About PUDA
The Presidency University Digital Archive is the repository for an astounding variety of records related to the history of the institutional life of the Hindu/Presidency College—the first institution of European education in Asia. Established in 1817 in the colonial city of Calcutta, Hindu College was renamed as Presidency College in 1854 and functioned under that name until 2010 when it was made into a university and renamed the Presidency University. The College was the first western-style educational institution in Asia established entirely by native philanthropy. It pioneered modern European learning in the natural and human sciences in colonial India. It is a well-known fact of modern Indian history that over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the institution produced a steady stream of eminent figures of Indian public life, as students, teachers, researchers, social reformers, nationalist leaders, and administrators. Research in the natural, social, and humanistically inclined sciences in the college were aligned with global trends and in some instances even pioneered such trends. The Hindu/Presidency College provided the foundations for many other significant educational institutions/developmental sites of modern India—most notably the University of Calcutta (1857), the Bengal Engineering College (1858), and the Indian Statistical Institute (1931), all of which grew out of it—and would eventually serve as a model for many undergraduate institutions across the country. This archive has been developed in collaboration with the University of Chicago. Some of its materials have also been digitized under an Endangered Archives Program project supported by the British Library, London.