Murshidabad, a remote border district of West Bengal, India, adjacent to Bangladesh, as a whole had lagged behind in literacy and having adequate opportunities of higher education even in the post-independence days. Ironically, before the British occupation of India, Murshidabad was the capital of Nawab’s kingdom comprising Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. After Nawab Sirajudullah was defeated in Plassey’s war in 1757 by the British, the latter established their capital to Calcutta and later shifted to Delhi, allowing once prosperous Murshidabad to deteriorate gradually. These rural regions of Murshidabad, including Beldanga, a very small town situated at the southern corner of the district, had an enormous population of economically backward and illiterate peasants and labors together with a few educated middle class people, even in half past 19th century!
It was almost 18 years since the independence of our great nation and there was not a single institution for higher education in and around the locality of Beldanga within a 20 km radius, in spite of existence of a number of schools within the jurisdiction of the region. In fact there was not a single college within a 100km stretch between Berhampore of Murshidabad & Krishnanagar of Nadia! As a consequence of which, the people of Beldanga, most of them happened to be poor peasantry class, had been deprived to enter into the arena of higher education standing upon the doorstep of struggle against starvation. As a result of such a weaker socio-economic infrastructure of the region, the locality of Beldanga ranked bottom most in the district of Murshidabad in the sphere of education.
Feeling from core of heart about the tremendous crisis of the down-trodden and poor people of Beldanga to cope up with rapid upward trend of having higher educational opportunities of the rest of the state of West Bengal, and the country as a whole, some noble souls of the region came forward with a vision of establishing a college of undergraduate level within the locality at the beginning of the 6th decade of the last century. In the process, a noble hearted inhabitant of the locality, Late Sri Rameswar Fatepuria, a businessman by profession, came forward and first raised his kind-hand by donating about four acres of prime land of his own and Rupees fifty thousand in cash to set up a college under Calcutta University in the locality . The college was named after Sewnarayan babu (the father of Rameswar babu), and Rameswar babu himself, as Sewnarayan Rameswar Fatepuria College, with the Hon’ble District Magistrate of Murshidabad, its permanent ex-officio President. Later, Jana Kalyan Samiti, a local NGO, came forward and built the North-East block of the college, which was named as Jana Kalyan Samiti Block. After some time, another local noble inhabitant, Hazi Mohammad Mahsin Molla, of Bhabta, raised his kind-hand by building the North-West block of the college, and which was named as Mahsin Molla Block. Apart from them, many well-wishers of the locality worked round the clock for months, selflessly, to make this noble effort a success.
The honest endeavor of these pioneers, with moral and physical support of the common people of the locality, came into existence in the year 1965 when the Sewnarayan Rameswar Fatepuria College was established as an undergraduate govt aided college with the affiliation under the University of Calcutta. In the year 1999, the affiliation to the college had been shifted, as per decision of the Higher Education Dept., Govt. of West Bengal, under the University of Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal. Since then, the institution has been running as an affiliated college under the University of Kalyani. In the year 2009, the institution established a study centre of distance learning of undergraduate and postgraduate courses with the affiliation under the University of Kalyani.