Explore
IIT KHARAGPUR
~a technohistorical place
"Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands this fine monument of India today representing India's urges. India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India."
~Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru
History
With the help of Bidhan Chandra Roy (chief minister of West Bengal), Indian educationalists Humayun Kabir and Jogendra Singh formed a committee in 1946 to consider the creation of higher technical institutions "for post-war industrial development of India."[citation needed] This was followed by the creation of a 22-member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. In its interim report, the Sarkar Committee recommended the establishment of higher technical institutions in India, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and consulting from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign along with affiliated secondary institutions. The report urged that work should start with the speedy establishment of major institutions in the four-quarters of the country with the ones in the east and the west to be set up immediately.
The main building of the institute during construction (1955) On the grounds that West Bengal had the highest concentration of industries at the time, Roy persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru to establish the first institute in West Bengal. The first Indian Institute of Technology was thus established in May 1950 as the Eastern Higher Technical Institute. It was located in Esplanade East, Calcutta, and in September 1950 shifted to its permanent campus at Hijli, Kharagpur 120 kilometres south-west of Calcutta. It is the 3rd oldest technical institute in the state after IIEST Shibpur (1856) and Jadavpur University (1906). When the first session started in August 1951, there were 224 students and 42 teachers in the ten departments of the institute. The office building had served as the headquarters of the Bomber Command of the U.S. 20th Air Force during World War II.