Developments Leading To The First IIT
Dr Humayun Kabir encouraged Dr B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal to work on Sir Ardeshir's proposal for an IIT. It is also possible that Sir J.C. Ghosh, the then Director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, prompted him to do so. In 1946, Dr Kabir along with Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy's Executive Council (Department of Education, Health and Agriculture) set up a committee to prepare a proposal, and made Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar the chairman. The Sarkar Committee was taking too much time, but Dr Roy did not wait for the Committee to finalise its report and started working on the interim draft itself. The 22 member committee (in its interim draft) recommended the establishment of Higher Technical Institutions in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern regions of the country. Possibly on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), these institutes were recommended to have a number of secondary institutions affiliated to them. The draft also urged the speedy establishment of all the four institutions with the ones in the East and the West to be started immediately. The committee also felt that such institutes should not only produce undergraduates but should be engaged in research – producing research workers and technical teachers as well. The standard of the graduates was recommended to be at par with those from elite institutions abroad. They felt that the proportion of undergraduates and postgraduate students should be 2:1.
L. S. Chandrakant and Biman Sen in the Education Ministry played significant role in producing a blueprint for a truly autonomous educational institution. Sir J.C. Ghosh (later to be the first Director of IIT Kharagpur) ensured liberal provisions of the IIT Act allowing the IITs to work free from nitpicking interference from the babudom. It is largely because of the IIT Act that IIT directors were granted authority superseding even some parts of the government. On the ground Bengal had the highest concentration of engineering industries, the Committee suggested that an IIT may be set up in that state. This encouraged Dr. Roy. to use that fragment of a report in order to persuade Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to push through a special Act to establish an IIT in Bengal.
With the recommendations of the Sarkar committee in view and on the basis of blueprint made by L. S. Chandrakant, Biman Sen, and Sir J.C. Ghosh, the first Indian Institute of Technology was born in May, 1950 at the site of Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur, a town in eastern India. Initially the IIT started functioning from 5, Esplanade East, Calcutta[ (now Kolkata) and shifted to Hijli in September, 1950 when Sir J.C. Ghosh offered the place as a ready made place for the IIT. The present name 'Indian Institute of Technology' was adopted before the formal inauguration of the Institute on 18 August 1951, by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. On 15 September 1956, the Parliament of India passed an act known as the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act declaring it as an Institute of National Importance. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, in the first convocation address of IIT Kharagpur in 1956, said:
| “ | Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India's urges, India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India." | ” |
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