SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 16 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 5 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

When was a Madrasa opened in Kolkata to promote the study of Arabic, Persian and Islamic law?

(a)1772 C.E.
(b)1783 C.E.
(c)1781 C.E.
(d)1774 C.E.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Warren Hastings founded the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781 for the study of Arabic, Persian and Muslim law.

The motive was practical as well as scholarly: the Company's courts still applied Islamic law in criminal cases, and needed men trained to work in it.

It is the earliest institution of higher study the East India Company itself set up in India, and it survives in Kolkata today as Aliah University.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
1772 C.E. — 1772 is the year Hastings took charge as Governor of Bengal — the date most often mistaken for the madrasa's founding, because both belong to him.
(b)
1783 C.E. — 1783 is when Sir William Jones reached Calcutta as a judge. His institution came the next year, and it was the Asiatic Society of Bengal, not a madrasa.
(d)
1774 C.E. — 1774 belongs to the Regulating Act taking effect — Hastings becoming the first Governor-General of Fort William, and the Supreme Court being set up at Calcutta.

Concept

The madrasa belongs to the orientalist phase of Company education policy, when the aim was to cultivate Indian classical learning rather than replace it.

Four landmarks define that phase:

1781 — Calcutta Madrasa, Warren Hastings, for Arabic and Persian.
1784 — Asiatic Society of Bengal, William Jones.

1791 — Sanskrit College at Benares, Jonathan Duncan.
1800 — Fort William College, Calcutta, Lord Wellesley.

Macaulay's Minute of 1835 and Bentinck's resolution ended the orientalists' priority in favour of English.

The value of this item is the cluster, not the single date. SSC picks one of the four institutions and fills the options with the other three founding years.

Key facts

The Calcutta Madrasa was founded in 1781 by Warren Hastings for Arabic, Persian and Islamic law.
It survives today as Aliah University, Kolkata.
Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
Fort William College was set up at Calcutta in 1800 under Lord Wellesley.

Study next

The Orientalist versus Anglicist controversy and Macaulay's Minute, 1835Wood's Despatch of 1854 and the Calcutta, Bombay and Madras universities of 1857Warren Hastings' administrative measures, 1772 to 1785

Common traps

Reading 1772, the year Hastings became Governor, as the founding year of the madrasa.
Confusing the Calcutta Madrasa with Fort William College — different purpose, different founder, nineteen years apart.

SSC asks for the founding year or the founder of one colonial institution and fills the options with neighbouring dates from the same reign. Learning the four institutions as a set beats learning any one date.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.