O Calcutta!

It seems to me to be disrespectful to live in a place and know little about it. The structured and the organic conjoin in Kolkata. Modernity has wrought changes, but the influences of earlier ages are never eliminated. I decide to explore why it is as it is. 

Epistemologists say the name Kolkata is likely to be a tribute to deity, the warrior goddess Kali, or Mother Nature’s bounty. However, most newcomers to the city, and especially non-resident Indians, don’t see any godly connection, and are appalled by the congestion, the pollution and the noise. It takes time to recognize the indomitable spirit of the people and to experience their selfless giving nature, but few people are that patient. To others, although difficult to stomach initially, Kolkata, nicknamed the city of joy after a French author’s book, tends to grow on you.

Travelogues of merchants and scholars from Persia and China date the region to centuries BCE. It is mentioned in the Mahabharat, one of the country’s ancient mythological epics. It was there during the Maurya and Gupta periods and in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s rent rolls in the sixteenth century. In short, this region had inhabitants for well over two millennia before Europeans appeared on the horizon. There was also an established trading post. Burra Bazar, close to the river, was probably this business hub. The old, old trading houses are still standing, although now in urgent need of repair and restoration.

The British, though, claim to have discovered the area through Job Charnock, a representative of the East India Company that came to these shores towards the end of the seventeenth century. That strikes me as absurd; just as it must have the Native American tribes when Christopher Columbus was credited the discovery of America. Like, hey, we were here first!  

True, not much concrete evidence remains of the ancient Indian architecture. This is most likely because the people of the age didn’t use brick and mortar for their dwellings. Their homes were eco-friendly, made of mud, thatch, tiles, and regularly recycled. Temples and tombs, however, were constructed with more lasting materials and they are testimony to the local talent. 

 

The British captured three villages, Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata, to create their headquarters for trading. They put their cultural stamp on their holdings razing everything else to the ground. The eastern bank of the Hoogly tributary of River Ganges bears impressive British architecture since. The roads built were named for their convenience - Dalhousie Square, Esplanade, Strand Road, Outram Ghat, Princep Ghat, Hastings, Curzon Park and so on. Being unable to pronounce the tongue-twisting Indian names, I suppose, they called the city Calcutta.

In the new millennium, this city has been renamed Kolkata. Street names change more frequently here. Whosoever comes to power in state governance, exercises the right to rename, perhaps following the British. I look up a few on a map of the city and then try to find them on the road. It turns out not such an easy task, because the same place might be referred to with different names! It can become confusing when people forget Chowringhee Road is now Jawahar Lal Nehru Road, or by habit, remember Harrington Street instead of Ho Chi Minh Sarani.

New constructions also appear atop the old, changing the faces of things quite completely. A Bank Street, for instance, is shown on a map to run alongside the waterfront on the Kolkata side for miles. But the location of this road is still a mystery to me. On every try, I am stumped at the Howrah Bridge, because the flow of traffic goes straight onto and over the bridge. I’m missing it somehow, or perhaps the newer flyovers have been built over and across it, to make ‘Bank Street’ just another discarded historical name.

Amongst the first British projects in India was the garrison to station the troops. Fort William, founded in 1702, is still there, as are the various living quarters built within, for humans, horses and armoury. Post-independence it has been taken over to serve as cantonment for the Indian Army. Although there have been later additions of housing and schools, the heritage of older structures, including the cannons, still look in top condition. The military story from inception to today is meticulously recorded in a little museum inside the Fort. 

Fort William was a strategic placement for the British. On the bank of the river, and shaped as a polygon of six or eight sides, and gateways on each side, enabled rapid deployment of their enforcers to one direction or another. The establishment of this regional military headquarters became a bone of contention between the foreign settlers, and the Muslim monarch of Bengal. Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah’s foresight of British expansionist intentions, led him to attack the Fort and succeed in driving the British out.  

But consolidation eluded him. Within a year, his own uncle betrayed him to British cunning. The bloody battle of Plassey was fought in 1757 and the Nawab was vanquished and killed. That put an end, for a while at least, to local aspirations. The Crown established Calcutta as the capital of British India. They wanted it to be known as the City of Palaces, and accordingly, the buildings constructed were massive, ostentatious displays of British architecture, high-ceiled spacious rooms, wide main roads, handsome parkways and boulevards, and deep, concealed drainage. The capital of British India flaunted imperial superiority to this part of the world. 

 

I’ve often wondered why only a part of Calcutta is so beautifully laid out, while much more was steeped in poverty and squalor. I rationalized that the Calcutta of yore must have been a pretty small place. The locations of their architecture probably demarcated the limits of the city built by the British. The population explosion thereafter must be responsible for sections to become dreadfully congested, with narrow streets, and run down structures. Pity, I thought, that the Indians had not learned from them to value space. 

I realize now that my grasp of the history is pretty weak. Calcutta had actually been bigger than what I imagined. The imperialists were not in the region to integrate cultures. They were white supremacists, here as masters.  Calcutta was developed in two distinct parts, and their names are self-explanatory - White Town and Black Town. The land, the funds utilized in the opulent construction projects of the former, as well as the human labour pressed into service were of course, taken from their new subjects in India, probably as reparation costs. 

 

They indulged racial discrimination to the hilt, relegating the natives to Black Town, north and east of the city. Dispossessed of their own lands, the Indian people were pushed further inland. The waterways and access to the river came under the aegis of the British Raj that did not hesitate to collect taxes. Deprived of their traditional livelihoods of cultivation and fishing, they huddled together in shantytowns. Poverty and squalor become their lot, and eventually the characteristic of all Black Towns held in the iron grip of the colonizers, backed by imperial military might.

Meanwhile, education was introduced in accordance with British educational standards. It raised a new class of Bengalis, the anglophiles, the educated, rich, upper caste Hindus. They were inducted into the lower levels of administration and the Baboo culture became the backbone of the bureaucracy. The Baboos profited from British presence. Their large town houses situated just outside the White Town zone probably as a buffer, shielding the masters from the serfs. Manipulated by the colonizers, many Baboos were against their own people.

However, education became a double-edged sword for the colonizers. Many Indians quickly became discerning, politically savvy intellectuals. The seeds of nationalism against British occupancy began to take root. Calcutta became the hub of the freedom movement launched within the first decade of the twentieth century. The sepoy mutiny (the upsurge of Indian soldiers), took place near the capital.  It was said that what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. 

When the partition of Bengal was mooted in 1905, political activism gained momentum with the boycott and public burning of British goods on the streets. It forced the British to shift their capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911. Perhaps in retaliation, they vivisected Bengal and handed the East to Pakistan in 1947. Although the former East Bengal is now a country, Bangladesh, that physical, emotional and economic setback inflicted on the region, it is yet to recover from. 

 

But the Indian psyche is not built to hold onto grudges for too long. Through centuries of being invaded, conquered, annexed and colonized by different culture, we are able to take the worst misfortunes in strides. The sense of nationhood remains through oppression and democracy. We become comfortable with all outside influences. They are assimilated into the culture and Indianized.

The English language is now one of the twenty-two official languages in the country. The colonial architecture has been preserved in all its glory even so many decades after Independence. Buggy rides reminiscent of the British Raj continue around the Victoria Memorial even today. We own it all without prejudice. As part of Kolkata’s historical cultural inheritance, they remain, as they ever were - Black Town, White Town, and what-have-you.