thought of him in relation to their own personal lives, Vivekananda thought of the Master in relation to India and the rest of the world. As the prophet of the present age, what was Sri Ramakrishna’s message to the modern world and to India in particular? This question and the awareness of his own inherent powers urged Swamiji to go out alone into the wide world. So in the middle of 1890, after receiving the blessings of Sri Sarada Devi, the divine consort of Sri Ramakrishna, known to the world as Holy Mother, who was then staying in Kolkata, Swamiji left Baranagar Math and embarked on a long journey of exploration and discovery of India.
During his travels all over India, Swami Vivekananda was deeply moved to see the appalling poverty and backwardness of the masses. He was the first religious leader in India to understand and openly declare that the real cause of India’s downfall was the neglect of the masses. The immediate need was to provide food and other bare necessities of life to the hungry millions. For this they should be taught improved methods of agriculture, village industries, etc. It was in this context that Vivekananda grasped the crux of the problem of poverty in India (which had escaped the attention of social reformers of his days): owing to centuries of oppression, the downtrodden masses had lost faith in their capacity to improve their lot. It was first of all necessary to infuse into their minds faith in themselves. For this they needed a life-giving, inspiring message. Swamiji found this message in the principle of the Atman, the doctrine of the potential divinity of the soul, taught in Vedanta, the ancient system of religious philosophy of India. He saw that, in spite of poverty, the masses clung to religion, but they had never been taught the life-giving, ennobling principles of Vedanta and how to apply them in practical life.
Thus the masses needed two kinds of knowledge: secular knowledge to improve their economic condition, and spiritual knowledge to infuse in them faith in themselves and strengthen their moral sense. The next question was, how to spread these two kinds of knowledge among the masses? Through education – this was the answer that Swamiji found.
One thing became clear to Swamiji: to carry out his plans for the spread of education and for the uplift of the poor masses, and also of women, an efficient organization of dedicated people was needed. As he said later on, he wanted “to set in motion a machinery which will bring noblest ideas to the doorstep of even the poorest and the meanest.” It was to serve as this ‘machinery’ that Swamiji founded the Ramakrishna Mission a few years later.
It was when these ideas were taking shape in his mind in the course of his wanderings that Swami Vivekananda heard about the World’s Parliament of Religions to be held in Chicago in 1893. His friends and admirers in India wanted him to attend the Parliament. He too felt that the Parliament would provide the right forum to present his Master’s message to the world, and so he decided to go to America. Another reason which prompted Swamiji to go to America was to seek financial help for his project of uplifting the masses.
Swamiji, however, wanted to have an inner certitude and divine call regarding his mission. Both of these he got while he sat in deep meditation on the rock-island at Kanyakumari. With the funds partly collected by his Chennai disciples and partly provided by the Raja of Khetri, Swami Vivekananda left for America from Mumbai on 31 May 1893.
His speeches at the World’s Parliament of Religions held in September 1893 made him famous as an ‘orator by divine right’ and as a ‘Messenger of Indian wisdom to the Western world’. After the Parliament, Swamiji spent nearly three and a half years spreading Vedanta as lived and taught by Sri Ramakrishna, mostly in the eastern parts of USA and also in London.
He returned to India in January 1897. In response to the enthusiastic welcome that he received everywhere, he delivered a series of lectures in different parts of India, which created a great stir all over the country. Through these inspiring and profoundly significant lectures Swamiji attempted to do the following:
Soon after his return to Kolkata, Swami Vivekananda accomplished another important task of his mission on earth. He founded on1 May 1897 a unique type of organization known as Ramakrishna Mission, in which monks and lay people would jointly undertake propagation of Practical Vedanta, and various forms of social service, such as running hospitals, schools, colleges, hostels, rural development centres etc, and conducting massive relief and rehabilitation work for victims of earthquakes, cyclones and other calamities, in different parts of India and other countries.
In early 1898 Swami Vivekananda acquired a big plot of land on the western bank of the Ganga at a place called Belur to have a permanent abode for the monastery and monastic Order originally started at Baranagar, and got it registered as Ramakrishna Math after a couple of years. Here Swamiji established a new, universal pattern of monastic life which adapts ancient monastic ideals to the conditions of modern life, which gives equal importance to personal illumination and social service, and which is open to all men without any distinction of religion, race or caste.
