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TEA: ITS SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSIONS IN COLONIAL INDIA

December 30, 2019Appliances/ Amenities, Bengal Renaissance, british rule, Company Rule, Cultural, Industrial Houses, Life Styles, People-in-general, Racial Profile, Raj Officials, Ways of Lifeacharya p.c. ray tea board, adda, bagged black tea, bharata, brahmosamaj, British, british tea culture, bubble tea café, café, calcutta, camellia sinensis, chaayos, chanyakya, ch’a ching, chinese traditions, civilizing atmosphere, coffee, coffee culture, coffeehouses, colonial calcutta, colonial india, commercial tea/ tea-bags, darjeeling himalayan railway, darjeeling tea, deshe-bideshe, deshi tearooms, Dwarkanath Ganguly, East India Company, egalitarian character, egocentric, english gentlemen’s private clubs, english upper middle-class, favourite cabin, flurys, gandhian tea, gulabi tea, herbal tea, hindustani classical music, indianize british tea culture, japanese traditions, kabul, king charles ii, leisure time, lloyd’s coffee-house, london’s lowlife, loneliness, lu yü, mallai tea, masala chai, medicinal tea, meghnad saha, moll king’s coffee-house, musafirkhana, naukadubi, nazrul islam, newspaper in tearoom, okakura, orthodox black, oxford coffeehouses, parinita, penny universities, quora, rabindranath tagore, ramkumar vidyaratna, sadharan brahmosamaj, saratchandra chattopadhyay, sayed muzaba ali, social mixing, subhas boses, swadeshi, swami vivekananda, tagore, taj mahal tea house, tea, tea culture, tea cups, tea gardening, tea habit, tea recipe, tea-making, tea-pots, tea-set, tearoom, tearoom culture, vernacular tearooms, vivekananda, women empoweringঅযান্ত্রিক

Tea, ‘the second most commonly drunk beverage after water’ ^Ellis, is now being cultivated in more than 61 countries (2018), and consumed by not less than 54 nations (2016). There have been so many varieties of tea, prepared and consumed in so many different ways, all tuned in their respective ecological as well as sociological settings. Britain had no tea of its own, India had. Yet it was the British who grew a tea culture of its own since the time of King Charles II, more accommodative than the ceremonial tea of the Chinese and Japanese traditions, which later globally accepted as a standard.

Camellia Sinensis Categories Courtesy:@Leaves of Tea Ring

While the tea culture varies, the tea as such is one and the same everywhere – basically a wild shrub called camellia sinensis. The ancient wisdom of tea processing has been modernized in colonial India. The manufacturing process transforms the tea into six types – black, oolong, green, yellow, white, and pu-erh each having distinctive characteristics requiring special ways of preparing, serving and taking for enjoying the drink most satisfyingly. In the beginning tea was prepared with spices and herbs, and consumed as medicine. The remedial value apart, herbal tea is always a popular beverage in countryside because of its strong aroma and heady taste. Nonetheless, herbal tea is a misnomer as it is made of alternative combinations of herbs and spices, milk and butter, sugars and salts and optionally tea leaves. Gandhian ‘Tea Recipe’, for example, lists no tea at all. ^Sanyal The recent herbal teas sound like new versions of Gandhian tea now being marketed as Tulsi tea, Adrak tea, Malai tea, Rhododendron tea, and the like. The Kahwa tea, is however different being the soul-warming drink of the Kashmiris and a part of their culture. All these refreshment drinks of dissimilar taste and flavour meant for people of different mind-sets than those who enjoyed tea the way Tagore’s Gora did, or a Nazrul did in Favourite Café.

Poetic Tea. Lu Yu’s book, the Ch’a Ching, tea ceremony

The branded tea of the modern society is rooted in ancient culture. Kakuzō Okakura found a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealization. It has no arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. ^Okakura The first book on tea, Ch’a Ching, that the gifted poet and tea-expert, Lu Yü (733-804), penned with precise details on tea’s origins, cultivation, processing, and preparation. A thousand year later the British drew upon the classic when they started producing tea themselves. ^KoehlerIt is important to note that the British accepted the practical and spiritual aspects of tea making believing that the magic of making tea comes, when the leaves begin to develop their unique flavours and aromas, almost mystically transforming into something far richer.

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway 1881. Photocredit:Carsten Bockermann

As the process has been simplified from Lu Yu’s instructions formulated thirteen centuries ago, machines instead of hands do the rolling now. Fermented tea is essentially baked rather than pan-cooked—it sticks to ancient principles. In Darjeeling, tea makers remain ‘stridently, adamantly orthodox’ in their processing. Orthodox tea contains just a handful of steps to turn green leaves into finished Darjeeling black tea before the tea gets sorted, graded, and packed. ^Koehler From the beginning to end, tea, except low-grade commercial tea/ tea-bags, is dealt with human touch, even when the process is mechanized. Tea is not industrialized, but grabbed the full advantage of industrialization for worldwide distribution and marketing of finished products from the remote gardens whence the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway opened in 1881, cutting travel time and transport costs significantly. Darjeeling tea found its final footing within five years as reflected in 1885 statistics of sales reaching 9 million pounds.^Bengal

II

Like most of the colonial things – bungalows, furniture, utensils, dresses or dishes, Indian teas are Indian by origin – pure or crossbred, which the Britishers shaped their way to lead a comfortable and decent life. As we know, Britain never grew tea until 2005, but grew a tea culture over two centuries ago that they enriched a great deal in colonial India, apparently with newly acquired intelligence of Chinese and Japanese tea traditions.
The British tea culture follows the ancient norm that ‘tea drinking should be treated with reverence and be accompanied by beauty but also restraint’, moderation is the very essence of tea. ^Ukers It demands a tad of sophistication nurtured in modern societies. One needs to acquire a taste for the cup of tea that a British queen and a Chinese sage may savour spiritually rather than palatably. When today’s tea culture is overwhelmingly British in character, it is already popular in most of the tea loving nations, including United States. ^Sirkin
Tea grew naturally in Indian soil, while tea culture grew in Indian mind through a long process of social interactions under influences of political and economic events. To my perception, the politics and economics had played a significant part in bringing in the ‘tea habit’, contrary to ‘tea culture’. Taking tea is discouraged by Swadeshi followers on the plea that tea is ‘injurious to heath’ and a ‘foreign’ drink. Gandhian political agenda against tea was directed to ‘tea habit’.

Gandhiji and other leaders during the Swadeshi Movement

Gandhi, once himself a tea lover, recommended his atypical ‘Tea Recipe’ for the mass that had no tea leaves in it to risk habit formation. ^Sanyal It seems to be his Swadeshi fervor that made a scientist like Acharya P.C. Ray to declare tea a poisonous drink ignoring factual findings. In response, the Tea Board did publish a statement of Dr. Meghnad Saha in favour of tea, to counter Swadeshi deterrent. There had been also a section of Brahmos and their sympathizers who boycotted tea in protest of British planters’ inflicting torture on the coolies found and reported first by Ramkumar Vidyaratna and Dwarkanath Ganguly, two volunteers of Sadharan Brahmosamaj ^Banerjee. The political aversion to tea was an issue reflected in Naukadubi of Rabindranath, Parinita of Saratchandra, and possibly many more contemporary stories. Interestingly, both the writers and most of their contemporaries and immediate successors happened to be tea devotees. So was Swami Vivekananda.^VivekanandaThe kind of tea they enjoyed was generally the British black tea, with milk/ sugar, or none just like the one Abdul Rahman served to Syed Mujtaba Ali in 1930’s Kabul (vide Deshe-Bideshe).

When people drink tea, they are expected to acquire certain manners and behave in a particular way, in terms of which a tea culture is defined. Tea etiquette, styles of tea-ware, ambience of tearooms – all contribute to a tea culture distinguished from all others. Close interactions between any two cultures enrich both. We have understood this better in this era of rapid globalization, which is also an era of collaborative entrepreneurship. The manufacturing of Chinese tea-pots in British fashions is a case in hand. The Chinese, so far we know, brewed tea directly in the cup instead of using a teapot, which they never had. The traditional Chinese teacups had a lid but no handles, presumably because they liked to feel the warmth of the tea while holding the cup. If it’s too hot to hold, it’s too hot to drink. Fixing handle, or ear, to a cup is an idea implemented by the British. The design of teapot we use today is basically European. The first teapots created in Europe were of a heavy cast with short, straight, replaceable spouts. “At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the East India Company recognized the growing demand for such items as teapots and began importation in larger numbers. The company commissioned china directly from Chinese artists and craftsmen, using patterns sent from England and geared to European tastes, stereotypes, and market values”. Designs fell into four main areas (1) mock-ups of Oriental designs, (2) designs adapted from European prints, (3) coat of arms for major European families,(4) and the innovative teapots -such as those with the now standard internal spout drain. The Company directors were especially concerned that teapots not drip and so stain the valuable linen that they also marketed. ^Anonymous]

Kyūsu back hand(le) teapot), Taishō era ca. 1921-1925

e and white ceramic tea-set of China

Uwade kyūsu top hand(le) teapot

Kyūsu – a common Japanese teapot, often with its handle on the pot’s side and spout crafted with an angle

Gaiwan or zhong is a Chinese lidded bowl without handle used for the infusion of tea leaves and the consumption of tea. Ming dynasty. It consists of a bowl, a lid, and a saucer. Courtesy: Sözdizimi Kullanıcı deneyimi

Not only teapots but the entire range of tea-ware was fashioned by the British, often with Indian motifs and materials, and increasingly by Indian artisans in spite of their being obliged to do work by hand, while the Europeans both accelerated and perfected by means of machinery. ^Williamson The tea-set, including cups and saucers, tea-spoons and tea-strainers, milk-jug and sugar-pot, teapot, tea cozies, tea-mats, sets the mood of a tea drinker before s/he takes tea. Tea-drinkers ‘take tea’ in a special way, which, I fear cannot be described aptly by any English verbs that we know. Surely, it is not that we ‘drink’ tea as we do drink milk or water, or even coffee. We do not sip tea like sherbet either, but do it by faint smacking of our lips inaudibly on the brim of the tea cup and relish slowly the enigmatic taste and aroma of the golden liquid afloat inside.Tea retains a strong association with nature. A good tearoom must be having a like ambience with windows to allow natural light, and flowers around.

Newspaper Reading. Courtesy: @Sholoana Bangaliana

Flury’s 2008. Courtesy: Flury’s

Tearoom at Tea-Pot, Fort Kochi

Tearoom is quite different from a coffee shop, which often tend to be set up more like a bar, offering quick coffee drinks that can be drunk while standing or while seated on a bar stool or similar chair unsuited for long sitting.^Goodwin Tearoom needs everything there should be styled to allow sitting for hours long as tea incites endless parleying – being an acknowledged stimulant for adda, or rap sessions without agenda. Tea and adda are inseparable components of tea culture.

TeaTable @Purwaaii. – Friends Caffe. Courtesy: Kolkata on Wheel. – Adda. Courtesy: @Scoopwhoop. – India Coffee House, Albert Hall

The word ‘adda’, found in Sanskrit and Pali literature was used in various senses by ancient writers, like Bharata and Chanyakya. ^Das As it was broadly indicated, adda once meant a place of assemblage for a purpose, like the ‘Buddhist adda’ once found in old Dhurrumtollah Street. The modern usage of the word broadens its import. As Collins Word online suggests, ‘It is a form of intellectual exchange among members. They talk about almost everything in jovial mood’. In context of tearoom, adda simply means chatting or free discussions with no agenda, participated by regulars and casuals as often as they like. It is a process of exchanging minds on any subjects imaginable. It is a common privilege of the tea-room goers to take part in adda but not without submitting to the unspoken norms of tea-culture prevailing there. While the tea-room-adda is a global trend, its pattern of behavior differs widely depending on the given living standards and traditions.

Japanese takes no sugar in tea, and their teahouse never serves sugar determinedly, but obliges customers cordially if they want it for sweetening an English tea instead. The English, while taking tea, detests letting out audibly a ‘ssss’ sound of breath through the mouth past the tongue. Appreciation of sound depends on one’s culture. It needs a cultured refinement to appreciate a pianissimo in western or Hindustani classical music, when a bursting sound of fireworks needs no cultural refinement at all. Appreciation of a quality black tea can never be expected from uninitiated tea drinkers to whom an herbal tea is the best choice and an orthodox black tea insipid.

