Cotton University is a premier institute of higher learning in Assam. Formerly known as Cotton College, the institute was established in 1901 by Sir Henry Stedman Cotton, the Chief Commissioner of the erstwhile British province of Assam. It became a constituent college of Gauhati University in 1948. The college had been the centre of the freedom movement as well as numerous literary and cultural engagements of the state that cemented Assam’s status as an integral component of India. In 2011 the Cotton College State University was established vide an Act of the Government of Assam, with the college as a constituent. Cotton University came into being in 2017 via The Cotton University Act, 2017 that enabled the unification of Cotton College State University and Cotton College.