In June 1899 he went to the West on a second visit. This time he spent most of his time in the West coast of USA. After delivering many lectures there, he returned to Belur Math in December 1900. The rest of his life was spent in India, inspiring and guiding people, both monastic and lay. Incessant work, especially giving lectures and inspiring people, told upon Swamiji’s health. His health deteriorated and the end came quietly on the night of 4 July 1902. Before his Mahasamadhi he had written to a Western follower: “It may be that I shall find it good to get outside my body, to cast it off like a worn out garment. But I shall not cease to work. I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God.”
Electronic systems are something we are surrounded with. We use cell phones, computers, fitness sensors, navigation systems and video games like a natural thing, medical equipments. But without electronic systems, none of the electronics surrounding us would have worked.Department of Electronics teaches the conception of electronics device, circuits and applications in various field and do research into further development of this technology. Student will enable to understand the ‘Today’s and tomorrow’s’ requirements for advanced communication solutions, energy efficiency, and storage capacity etc.
Keeping in view, the most rapidly developing subject in twentieth century, it has been decided to intend electronics as one of the subject in undergraduate B.Sc. curriculum. Accordingly appropriate academic curricula in electronics have been framed keeping the relevence of the subject and the utility of the course under consideration. Inclusion of electronics as one of the elective subjects was first made from the academic year 2009. The entire responsibility of running the course was commenced by the Dept. of Physics. Some of the faculty members of the Physics department namely, Dr. S. Bardhan Roy, Dr. M. Purokait, Dr. D. Das and a few Part-time teachers conducted the course successfully. However due to lack of teaching faculty the course of electronics as pass subject was however suspended from the academic year 2012.
Finally the course has started in the session 2014 after Dr. Sourav Chattopadhyay joined the institute as a full time Electronics faculty. Along with Dr. S. Chattopadhyay, the course has been carried out with help of Dr. D Das, Dr. J C. Mahato, Mr. S. Bhunia, Dr. S. Sarkar and Mr. A. Ray of Department of Physics. At present the Dept. of Electronics is offering generic elective course for students under CBCS syllabus.
At the very beginning :Dr. S. Bardhan Roy, Dr. M. Purokait, Dr. D. Das : Their untiring efforts at excellence and unflagging spirit of service have made the Dept. what it is today.
At present :Dr. Sourav Chattopadhyay and Mr. Tanmay Biswas of Electronics Department and Dr. D Das, Dr. J C. Mahato, Mr. S. Bhuia, Dr. S. Sarkar and Mr. A. Ray of Dept. Of Physics.
The course is designed such way that the students will be able to understand the logics behind the electronic device operation, how to implicate and design any king of instrument including. They would be able to understand the practical problems and way to overcome such designing problems and they may also be to deal with new kind of instrumentation/circuit designing. As it is a growing field lots of research scope are there in this field and students will be able to think independently afterthe course.
R&D projects are evolved in identified thrust areas by comprising of leading faculty Dr. S. Chattopadhyay,. Appraised projects are processed. Regarding the present research activities of the department, Dr. S. Chattopadhyay has got research grant from Science and Engineering research board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST) and West Bengal Higher Education Department (WBHED).Broad area of research of the departmentis on nano-semiconductor devices, flexible device for medical applications, and energy devices.
The Department of History came into existence in the year 1960 and started functioning w.e.f. the academic session 1960-61. Initially, the college obtained affiliation in History to the B.A. Pass standard only (vide Calcutta University letter no: C-2306/160 [affl.] dated 23.05.1960). Honours course in History was introduced in the academic session 1961-62.
The Department in its formative Phase:
The early years of the Department saw the involvement of some eminent professors of History of the stature of Dr. BinoyBhushanChoudhury, Dr. Sushil Choudhury and Dr. SekharBandyopadhyay both as teachers and advisors. In addition to these historians of repute, full-time teachers whose names are given below rendered valuable services to this department in the first three decades of its existence (from 1961 to the 1980s):
Shri Kalyan Sen retired after 32 years of service in this Dept. (1965-1996), in June 1996. The department sustained a major loss in the pre-mature death of one of its brilliant faculty members, Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee in August 2009. Dr. Mukherjee had joined the Department in January 1986.
