জেনেরেল অয়াসেম্বলি’স ইন্সটিট্যুশন, কলকাতা, ১৮৩০
The college founder, Rev. Alexander Duff, was the first missionary to India from the Church of Scotland. His idea was to set up an institution which linked western education with Christian mission and the eventual progress of the people. Years later, Duff committed himself to building education institutions aiming at academic excellence along with social awareness and character building.
Duff opened his first school in a house located at upper Chitpur Road in the Jorasanko neighborhood of Calcutta. Feringhi Kamal Bose, an affluent Hindu, made the house available. The school soon expanded into a missionary college, known as the General Assembly’s Institution that was founded by Duff and his fellow Scottish missionaries with the help of Raja Rammohan Roy, the illustrious social reformer in 1830. In 1834, Duff returned to Britain broken in health. During that sojourn, he succeeded in securing the approval of his church for his educational plans and in arousing much interest in the work of missions in India. In 1836, the Calcutta institution was moved to Gorachand Bysack’s house in the Garanhata neighborhood. On 23 February 1837, Mr. MacFarlon, the Chief Magistrate of Calcutta, laid the foundation stone for a new building belonging to the mission itself. John Gray designed the building while Capt. John Thomson supervised the construction, both of the British East India Company. The construction of the building was completed in 1839. In 1840, Duff returned to India. At the Disruption of 1843, he sided with the Free Church and gave up the college buildings, with all their effects. With unabated resolve he set to work to provide a new institution, later known as the Free Church Institution. After the unification of the Church of Scotland in 1929, these two institutions – General Assembly’s Institution and the Free Church Institution later merged to form the Scottish Churches College. Duff had the support of Sir James Outram, Sir Henry Lawrence, and the encouragement of seeing a new band of converts, including several young men born of high caste. In 1844, governor-general Viscount Hardinge opened government appointments to all who had studied in institutions similar to Duff’s institution. In the same year, Duff co-founded the Calcutta Review, of which he served as editor from 1845 to 1849.
It is important to mention hereabout the equation of Duff with the Derozians – the Young Bengal group of radical Bengali free thinkers emerging from Hindu College – named after their firebrand teacher, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809 – 1831). The Young Bengal Movement peripherally included Christians such as Reverend Alexander Duff, and his students like Lal Behari Dey (1824–1892), who went on to renounce Hinduism. Because of their irreconcilable westernized stand, these argumentative scholars of Duff’s college were branded as ডেঁপো – a Bengali ascription coined after the name of Duff. Latter-day inheritors of the legacy of the Young Bengal Movement include scholars like Brajendra Nath Seal (1864–1938), who went on to be one of the leading theologians and thinkers of the Brahmo Samaj. Duff regarded the Derozians as rootless egoistic sophists with no ultimate care save for their own interests.. From their ranks, however, he hoped would come the leaders of the new India. But first they must replace their volatile skepticism with a more securely based commitment, that in Duff’s view, could only be adherence to Christianity. See
Several important Indian figures were products of Duff’s Institutions. Most notably, Rev. Lal Behari Dey, who wrote two books (Folk Tales of Bengal and Bengal Peasant Life) that were widely distributed among Indian schools, and Krishna Mohan Banerjee, who became registrar at the University of Calcutta and later became a co-founder of the Indian National Congress. Through the years a long line of illustrious personalities have been educated in these hallowed halls of learning. The splendorous architecture of the College including its magnificent prayer hall is eloquent testimony to its timeless heritage and the pioneering vision of its founding fathers. See
PURONOKOLKATA 