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| Formation | 4 January 1993; 32 years ago (1993-01-04) |
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| Founders | Saiyid Nurul Hasan |
| Type | Research Institute |
| Headquarters | IB 166, Sector -III, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700106 |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 22°34′15″N88°24′47″E / 22.5708981°N 88.4131176°E /22.5708981; 88.4131176 |
Chairman | Radharaman Chakraborty |
Director | Sarup Prasad Ghosh |
Parent organisation | Ministry of Culture,Government of India |
| Website | http://www.makaias.gov.in |
TheMaulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies is an autonomousresearchinstitute based inKolkata. It is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India. It was founded on 4 January 1993. The foundation stone of the institute was laid where the new building now stands on 12 March 1993. It is devoted to the study of the life and works ofMaulana Abul Kalam Azad, the eminent nationalist leader and India's first educationminister, after whom it is named, and to the furtherance ofArea Studies, with special reference toSouth Asia,Central Asia andWest Asia, especially dealing with social, cultural, economic, political and administrative developments in Asia from the nineteenth century to the present. M.Phil.- and Ph.D.-level students of theUniversity of Calcutta,Jadavpur University andJawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi are also associated with it.
With the start of the birth centenary celebrations of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in 1989, the need for a research institute devoted to the study of his life and writings as well as area studies, especially to the research in secularIslam in Asian countries was felt by the governor of West Bengal,Nurul Hasan, who took the main initiative in founding this institute in Calcutta. He was the founder of this institute.[1] It took a few years before such a plan could be fully implemented, and the foundation stone of the institute was laid on a newly acquired plot close to the Salt Lake stadium in Calcutta in 1993 by the then president of India,Shankar Dayal Sharma, in the presence of the then Human Resource Development MinisterArjun Singh, Nurul Hasan, the then ChiefMinister ofWest Bengal,Jyoti Basu, the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha,Najma Heptullah, and the then Minister for Higher Education of the Government of West Bengal, Satyasadhan Chakraborty. Barun De, formerly firstDirector, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, was given the responsibility of organising the event.
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Nurul Hasan, was the founder-president of the institute's society and the executive council.Satish Chandra, formerlychairman,University Grants Commission,Delhi, was appointed as the firstvice-chairman of the executive council, and Barun De was appointed as the first director of the institute.[2]
At this time the former residence of Maulana Azad at 19, Ballygunge Circular Road, presently 5, Ashraf Mistry Lane (better known locally as Lovelock Lane off Ballygunge Circular Road), was handed over by the Government of West Bengal to the institute. It was meant house a museum. Soon the institute shifted to 567, Diamond Harbour Road, Calcutta, where it temporarily occupied two large floors of a rented house. Later, at the turn of the present century, it was shifted to Maulana Azad's house, where both the institute and its museum were located until 2010. A new building, named 'Azad Bhavan', has been subsequently built on the one-acre plot given to it in Salt Lake, where the institute has now been shifted. The museum will remain in Maulana Azad's house, now renamed Maulana Azad Museum.[3][4][5]
The institute organises seminars, conferences, symposia, workshops and a few annual lectures includingMaulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lectures and theBarun De Memorial Lecture.[7]
TheMaulana Azad Museum was inaugurated on 11 March 2006, in memory of the former education minister, at his former residence in Calcutta. The museum holds annual lectures and other cultural events.[8]
It is registered as a society under the West Bengal Registration of Societies Act, 1961. It is mainly financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India. His Excellency, theGovernor of West Bengal is the president of the society of the institute. Radharaman Chakraborty is the chairman of the institute. Sarup Prasad Ghosh is the institute's presentdirector.
Maulana Azad's home is an example of twentieth-centurycolonial architecture. It is situated off the Ballygunge maidan and close to landmark buildings of the city. The location of the new building is also well-appointed, given its centrality in Salt Lake. It is close to other educational institutions, such as the Salt Lake campus ofAll India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Salt Lake campus ofIndian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur,S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, the Salt Lake campus of theUniversity of Calcutta, the Salt Lake campus ofJadavpur University,NIFT Kolkata,Government College of Engineering and Leather Technology, andWest Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences.
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