The first college that taught Indian daughters to think aloud: Can you guess its name?
Not all revolutions are draped in tricolours. Some start with a hard-hitting question: “Why not her?”. The story that traces its history in 1849 in the womb of colonial Calcutta, a city of imperial order and native hesitation, when John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, a British barrister with radical ideals, opened the doors of learning wide open for Indian girls. In a modest house in Baitakkhana, with just 21 girls, a dream was nurtured and etched in the leaves of history, yes, it was a form of rebellion. The Calcutta Female School was born. It wasn’t just a school, but an institution that challenged the status quo, the deeply entrenched patriarchy.By the following year, the enrolment had quadrupled. For a society that kept women indoors, the sight of girls carrying books was nothing short of disruptive. What Bethune and his Indian ally Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee built wasn’t simply an institution; it was intellectual insurgency in the disguise of a curriculum. It was a means to facilitate their voice and a statement of rebellion.
A stone, a signature, and a storm
November 1850 marked a new chapter. At Cornwallis Square, a cornerstone was laid. The inscription on the copper plate read “Hindu Female School,” but the message it carried echoed louder; it was a challenge to misogyny, caste, and colonial complacency. The ceremonial trowel was silver, but the real foundation was forged from grit.Then came the sudden blow. Bethune died in 1851, and like all movements hinged on a visionary, the school faced uncertain winds. The British government, perhaps sensing both promise and provocation, stepped in by 1856 and renamed it Bethune School. By 1879, the flame grew into a full-fledged college. Thus, Bethune College was born, India’s first women’s college, an epicentre of educated defiance.
Degrees against doctrine
What Bethune College achieved in the 19th century was not merely academic success—it cracked centuries of social conditioning.What Bethune College achieved in the 19th century not only counted for academic glory, but the weight of it crumbled the years long social conditioning. Paving the way for alumni such as Kadambini Ganguly and Chandramukhi Basu, the first two female graduates in the British Empire, the institution successfully shattered the ceilings.Each degree awarded by Bethune was a quiet rebellion. It told society: “We won’t wait for permission.”From poets like Kamini Roy to revolutionaries like Kalpana Datta, Bethune didn’t just educate women; it armed them with thought, with agency, with voice.
Beyond the syllabus: A sisterhood of storms
Bethune’s story is not encased in framed photographs or yellowed documents. It breathes in the work of its alumnae. Take Bina Das, who attempted to assassinate Bengal’s Governor as part of her anti-colonial activism. Or Pritilata Waddedar, who led a revolutionary attack disguised as a man. Or Neena Gupta, who solved the complex Zariski Cancellation Problem in algebra decades later. The college taught them calculus, yes, but more importantly, it taught them to calculate injustice.This wasn’t an institution that polished women into ornamental roles. It roughened them up for real battles. Its alumni list reads like a manifesto of feminine firepower, writers, freedom fighters, scientists, feminists, politicians.
Legacy in brick, thunder in thought
Bethune may stand quietly on Bidhan Sarani today, ranked 91st in the NIRF 2024, but its influence doesn’t seek headlines.It simmers in every young woman who enters its gates and dares to think bigger than the world allows. Its ivy isn’t the climbing kind, it’s the rooting kind. Deep. Anchored. Historic.When India talks of educational milestones, it often exalts IITs, IIMs, and the recent rush of global collaborations. But Bethune was here before ambition was fashionable. Before equality became a policy. When it was only a possibility.
Not just a college, but a counter-narrative
Bethune is India’s first feminist institution, born on the protest grounds of gender inequality. Its founding wasn’t sanctioned by demand, it created the demand.In an age where education is increasingly commercial, Bethune stands as an old tree, its roots in resistance, its branches sheltering a century’s worth of female aspirations. It has produced no fewer than Prime Ministers, mathematicians, and martyrs. Not many institutions can claim that breadth of influence across thought and time.
History was her campus
Bethune college is not a historical monument you will visit, but a pious haven that gave a legacy to carry. When we narrate the Indian education system’s milestones, let us remember the women who carved them. Let us remember that they had to battle the world to earn a degree and build a school.And that school became a college.That college became a revolution.And that revolution?It began with 21 girls and a man who believed.The rest, as they say, she wrote herself.
