The founders
Madan Mohan Malaviya was a lawyer, journalist and Congress leader from Allahabad who served four times as president of the Indian National Congress. He was also a leader of Hindu religious and social organisations. From the early 1900s he campaigned for a Hindu university that would teach science, technology and the humanities alongside Sanskrit and the Hindu scriptures, in the way Aligarh served Muslims. Annie Besant, the Theosophist, had founded the Central Hindu College in Varanasi in 1898, and she joined her plans to his. The Maharaja of Darbhanga and other princes and donors provided funds.
Foundation
The Banaras Hindu University Act was passed in 1915, and on 4 February 1916 the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, laid the foundation stone. At the opening ceremonies Gandhi, recently returned from South Africa, gave a speech that caused a sensation. He criticised the princes on the platform for their jewels while the people were poor, spoke of the need for Indians to speak in their own languages, and referred to anarchist violence in a way that led the organisers to stop him.
The campus
The campus, on land given by the Maharaja of Banaras south of the city, was laid out in a semicircle, with roads radiating from a central point, and its buildings combine Indian and European forms. It is one of the largest residential universities in Asia. The university came to include faculties of science, engineering, medicine, agriculture, arts and music, and a faculty for Sanskrit and theology. Its engineering college became an Indian Institute of Technology in 2012. At the centre of the campus stands the Shri Vishwanath temple, planned by Malaviya and built with funds from the Birla family, completed in the 1960s, and open to people of all castes and faiths.
Significance
BHU was conceived as a national institution in the period of the independence movement, and its students and teachers took part in it. Malaviya remained vice-chancellor for two decades. The university has since been one of India's largest central universities. It has also been a site of political controversy, including over appointments in its Sanskrit faculty and student protests in recent decades.
Further reading
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
- Brown, Judith M. Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy. Oxford University Press, 1994
- Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
See also
- Annie Besant — Annie Besant (1847-1933) was a British-born theosophist, social reformer and Indian home rule campaigner who became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress.
- Indian National Congress — The Indian National Congress is India's oldest political party, founded in 1885 as a forum for Indian political opinion under British rule and later the principal organization leading the country's independence movement and, after 1947, its dominant governing party for most of the following seven decades.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) was an Indian lawyer and political leader who developed satyagraha, a method of organised nonviolent resistance, and led the campaigns that became central to India's independence movement before his assassination in 1948.
- Varanasi — Varanasi, traditionally known as Kāśī or Banaras, is a city on the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh regarded as the holiest site in Hinduism and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.