Cotton University in Guwahati is a public state university whose institutional history reaches back to Cotton College, one of the most influential higher-education institutions in Assam. Public demand for a college in Assam led Manik Chandra Barooah to petition the colonial administration in 1899. Chief Commissioner Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton announced the decision to open a college in Guwahati on 3 November 1899, and Cotton College was inaugurated on 27 May 1901. It began with a small faculty and student body and was initially affiliated to the University of Calcutta. The college became closely associated with Assam’s intellectual, literary, cultural and political life and later became a constituent college of Gauhati University after that university was established in 1948. In 1992, Cotton College was declared a centre of excellence. Its centenary was observed through a year-long programme from May 2001 to May 2002, and India Post issued a commemorative stamp featuring a heritage college building. A new institutional phase began in 2011 with the establishment of Cotton College State University, with Cotton College as a constituent unit. The Cotton University Act, 2017 then unified Cotton College State University and Cotton College into Cotton University, conceived as a unitary, residential teaching and research university. Today, the university offers undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral education across humanities, languages, social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences and interdisciplinary areas. Its Panbazar campus preserves the historical continuity of Cotton College while supporting contemporary research and university governance. Cotton University’s distinctiveness lies in this unusually direct institutional line from a colonial-era college central to Assam’s public life to a modern state university with a broad teaching and research mandate. Cotton’s institutional continuity is visible in its transformation from a 1901 college into a university, while retaining a strong identity in undergraduate and postgraduate liberal arts and science education.