Fort William College: History and Importance

• Who founded it?: The college was established by Governor-General Lord Wellesley.
• When and Where?: It was founded on 10th July 1800 inside the Fort William complex in Calcutta (Kolkata).
• The Main Purpose: Young British officers arriving in India (civil servants) had no idea about Indian customs, laws, or languages. The college was built specifically to train these British officers in Indian languages (like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Sanskrit, and Persian) so they could rule and collect taxes efficiently.

While the college was built to help the British, it accidentally caused a massive literary revolution for Indian languages.

• To teach the British officers, the college hired the greatest Indian scholars, writers, and Pandits of that time.
• Because there were no printed books in Hindi or Urdu, these scholars were tasked with writing them.
• Under the guidance of Dr. John Gilchrist, writers like Lallu Lal and Sadal Mishra wrote the very first modern prose (stories/text) in Khari Boli (modern Hindi).
• The college became the birthplace of modern Hindi and Urdu literature.

Despite its success in literature, the Directors of the East India Company sitting in London did not like the college. They thought it was too expensive and that young British officers in Calcutta were getting distracted by parties. They eventually established a different college back in England (Haileybury College) to train officers, and Fort William College was slowly shut down by 1854.