Fortune the China Tea Smuggler © 2019 Les Films de la Mémoire

Agents of the Assam Tea Company of Prince Dwarkanath. Source: . @cambridgeDigitalLibrary

We learnt from history that India have had tea before the British smuggled the Chinese tea to India. Along with the tea plants they also brought in India the stolen Chinese know-how of tea gardening, which India never had occasion to know because of not having any tea gardens but forests of tea trees. The tea habit in India was grown initially by the British through massive propaganda launched by the governmental agencies and industries for economic gain. Their objectives were only to introduce tea to the people and promote sales. One has only to glimpse through the old newspaper ads and publicity posters to realize nothing was there to motivate a tea culture. Neither the study books tell about the tea etiquette, nor any leaders spoke anything contributing to the tea culture, yet the India historically speaking has imbibed a strong cultural affinity toward tea. And that culture, largely in British way, but certainly not exclusively British, as we have already exemplified in my last post ‘Ways of life in colonial Calcutta’. The scenario of Calcutta tea culture found in the hundred year old Favourite Cabin crowded by the firebrand intellectuals had little in common with Flury’s grand ambience except that they both served black tea in ceramic cups. It is unthinkable for the Favourite Cabin to keep Flury’s gentle silence with the presence of a buoyant Nazrul at tea table.

ANYTIME TEA TIME Courtesy: Tea-Pot, Fort Kochi

Their tea-table manners were also more like Indian. As the expert admits that whatever tea seeds you sowed in Darjeeling, it grows to a ‘Darjeeling tea’; similarly, the British tea culture grown in India turns into Indianize British tea culture, more Indian than British. European ladies and gentlemen have always some fixed times for socialization over warm cups of tea, while in Indian culture it is anytime a tea time

Here, in India, it is adda that takes the first position in defining tea culture. The old deshi tea-rooms in Calcutta never cared much for manners and etiquette unlike the British ones. The tea-rooms were being used in Calcutta as meeting spots for lively exchange of minds and hearts, sharing views and news with known, half-known folks or even strangers. The spirit was somewhat akin to the Oxford coffeehouses of 1650s, where ‘the mind-stimulating benefits of the beverage complemented the spirit of sober academic discussion and debate evident at the university there’.^White After 1860s, tea took the place of coffee as the major beverage and served in the British coffee houses, including ‘Mr. Lloyd’s Coffee-house’ in London, favoured by ship owners, merchants, and marine insurers – the origin of the celebrated insurance firm, Lloyd’.

Interior of a London Coffee-house, 17th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Edward Lloyd’s coffee house in the late seventeenth century

These archaic coffeehouses were called ‘penny universities, because for a penny any man could obtain there a pot of tea, a copy of the newspaper, and engage in free conversation with wits. They served as a basic model for the English gentlemen’s private clubs popularized by English upper middle-class men and women in the late 19th century and early 20th century. By the close of the 18th century the popularity of coffeehouses had declined dramatically. Already by the 1750s consumption of tea, which many people found to be a sweeter, more palatable drink of choice, easy to make and cheaper, was beginning to rise. ^Cowan

The Club. Engraving by James Doyle

Literary and Political Clubs rose in popularity and the frivolities of coffee-drinking were lost in more serious discussion. Tea was also gaining in importance as Society’s beverage of choice. The East India Company at this time had a greater interest in the tea trade than the coffee trade. The Government’s policy was to foster trade with India and China and it offered encouragements to anything that would stimulate the demand for tea. Tea had become fashionable at Court and in the Tea Houses and was growing in popularity with the public. ^Boswell

India never had a coffee culture parallel to English one, its production and consumption being confined in some South Indian states, yet it seems that the bygone institution of British coffeehouse had surprising similarity with the tearoom culture developed in colonial Calcutta.

III

This century begins with a startling fresh digital memory of billions of terabytes to absorb the swiftly outdating modern-time and an alarmingly fast growing social dementia making the yesterdays already fuzzy in public mind. I fear, we have already forgotten many old acquisitions. The tea culture is one such thing. The millennium citizens become insentient to identify its fine distinctions. We pain to see tea is now being redefined in terms of the medicinal masala chai that was in vogue before the beginning of the tea cultivation – a long stride backward.

The real tea has lost its relevance in the 21st century society. A recent opinion survey of NDTV on Tea versus Coffee discloses the increasing popularity of coffee among Indians. It was ‘a moment of triumph for the coffee shops walked into a tea-drinking country’ offering a luxurious and genteel beverage as alternative.^{Channi-Tiwary} Some historians of coffee-house culture, however, were skeptical of the innate politeness of coffee since there were also some coffee-houses like a Molly King’s Coffee-House, notorious haunts of London’s lowlife.^White

As indicated before, coffee-culture in India has been geographically restricted and historically insignificant, contrary to the British experience. Coffee had the same place in London and Oxford of 17^th and 18^th centuries as the tea had in colonial India. Coffeehouses were then club-house like joints somewhat akin to Indian tearooms in spirit. The rejoinders of NDTV survey marked a reverse trend of opening up across the country tearooms like Chaayos, Taj Mahal Tea House, Bubble Tea Café, etc. These offer the comfort of a beverage many of us love, reinvented and served in a relaxed and casual café environment. ^{Channi-Tiwary}

April this year, Quora published an interesting response to their question ‘Why do the majority of Indians like tea rather than coffee?’ The responder claims it was not tea but coffee, black or espresso, what the majority of Indians prefer. It was also observed that some senior citizens still stick to tea out of habit, and currently many people take green tea because it is good for health. ^Quora The tea habit is a concept closely related to tea culture, which is still being maintained by the senior citizens, and most likely it will end with them, leaving an assortment of reinvented herbal chai for the newer generations broken away from nearly two thousand year tradition of Lu Yü to start a new one from zero.

Before Calcutta bids it a farewell, we may recite a requiem to the tea culture, remembering some good things it did to our society:

The early tearoom in Calcutta was a place to take tea, talk, read news, and collect worldly knowledge paying a thin dime just for the cup of tea; everything else were free. We may call those tearooms by the name of Penny University as the Londoners did for their Coffee shops operated in mid-18^th Century as cheap learning centres. Among other things tearooms in Calcutta helped bringing about necessary attitudinal change to tolerate differences in socio-cultural values and political idiosyncrasies.
Tea has been popular among rich and poor. It had an egalitarian character that incited rich social mixing. Vernacular tearooms, or deshi tearooms, offered space for meeting with friends and strangers free from the social conventions of class and deference.
Tea has no arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, neither the simpering innocence of cocoa. ^Okakura The cups that cheer but not inebriate.^Cowper The tearoom has a ‘civilizing’ atmosphere, and a role in urbanizing the migrants from less advantaged locations. It was analogous to musafirkhana where travelers get first taste of the city life, or where students get oriented to new campus life.
Tea was instrumental in bringing family together. Even before the introduction of instant tea bag, making a cup of tea has always been a simple and quick process for anyone to perform. Taking tea comfortably at home prepared by the caring hands of fair ladies was a good reason for meeting family members and family friends more frequently.
Tea-making happens to be also a new occupation for a housewife. Women for the first time through tea parties, take leading position in social gatherings, administering tea-shops or running tea-stalls.
Tea in India and many other places, like Ireland, is served as a gracious offering to guests as welcoming gesture. Tea has been a symbol of bonhomie in tribal as well as in civilized society. To the writer of Religion of Man, Rabindranath Tagore, making tea personally for his guests was always a pleasure. ^{^Chanda.}
Tagore with Count Okuma, PM Japan at tea in 1916

Every human institution decays, so does the tea culture. History records ups and downs, and often interprets every step in terms of their relationship with immediate past and latest trends. Likewise we may consider the followings as possible reasons why the tea culture goodbying Calcutta, the city that nurtured it.

It is the altering value systems of the city that destabilized the climatic condition necessary for the tea culture to sustain. To the millennium everything advertised in the name of ‘tea’, for example, gulabi tea, mallai tea, etc. are readily acceptable as tea. Except the manufacturing companies, not many are there who can smell the difference between a bagged black tea and orthodox leaf tea..

The litterateur and intelligentsia, like Nazrul Islams and Subhas Boses, ceased to be seen in deshi tearooms. The plebian city sticklers occupied the empty seats there for quick energizing sips.
The newspaper in tearoom has lost importance. Current affairs and general knowledge are now readily and cheaply available in social media. The dwindling leisure time in modern life is almost entirely used up by mobile chatting, which is largely responsible for making the generation lonely and egocentric, apathetic to tearoom culture.

∞

REFERENCE

Anonymous. (2009). History of Tea, LGOL27 Portal. Last updated : 23-Feb-09. https://www.gol27.com/HistoryTeaChina.html
Banerjee, Dipankar. (2006). Brahmo Samaj and North-East India. Delhi: Anamika. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=GE2o4QQV7UgC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Ramkumar+Vidyaratna+and+Dwarkanath+Ganguly&source=bl&ots=6ominLanpJ&sig=ACfU3U2mTX2VU3Z25u5yr1of9Og3mh2bBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNgLjk7cbmAhV_zjgGHYewBpQQ6AEwA3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ramkumar%20Vidyaratna%20and%20Dwarkanath%20Ganguly&f=false
Bengal District Gazetteers: Darjeeling ; Ed.by Arthur Jules Dash. (1947). Calcutta: G.P.Press. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.150149
Boswell, James. (1791). The life & times of Doctor Samuel Johnson. Stories of London – portahttp://stories-of-london.org/samuel-johnson-5/
Chakraborty, Sumita. 2016. “শান্তিনিকেতনে চিন ও জাপান.” Parabas, 2016. https://www.parabaas.com/rabindranath/articles/pSumita_china-japan.html
Chanda, Rani (2007). Gurudev. Calcutta: Visvabharati. https://archive.org/details/Gurudeb-Rani-Chanda
Channi-Tiwary, Harnoor. (2018). Tea vs Coffee: Which is India’s Favourite Hot Beverage? In: NDTV Convergence, Updated: March 12, 2018 https://food.ndtv.com/opinions/tea-vs-coffee-which-is-indias-favourite-hot-beverage-1246860
Cowan, Brian. (2005). The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. Yale UP. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjq4JGVmsfmAhUpzjgGHb0hB-MQFjABegQIAhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbhsecglobal.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F03%2Fsocial-life-of-coffee.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2ynOBv82H95N20ip5E-Ikg
Das, Jnanendra Mohan. (1917). Bangla Bhasar Abhidhan ( বাঙ্গালা ভাষার অভিধান). Allahabad: Indian Press. https://archive.org/details/Bangla_Bhasar_Abhidhan_1917_by_Jnanendra_Mohan_Das
Ellis, Markman. (2014). Tea, the second most widely consumed drink, after water — a meme. Tea in Eighteenth-Century Britain April 21, 2014. https://qmhistoryoftea.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/tea-the-second-most-widely-consumed-drink-after-water-a-meme/
Goodwin, Lindsey (2017) Coffee Bar Definition. The Pruce Eats Portal. Updated 11/27/17
https://www.thespruceeats.com/coffee-bar-definition-765033
Koehler, Jeff. (2015). Darjeeling: a history of the world’s greatest tea. London: Bloomsbury. https://www.goodreads.com/user/new?remember=true
Lu Yu. (1974). Cha ching. The classic of tea. Boston; 1st ed. Little, Brown
https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Tea-Origins-Rituals/dp/0880014164/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1/147-0179330-7137150?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0880014164&pd_rd_r=dddc49fc-6a1f-4754-b82c-ffc76e13cbcb&pd_rd_w=zAATb&pd_rd_wg=mR0UB&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=HC08A16M8H6139AZTY99&psc=1&refRID=HC08A16M8H6139AZTY99
Mandelslo, Johann Albrecht von. 1669. Voyages Celebres & Remarquables, Faits de Perse Aux Indes Orientales. London: John Starkey, and Thomas Basset. https://archive.org/details/voyagescelebresr00mand/page/n8.
Okakura, Kakuzō . (1906), The Book of Tea. London: Putman’s
https://archive.org/details/bookoftea00okakrich/page/n8
Quora, Opinion survey (2015).Why most of the Indians like tea but not coffee? Quora Portal. Ap 14 2015
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-majority-of-Indians-like-tea-rather-than-coffee
Sanyal, Amitava. 2012. “Mahatma Gandhi and His Anti-Tea Campaign.” BBC News Magazine, May 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17905975.
Sirkin, Austin. (2013). Hey, America—You’re Drinking Your Tea Wrong! In: WonderHowTo Portal. 01/10/2013. https://steampunk.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hey-america-youre-drinking-your-tea-wrong-0141235/
White, Matthew. (2018). Newspapers, gossip and coffee-house culture. In: British Library newsletter; 21 June 2018. https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/newspapers-gossip-and-coffee-house-culture

TEA: A BRITISH GIFT TO INDIA

December 3, 2019british rule, Company Rule, Cultural, Industrial Houses, Life Styles, Living Conditions, Natural EnvironmentAgricultural and Horticultural Society, Archibald Campbell, Assam Tea Companies, Beesa Gam, Bengal Presidency, Bengal Tea Association in Calcutta, biodiversity, Botanic Garden, C. K. Robison, C. Macsween, Calcutta Botanic Gardens, CAMELLIA CHINOIS, Camellia drupifera, Captain David Scott, Captain Francis Jenkins, Captain Robert Bruce, Charles Alexander Bruce, Charles Darwin, Charles E. Trevelyan, Chinnamara Tea Gardens, commerce, Committee of Tea Culture, Darjeeling, Dr. N. Wallich, dwarkanath, Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, first Commissioner of Assam, G. J. Gordon, George James Gordon, I-tsing, India's War of Independence, industrial revolution, J. R. Colvin, J. W. Grant, James Pattle, Jenkinsia Hook, John McClelland, John Tytler, Joint Stock Company, Kanan Devan, Karl Friedrich Gutzlaff, Kumaon plantation, Lieutenant Andrew Charlton, Lomariopsidaceae, Maniram, Mughal garden, Nathalien Wallich, Oolong Souchong, R. D. Colquhoun, R. D. Mangles, Radakant Deb, Ram Comul Sen, Robert Fortune, Robert Wilkinson, Sadiya, Saharanpur, Singphos, Tea Committee, Tea Martyr of India, Tea Plantation, Toklai Tea Gardens, Western Ghats, William Griffithঅযান্ত্রিক

BACKDROP
Tea might have been tasted by an Indian in around 1040 AD while the British did it before 1662 AD, and in no time the British Tea Culture came about some three centuries ahead of India’s courtship with tea. Around 1040 AD when Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna, the great preacher of Buddhism, was in Tibet, the Dharma King made offerings to all lamas and served tea and victuals to monastic congregations. Atiśa being the King’s honoured guest must have enjoyed drinking tea that time. His experience with Tibetan cup of tea died with him in 1054 AD at Lhasa. By that time, according to the oral history of the Singphos, India must have started growing tea forest in the North-East.

