Following demands from Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah Bahadur and others, Viceroy Lord Hardinge proposed on 2 February 1912, that a new university should be established in this partition of Bengal.
Classes were taught in 12 departments: Sanskrit and Bengali, English, Education, History, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Persian and Urdu, Philosophy, Economics and Politics, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Law.
Advocate Dr Rashbehari Ghosh told viceroy that the establishment of a separate university at Dhaka would promote 'an internal partition of Bengal'.
It also made national headlines when he extended an invitation to then-President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, who declined citing 'security reasons'.
Enrollment in the first few years is shown in the table below:[8] Students and teachers of the University of Dhaka played a vital role in the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh.