Maharaja’s College

Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam, is a unique institution for higher education in several ways. Its rich tradition and enviable achievements in all arenas of human enterprise—production and dissemination of knowledge, inculcation of secular and liberal values, measures to achieve inclusive growth and development, schemes which help the marginalised achieve upward social mobility, inter alia— have transformed it into a motor force for progressive social change. Spread over a 25-acre campus, the college stands right in the heart of the happening city of Kochi, with easy accessibility by road, rail, air, metro rail and waterways. The college campus is refreshingly lush and verdant because of the shady trees and their thick foliage and fresh water ponds that lend a sylvan ambience to the premises.

From its extremely modest beginning as an elementary English school that was founded way back in 1845 in the former princely state of Cochin with the express aim of imparting “such instruction to the students as would enable them to converse with Englishmen without the aid of interpreters,” Maharaja’s College grew in stature, slowly but steadily over the decades, to its present status of “Centre of Excellence” conferred by the Government of Kerala and a “College with Potential for Excellence” recognized by the University Grants Commission.


The aforesaid elementary school metamorphosed into a high school in 1868 and then into a college in 1875 responding to the rising demand for higher education within Cochin and nearby states of Travancore and British Malabar. The college, originally named ‘The Ernakulam College’, and affiliated to the University of Madras, offered First Arts courses. It soon became one of the leading educational institutions in the Madras Presidency. Like other colonial institutions elsewhere in the country, Maharaja’s too had the British at the helm as Principals. Without exception these were enlightened men who played a crucial role in popularizing English education in the state of Cochin. Professor A.F. Sealy (1875-1892), the first Principal, who described himself and his compatriots in his farewell speech as a “labourers in educational work” engaged in “bringing light to one of the dark regions of Asia” nevertheless acknowledged that their work was only “a just repayment of an old debt of gratitude which the West owes to the East.”