Smita's Kolkata Chronicles

Oriental Seminary  was established at Goranhata of Kolkata, on 1st March 1829 by Gourmohan Adhya (1805-1845). He died in a boat accident on the  Hooghly river while returning from Serampore , on a mission to find a suitable english teacher for the school .   Initially the medium of instruction was English, after ten years; from 27 April 1839 the Seminary started teaching Bangla. The school believed in preserving local socio-cultural norms among the native students rather than influencing the Western way of life upon them.   Notable Bengali teachers were Kalikinkor Palit, Peary Mohan Bandhopadhyay, Gurucharon Datta, Kailash Chandra Basu, Ishwar Chandra Nandi, Benimadhob De, Amrita Lal Basu  and others. Some of the Western teachers at the elementary and high sections were George Edward Baylis, Alexander Turnbull, David Lester Richardson, Fredrick Penny, Mr JB Smith, Hardman Jeffrey and others. At the elementary level, different languages like Greek, Latin...

On the main road of Beadon Street is situated the Chaitanya library, founded in 1889 on the day of Saraswati Puja. At its inception, there were   284 members out of which only 6 were females .  Women were not allowed to read and write during that time so they were hardly seen in the library. Today the library is in pathetic shape with empty reading rooms, damaged, termite infested rare collection of books on the floor, layers of dust, damp rooms and broken ceilings.  Chaitanya Library is the conceptualised of Gaur Hari Sen and his bosom friend Kunj Behari Dutta. Grandfather of Kunj Behari, Shri Ganganarayan Dutta was then a well-to-do person in the Beadon Street locality. Gaur Hari persuaded him to donate some money and a large room on the ground floor of his house to set up a library. Apart from that, Noni Mohan Banerjee donated Rs.20 for the library. Rabindranath Tagore was one of its founder members.  Today this library holds approximately 1, 50,000 books an...