AtisaDipakar — Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna Buddhist Preacher in Tibet c.1054 AD

THE WILD TEA OF THE SINGPHO
Singphos are the same people as those called the Kachin in Burma and the Jingpo in China – a colourful tribe of Mongolian origin. Singphos have a very rich heritage of oral folklore, leaving deep traces in history of Assam. They spoke of their ancestors migrated from somewhere in the highland of Mongolia in B.C. 600-300 to their abode in the hills of Singra-Boom in Tibet . From there they formed several groups among themselves. Of these groups one went to China, one to Myanmar and one of them migrated to the Indian hilly region. Around B.C.300– A.D.100 the Singpho entered Brahmaputra valley. They brought with them their linguistic traditions and culture, and their affinity to tea being an integrated part of their mode of living. They speak Jingpo language in Singpho dialect that shares a degree of similarity with Tibetan and serves as lingua franca among Kachins.
Singphos were the most powerful and influential tribes of Lushai mountain range in Mizoram. The John Company remained indebted to them for building its tea empire on the borrowed resources generously provided by the Singpho chief, Beesa Gam in 1883. Singpho people are believed to be among India’s first tea drinkers and traditionally engaged in tea cultivation. To this day, they continue to process tea by first heating the leaves in a metal pan until they brown, and then sun-drying them for a few days. When processed and brewed correctly, a cup of Singpho tea, which is had without milk or sugar, is a lovely golden-orange colour. The leaves can be reused to brew three or four cups, the flavour getting better with each infusion. Singphos also use white tea flowers, pan fried and served with rice. The traditional processing of tea, they believe, retains its medicinal value. [Sarita]
Not only in India, as the history reveals, tea has been introduced everywhere as a health drink. Taking tea as refreshment is a recent phenomenon comes in vogue before tea turns out to be a mode of socialization.

Because the term ‘tea’ often used to mean ‘herbal tea’, other than to a Camellia variety, we are not sure of the significance of some rare references to ‘tea’ (or ‘chay’) in Vedic literature found in Caraka Samhita’s ‘Pancha Karma’ prescribing heating pastes, teas, and keep them in warm chambers.’ [Charaka Samhita] There have been, however, some evidences of tea consumption found amongst the people of Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh.

Okakura Tensing (1863-1913)

I-tsing a 7th century Chinese Buddhist

Shennong as depicted by Gan Bozong, Tea God

Cha Dao Lu T’ung author of ‘Song of Tea’ (618–906 ad)

They follow the ancient tradition of preparing beverages Thang by boiling Camellia/Taxus /Acacia in water like decoction, and the Ccha Chah, a salty tea, by adding dry walnut powder, black pepper, milk (optional), butter and salt. [Negi] I-tsing a 7th century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who left behind an account of his ten-year sojourn (676-685) in Nalanda said to have noted semi medicinal use of tea brew in India. [Achaya]
Much later in 1638, in a curious account of Albert de Mandelslo, a young gentleman of Holstein who visited Seurat that time described how they took only thè (tea) “commonly used all over the Indies, not only among those of the country, but also among the Dutch and the English, who take it as a drug that cleanses the stomach, and digests the superfluous humours, by a temperate heat particular thereto.” [Wheeler]
Mandelslo’s tea account incidentally coincides with the initiation of Tea in England of King Charles II, discarding our notion that Britain discovered tea before India did. Moreover, contrary to the popular views, tea no more considered a foreign breed, but a native crop of India. If not in Vedic age, tea must have been here since the beginning of the Christian era when the Singphos crossed Brahmaputra and made India their home amidst the tea forests they grew as a part of their mode of living. The tea trees remain in the Singpho land hidden from modern civilization until the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

TEA EXPLORERS
The modern history of Indian tea begins in 1823 when the tribal chieftain Beesa Gaum graciously handed two tea plants to Captain Robert Bruce in exchange of a musical snuffbox – a gift from Bruce. This exchange of friendly gifts took place because of the initiatives of two protagonists of native tea, Captain Bruce and Dewan Maniram.

Maniram Dewan (1806-1858)
Maniram Dutta Baruah, was a nobleman domiciled Assamese from Kannauj ever remembered for his lifelong commitment to native tea plantation, besides his activism. In the year 1839, Maniram joined Assam Tea Company at Nazira as Dewan but quitted the job next year to try his hand in tea cultivation

Dewan Maniram Dutta Baruah (1806 – 1858)

Chinnamara Tea Garden of Dewan Maniram

independently. Finally in 1845 he developed Chinnamara and Toklai Tea Gardens, the first plantations owned by any native Indian, much to the dislike of his rival European tea planters who, according to some, by instigating the Company administration against Maniram for his alleged anti-British role succeeded in getting Maniram’s tea estates confiscated and illegally auctioned to one Mr. George Williamson at a very nominal price. Maniram was sent to gallows on 26th February, 1858 on the plea of his involvement in Assam uprising, otherwise called India’s First War of Independence. Maniram Dewan became a martyr, the first Tea Martyr of India. There is yet another assumption that Maniram, once a loyal ally of the British East India Company, wanted to take the opportunity in 1857 mutiny to uproot British rule in favour of Ahom rule; and he did that particularly to avenge the interference of the white with his tea business. [Ghosal]

Captain Robert Bruce (1789-1824)
Captain Robert Bruce (1789-1824), born in Edinburgh, joined the army and eventually found himself involved in establishing opium plantations for the East India Company. Sometimes he was described as ‘a soldier of fortune’. [Bruce] It was presumably on the advice of the East India Company he arrived at Rongpur in 1823 to contact Maniram Dutta Baruah who had informed them earlier of the existence of indigenous tea in Assam. Captain Robert Bruce (1789-1824) died in 1824 just a year after he met Maniram, leaving his younger brother Charles to take up his lead.

Charles Alexander Bruce (1793-1871)
Charles Alexander Bruce approached the Singpho chieftain Beesa Gaum once again and obtained a canoe full of wild tea plants and seeds that he dispatched to officials in Assam and Calcutta, particularly to Captain David Scott, first Commissioner of Assam, and the rest he distributed liberally to all whom he thought might take interest. With the exception of one ‘army officer in Lucknow’ [Johnson] none of the recipients had an inkling of wild Assam tea. Captain Scott having realized its huge possibilities himself wrote to Wallich, the Empire’s arbiter on botanical matters, at Calcutta, for their cognizance and actions without any reference to Charles Bruce as his source. Nathaniel Wolff Wallich (1786- 1854), an FRCS surgeon and botanist of Danish origin, was however never serious about indigenous tea as he staunchly believed that true tea grew nowhere but in China. Moreover, as it seems, the samples consisting of mere tea leaves and seeds might not have been sufficient for identifying the species. The lots that Scott sent to Wallich in 1825, 1826 and then again in 1827, all reckoned as Camellia drupifera and not ‘true tea’. The Company authorities remained nonchalant so far Assam tea was concerned. They neither believed nor had any interest in India breed tea. Assam tea had to wait seven years more for getting recognized and finally certified through a zealous effort of an adventurous Lieutenant Andrew Charlton.

Lieutenant Andrew Charlton (≥1800- >1840)
Charlton was appointed in May 1826 to command the military post at Sadiya (Assamese সাদিয়া )in Upper Assam – he was there to serve as the official channel of communication with the Singpho and Khamti Chiefs, as well as exercising criminal jurisdiction over the tribes and promoting commercial relations etc. [Appointment Record. BL] In 1831 while working in the Assam Light Infantry, Charlton found tea growing in eastern Assam in the hill tracts around Sadiya . He had learnt to recognize tea trees during his sojourn in the Dutch East Indies. With the help of his resourceful gardener he acquired some tips about tea growing and some young tea plants that he cultivated in his own garden in Jorhat. Charlton sent four young tea trees to Dr. John Tytler in Calcutta, who planted them in the Botanic Garden, where they withered and died before they could be botanically investigated. [Driem]
When in October 1831 he came to Calcutta, Charlton brought with him a few plants which he presented to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society that was ignored by the Society as the sample size found too small. Next time, in November 1834 he sent tea plants with fruits to Wallich, which was found on examination convincing and finally declared that ‘Assam tea was as real as the tea of China’. Wallich wrote to the just established Tea Committee of Lieut. Charlton’s discovery of Assam tea on 6 December 1834.

Nathaniel Wallich. Lithograph by T. H. Maguire, 1849

Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911)

William Griffith (1810-1845)

Charles Alexander Bruce (1793-1871)

Tea Committee
The little attempts earlier made to cultivate tea in India and that too half-hearted. As long as the Company’s monopoly over China tea lasted, Calcutta, including its science establishment, closed their eyes to the possibility of tea in Assam. When the monopoly was broken by the 1833 Charter, the Company had nothing to hold on but to the prospect of new-found Assam tea or to cultivating imported tea plants on Indian soil. A 12-member Committee of Tea Culture was set up by Lord William Bentinck in 1834 to explore the possibility of a tea industry in India, with George James Gordon (Secretary), James Pattle (Chairman), J. W. Grant, R. D. Mangles, J. R. Colvin. Charles E. Trevelyan. C. K. Robison, Robert Wilkinson, R. D. Colquhoun, Dr. N. Wallich, C. Macsween. G. J. Gordon, Radakant Deb, and Ram Comul Sen.

Francis Jenkins (1793-1866)
The Committee sent out a circular asking for reports of areas where tea could be grown. The circular was responded almost immediately by one Captain Francis Jenkins. Jenkins joined the East India Company and sailed from England in 1810. He was deputed by the Company to undertake a survey of Assam, including Cachar and Manipur, during October 1832-April 1833, following its annexation by the British. Early 1833, Bruce told Jenkins privately and wrote him publicly that ‘the tea plants were growing wild all over the country’ [Kochhar]. Jennings must have been convinced also by the findings of Lt. Charlton of Assam Light Brigade under his jurisdiction. Jenkins reported the Committee of Tea Culture recommending strongly for Assam tea. Based on his report an experimental nursery was set up at Sadiya. Excellent tea was soon being produced. With help from Jenkins, commercial production rapidly developed, and by 1859, more than 7,500 acres in the region were devoted to tea cultivation. Jenkins reluctantly retired from service in 1861 but remained in Assam, dying at Guwahati in August 1866. A set of Jenkins’ journals and letters dating from 1810 to 1860s were brought to auction at Sotheby’s in 2009. The genus Jenkinsia Hook. (Lomariopsidaceae) was named for him. [JSTOR]

Tea smuggling form China

A Wardian case. sealed protective container for plants

Karl Friedrich Gutzlaff in Chinese garment

Robert Fortune (1812-1880)

Gardening Assam Tea replacing Wild Tea Forest
On 11 February 1835, the Committee appointed Charles Bruce as the in-charge of nurseries to be developed in Upper Assam, at Sadiya and other places. Two years after, Bruce was designated Superintendent of Tea Plantations. It was Charles who pioneered the use of the term ’tea garden’, a meaningful linguistic shift from ‘tea forest’ signifying the way tea produced in colonial environment, employing semi-mechanized systems . Charles Bruce, regarded as the Father of Indian Tea. [Sharma]
Upon the whole, there seems little reason to doubt that Assam then was physically capable of producing that important article, on which eight or nine millions of money was annually spent in the United Kingdom. Eight chests of Assam teas were auctioned in London in January 1839. This was the beginning of the end of Chinese domination of the tea market that had lasted a century and a half. [Gazetteer for Scottland]

Assam Tea Companies
The same year Prince Dwarkanath had formed the Bengal Tea Association in Calcutta – the first Indian enterprise to start tea cultivation [ Majumdar], and a Joint Stock Company was formed in London. These two companies got combined and formed the first Indian Tea Company called the ‘Assam Company’ – the first Joint Stock Company in India. Tea Plantation spreads beyond Assam across Indian landscape.

