Tarang (culfest)
Tarang is the annual cultural festival of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Saharanpur Campus, which was formerly known as Rave. It is held in the spring semester of the institute, thereby not coinciding with ‘Thomso’, I.I.T. Roorkee’s annual cultural festival. This year it is going to be held on 12, 13 and 14 March, 2010.
Saharanpur Campus
The Saharanpur Campus holds the department of Paper technology. The Department is the successor of the School of Paper Technology established by the Government of India in 1964, with an aid from the Royal Swedish Government. This school was managed by a society created by the U.P. Government until its merger with the then University of Roorkee in 1978. The school was renamed as the Institute of Paper Technology in July 1968 and subsequently Department of Paper Technology in July 1992. Now, it has two more branches running along with the original pulp and paper branch. These are Polymer Science and Technology (Five year Int. M. Tech) and Process Engineering with MBA (IDD five year course).
Festival History
Held twice before, it started to give the students of Saharanpur Campus a chance to organize a large-scale event. This was done considering the fact that they were not able to contribute enough in Thomso, the main campus’ festival. First time it was held in the year 2007. In 2008, the idea for its organisation formed but could not be concluded. In 2009 though, the festival was organised again under the name ‘Rave’. In 2010, its name will be ‘Tarang’. Comparing with other cultural festivals like Mood-I (I.I.T.- Bombay), Rendezvous (I.I.T.-Delhi) or Thomso (I.I.T.- Roorkee) itself the festival is quite small scale. Still, it is able to manage to uphold the baton of an I.I.T.