 The nationalists in the freedom struggle of India dubbed the Calcutta University, another pillar of India's education movement, as "Goldighir Ghulamkhana", or the slave house of Goldighi, with reference to the lake adjacent to Calcutta University, and the many graduates it churned out who were used in the British colonial era as ICS officers.Hence, the need for setting up an institution which would impart education along nationalist lines was strongly felt by the luminaries of the period.The real impetus, though, was provided by the partitioning of Bengal by Lord Curzon, the then Governor-General of India, into East Bengal on the one hand (the area that was eventually to become Bangladesh in 1971) and West Bengal and Odisha on the other.