Camellia sinensis (China)

Camellia sinensis foliage

Camellia sinensis Assamica (India)

INDIANIZATION OF CAMELLIA CHINOIS
In spite of the incredible agronomical and commercial success of Assam tea, there remained a large section in East India Company unconvinced about its worth in comparison to the Chinese camellia. They were more eager to avail the Chinese saplings for domestication because of their qualitative supremacy over the wild Assam. To report on the earlier amateurish findings, a scientific delegation, headed by Wallich, the celebrated Danish-born botanist geologist, including the surgeon-naturalist John McClelland, and another celebrated botanist William Griffith, was sent to Assam in July 1835. Dr. Wallich maintained that since the native plants were actually tea, there was no need to import seeds from China.
The ‘young Turk’ Griffith, however, had completely a different view and pronounced emphatically that only by importing ‘Chinese seeds of unexceptionable quality’ could the ‘savage’ Assam plant be reclaimed as fine tea. As this wisdom was unquestioningly accepted, a young botanist, Robert Fortune working in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. Alongside, G. J. Gordon was instructed by the Calcutta Botanic Gardens to “smuggle tea seeds out of China.” [Ukers] A deputation, consisting of Messrs. Gordon and Karl Friedrich Gutzlaff, was then sent to the coasts of China to obtain tea seeds. They succeeded in obtaining seeds from southern China that arrived in Calcutta in January 1835, and being sown, vegetated and produced numerous plants. In the beginning of 1836 about 1326 saplings sent to North-East. The tea nurseries were formed at Kumaon and Gurhwal in the Himalayas, and immediately began to grow with all that vigor aided by a small band of Chinese tea-makers whom Dr. Wallich recruited for them in April 1842.
In January 1843, the first sample of Himalayan tea was received at the tea table of the British Chamber of Commerce and reportedly pronounced by the members that the fine kind of tea – Oolong Souchong, “flavored and strong, equal to the superior black tea generally sent as presents, and better for the most part than the China tea imported for mercantile purposes.” [Carey]

Robert Fortune, (1813 -1880)
Fortune was commissioned to undertake a three year plant collection expedition to southern China in 1842, and in 1848. Finally, it was on behalf of the East India Company, he went to remote Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province and in mid-February 1851 Fortune brought tea-filled especially designed ‘Wardian’ cases consisting of no fewer than 12,838 plants, 8 illegally immigrated Chinese tea-workers and tools of trade to Calcutta port via Hong Kong. Dr. Hugh Falconer, who had recently taken over from Wallich as superintendent of the Botanic Garden, received Fortune at Shibpore ferry ghat to take the sprouting tea-plants smuggled from China under his care. The tea plants then dispatched to Saharanpur, formerly a Mughal garden, at the lower foothill, and from there distributed to various Himalayan plantations. Some of that exceptional stock nurtured in Kumaon plantation made its way to Darjeeling, where it would eventually produce the world’s finest and most expensive teas. [Ukers]

DARJEELING TEA
Coming of tea to Darjeeling was something almost accidental. It was never considered as a place good for planting tea. Even Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911),

Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800-1894)

Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911)

founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin’s closest friend, thought of Darjeeling as a place too high with too little sun and too much moisture to grow tea. Dr. Archibald Campbell proved it all wrong within two years of his arrival at Darjeeling as the newly appointed Superintendent in 1839. Previously, when he was in Kathmandu working under renowned ethnologist and naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800-1894), Campbell was inspired by him to care the native flora and fauna with love. Among other plants in his home garden at the height of 7,000 feet, Campbell in 1841 sowed tea with stock that came from the nurseries in the western Himalayan foothills. The trees came to bear in the second half of that decade, and the Company inspector reported in 1853 that both Chinese and Assam varieties were doing well in Campbell’s garden.
Campbell established government sponsored tea nurseries in Darjeeling and Kurseong. While both types of leaf varieties were planted, Chinese ones were unexpectedly, successful. Plants from stock Fortune had smuggled out of China thrived in Darjeeling’s misty, high-elevation climate. The Company opening up land and clearing plots for tea gardens began to circulate plants for individuals and small companies. [Bengal District Gazetteers]
The commercial cultivation of tea was started in 1852-53 in Darjeeling with the Chinese variety of tea bushes. Today tea is grown in forty-five countries around the world, summer-flush Darjeeling has always been the best choice of the global connoisseurs, and the most expensive as well. [Koehler]

About 10 million kilograms of Darjeeling tea are grown every year spread over 17,500 hectares of land. [Marketing Analysts] India on an average produced 1233.14 million kilograms of tea between 2011 and 2016. North India produces nearly 5 times more than South; and West Bengal produces 329.60 million kg, which is little more than half of Assam. Darjeeling tea seems quantitatively too insignificant but qualitatively the highest among the best teas of the world. [IBEF]

TEA AND ITS SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
In a nutshell this is the story of Indian Tea, which the Britishers discovered, harvested, industrialized and monetized to secure their sovereignty, and left the tea legacy to India when they lost it. This over two hundred year long story tells us how the India’s own wild tea forests turned into tea gardens, and how the smuggled China tea was Indianize imbibing the essence of the mystic Himalayan, Western Ghats, Kanan Devan’s biodiversity.

Tea history, you might have already sensed, is highly illustrative for appreciating the process of cultural shifts leading to acculturation that took place in colonial India, Bengal Presidency in particular being the playground of both the Assam and the Darjeeling teas. Allow me to elaborate in my next post a few elements of the tea history for you to connect the ideas of acculturation I discussed earlier.
Happy New Year

REFERENCE

Achaya, K. T. (1997). Indian Food: A Historical Companion. Oxford: UP. https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Indian_Food.html?id=CKIJAAAACAA
Bengal District Gazetteers: Darjeeling ; Ed.by Arthur Jules Dash. (1947). Calcutta: G.P.Press. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.150149
Bruce, Charles. (1840) The First story is an 1838 Account of the Manufacture of Black Tea as practiced at Suddeya in Upper Assam. In: Koi-Hai. December 6, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20061220204732/http://livn-an.com/tearoom/bruce/
Carey, William H. (1964 ). The good old days of Honorable John Company; being curious reminiscences during the rule of the East India Company from 1600-1858, complied from newspapers and other publications. Calcutta: Quins. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Good+Old+Days+Of+Honorable+John+Company+From+1800+To+1858%3B+W.+Carey

Charaka Samhita; Edited by Gabriel van Loon. (2003). Handbook on Ayurveda; Volume I. Durham: Center for Ayurveda. https://archive.org/details/GabrielVanLoonCharakaSamhitaVol1Eng/page/n1
Driem, George L. van . (2019).The Tale of Tea: A Comprehensive History of Tea from Prehistoric Times to the present time. Leiden: BRILL. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Z6WODwAAQBAJ&pg=PA625&lpg=PA625&dq=Lieutenant+andrew+charlton+tea+Assam&source=bl&ots=baf_hPx8hM&sig=ACfU3U0t3UX-zqmLIVkXUuoXF3VXwdFEvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfpf2KuLTlAhXQbn0KHa9mAHwQ6AEwBHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Lieutenant%20andrew%20charlton%20tea%20Assam&f=false

Gazetteer for Scottland. (2017). Robert Bruce (1789–1824). In: Gazetteer for Scottland. Edinburgh: University. https://www.scottish-places.info/people/famousfirst3224.html
Ghosal, Ranjan Kumar (2019), Indian history buff. Quora July1, 2019. https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-role-of-Maniram-Dewan-in-the-Revolt-of-1857
Griffith, William. (1847). Journals of travels in Assam, Burma, Bootan, Afghanistan and the
neighbouring countries. Calcutta: Bishop’s College. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15171/15171-h/15171-h.htm
(2018). Tea Industry and Exports in India. In: India Brnad Equity Foundation – Portal. Last Updated: December, 2018. https://www.ibef.org/
Johnson, George W. (1843). Stranger in India; or, Three years in Calcutta; v.1. London: Golburn. https://ia902702.us.archive.org/22/items/strangerinindia00johngoog/strangerinindia00johngoog.pdf
Global Plant Resource. [Search Engine] https://plants.jstor.org/login?redirectUri=%2Fstable%2F10.5555%2Fal.ap.person.bm000329174%3fsaveItem=true%5D
Kochhar, Rajesh. (2013). Natural history in India during the 18th and 19th centuries. in Journal of Biosciences 38(2) June 2013. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236674827_Natural_history_in_India_during_the_18th_and_19th_centuries
Koehler, Jeff. (2015). Darjeeling: a history of the world’s greatest tea. London: Bloomsbury. https://www.goodreads.com/user/new?remember=true
Majumdar, Sumit K. (2012) India’s Late, Late Industrial Revolution: Democratizing Entrepreneurship. Cambridge: Univ. Pres.
Negi, Vineeta, and ors. (2018). Tea Kinnauri, Thang & Namkeen chai: an Ayurvedic In: World Journal of Pharmaceutical Research. Volume 7, Issue 18, 638-649. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328802003_Tea_Kinnauri_Thang_and_Namkeen_Chai_an_Ayurvedic_Perspective_A_review
Santoshini, Sarita. (2016). Singpho Tea Party. In: Traveller India, Natgeo, february 22, 2016 http://www.natgeotraveller.in/singpho-tea-party-the-story-behind-the-brew/
Sharma, Jayeeta (2011). Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India. London: Duke University. https://books.google.com/books?id=W2dtxgZba6MC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=a+significant+linguistic+shift,+from+%E2%80%9Ctea+forests%E2%80%9D+to+%E2%80%9Ctea+gardens&source=bl&ots=3_FfCbYj0-&sig=ACfU3U03VGNWmyb4pgp4UskXlr7w-ZBkZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiI5a62mKvlAhXyxlkKHV9wA3oQ6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=a%20significant%20linguistic%20shift%2C%20from%20%E2%80%9Ctea%20forests%E2%80%9D%20to%20%E2%80%9Ctea%20gardens&f=false
Wheeler, J Talboys (1878). Early Recods of British India: A history of the English settlements in India. Calcutta: Newman. https://ia800208.us.archive.org/17/items/earlyrecordsofbr00wheeuoft/earlyrecordsofbr00wheeuoft.pdf
William Ukers. (1935). All about tea; v.1. New York: Tea & Coffee Association Trade Journal Company. https://archive.org/details/AllAboutTeaV1/page/n9

ARMENIAN GHAT PAVILION: An update of 28 May 2015 post

July 16, 2019bathing ghats, british rule, Ferry Ghats/ Harbors, Life Stylesarches, armenian ghat, canopy, cast iron, ghat pavilion, Lithography, manvel hazaar maliyan, mullick ghat, Mullik Ghat, Orell Fussli, Photochrom Zurich, photography, pillars, river ghat, wrought ironঅযান্ত্রিক

আর্মেনি ঘাট মণ্ডপ

This is one other instance of mistaken identity of Armenian Ghat, which is often being called Mullick Ghat or Mullik Ghat by laymen and scholars alike. The root cause of such a mistake probably lies in our inattention to the fact that the river ghat and the ghat pavilion are two distinctive entities. It becomes a knotty problem when a new ghat replaces a ruined one by reconstructing its ghat-steps, and erecting a new pavilion. As we all know, Armenian Ghat and Mullick Ghat existed close to each other with their separate structure and unique history, but a few know how close they were in terms of yardsticks and timetables so that their identities never get lost . We already discussed these issues in earlier posts.

Photochrom Zurich, is the company behind the production and distribution of this type of event, this photochrome is an authentic photochrome of their house. Every image produced by them is referenced in gold letters in the lower left corner: 20036.PZ. The photochrome is a process that borrows applications from photography and lithography. The proof is produced from a black-and-white negative and then processed using a color lithographic method. The invention was deposited in 1888 by the Swiss company Orell Fussli, then presented to the public at the 1889 World Fair in Paris.