Present Strength of the Department:
Three of the permanent faculty presently serving the Department joined in the 1990s. Shri Arup Biswas (ex-student) and Dr. Chnadra Bhushan Roy joined the Department in the year 1990 and Shri Susobhan Sengupta (ex-student) in October, 1999.
Dr. Rajesh Biswas joined the Dept in March 2017 and obtained Ph.D. degree from Jadavpur University in June, 2018.
Dr. Krishna Kumar Sarkar joined the Dept as Guest faculty in February 2014. He obtained Ph.D. degree from Jadavpur University in August, 2018 and is presently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Jadavpur University.
Awards and Recognition:
The late Dr. Prafulla Kr. Das won the Griffith Memorial Prize of Calcutta University in 1975. Probably no other full-time faculty of the college had earned such a recognition before Dr. Das.
The late Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee was privileged to attend the 20th International Congress of History of Science as an INSA delegate in July 1997 at Liege, Belgium.
Dr. Chandra Bhushan Prasad Roy was given honorary appointment to the “Research Board of Advisors”, American Biographical Institute, North Carolina, USA, in the year 2005.
Role of the Department in multi-dimensional activities of the College:
All the full time teachers of the Department have been and are actively involved in various activities—cultural, sports, social services etc. of the college for decades. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the post-Silver Jubilee era, this Department has been playing a key role in providing all sorts of assistance to the college administration in launching, managing, controlling and completing various academic programmes and extension activities:
iii) Member, College Exam Cell since 2014.
Nestling close to lush bougainvillea sprays that are a delight to the eye, the Department of English has a beautiful setting, with the inner and outer walls of its classrooms displaying portraits of the greats of English literature—Shakespeare, Milton and George Bernard Shaw et al. The Dept. breathes an ambience of homeliness and warmth its students feel on their pulses the moment they set foot on its precincts.
The Dept. of English was born one of the firstlings of the College in 1960. Legend has it that from the beginning, the Dept. was the blue-eyed boy of Swami Lokeswarananda who had himself studied Honours in English in his student days. He saw to it that the Dept. had teachers of proven excellence on its teaching staff. Incredible as it might sound, he could persuade even Dr. Subodh Chandra Sengupta, a Shakespeare scholar of international stature, to teach in the Dept. for a few months. During its early years, thanks wholly to Swami Lokeswaranandaji’s dynamic initiative, the Dept. faculty was an impressive array of scholarly and dedicated teachers. In the early 1960s, between 1960 and 1964 to be precise, Dr. Satyendranath Roy ( D. Phil. Oxon ), Dr. Sarojendranath Roy (Ph.D. London), Sri Sourindranath Mitra (the first Head of the Dept.), Sri Sudhangshu Sekhar Mandal, Sri Kshitindra Chandra Ghosal, Sri Ajit Nath Nandi, Sri Akshay Kr. Dey, Sri Nirad Bandhu Mukherjee (formerly of JU), Sri Binoy Chowdhury joined the Dept. and immensely contributed to its steady burgeoning. The Dept. owes profound debts of gratitude to them. The Dept. is also indebted, in no small measure, to Sri Dilip Kumar Sanyal, Sri Dwijadas Banerjee (first enrolled student of the College; later Director, Rabindra Bhaban, VB), Dr. Binoy Banerjee (alumnus, ex-Professor, NBU), Prof. Harijiban Ghosh (ex-Principal, Holkar College, Madhya Pradesh), Sri Prasanta Pal, Sri Adhip Kr. Ghosh Dastidar, Sri Prasanta Banerjee, Sri M. N. De, Dr. Parbaticharan Chakraborty (alumnus; ex-Professor, BU), Sri Cowas de Tambuli, Sri Amitava Mitra (formerly of IIT, Kharagpur), Dr. Swapan Chakraborty (now Director, The National Library, Kolkata), Sri Sushil Mukherjee (formerly Principal, Scottish Church College), Prof. Ashok Mukherjee (formerly of Presidency College), Sri Kapila Chatterjee, Dr. R. K. Sen (D. Litt., CU), Dr. Amrit Sen (VB) and Dr. Amlan Dasgupta GU) for their contribution to the enrichment of the Dept. in their capacities as full-time or guest teachers. At present, ‘1 the faculty has 5 full-timers and 7 Guest lecturers.
