About The Department

A couple of years before Independence, in 1945 Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi and Bengali were clubbed in a single Department, and while Hindi continued to be taught as a language for a while, Sanskrit and Pali were moved to Sanskrit College in 1951. Hindi appears to have been taught only as a vernacular subject from the year 1928. The Hindi Department (erstwhile Presidency College) was formally opened in 1981 with BA Honours course and preparations were on for opening a Seminar Library which was being made good use of by at least 1986. The Department has since steadily grown. The post graduate course in Hindi started from 2002. The strength of the students has surpassed 200 in the department. Gandhi Centre for North-Eastern Languages was set up in 2008 with the assistance of Gandhi Smriti evam Darshan Samiti, New Delhi, a National Institute under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister of India. Presidency College was made a University in 2010. The Department of Hindi is still in its formative stage. Choice based credit system course in UG has been implemented in the year 2019. Apart from formal classroom lectures and traditional close textual analysis, e-classes, tutorial and sessional classes keep students under continual assessment and evaluation. Term-papers, dissertations make students more prepared for Semester examinations. The Department is also conducting PhD program since 2014 and 16 research scholars are continuing their research work under supervision of their research guides. One of our research scholars presently working as Assistant Professor, Hindi in the University of Texas, at Austin USA, has been awarded PhD as the first candidate from Humanities and Social sciences. From the year 2020 the Department has started ‘Rahul Sankrityayan Research Symposium’- a monthly discussion programme to exchange views of research scholars. The Department of Hindi still organises ‘Panini Lecture Series’ on linguistics and ‘Premchand Lecture Series’ for inter-disciplinary lectures and learnings. From the year 2020 the Department has also started ‘Tagore Lecture Series’ and ‘Vivekananda Lecture Series’ for promoting literature, Indology and value education respectively for students. The students get opportunity to express their literary and cultural views on their specific wall in the department through paintings, proses poetries, as well as they take part in vibrant cultural life on campus, participating in music, debate, songs, quizzes, drama performance, Hindi Diwas and many more in literature and cultural potpourri.