A black-and-white negative used for colored lithograph of Armenian Ghat

Besides the identity issue, the publisher provided us with a misleading information about the pavilion structure, which was made of wrought iron and not ‘of wood’ as stated. “A singularly beautiful lacy cast iron canopy with arches and pillars – distinguishes Armenian Ghat from all brick and stone pavilions of those days. In the mid-18th century, the rich Armenian trader Manvel Hazaar Maliyan had shipped in an elaborate cast iron facade for the Armenian Ghat ..”
Sebanti Sarkar, who did a fascinating study (2017) on colonial architecture in consultation with celebrated architect Professor Manish Chakrabarti, observed that the elegance of the lacy floral motif fashioned in cast iron aroused a general interest in using ornamental wrought iron to beautify public places, corporate buildings as well as family mansions. Calcutta elites assumed the ‘newer aesthetics of living’. The merchants and, zamindars, munshis and baniyas found it appropriate to adopt the new hallmark and style of power. Gradually innovative patterns evolved admixing different European with traditional Bengali motifs. Local variety of cast iron grilles, bells and whistles, sometimes twined with religious icons or family insignia became affordable and popular by early 1900s. [See: Sarkar]

Living in Style in I9th Century Calcutta. Courtesy: Timorous Traveler

REFERENCE

Ajantrik. 2015. “Armenian Ghat, Calcutta. 1734.” Puronokolkata.Com. 2015. https://puronokolkata.com/2015/05/28/armenian-ghat-calcutta-1734/.
Ajantrik. 2018. “Mallick Ghat and the Jagannath Steamer Ghat.” Puronokolkata.Com. 2018. https://puronokolkata.com/2018/08/22/mullick-ghat-and-the-jagannath-steamer-ghat/.
Park, Keith. 2010. “Introduction to Photochromes.” Photographers Resource. http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/photography/history/introduction_to_photochromes.htm.
Sarkar, Sebanti. 2017. “Tudor Roses at the Ghoses.” Hindu. 2017. https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/tudor-roses-at-the-ghoshes/article19819052.ece.
Timorous Traveler. 2010. “Poetry in Iron- The Charm of Old Kolkata Balconies.” Sights and Sounds of Kolkata. 2010. https://pedantictraveler.blogspot.com/2010/03/poetry-in-iron-charm-of-old-kolkata.html.

DHURRUMTOLLAH STREET: WAY TO BENGAL RENAISSANCE

May 9, 2019Appliances/ Amenities, Bazaars/Superstores, Bengal Renaissance, Blacks, british rule, Communications, Company Rule, Educational Institution, Export/ Import, Industrial Houses, Life Styles, Living Conditions, Locales, New Township, People, Racial Profile, Religious Profile, Shops/ Markets, Ways of Life, Whitesamerican unitarian, and music records, andrew yule, animal-drawn carts, atheist teacher, auctioneers, barbarians, bengali mind-set, bengali renaissance, birbhum gravel, birji, bond and free, book-sellers, bowreah cotton mills, brahmoite, bullocks, burrabazar, calcutta connections, Camels, camera shops, capital goods surman’s park, carrebean, chandney bazar, chandney market, chemists, chowringhee, city of shop-keepers, coach-making, colinga, construction, consumer goods, coolies, david drummond, David Hare, dean mohamet, dharmatala, dharmathakur, dhurrumtollah academy, dhurrumtollah bazar, dhurrumtollah milieu, dingabhanga, doctors, dundee, dwarkanath, edward ives, elephants, engineers, entrepreneurial backwardness, esplanade, ethiop, eura¬sians, european district, expatriated british, fort gloster, fort william, free society, global town, govindpore, govindpore fort, gramophone players, grey town, gueber, hair-dressing, hammersmith high¬way, hindu, horse doctors, horsemen, horses, indian entrepreneurship, industrial capitalist, industrial production, industrial revolution, industrialization, industrialization produced a new market economy, international commerce, jala colinga, james augustus hickey, Jaunbazar, jew, jewelers, job opportunities, jurymen, justice le maitre, jute mill, Kumartooly, learning society, lifestyle, lindsay street, lord clive, madan theatres, manchester chamber of commerce, medical practitioners, midwifes, mobilization, mookherji’s magazine, murgihatta, mussulman, octavius, or palanquin-bearers, p c ray, park street, photographers, photographic studios, pritaram das, professional cameramen, professors of music, projectors and films, public-private partnership, publicans, rani rashmoni, rishra, road-labourers, Rudyard Kipling, sambhoo churn, scythians, shoe-making, Sobhabazar, steam- industries, tailoring, talpooker, taltola, tank square, tanning, tavern-keeping, textile industry, the mind-makers, town calcutta, transportation, under¬takers, watch-making, western education, white town, wine-dealing, young bengalঅযান্ত্রিক

A triple portrait of the East India Company ship Royal Charlotte – Indiaman (1758-1770. Oil on canvas by Robert Dodd. Couresy: National Maritime Museum,

নবজাগরণের যাত্রাপথে ঐতিহাসিক ধর্মতলা স্ট্রিট

LEAD UP
As early as in May 1772 when Dean Mohamet (1784–1851) arrived, Calcutta was already a major center of commerce for the English East India Company, prosperous and entrepreneurial. [Dean Mahomet] Calcutta was then just a township desperately in need to grow into a city to fulfill the common ambition of the Company Bahadur and the British colonialism under the administration of Lord Clive and his immediate followers. It is interesting to note that the Industrial Revolution, the critical turning point in modern history, had its origin in village Sutanuti cotton market that allured the British traders to settle and exploit. The wave of Industrial Revolution, which had started a decade ago in Britain with manufacturing of textiles, reached the shore of river Hughly by then, and let its impact felt in the planning for Town Calcutta expansion beyond the up-coming Fort William at Govindpore. Its chronicle gradually discloses a co-relation between industrialization and urbanization.

It all started with the initiation of the new Fort that set off huge mobilization of the Europeans southward and of the natives of Govindpore to Kumartooly, Sobhabazar, and Burrabazar at north and to Taltola at east. Both the parties had to spend lengthy time experimenting with new realities before they settled themselves in changed environment. That was the time since when new occupations being introduced as the unheard-of opportunities coming up as a result of scientific inventions and industrial diversification. Calcutta in the process of urbanization started experiencing effect of industrialization. The external economic orientation of Calcutta to England emerged in18th and 19th centuries, provided the young city with an industrial prospect. It took however pretty long time to develop some minimum indigenous technological systems of production, transportation, construction, and the logistics required for large concentrations of people in urban areas. [Ghose] The progress slowed down because of the typical political apathy and cultural lethargy of colonial Calcutta.

Merchant Ship at Old Fort ghat Calcutta. c.1798. Artist Francis Balthazar Solvyns. Source: Peabody Essex Museum

Calcutta Merchants. Diversified group of Persians, Arab, Jews, Marwarrees, Armenians, Mundrazees. Cashmeerees, Malabars, Goojratees, Goorkhas, Affghans, Seiks. Turks. Parsees. Chinese, Burmese, and Bengalees. 1849. Lithograph byColesworthey Grant.

THE CLIMATE

Until 1813 the commercial relations between India and England was free from industrial capitalist exploitation. Trade with India had been relatively small. Its huge potential, however, was foreseen by the industrial capitalist who wasted no time to frame policies for maximizing capital gain to feed British machine industry. They defined their policy with the objective, set out by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, to make India an agricultural colony of British capitalism, supplying raw materials and buying manufactured goods. British rule brought the destruction of traditional handicrafts as well as their technical proficiency, carried off plunder, and revenue extraction. [Sarkar] By 1814 the Company servants themselves had begun to invest their capital in Agency Houses born out of an alliance between the private trading interests of the Company’s servants and the Free Merchants. This unseemly alliance had been continuing since early days of East India Company. We understand from a scholarly note on the Company’s ship Royal Charlotte – Indiaman (1758-1770) featured at the top, that the Company placed bulk orders for official goods with the ships’ captains and supercargoes encouraging the flourishing network of private trade that supported the regular inflow of luxury commodities into Europe. This form of ‘regulated corruption’ was sanctioned through indulgences in Company policy. [Davies]

Despite all the mighty negative forces driven by the political machinery, industrialization happened in Bengal as well as other provinces in India at uneven pace mostly on European initiatives, excepting few instances of Indian entrepreneurship. Calcutta and its neighborhood were on the threshold of a small scale industrial revolution. The local business community embarked upon a broad range of steam-powered industries. Calcutta became ‘a seat of numerous extensive manufactories, vying with many British cities.’ [Stocqueler] The scenario changed in the second half of the 19th century. Faster transportation, and a uniform legal framework, in particular, expanded possibilities of capital and labour movements. ‘The Empire encouraged factor-market integration, increased the scope of public-private partnership and the separation of banking from trading and of trading from manufacturing. This diversification of risk was a key impetus to the industrialization drive.’ [Ray] It was the English who exploited the opportunities most. The natives of Calcutta missed it almost because of their so called entrepreneurial backwardness – a deeply-seated socio-cultural attitude. ‘Power over land, not mercantile or industrial enterprise, was the economic hallmark of social statuses.’ Trade was associated with low ranking castes, Brahmins and Kayasthas considered only the intellectual and administrative professions as proper occupations. Thus the indigenous Bengali elite turned its back on business and left modern industry and international commerce in Calcutta to Europeans. [Sarkar] Neither the shrewdness of colonial policy nor the apathy of general Bengalese toward business could stop Industrialization Revolution that brought forth radical and innovative changes in manufacturing and transportation from manual to mechanical mode. We may note in this context that it all had started with the bonanza of British textile industry at the cost the death of Indian cotton hand mill tradition. The first textile industry in India, Bowreah Cotton Mills, was established in 1818 by British at Fort Gloster near Calcutta; the first jute mill at Rishra started spinning in 1855 when they brought its machinery from Dundee. Industrialization produced a new market economy, and most importantly, a new society desirous of using innovative products and transports to set the revolution go.

Dhurrumtollah Bazar – a section of the coloured lithograph depicting Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart created before 1838 (pub. 1848) by Sir Charles D’Oyly. Courtesy Heidelberg U Univ.

DHARRUMTOLLAH IN CONTEXT

Walking around the Dhurrumtollah Street we may still find few footprints of Industrial Revolution that modernized the ‘process of manufacturing consumer goods and capital goods and of building infrastructure in order to provide goods and services to both individuals and businesses.’ The industrial orientation was discernable more markedly in the new township around the Fort covering the entire southern expansion up to Surman’s Park including villages of Govindpore, Birji, Chowringhee and sections of Colinga – the area commonly understood today in terms of east and west Dhurrumtollah. That time Taltola, or Talpooker, with its segment Jaunbazar was an undeveloped swampy land of Colinga mouza nearest to ‘Bazar of Govindpore on the site of Fort’ (also referred to as ‘Dhurrumtollah Bazar). The only landmark it had was a shrine of Dharmathakur, or the Dharmatala. A road to Dharamtala that known to exist in 1762 as a causeway immediate north of Dingabhanga or Jala Colinga was reinforced with Birbhum gravel in 1796 just after the new Dhurrumtollah Bazar established. [Setton-Kerr]

Old Jaunbazar Native Shops. Chromolithograph By William Simpson. 1867. Courtesy: BL

Portrait of Rani Rashmoni recreated based on an anonymous painting.

As we have already noticed, during the time of expansion of the Town Calcutta and construction of the new Fort, there had been massive mobilization from all directions. The Europeans moved toward south, the Govindpore villagers toward north and east where the later had to take up new occupation for living. In addition, there had been a steady inflow of people from outside India of varied cultural background and expertise for doing business or working as professionals or employees in government and private institutions. The uprooted Govindpore folks gained prospect of living in civil areas and availing new job opportunities in exchange of homes they lost. The opportunities were not limited to serving the European and the Native aristocracy as domestics, but also in public places and at the Fort site as coolies, road-labourers, or palanquin-bearers who in those early days were customarily natives of Bengal. So far we understand, the Hindu settlers from Govindpore had no serious involvement in the process of developing Dhurrumtollah into a neighborhood of historical importance. In our collective mind, the area of ‘Dhurrumtollah’ today no more includes the eastern part of Jaunbazar, which found its own identity after Pritaram Das had built his palatial house in 1810s – the hallowed site where Rani Rashmoni, his daughter-in-law, lived her distinguished life of spiritual, social and political significance. As we conceive, Dhurrumtollah of recent time comprises the entire area between the Lindsay Street and the Dhurrumtollah Street. The road was widened up in 1836 allowing the adjacent land to develop fast into a modern colony next to Chowringhee, but unlike Chowringhee, it was for people of all shades, not white alone. So to speak, such liberal inclusion was a striking exception to the administrative directions pronounced for removing ‘native inhabitants from the black town and to build houses for themselves on another spot, at a greater distance from the fort’. We gather from the English traveler, Edward Ives that this was ‘owing to the governor and council’s resolution in consequence of Colonel Clive’s advice, to enlarge and well secure Fort William, which could not be done, whilst the Indian town was standing. [Ives]

Roman Cathooic Church on Dhurrumtollah Street. (post card picture)

Dhurrmtollah Street in 1880s. Photograph: Johnston and Hofman. c1880s

Westward view of Dhurrumtollah Street. n,d. (picture Postcard) Courtesy: Ebay

Methodist Church from Wellington Crossing

From The Statesman House rooftop. Glenn S. Hensley. 1944

The White Town concentrated around the Tank Square. The region centering on the Govindpore Fort, including Chowringhee, Park Street, Dharmatala, Esplanade, formed the European part of the town. [Wallace] Dharmatala, though commonly designated as a European district, can hardly justify so by its mixed populace and liberal lifestyle, which has been encouraged to diversify further culturally and economically, keeping pace with the changes taken place in global societies through ever increasing Calcutta connections.