A special word must be said about Sri Kshitindra Chandra Ghosal, the longest-serving Head of the Dept. (1962-83). More than anybody else before or since, he contributed to the Dept.’s consolidation into its present position of importance in the academic hierarchy of the College. A scholar equally at home with English and Bengali literature, a strict disciplinarian and an uncompromising perfectionist, he spared no pains to maintain a high standard of work culture in the Dept. and commanded the respect of his students as well as his colleagues. The Shakespeare Gallery, The Sophocles Gallery and the Language Laboratory bear testimony to his creative genius and his exceptional organisational skill. It was under his leadership that the Dept. hosted a 5-day State-Level Seminar on Humanities subjects under the UGC-sponsored COHSSIP (College Humanities and Social Sciences Improvement Programme) scheme, in July 1978. It was a grand success, indeed! On Sri Ghosal’s retirement, the mantle of headship fell on Sri Sudhangshu Sekhar Mandal who ably sustained the legacy handed down to him. Sri Satiprasad Maiti took over as HOD in 1998. The four other members of Team English are : Sri Satyaki Pal, Sri Dipaksankar Chakraborty, Sri Sajal Bhattacharya and Sri Arya Ghosh. The Dept. boasts the richest seminar library of the college with a collection of nearly 5000 books. Students borrow books at regular intervals and the faculty, sees to it that the library delivers to full potential. The faculty is student-friendly, supportive and easy of access. The students of the Dept. have been, over the years, taking the lead in the cultural affairs of the College. They are all agog when it comes to the periodical publication of the Department’s Wall-magazine ‘Image’. The Dept. has recently set up a Film Theatre where students can view film versions of the novels and dramas prescribed for study in their curriculum, besides other critically acclaimed movies. Much as the faculty might wish, the Dept. went without a first class in the University exams over a long stretch of years. Then in 2003, Sri Shishir Roy, the Dept.’s wonder boy, broke the jinx. He not only secured 1st class but also won the 1st position. He repeated the performance in his M.A. Five of the Dept.’s students have secured 1st class since—a remarkable achievement, given that first classes in English do not come thick and fast and were until recently almost the exclusive preserve of only two or three colleges under the University of Calcutta. We are also proud of a distinguished alumntA of the Dept., Swami Purnatmananda, ex-Editor, UDBODHAN. Seminar lectures, Symposia, workshops and talks by scholars well-known to the English-teaching academia, have always been a high spot of the Dept. In 2006, the Dept. had the proud privilege of hosting a UGC-Sponsored National-Level Seminar—the first ever in the college—on ‘Indian Poetry in English : The Problem of Canon’, with Prof. Nirmal Kumar Bhattacharya, Director, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, in the Chair. Among the speakers were the late Prof. (Dr.) Niranjan Mohanty of Visva Bharati, and Sri Ranjit Hoskote, stalwart art critic and poet. The seminar was rounded off by a brainstorming one-to-one interface between Sri Amit Chowdhury, a stalwart novelist in English and Dr. Swapan Chakraborty, one-time teacher of the Dept., then Prof. of JU and now Director, The National Library, Kolkata. The whole event was really a big draw. In 2009, the English Department Alumni Association in sync. with the Dept. successfully hosted a talk by Sri Amitav Ghosh, a front-ranking novelist in English and winner of many accolades. 2010 saw the iconic Indian playwright in English, Sri Mahesh Dattani, visit the Dept. and give a heart-warming talk that held a capacity audience spell-bound. The attainment of Autonomous Status in 2008 and, by happy co-incidence, the introduction of the P.G. course in the Dept. in 2009 have no doubt set the Dept. firmly on the road to a further expansion of its activities. Some of the old boys of the Dept. including Prof. P. C. Chakraborty, Dr. Tirthankar Das Purakayastha, and Dr. Subhajit Sengupta—the Dept. cannot thank them enough—have come forward, in a remarkable gesture of solidarity, to help the Dept. grapple with the challenges the twin developments of 2008-09 have thrown its way. New horizons unfold before the Dept.
