The Osmania University, established in 1918, is the seventh oldest in the country, third oldest in South India and the first to be established in the princely State of Hyderabad. Though the need for a university for the Hyderabad State was felt, both by the intelligentsia and the people for a long time, the initiative came from a civil servant, Sir Akbar Hydari, who was then the Home Secretary to the State Government. Sir Akbar, in a Memorandum to the Education Minister in early 1917, emphasized the need to establish a University for Hyderabad with ‘Urdu’ as the medium of instruction "as it is the language of the widest currency in India, official language of the State,"
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