Of the Nations Most Known in Hindoostan. Solvyns, Les Hindous, Vol. III. 1811

The crowd of Dhurrumtollah Street is always different from anywhere else in Calcutta – “full of the People of India, walking in family parties and groups and confidential couples. And the people of India are neither Hindu nor Mussulman — Jew, Ethiop, Gueber, or expatriated British” (like James Augustus Hickey, Justice Le Maitre, or a David Drummond). “They are the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in Dhurrumtollah now.” [Kipling] Because of the presence of British insiders, Dhurrumtollah milieu is essentially more inclusive than the grey town Murgihatta, and may be justly called a global town. On this road, Rev. C Cesry found in 1881 many faiths, many occupations, and many institutions existing next to each other. [Cesry] The road becomes congested with swelling population and their multifarious activities – commercial, professional, humanitarian, devotional, and recreational.

Calcutta may aptly be called ‘a city of shop-keepers’ if ‘getting and spending’ proves to be the essence of its economic life. This was what Sambhoo Churn wrote in Mookherji’s Magazine in 1861. The most respectable of its inhabitants were merchants, and the next might be the judiciary and law practitioners in Calcutta. Those days their profession found highly profitable. So were the medical practitioners. Englishmen in those days carried on other professionals as well. They were jurymen. Besides, they were engaged in different trades as coach-making, watch-making, tavern-keeping, tailoring, wine-dealing, shoe-making, hair-dressing, tanning and the like. [Biswas]

NEW PHENOMENA
A glance through the street directories of late 18th century or early 19th century Calcutta should show the changing pattern of occupations in Dhurrumtollah Street with “addresses of Engineers, Under¬takers, Chemists, Doctors, Midwifes, Photographers, Professors of Music, Horse Doctors, Auctioneers, Jewelers, Book-sellers, Publicans, Barbarians, Scythians, Bond and Free. [Cesry] There were more, most importantly the teachers who contributed singularly to awakening of a new Bengal. The role of Dhurrumtollah Academy of David Drummond and certain other extraordinary institutions carried out gently their grand missions on this rowdy street of ‘shops and bazars’. To Rudyard Kipling the street was like Hammersmith High¬way – the main shopping street in Hammersmith, London.

Bourne & Shepherd. Initially established by William Howard in 1840 as Calcutta Studio. ; renamed in 1866 by Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd.

Daguerreotype camera used in the early 19th century in the physics lab Presidency College Courtesy@TimesFreshFace

Annapurna Dutta, a Bengali photographer, appeared on the scene in the 1920s.

Gauhar Jaan – the first Indian voice recorded on gramophone in 1902. Cut 600 records in 20 languages. A Dhurrumtollah resident. Courtesy: TOI

As we have elsewhere discussed at length about the old bazars of Dhurrumtollah, including the Chandney Market that still exists. [puronokolkata] The old Chandney was altogether a different class of market. It was set to cater raw materials like cloth lengths, threads and needles, or tools like scissors, knives, hammers or a fishing rod, but barely any ready-made consumer goods like garment to wear or fishes to eat. It was also a good shopping centre for household wares. I believe it still continues with the tradition to a large extent. This apart, I like to draw your attention to the variety of specialty shops in Dhurrumtollah locality that sale, repair and offering services and products of modern technology.

Madan Theatre by Night” by Gaganendranath Tagore. Held at National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Image Courtesy: NGMA

There was no dearth of photographic studios, camera shops, professional cameramen, gramophone players, and music records, projectors and films, and above all there was the pioneering Indian cinema production company, the Madan Theatres to show how very receptive the ambience of Dhurrumtollah has been to innovative merchandise. Even today one goes there for a treasure hunt for rare music records, and some finds the master mechanic for gramophones and cameras in its lanes and bi-lanes. Such experience veritably takes us back to the old days of Dhurrumtollah.

Camel Carriage. Coloured lithograph by F. Jones after Captain G.F. Atkinson. 1860

The scenario Kipling described did not grow overnight but an outcome of a slowly built tradition since 1762 – the time when Dhurrumtollah Street was a muddy road frequented now and then by animal-drawn carts pulled by bullocks, horses, and possibly elephants and camels.
The road became wider in 1867; building plots were numbered in 1843 and revised in 1869. Along with the continuous improvement of the Street and its surroundings, changes take place not only in mode of transportation, or form of vehicle, but in people’s lifestyle and the design of the institutions within the orbit of Dhurrumtollah Street.

OBSERVATIONS
Dhurrumtollah Street is, as we see, one of the few roads of the 18th century Calcutta that may claim to be a distinctive reserve for augmenting the history of making Calcutta a modern City out of the colonial ‘Town Calcutta’. The Street carries the traces of the socio-cultural progress on the route to urbanization basking in the glow of Industrial Revolution. It turned up in Dhurrumtollah rather than in any other part, because of two reasons, I believe. First, it was a free society and a learning society, continuously adjusting itself with new ideas and technological inventions. Second, the resolute role of institutions and few little-known, liberal forward-looking people that made it all happened.

CHAPIN PUMPING ENGINE.Dwarkanath imported this technology from England for his business ventures

Contrary to this view, there is a general notion that ‘the early and prolonged exposure to British administration resulted in the expansion of Western education, culminating in development of science, institutional education, and social reforms in the region, including what became known as the Bengali renaissance.’ [Bengal Chamber] When there is no denying that India owes to the British for the revival of its heritage, the British had little to contribute to the formation of the liberal spirit of Bengal Renaissance simply because they never had such values in their national character founded on the rock of convention.

Neither the contemporary business world had much to effect a change in Bengali mind-set. We know many illustrious names of the 19th century business and industrial leaders, British and Indian, from Andrew Yule to Octavius, from Dwarkanath to P C Ray. Among the Indian entrepreneurs there were many great public figures but hardly any persuasive leader capable of being an agent of social change. When Dwarkanath launched his firm, Young Bengal found a hero, and expected the Bengalis to ‘compete with the nations of Europe and America, not only in English literature, but in fine arts, sciences and commerce’. [Sarkar]

Lithograph by C. E. Pierre Motte (1785 – 1836), after a painting by A Geringer, published by Marlet & Co., later hand coloured c1830

‘Dwarkanath Tagore. Portrait by Count D’Orsay – an album assembled by Lady Georgiana Codrington. [1850s] Cortesy:Alamy

William Carey and Pundit. Engraved by J Jenkins after Home Courtesy:NPG

There had been however many renowned adorable renaissance men, including foreigners like a David Hare, and many more unacknowledged people who readied the Calcutta society at large with their open and inquisitive mind imbibed with liberal values. The society was shaped by those extraordinary minds behind the scene that produced leaders to instill new values in public mind, and influence politics of the land. While the industry, the political power, the social elites all had their respective roles to back the new society to flourish, essentially it was the work of the unaccounted activists – the mind-makers.

ENDNOTE
To illustrate my views I shall present few cases, starting with Chandney Bazar, an obscured offshoot of the industrial age. It will be followed by profiles of some magnificent men who left their invisible signatures on some very important chapters of Calcutta history leading to Bengal Renaissance. They came from dissimilar walks of life at different points of time – two horsemen, one Caribbean the the other French by birth, a atheist teacher of Scottish birth, and one Brahmoite American Unitarian activist. Hopefully, you would enjoy their stories so far unheeded, when come out on puronokolkata pages before long.

REFERENCE
[Anonymous]. 1816. Sketches of India; or, Observations Descriptive of the Scenary, Etc in Bengal. London: Black, Purbury and Allen. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=tEcVAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Bengal Chamber of Commerce. 2016. Discover Bengal: A Guidebook Of Business Prospects In West Bengal. Calcutta: Bengal Chamber. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi77uKz1PnhAhUk63MBHQ8vDkYQFjAAegQIAxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bengalchamber.com%2Feconomics%2Fdiscover-bengal.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1V8wDJ0_pSUMaxTwj7VrZ9.
Bengal Hurkaru. 1838. Bengal Directory and Annual Register 1838. Calcutta: Samuel Smith. https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.14012/page/n5.
Biswas, Oneil. 1992. Calcutta and Calcuttans From Dihi to Megalopolis. Calcutta: Firma KL. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149376.
Cesry, Rev. C. 1881. Indian Gods Sages And Cities. Calcutta: Catholic Orphan Press. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.128152.
Chunder, Bholanauth. 1869. Travels of a Hindoo; to Various Parts of Bengal and Upper India; Vol.1. London: Trubner. https://archive.org/stream/travelsahindoot00chungoog#page/n9/mode/2up.
Davies, Pauline. 2013. East India Company and the Indian Ocean Material World at Osterley, 1700-800, East India Company at Home (May 2013). https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah/osterley-park-middlesex/osterley-case-study-winds-of-trade/
Dean Mahomet. 1997 The Travels of Dean Mahomet: an eighteenth-century journey through India; ed. By Michael Fischer. California: UCPress,1997 https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520207172/the-travels-of-dean-mahomet
Forbes, James. 1834. Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India; Vol.2. 2nd ed. London: Bentley, Richard. https://archive.org/details/orientalmemoirs00montgoog/page/n10.
Ghose, Benoy. 1960. “The Colonial Beginnings of Calcutta Urbanisation without Industrialisation.” The Economic Weekly, no. August 13: 1255–60. http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1960_12/33/the_colonial_beginnings_of_calcuttaurbanisation_without_industrialisation.pdf?0=ip_login_no_cache%3Dfc8386086015fc6e2268f71b76bece16.
Kipling, Rudyard. 1899. City of Dreadful Night. New York: Alex. https://archive.org/details/citydreadfulnig02kiplgoog/page/n7
Puronokolkata. (2018). Durrumtollah And Its Old Bazars. Retrieved from https://puronokolkata.com/2018/05/08/dhurrumtollaha-bazars/
Roy, Tirthankar. 2014. “Trading Firms in Colonial India.” Business History Review 88 (1): 9–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680513001402.
Sarkar, Suvobrata. 2013. “Bengali Entrepreneurs and Western Technology in the Nineteenth Century: A Social Perspective.” Indian Journal of History of Science 48 (3): 447–75. http://www.insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/IJHS/Vol48_3_4_SSarkar.pdf.
Sen, Amit pseud. [i.e. Susobhan Sarkar] ]. 1947. Notes on Bengal Renaissance. Bombay: People’s pub. https://archive.org/details/notesonthebengal035527mbp/page/n6.
Setton-Karr, W. S. 1865. Selections from Calcutta Gazettes; Vol.2. Calcutta: Military Orphan Press. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.44506/2015.44506.Selections-From-Calcutta-Gazettes–Vol-2#page/n3/mode/2up/search/beerbhoom.
Stocqueler, J.H. 1845. Handbook of India: A Guide to the Stranger and the Traveller, and a Companion to the Resident. 2nd ed. London: Allen. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=SelHAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348&dq=a+seat+of+numerous+extensive+manufactories,+vying+with+many+British+cities.&source=bl&ots=O-V1sg-gc6&sig=ACfU3U1bRKpuM94feKVkwAc3A7wwaWsOPg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi8hbmhlO3hAhWKP48KHYEm.
Wallace, Robert Grenville. 1822. Fifteen Years in India; or, Sketches of a Soldier’s Life Being an Attempt to Describe Persons and Things … U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. London: Longman. https://doi.org/10.1016/0003-6870(73)90259-7.

