Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith is a public university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Established on 10 February 1921 as Kashi Vidyapith and later renamed, it is administered under the state legislature of the government of Uttar Pradesh.

It is one of the largest state universities in Uttar Pradesh, with hundreds of thousands of students, both rural and urban.

Babu Shiv Prasad Gupta and Bhagwan Das established the university in Varanasi, on 10 February 1921, during the non-cooperation movement of the freedom struggle.

[2] Inspired by Gandhi's call for self-reliance and swaraj (self-rule), the Kashi Vidyapith was the first modern university organised by Indians in British India.

Attracting young Indians from across the country, its faculty included prominent nationalists and scholars such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Rajendra Prasad, Jivatram Kripalani, Shriprakash and Sampurnanand.

Others associated with the first board of management included Mahatma Gandhi, Lala Lajpat Rai, Jamuna Lal Bajaj, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Shiv Prasad Gupta, Acharya Narendra Dev, Krishna Kant Malviya, and Purushottam Das Tandon.

Established with the resolution to keep the institution away from government recognition and grants, the Vidyapith was accorded the status of "Deemed University" by the UGC in 1963.

Kamlapati Tripathi initiated a state government resolution to have his alma mater acknowledged as a statutory university; this would occur on 15 January 1974.

Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith owes its birth to the educational, cultural and political aspirations of pre-independence India.

The former head of the Department of Commerce, Prof. Sudhir Kumar Shukla, is a recipient of the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi National Award.

Many stalwarts of the national movement, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Jamunalal Bajaj, Acharya J.B. Kripalani, Puroshottamdas Tandon, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Sampurnanand, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Pandit Kamalapati Tripathi were closely associated with this library.