The Department of Mathematics came into being in 1960. Fifty years down the line, it has had much to feel happy about. It has had a faculty committed to the cause of excellence and also students—scores of them—who have brought glory to it by their brilliant academic performance. During the period 1985-2010 alone, several 1st classes apart, 7 students of the Dept. stood 1st in the 1st class in Calcutta University exams, one of them securing the First position among all the science graduates of the University (1997). This speaks volumes. From 2009 the Dept. restructured its syllabus and focus to the then requirement of Academic Autonomy granted to our college by the UGC. Naturally from this period onward our boys have been writing the examinations conducted by our college, whence their success and achievements may be found as reflected in several pan India entrance examinations, like that of IIT, ISI, IISc, TIFR, IIEST, IISER, CMI, HCU, ISM, CU, JU, RKM-VERI etc towards progression into higher studies. The department takes much pride in the fact that the faculty lists of a good many number of these Institutes of our country, where higher studies and research in mathematics is undertaken, now features quite a few names of our ex-students.
The Department started with eight to ten boys on its rolls. These boys, already into their second year at Dinabandhu Andrews College (Garia), decided to forgo a precious year of their career and join the fledgling Department of Mathematics here. The first faculty comprised four teachers Sri Baidyanath Basu, Sri Sudarsan Das, Sri Rasik Chandra Chakraborty and Sri Gobindadev Bhattacharya. Sri Gobindadev Bhattacharya was the first Head of the Dept. The Dept. was soon joined by Dr. Yudisthir De, Dr.Nanipada Bhanja, and a little later by Sri Makhanlal Nag who succeeded Sri G. Bhattacharya as HOD and served as Vice-Principal of the College till his retirement in 1979. The Dept. moved from strength to strength as years rolled by. From the very beginning the Dept. had the privilege of having some well-known teachers agree to teach here part-time, thanks largely to the initiative taken by Dr. Bikas Chandra Sanyal, the then Prof-in-charge of our College, whose great mentor was Swami Lokeswaranandaji himself. The Dept. will and does gratefully remember Sri Ramkrishna Ghosh (St. Xavier’s College), Sri Hemendra Kanta Ganguli (formerly of Scottish Church College) and Sri Murari Mohan Roy Choudhury (formerly of Presidency College and CU) and Sadhan K. Mapa (Presidency College) and Sri Nalini Ranjan Roy (Dept. of Pure Maths. C.U.) for their services to and affection for the Dept. They were the boost the Dept. needed for forging ahead in vigour. In continuation of this tradition the Dept. gratefully acknowledges the academic help and selfless service rendered by a number of eminent scholars in recent years. The list includes Prof. (Dr.) M.N. Mukherjee (Dept. of Pure mathematics, CU) and Sri Samar Ghosh, IAS (ex Chief Secretary Govt. of WB) among others. No annals of the growth and development of the Dept. can do without a loving and respectful remembrance of Dr.Sudarsan Das who joined the Dept. in 1961 and was its Head till his retirement in 1995. He was an outstanding teacher the memory of whose unique style of exposition left an indelible mark on the minds of his students. His students loved him and held him in the highest esteem. Affable, soft-spoken, affectionate, he served the Dept. with exemplary dedication. He was a good actor and directed many plays put on the boards during college functions. His superannuation in 1995 marked the end of an era in the history of the Dept.