THE EDEN GARDENS – A PARADISE LOST

January 22, 2019british rule, Company Rule, Lake / Talao, Life Styles, Maidan/ Esplanade, Parks/ Poolsanglo-afghan war, anglo-indians, auckland circus gardens., auckland city, auckland garden, auckland park, band stand, bandstand, Barrackpore, barrackpore eden school, Belgachia Villa, belvedere house and, bengal lawn tennis, bengali theatre, bentinck, bible, botanical garden, british ballad, burmese pagoda, calcutta cricket club, captain tolly. it was afterwards purchased by hastings for the governor's garden-house, chaises, charles greville, coach and four, d l roy, dalhousie, dwarkanath tagore. military band, Eden Gardens, Emily Eden, Fanny Eden, fever committee, fitzgerald, garden of eden, gautama buddha, george eden, gloriosa-superb, government house, governor-general’s band, henry weekes, hindoostanni, john barry, kennel club dog shows, king’s bench walk, ladyship garden, letters from india, Lord Auckland, lottery committee, ma kin, misses eden, moira, new zealand insurance co, operatic culture, pagoda, park gardens, parlour song, perrin’s garden, pilgrimage tax, presidency sports, prome, r.a, rajachandra das, respondentia walk, rowing club boating, sisir bhaduri, sita, slavery act of 1843, stadium, statue of auckland, strand bank, strand bank fund, strand road, surman’s, tazoungs, temple of fame, victoria memorial hall, wallich, white town. town band, william peelঅযান্ত্রিক

ঈডেন উদ্যান কলকাতা
In 1940, John Barry, the Calcutta Journalist, finds Calcutta “admirably served in the matter of ‘lungs’. There is no part which is not provided with a park or open space.” Besides the vast green of the Esplanade around the new Fort William, there have been as many as seven parks in the south of Tank Square, the Eden Gardens being the prettiest of them all. It served as the Promenade of Calcutta as Perrin’s Garden did long back in 1740s.

Garden City Calcutta
Calcutta has gardens of varying descriptions and many luxurious garden houses of upscale European and native families; a few of those turned later into institutional gardens like Horticultural Garden and Zoological Gardens. Two of the oldest gardens, Perrin’s Garden and Surman’s Garden were the most inviting entertainment grounds for the early English genteel in Calcutta.

The Perrin’s Garden at the extreme north of the town, now Bag Bazar, was named after Captain Perrin, owner of several ships. Perrin’s Garden was a pleasure resort, once the height of gentility for the Company’s covenanted servants to take their ladies for an evening stroll or moonlight fête. [Long. It began to be less frequented when the English left Sutanuti. By 1752 it was altogether out of use and sold out for Rs. 25,000.. The other old garden, Surman’s Garden, lay at the extreme south of the town. Surman owned both Belvedere House and its garden which were sold on his behalf by public auction to Captain Tolly. It was afterwards purchased by Hastings for the Governor’s garden-house. [Calcutta Census 1905]

Topography
Between Government House and Garden Reach there was a broad open plain, about 150 acres in extent, called the Esplanade or maidan in Hindustani. It was laid out with fine broad macadamized roads, bordered with trees. The space between the roads is plain turf. As seen in Thacker’s Guide of 1906, the Calcutta Gate of Fort William.

Strand Road west of Eden Gardens. Photographer: Samuel Bourne. c1868

leads out in a straight line to the Eden Gardens at the north-west extremity of the Maidan, bounded on the north by Auckland Road and on the west by Strand Road. [Thacker’s 1906] On Strand Road where the Bank of Bengal now stands, the native boatmen careened their craft at Cutcha- goody Ghaut before the English occupation. Later, when Supreme Court stationed in Calcutta, an avenue of trees marked this spot along the river-bank up to the Creek as King’s Bench Walk. A more elegant avenue was planted by the Lottery Committee stretching from Chandpal Ghaut to the New Fort, known as Respondentia Walk. [Blechynden] The Calcutta society took their constitutional, evening after evening, while the more wealthy drove round in palanquins —facetiously called “coach and four ” —or chaises. Others still went up and down the river in budgerows, over exactly the same ground as their successors do in carriages or motors ; for the Hughli at that date flowed along what is now the Strand. [Minney]

Strand Road north of Eden Gardens. Photographer: Samuel Bourne. c1868

The Strand Road was laid on the land resulted from alluvial deposit. The Municipality contributed largely in the reclamation of this valuable land, or chur (চর) by depositing the sweeping of the town upon the alluvium so formed for many years. In 1848, the sweeping, which were reported to cause a nuisance, were covered up and consolidated by the Municipality. The property became valuable and the income formed the Strand Bank Fund, which was utilized by Government not only for improving itself but for draining and painting trees on the Maidan, the Eden Gardens, and works on the Esplanade. The Lottery Committee constructed Strand Road and Strand Bank , in 1820-21,that passed through two Zamindaries, Calc utta and Sootanaty. [Friends of India. 8 Sept.1853]

The Calcutta society took their constitutional, evening after evening, while the more wealthy drove round in palanquins , facetiously called “coach and four “, or chaises. Others still went up and down the river in budgerows, over exactly the same ground as their successors do in carriages or motors; there were no Eden Gardens, which came nearly half a century occupying most of the old walks. [Minney]

Genesis
There are different unverified stories about acquisition of the land. According to some, it was Babu Rajachandra Das (Marh) who gifted it to Lord Auckland [Wiki]; some suggested Auckland himself purchased a plot for the garden in 1841 [Ency Date]. Whatever might be source of procurement, it is obvious that Auckland tended the garden when it formed part of the Governor’s Estate. [BL Annotation to Band Stand Photo by Malitte]
That the Eden Gardens is named after Emily and Fanny Eden is now a common knowledge, but a few know why it was not after their brother George Eden instead. Something similar happened with the Barrackpore Eden School which was established and grew under personal care of Lord Auckland, often erroneously credited to Emily Eden. Around 1842 the Eden Gardens of Calcutta came into existence with the name Auckland Circus Gardens, or just ‘Auckland Garden’. We are yet to know when it adopted the new name ‘Eden Gardens’ and why the change needed at all. {Ency. Indian Dates} Some believed that the makers of the Gardens being ‘inspired by Garden of Eden in the Bible’, changed its name. What we gather from the words of Curzon and Cotton, that it were Misses Eden, the sisters of Lord Auckland, whose ‘liberality and taste’ contributed most in making the gardens to benefit Calcutta society [Cotton] . Unfortunately, their claims appear somewhat inconsistent with the details Emily recorded in her Letters from India.

Emily and Her Sister

Miss Emily Eden. Portrait Artist: Simon Jacques Rochard. 1834

There is no denying that Edens had a genuine love for gardening. Gardens were their means to secure Englishness in India. At each of their houses in Calcutta, Barrackpore, and Simla, George and Emily made sure they had a garden. But the letters Emily Eden left with us provide little or no indication to establish her involvement in making Eden Gardens. Emily’s ‘new garden’, which comes up frequently in her correspondences, refers to the Park Gardens, or the Ladyship Garden at Barrackpore where she stayed mostly, happily engaged in overseeing her ‘new garden turning out very pretty, observing that her plants doing a great deal in six weeks, enquiring about the Gloriosa–superb growing almost wild there. [August 2. (Finished August 9), 1836] – all these mentions were about their private garden in Barrackpore where she planted seven hundred flowering plants that Dr Wallich of the Botanical Garden gifted. This was the garden the two sisters and their brother George Eden had built for enjoying privately their Englishness in continuity of their Greenwich days. Historically, Emily and Fanny Eden had no more than accidental relations with Eden Gardens and, if any, that should be hardly enough to justify changing of the name of Auckland Circus Park into Eden Gardens, in other words, replacing Lord Auckland with the names of his two sisters in public mind for some external reasons .
We have also difficulty in accepting Eden sisters as liberal-minded as Curzon and Cotton suggest disregarding their highly opinionated conservative mind-set uncovered in great many private letters Emily.
“Eden’s place in English society developed out of a permanent class hierarchy, from birth. Being dropped into the contrasting classes of Anglo-Indian society made Eden psychologically uncomfortable”. In fact, hardly ever Emily minded her language in expressing her aversions, as we see in her letter of 24^th March 1824, Emily describes their dinner with Anglo-Indian guests: ”have great dinners of 50 people, ‘fathers and mothers unknown’, to say nothing of themselves”. March 24, 1836. Eden sisters were upset seeing the loss of British identity in those white people of Calcutta. They abhorred ‘the black naked creatures’ – the native Indians. The status and prestige Emily enjoyed as George’s sister made her “royalty” among the inhabitants of Calcutta, yet unlike their brother George they detested Calcutta, and sometimes thought India a barbarous country.

George Eden, Earl of Auckland
George Eden, earl of Auckland was different being liberal and concerned for the welfare of the people many of the stiff neck Britons looked down, as did his two sisters. He was known as ‘Cold-mannered, reticent, shy, good-natured, robust of figure, disliking all pomp and parade, and delighting in regular official work’. He was said to be least fitted to organize wars and gain victories. He took charge as Governor- General of India in 1836. During his tenure, the first Anglo-Afghan war gave a severe blow to British Prestige in India. He was termed as most unsuccessful Governor–General of India and is known for his follies in Afghan wars. Though Auckland was found “least fitted to organize wars”, he “eminently fitted by temperament and long experience to discharge the most exacting duties of quiet times,”[Trotter] The then British authority, as we see, preferred a war-hero to a good statesman in India. Auckland was called back in 1842 as a failure notwithstanding the immense good he had done for India and its people.

Earl of Auckland, George Eden. Portrat Artist: Simon Jacques Rochard. c1843

During his six year administration Auckland amply proved his will and ability to improve the living conditions and opening opportunities for self development. Launching the Fever Committee programs, introducing the basics of municipal governance, abolishing Pilgrimage Tax, empowering religious endowments, improvement of the medical and general education, extending government scholarship to studying Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian, designing Slavery Act of 1843, are some of his lasting contributions to the colonial India, Calcutta in particular. Lord Auckland’s despatches and State papers impressed Fitzgerald, as President of the Board of Control. He perceived, Auckland “was, with the sole exception of Lord John Russell, by far the ablest member of his party; his views most statesmanlike, and his government of India particularly just.’ “If modern Calcutta has ever a thought to give to the citizens who have made her what she is, she will find many a name worthy of honour among those who recognized Moira and Bentinck and Auckland and Dalhousie as king in turn.”[Cotton] The new Viceroy astonished the inhabitants by showing himself on foot at times and places where he would be least expected. ‘He walked,’ says his private secretary, “to the Eden Gardens in the gloom of these January evenings, and, like the Sultan in the Arabian Nights, heard with amusement or with interest remarks about him as he mingled with the crowd. [Thaker’s Guide to Calcutta 1906]

As already said, Auckland loved gardens, and that wherever he lived maintained a garden there. Government House apart, Auckland had owned one of the most magnificent Garden houses, the Belgachia Villa, which later passed to the hands Dwarkanath Tagore. Auckland’s deep sense of living in harmony with nature prevented him to sanction a plot of ground “at the south-east corner of the enclosure of Tank Square ”for the purpose of erecting Imperial Library. He thought that those spaces of the town which are appropriated to light and ventilation ought not to be given up for purposes of building.” [Cotton]

So far what I have said is only to suggest that George Eden had by far the most appropriate candidature for being the ‘Eden’ of the Eden Gardens, previously called Auckland Circus Garden, or simply ‘Auckland Garden’, though it is being said in chorus that the garden was named after ‘Emily and Fanny Eden’.

A Garden of Eden
The garden was the best of its kind in English colonial states. The Eden Gardens along the river’s bank had been a place of “great show of fashionables out for the purpose of enjoying a drive— ‘eating the air’ (howa-khana) as the Indians express it.” [Carey] Entering the Strand Road we turn to the North, and on our right we pass the Eden Gardens. A large space has been turfed and is well patronized by hundreds of citizens who may be seen taking their evening exercise on the green sward. [Cotton] Thirty years ago, the evening walk in the Eden Gardens was sacred to the Calcutta elite, and, if not in uniform, one had to assume a top hat and frock-coat in order to mingle there with the great ones of the land. Then a wave of liberal sentiment break the order, and the pleasure of listening to the military band discoursing sweet music ceased to be a monopoly for Europeans. The hierarchy since then has not patronized the Gardens as in the days of old. [Thaker’s 1906] The Eden Gardens complex sprawls over a lush green land of 50 acres many gardens, lakes, a Pagoda and a Bandstand of special historical importance. The gardens themselves are laid out with winding paths and artificial water, interspersed with a profusion of flowering trees and shrubs. A pleasanter place for a morning or evening stroll cannot be found. The portion devoted to promenading is well illuminated with the electric light [Carey]

eden gardens calcutta ( kolkata ) frith 5

eden gardens, calcutta by francis frith 2

eden_gardens,_calcutta_by_francis_frith_(1)

The prettily decorated Pagoda and its reflection on the adjacent lake water was a favourite spot of the visitors. This Burmese Pagoda, a specimen of Tazoungs architecture, was built in 1852 in Prome by Ma Kin, wife of the then Governor. It was then removed from Prome after the Burmese War in 1854, and re-erected here in 1856. Within the Pagoda there was an image of Gautama Buddha with its forehead set with precious stones, used by Buddhist Priests for worship. [Thaker’s 1906] The lake alongside the Pagoda, where giant lilies bloom in plenty, is a pleasing sight. For the happy holiday-makers there were two rowing boats, very appropriately named Adam and Eve. These can be hired at the rate of four annas per head per hour. [Barry 1939/40] Round the whole is a broad grassy ride for equestrians, enclosed by shady walks and plantations. [Carey]

