History of the Department

Hindi appears to have been taught only as a language from the year 1928 at Presidency College. Even then, it was part of the Sanskrit-Pali-Bengali-Hindi Department. A separate Department was created for Bengali in 1945 and Sanskrit and Pali moved to Sanskrit College in 1951. Sri Shivnarayan Lala (1928-55) may have been one of the first teachers of Hindi, at least after the Hindu College phase. In the year 1955 after his retirement Taraknath Agrawal as part-time teacher served the Department from 1955 to 1962. In 1962, Premsen Singh (1962-71) took charge, assisted by Jagannath Seth (1962-81). Few know that Hindi writers of standing such as Vishnukant Shastri, later Governor of Uttar Pradesh, graduated from Presidency even during this period.

The Hindi Department was formally opened in 1981 by creating four full-time posts in the West Bengal Education Service. Hindi at Presidency had Professor Sadanand Singh (1972-7; 1980-9; 1995-9), Dr Vivekanand Dev (1989-98), Dr Subrata Lahiri (1978-2006) and Dr Sheonath Pandey (1990-2005), and Sri Ramraj Singh (1984-93) as full-time faculty. The Department has steadily grown since. It was the first Department in Kolkata to introduce the one-year Pre-MA course in Hindi. On successful completion of the course, Pre-MA qualifier students could seek direct admission in the postgraduate programme in Hindi at Calcutta University. The Department had also introduced a PG Diploma course in Functional Hindi for which Calcutta University had granted permission in 1995. Dr Vivekanand Deb served the Department as Head for a long time. After his retirement Professor Sadananda Singh and Dr Subrata Lahiri served as Head. At that time the Department has published five issues of ‘Dishabodh’, the Hindi Literary Journal of Presidency College.

After the retirement of Dr Vivekananda Deb and Professor Sadananda Singh two new teachers, Dr Sandhya Singh and Dr Rinku Ghosh, joined the Department in the year 2000-1. After Dr Subrata Lahiri's retirement, Dr Rinku Ghosh took charge of the Department. In 2005. In June 2007, Dr Tanuja Majumdar took the charge as Head of the Department and she set up the Gandhi Centre for North-Eastern Languages on 7 February 2008 with the help of Gandhi Smriti Evam Darshan Samiti, New Delhi, a National Institute under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister. In the year 2009 Dr Jayant Sahu joined the Department. Presidency College was made a University in 2010.

Dr Tanuja Majumdar was appointed Professor and Head of the new University Department in July 2012. Dr Anindya Gangopadhyay, Dr Rishi Bhushan Choubay, Dr Mary Hansda, Dr Ved Raman Pandey joined the Department as Assistant Professors in mid-2013. Dr Munni Gupta joined in 2016. Dr Ved Raman Pandey took charge of the Department in February 2018. At present Dr Anindya Gangopadhyay is working as Head of the Department of Hindi, Presidency University from April 2019. Presently Department is conducting its UG, PG courses in Hindi with PhD coursework and PhD, the courses of higher learnings.