The role of vanguard towards our journey moving ahead was thereafter taken by Dr. Yudhushir De (1995-1996), Dr.Nanipada Bhanja (1996-1998) and then by Dr. Bijoy Kumar Bera, an alumnus of our Dept. (1971-1974) who joined the service in 1979. Dr. Bera headed the Dept. from 1998 to 2010 and played a significant role in sustaining the upward mobility of the Dept. and enhancing its reputation. Post retirement (2010), he has been appointed Deputy Controller of Examinations of our College and the Dept. is still receiving his invaluable guidance and active participation in teaching as well. Dr. Nurul Islam, another alumnus (1974-1977) of this dept. joined the service in 1982 andtook the baton of Headship from Dr. Bera 2010. Actively engaged in UGC-DST-sponsored research projects, Dr. Islam has successfully co-guided two students towards their Doctoral degrees,one each from CU and JU. Two others, registered as Doctoral students at CU are doing their research under his guidance at present. After his retirement in 2016, he is now actively involved with the Dept. as Prof. N.N. Biswas Chair Professor. From 2016 he also holds the coveted post of Co-ordinator of the Vivekananda Centre for Research, the research wing of our College, recognized by CU. With a heavy heart, the Dept. acknowledges the peerless service rendered by one of its relatively recent faculties, Sri Partha Pratim Basu, who joined in 1999 and whose sudden untimely demise in 2019 left all of us shocked. Apart from scholastic reasons, he will be remembered by his students and colleagues alike for his jovial and ever youthful student friendly nature,that was loved by one and all. The present faculty of three full time members, Dr. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay (1997 – ) and Dr. Pulak Samanta (2019 – ), headed since 2016 by yet another alumni (1982-1985) Dr. Nanigopal Mandal (1997- ) has been putting in their best efforts to keep up the tradition of excellence set up by their predecessors. In this endeavour the Dept. gets useful support from some Guest faculties like Mr. Dipak Roy and Mr.Biswadip Pal, who is presently holding a Chair Professor post created out of an endowment in the memory of Prof. N.N. Biswas. Dr. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay has a lot of solid achievements to his credit. He visited Bangkok, Hongkong, Berlin, Madrid and Budapest (Hungary) on invitation to present talks/papers. Both Dr. Mukhopadhyay and Dr.Mandal have several books on mathematics to their credit. Several ex-pupils of the Dept. are occupying top faculty positions in institutions of higher education in our country. Mention must be made in this connection of Dr. Imran Habib Biswas (TIFR, Bengaluru), Dr.Ujjal Koley (TIFR, Bengaluru), Dr. SanjoyPusti (IIT Mumbai), Dr. SumanKundu (Vanderbilt University, Nashville), Dr. AshishMondal (IIT Kanpur), Prof. Pravash Roy (CURetd.), Professor Saktipada Ghorai (IIT, Kanpur), Dr.Ranjit Dhar (Ex-Registrar, Vidyasagar University), Dr. Sunil Kumar Maity (Dept. of Pure Maths. CU), Dr.Anjan Bhunia (VisvaBharati) and Professor Prakash Chandra Mali (JU). The students of the Dept., apart from their pursuit of academic excellence, have always shown a keen interest in the different co-curricular and extra-curricular activities of the department in particular and the college as a whole.The Dept. does not rest on its laurels. It continues its efforts at further excellenceand looks forward to a brighter future in the current CBCS regime, to which it has geared up under the dynamic leadership of Dr. Mandal.
The Department of Physics was opened in Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur and affiliated to Calcutta University offering Honours degree course from the very beginning of the college (in the year 1960). Prof. K. P. Ghosh from Scottish Church College joined this college as the Head of the department. Then, around the same time, joined many senior professors, namely Shri Abalakanta Choudhuri from Bankura Christan College, Sri Bhabani Bhattacharya from Surendranath College, Sri Kulada Prasad Roy Choudhury from Burdwan Raj College and Sri Himangshu Bimal Dey from Rajshahi University. They worked hard in shaping the department and developing the laboratory for performing various UG experiments. The department was further upgraded to its present form by Dr. J. N. Chakraborty, Prof. P. Sengupta, Prof S. Chakraborty, and Dr. A. K. Tewari, who acted as HOD in various periods of time. The role of Dr. S. Bardhan Roy and the Lab-attendant Sri Rakhal Chandra Pal in setting-up the UG experiments is also praiseworthy.
