Midnapore Collegiate School (1834)

Begin at the Collegiate School on Raja Bazar Road, formally established on 14 November 1834, making it one of the oldest schools in Bengal and among the oldest in India. The school's freedom-struggle credentials are extraordinary: Khudiram Bose, the youngest martyr hanged in the independence movement (hanged 11 August 1908, aged eighteen), was a student here. Rishi Rajnarayan Basu, headmaster from 1851 to 1866 and one of the great figures of the Bengal Renaissance, is said to have been the first government schoolmaster in India to inspire his students openly to join the freedom movement, and to hoist the national flag on school premises. District Magistrate James Peddie was assassinated inside the school itself, by Bimal Dasgupta and Jatijiban Ghosh, both former students and members of the Bengal Volunteers, on 7 April 1931, while he was visiting an exhibition on the premises.
From the school's courtyard, walk to the garden where a statue of Khudiram Bose stands, the same young man who, at fifteen, was first arrested for distributing seditious pamphlets in Midnapore. The school building itself is worth a slow circuit: the colonial-era architecture, the basketball court and the quiet pride of staff who are acutely conscious of the institution's legacy combine to make this more than a sightseeing stop.