It certainly is a walk of pride for students, or anyone, down the Dhaka Collegiate School campus, now at 1 Lyall Street in Old Town of Dhaka, founded in 1835 as the first government high school in undivided Bengal.
Scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose attended the school. Astrophysicist and politician Meghnad Saha became a student of the institution in 1905.
Buddhadeb Bose, who attended two classes at the institution before his entrance examinations in the 1920s, in 鈥楢mar Chhelebela,鈥� writes: 鈥楾he Dhaka Collegiate School has for long been renowned, respected since the time of the University of Calcutta. It stands proudly in the principal civic quarter of Dhaka, a lofty building with thick, round Roman columns.鈥�
鈥業n front lies Victoria Park, with several major road crossings around it and, only a minute鈥檚 walk away, a yellow-painted church of graceful structure, with its great round clock.鈥�
The writer describes the school: 鈥楾he stairways, floors and verandas are all gleamingly clean; light abounds and air flows abundantly in the classrooms; yet, the sound of carriages and horses scarcely penetrates the compound.鈥�
The school now stands in no way how Buddhadeb Bose has described it. Nothing of the glorious past remains, neither in structure nor in the academic environment.
It was founded as an English seminary, Dacca Government High School, a couple of blocks away from its present location. It was later moved to a building at the site of an indigo plant.
Dacca Intermediate College, now known as Dhaka College, was founded on the Collegiate School premises in 1841, housed on the first floor. The school, renamed as Dacca Collegiate School, continued on the ground floor.
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The college moved to a building near Bahadur Shah Park in 1873 and other places before finally being settled on Mirpur Road in the 1950s. But the name of the Collegiate School remained.
Only four modern buildings, none older than a few decades, now remain standing. The old two-storey heritage building was pulled down in 2024. It was marked unsafe.
The demolition sparked off protests from heritage activists, who argued that the structure could have been reinforced and preserved. Md Habib Ullah Khan, who now heads the school, says that the building became risky. 鈥楽ome students were wounded in the past as objects falling from above struck them.鈥�
鈥榃e lost many of the relics during relocation,鈥� Md Noman Hossain, a teacher there since 1992, says. 鈥楳any of them were lost during the demolition of the old building.鈥�
The school still has a handful of relics. Prominent among them is a bookshelf, a gift from Victor Bulwer-Lytton, a governor of Bengal, as an inscription on the article says.
There are a few old books and a few scientific instruments. But for the bookshelf in the headteacher鈥檚 room, none is accessible to visitors. 鈥榃e have lost many old books during the demolition of the old building,鈥� Noman, who also worked as the librarian in 1993, says.
The school has a plaque in memory of the meritorious services of a headteacher, Ratna Mani Gupta, during whose tenure in 1888鈥�1896, the school topped the entrance examinations for eight out of nine years.
The three other buildings of the school have now also been marked risky. They would be replaced, the headteacher has said.
The school erected two tin-shed rooms to accommodate students. 鈥楾he school needs more space for more than 2,000 students. A five-storey building is being constructed at the site of the old building,鈥�
鈥業 liked the old building. It was beautiful. Big classrooms and old benches,鈥� Md Al Nur Sheikh, a Class VIII student, has said.
The school has earned its place in literature. In Satyajit Ray鈥檚 Feluda story 鈥淭he Adventure of the Royal Bengal,鈥� Tapesh Ranjan Mitter, the detective鈥檚 assistant, says about Feluda鈥檚 father, the late Jay Krishna Mitter: 听鈥楳y second uncle 鈥� Feluda鈥檚 father 鈥� was a teacher of mathematics and Sanskrit at Dhaka Collegiate School.鈥�
Collegiate schools were next founded in Rajshahi and Patna in 1836.
