If you’ve spent any time around Delhi University, you know how quickly it becomes a world of its own. The shorthand rolls off the tongue. North Campus. South Campus. Canteens, corridors, societies, library steps, a hundred conversations happening at once.
That’s why this detail stops you for a second when you first hear it. When the University of Delhi opened in 1922, it began from a rented space connected to the Ritz Cinema building at Kashmere Gate. There were no sprawling lawns waiting outside, and none of the familiar red-and-cream buildings either. Just a university trying to begin, inside the city, using the space it could get.
Kashmere Gate was one of Delhi’s busiest public areas when DU began functioning from rented premises in 1922. (Pic: So City)
A university beginning before the “university” existed
Early DU was small. The ambition was clear, but the set-up was still catching up. That gap between the plan on paper and what’s actually possible on the ground can feel familiar, whether you’ve worked in a newsroom, a college, or anywhere else where things are being built as they run.
So the university started where it could. The city already had buildings with rooms, entrances, schedules, movement. Kashmere Gate was active and connected, and the Ritz Cinema building was part of that public, everyday Delhi. In that atmosphere, DU took its first steps.
In its early years, DU functioned from multiple temporary locations as student numbers slowly increased. (AI-generated image)
What I like about this beginning is how straightforward it is. Nobody waited for the perfect campus to appear. A university was created, students were coming, and classes had to happen. So they happened.
You can almost sense the early rhythm of it: students arriving, teachers figuring out their routines, the university learning how to run itself while already teaching. The setting wasn’t built to “feel academic”, and that’s precisely what makes it memorable. Education was happening in a place shaped for public life, which meant the city was never far away.
The cinema building reflected how DU began within the city, using available public infrastructure. (Pic source: Hindustan Times)
It also quietly reminds you that institutions rarely arrive fully formed. They grow in pieces. They learn by doing. They become real through repetition, through people turning up day after day and deciding this matters enough to keep going.
The shifting years, and the slow settling into place
After that first phase, DU moved through different temporary addresses as it expanded. It’s the kind of growth story many Indian institutions share: the work begins first, and the infrastructure keeps catching up behind it.
Over time, the university found more stable footing. By the early 1930s, the story takes a turn that feels familiar to anyone who associates DU with a campus landscape. In 1933, the Viceregal Lodge estate near the Ridge was handed over to the university, and that moment helped shape what would eventually become the nucleus of the campus many people picture today.
The Viceregal Lodge estate was transferred to Delhi University in 1933. (Pic source: So City)
The Ritz Cinema detail still matters. It’s the kind of start that tells you what those early years were like, a university trying to run before it had a proper home. Even after DU moved to other places, that first setup stays in your head because it feels so make-do and so real.
What this beginning tells you about campus life today
If you zoom out, this isn’t only a DU story. It’s a campus story.
Across India, plenty of student-led change still begins without perfect conditions. It begins with borrowed rooms, shared noticeboards, small budgets, and a group of people deciding to try anyway. That’s where you see the most interesting energy: students setting up waste segregation systems in their hostels, starting peer support circles, building climate and community projects, using college time to solve real problems in their neighbourhoods.
Better Campus is The Better India’s new series spotlighting student-led ideas and impact across Indian colleges.
In a way, DU’s earliest years offer a neat reminder that “campus” has always been more than buildings. The heart of it is people. The atmosphere is created by what they choose to do with what’s available.
And if you’re reading this and thinking of a story on your own campus that deserves to be told, keep an eye out for something we’re bringing next week at The Better India. We’re launching Better Campus, a dedicated content series focused on student-led impact and positive change across Indian colleges.
If there’s a person, project, club, or idea you think we should feature, you can write to us at [email protected]. Many campus stories begin with someone saying, let’s try this, and taking the first small step.
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