The seminar lectures by famous professors like Prof. S. N. Ghoshal, Shyamal kr Sengupta, B. B. Baliga, Prof. S. K. Chakraborty and many other such eminent persons were arranged every year for the enrichment of students and faculty members. The department has a high-profile academic record with a large number of students securing first class every year. The students got top ranks in university examinations in most of the years, till it received its autonomous status from Calcutta University in 2009. The students have been doing well in various Master’s and Ph.D. entrance examinations consistently in every year. The post-graduate course in Physics was started in the year 2006. We have at present Condensed Matter Physics as Special paper and Astrophysics as an Elective paper. Most of the theoretical classes in Astrophysics are being taken in collaboration with Indian Centre for Space Physics, Kolkata. Right now, the faculty consists of Dr. Debabrata Das, Dr. Malay Purkait, Dr. Kaushik Sarkar, Dr. Jagadish Chandra Mahato, Sri Swapan Bhunia and Sri Amit Ray and Dr. D. K. Basak. Professors from different colleges, universities, research institutes as well as eminent retired professors from different universities take classes in physics department as Guest Professors regularly, both in the UG and PG sections. Regarding the research activities of the present faculty members of the department, Dr. M. Purkait has received research grants from CSIR, SERB, WBDST and UGC; Dr. D. Das has received minor research projects from UGC and Dr. J. C. Mahato has recently got research grants from WBDST. Dr. M. Purkait has been doing the research works in the field of Atomic Collision Physics and he has been guiding several research scholars. Dr. K. Sarkar, Dr. J. C. Mahato and Sri S. Bhunia are also engaged in research works in various fields. They have been publishing research papers in national and international journals regularly.
The Department of Chemistry of Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, came into existence in July, 1960. The then Secretary of the Ashrama, Swami Lokeswarananda was dreaming of a degree college, motivated by the ideals of Swami Vivekananda. The main objective of this college was to instil the man-making and character-building ideas of Swamiji in the minds of students and make them complete citizens and nation-builders.
Guided by the Secretary, Swami Lokeswaranandaji, Sri Bikash Chandra Sanyal, a famous alumnus of the Ashrama, went all out in search of suitable teachers for the college. Fortunately, a group of highly talented teachers who had been teaching elsewhere joined our college. Among them Prof. Deb Kumar Mitra was appointed Head of the Department. In the meantime, Prof. Asim Gupta, Prof. Dipak Guha, Dr. P. B. Sarkar, Prof. Ramesh Chandra Sen, Prof. Bijoykali Goswami, Dr. S. M. Dasgupta (retired from CGCRI) joined the Department one after another. Some retired teachers taught part-time in the Department.
Prof. Basudev Barman, an ex-student of the Ashrama, joined the faculty and worked for some time. Professor-Emeritus Dr. Pratul Chandra Rakshit, an outstanding scholar and teacher respected and adored by all, joined the college at the beginning of 1967. He brought a new lease of life to the Department with his illuminating method of teaching and continued his honorary service to the last of his life. Other erudite teachers, Prof. Sushil Chandra Nag and Dr. Kanai Lal Roy, made their mark in teaching their respective subjects. All the teachers and professors and also non-teaching staff worked hard with unswerving commitment and dedication.
Research activities by the teachers were encouraged by the authorities. But the heavy teaching load and inadequate infrastructure stood in the way of active research. Despite limited resources, a number of teachers earned their doctorate degrees working in the college laboratories. Notable of them are Dr. Haraprasad Samaddar, Dr. Hrisikesh Chatterjee and Dr. Dinabandhu Mandal.
The college of yesteryears was like a sapling planted by the then Secretary. Now it has grown big and blossomed in full with research and other activities going on in full swing to keep up with the modern developments of science and technology. The present group of teachers are fully devoted and committed to their duties and obligations. They work hard to improve their own performance as teachers as also to infuse their students with dynamism.
The faculty was headed from 1998 to 2012 by Dr. Arogyavaram Saha whose admission to the degree of Doctor of Sciente (D.Sc.) of the University of Calcutta in 1989 added immensely to the prestige of the College in general and the Dept. of Chemistry in particular. Ever since his joining the Dept. in 1976, he has been an invaluable asset for it. Another distinguished member of the faculty worthy of special mention is Dr. Prasanta Ghosh who was awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship (Germany) in 2000 and who has been successfully supervising research projects, under the aegis of CSIR, UGC and DST, for the award of Ph.D. degrees.
The Dept. duly acknowledge the services of Sri Samar Kumar Chakraborty (a long-service HOD), Sri Prabhat Kumar Mondal (PRS) and Dr. Santosh Kr. Maji to the Dept. over a long period of time.
Over the years, the results of the Department boys in university exams have been highly satisfactory. The Department is poised for a great expansion of its activities with the introduction of the P. G. course, a well-equipped research wing and of course, the recent grant of autonomy to the College by the UGC and the University of Calcutta in 2008-09.