Town Band & Operatic Culture
Thanks to the fact that Calcutta was the seat of the Governor-General, brass bands had been of enormous import since the city’s earliest days. The town’s regimental bands, or the Governor-General’s own private band, had initially provided Calcutta with this public music. Curzon reminded us that for the first time the Governor General’s Band was played at his Party in the new Government House to celebrate the King’s Birthday on 4th June, 1803. But it was much later in 1820s a separate Band for the Vice-Roy was formed on assured basis. Since then ‘visitors to Government House have always noticed and as a rule expressed much admiration for, the Viceroy’s Band. Emily Eden, writes on 16 March 1836:

Bengal Levee- a tradition. Lord Cornwallis shown in a crowd of sycophans. Artist: Gillray James. 1782

“To-night there was the concert, at which the natives came, besides all the same society that was at the ball. Fanny said there was nothing very splendid about the rajahs. I heard the music in my bedroom, and it did not sound ill. Our own band is a very good one, and plays every evening when we have company.” [Emily 16Mar1836]

In the late 1850s, after the Rebellion, promenade band concerts became a regular part of White Town life. By August 1861, the concerts had grown in popularity and the more musical residents of Calcutta established a Town Band that entertained the town each night. A large sheltered bandstand was erected in the Eden Gardens. By the winter of 1861-62, the Town Band had become a musical and social institution; evenings would find the bandstand occupied by the Town Band, an ensemble of twenty-five performers supported entirely through voluntary private donations, with crowds of townsfolk coming in carriages, on horseback or on foot to listen. The Band’s best contributions to operatic culture were the regularity of its offerings and its low-cost. [Calcutta Premiere]

The repertoire for each day’s concert was published in the morning edition of several Calcutta newspapers, including The Englishman. Although the individual pieces varied each day, the programmes followed a fairly standard formula: one or two opera overtures, a dance such as quadrille, waltz or march, an arrangement of an operatic set-piece, an arrangement of a British ballad or song, especially of a patriotic nature, and occasionally an arrangement of a parlour song or Hindoostannie (sic) air. We find Sisir Bhaduri, the maestro of Bengali theatre, staged DL Roy’s Sita at the Eden Gardens during Christmas in 1923. [Christiansen] The recitals of the city’s professional musicians and the daily promenade concerts given by the Town Band were invaluable contributors to Calcutta’s operatic culture.

The Statue of Auckland
This noble statue of Lord Auckland was installed in the Eden Gardens, or the Auckland Circus Garden as it was called then. Facing the river, the statue remained prominently visible from strand. The height of the statue itself is about 8 feet 6 inches; and on the whole, including pedestal, 20 feet only. The casting, as well as the model, was sculptured by Henry Weekes, R.A. The monument was complete in 1848. A fee of £.2000 was paid to the sculptor from the fund collected by the people of Calcutta for making the statue of the Earl after his departure from India as a token of their love and gratitude.

Earl of Auckland. Marble Statue. Sculptor: Henry Weekes, R.A. 18481848

The statue of George Eden comes in view when one walks past the Burmese Pagoda and close to the northern gate. The inscription on the pedestal upon which it stands declares that the statue was erected by men, of whom some were the instruments of his government, of whom many knew that government only by its benign effects, all of whom agreed in the affectionate desire to perpetuate the memory of the six years during which be ruled the destinies of British India — for this just reason that, throughout the whole course of those years, he laboured earnestly and unremittingly to make security from rapine and oppression, freedom of internal trade, the medical science of Europe, the justice which is blind to distinctions of race, and the moral and intellectual affluence which it opens, a common and perpetual inheritance to all the nations who inhabit this Empire. 1848.” [Steggles] It was ‘an almost fantastic panegyric’, Curzon commented, and regretted that the name of Auckland was forgotten in Calcutta by then, ‘except the Eden Gardens, which Calcutta owed to the liberality of his sisters, and for its own statue’. [Curzon, v2] Today, none of those two, the Eden Gardens and Auckland’s statue, survives to bear out the loving memory of the Earl in this city. It seems Auckland was covertly stripped of everything he achieved while in India because of some untold sins he committed –failure in Afghan War, or for some good he did for Indian people that proved bad for the British interest. It might also be a streak of his character. As Charles Greville, who knew him well, found in him some very best qualities for a statesman but ‘a certain diffidence in his own judgment, a diffidence which was soon to lead him, his party, and his country, into disaster. [Trotter]
Firstly, Auckland Park lost its definite identity by changing its name into Eden Gardens in an attempt to cut off Auckland from Calcutta people very unkindly, indeed. The new name convenience spreading of the make-belief story, that it was a gift to the townsfolk due to liberality of the Eden sisters, who had been in real life conservative British aristocrats utterly disrespectful to the native Indians and Anglo-Indians on different counts.
View of Eden Gardens and its Burmese Pagoda. Photographer: Hoffman and Johnston. 1865Besides Auckland’s statue, there had been two other monuments located in Eden Gardens. On its north side, the grave of Charlotte, Lady Canning was buried and remained there until moved to Barrackpore Park. On its south side stood the statue of the Naval Commander William Peel until reinstalled at Temple of Fame, Barrackpore. No memorials of Emily and Fanny Edens ever installed to acknowledge their supposed involvement in making of the garden. The statue of Auckland that stood in Calcutta from 1848 was taken away to Auckland City in 1969, after a short stay in Victoria Memorial Hall being a part of its statuary collection. The cost of transportation and its erection on site was arranged and financed by the New Zealand Insurance Co. Ltd. as a gift to its home city. Calcutta bade adieu to the last of Auckland.

A Paradise Lost

The garden that was steadily being developed since early 1840s under the care of Lord Auckland and his successors into an enchanting sphere of natural beauty and peace for the people of Calcutta, encountered a threat in 1864. The Calcutta Cricket Club, after many refusals of their prayer to the successive Governors-General obtained permission to move to the eastern end of the Eden Gardens. The garden authorizes did never mind accommodating such events as of Bengal Lawn Tennis Championship, Kennel Club Dog Shows, Presidency Sports, Rowing Club boating, but not a game that may ruin the delicate natural atmosphere and its exquisite garden architecture with the tumult of the maddening crowd from the stadium. The stadium has since grown into a large walled realm larger than Roman coliseum ruled predominantly by the law of fashion, entertainment and commerce in the name of sports. It was an unholy marriage that ultimately reduced the Eden Garden, once so much loved, next to nothing but its name, which now stands for:
”a cricket ground in Kolkata, India established in 1864. It is the oldest cricket stadium in India. It is the home venue of the Bengal cricket team and the IPL franchise cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders, and is also a venue for Test, ODI and T20I matches of the India national cricket team. The stadium currently has a capacity of 68,000.” [Wikipedia]

This shows how we like to redefine our past and ourselves giving a damn to our roots.

REFERENCE

Blechynden, Kathleen . 1905. Calcutta: Past and Present. London: Thacker. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttapastand02blecgoog).

Carey, W. H. 1907. The Good Old Days of Honorable John Company, Being Curious Reminiscences … during the Rules of the East India Company, from 1800 to 1858; Vol.2. Calcutta: Cambray. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.116087).

Carey, William. 1882. Good Old Days of Honorable John Company; Vol.1. Calcutta: Quins Book. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/goodolddaysofhon00careuoft).

Christiansen, Amy Marie. 2012. Discomforts of Empire: Emily Eden’s Life in India, 1836=1842 -. Auburn: Auburn University. Retrieved (https://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/3271/AChristiansen-Thesis.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y).

Cotton, Evan. 1907. Calcutta, Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City. Calcutta: Newman. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttaoldandn00cottgoog).

Firminger, W. K. 1906. Thacker’s Guide to Calcutta. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/thackersguidetoc00firm).
Gupta, Hemendranath Das. 1944. The Indian Stage; v.4. Calcutta: M K Das Gupta. .(https://www.amazon.in/Indian-Stage-Vol-IV/dp/1178594637)

Marquis Curzon. n.d. British Government In India Curzon 2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Retrieved January 21, 2019 (https://archive.org/details/BritishGovernmentInIndiaCurzon2/page/n3).

Massey, Montague. 1918. Recollections of Calcutta for Over Half a Century. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjRr_WylsPXAhUDV7wKHTWJAXcQFggxMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Frecollectionsofc00massiala&usg=AOvVaw3uvydXqyjqB3xbkOOZe4jp).

Minney, R. J. 1922. Round about Calcutta. London: Oxford U P. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/roundaboutcalcut00minnrich#page/n5/mode/2up).

Ray, A. K. 1902. Calcutta: Town and Suburbs; Pt.1 A Short History of Calcutta. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=-Lo5AQAAMAAJ&q=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&dq=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDnrz11MnXAhUCN48KHdgEDQUQ6AEIJzAA).

Rocha, Esmeralda Monique Antonia. 2012. “Imperial Opera : The Nexus between Opera and Imperialism in Victorian.” 1833–1901. Retrieved (https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/portalfiles/portal/9844782/Rocha_Esmeralda_Monique_Antonia_2012.pdf).

Steggles, Mary Ann. 1993. Empire Aggrandized: A Study in Commemorative Portrait Statuary Exported from Britain to Her Colonies in South Asia, 1800 to 1839; Vol.1. Leicester: Leicester. Retrieved (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44103641_The_Empire_Aggrandized_A_Study_in_Commemorative_Portrait_Statuary_Exported_From_Britain_to_Her_Colonies_in_South_Asia_1800_to_1939).

Trotter, L. J. 1893. Earl of Auckland. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=1ypnW6TwjQAC&pg=PP2&lpg=PP2&dq=captain+trotter+auckland&source=bl&ots=vKMRrW9x7i&sig=rCHTnT2EZ0Z_FyF0dtIz_uFAREU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBspPbhejfAhWIQI8KHbqfDLUQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=captain trotter auckland&f=fals).

Wikipedia . Eden Gardens. 12 Jan. 2018 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Gardens)

FINDING DHURRUMTOLLAH

June 17, 2018british rule, Company Rule, Land View, Living Conditions, Maps / Charts, New Township, Roads & Streets, UncategorizedBanyan, beliaghata, benchi, beri, biodiversity, birds of bengal, birds of calcutta, blue-jay, bulbul, calcutta khal, canal, carambola, chandpal ghat, chitpore, chowringhee, colimba, colinga, colinga bazar street, colinga tank, collin street, collinga, collingabazar street, common mynah, common tailorbird, coppersmith barbet, creek, croton tiglium linn, dhtal, Dhurrumtollah, dhurrumtollah street, dinga-bhanga, dove, dumar, ficus religiosa, govindpore, gull, harlots, honey-sucker, house crow, jafer, jala colinga, james augustus hickey, jannagar, jaun bazar road, jaun bazar street, jaunbazar street, jola colimba, justice le maitre, kalighat, king-crow, kingfisher, kite, kolikata, lebbek, mangoes, mark wood, marshland, monohur doss tank, oriental magpie robin, oriole, owl, paddy bird, pakurh, palms, parrot, peepul, sacred fig, seven sisters, shrines, simul, siris, sirish, sparrow, stone and hoffmann, street, sunderban, sutanuti, swift koel, talpooker, taltola, tamarind, tiger hunting, Tolly’s Nullah, trees, upjohn, village chowringhee, vulture, woodpeckerঅযান্ত্রিক

Calcutta. a steel engraving. 1839. Source: Meyer’s Universalism 1850.

ধর্মতলা সন্ধানে

DHURRUMTOLLAH STREET Away From Durrumtollah

Dhurrumtollah Street, nicknamed ‘Dhurrumtollah ka Rasta’, is an approach road to Dhurrumtollah – a vaguely indicated locality north of village Chowringhee that anonymously spreads over the marshy terrain known as Colinga at one time. None of the old maps of Calcutta specifies the place of Dhurrumtollah, though the Dhurrumtollah Street invariably shows up in its place since Mark Wood’s map of 1784-85.
The Dhurrumtollah Street came up in around 1762, so did Jaun Bazar Road (later ‘Street’), both running eastward leaving Dingabhanga in between [Mark Wood, 1784]. Originally it was a causeway raised by deepening the ditch on either side of a land then owned by Jafer, a zamadar in the employ of Warren Hastings.”[Cotton]

COLINGA

Topography
It was the time when the English territory south of Town Calcutta was partly jungle, an extension of Sunderban, where Hastings said to have had the pleasure of tiger hunting.
Before coming of the English, Calcutta topography had been much simpler as Barrel’s 16th Century Bengal map reveals. The vast surrounding area, where the English later founded their first zamindari, looked like populated by only three distant villages – Chitpore, Kolikata, and Kalighat, connected by an unnamed jungle path. The 1680 map ‘Calcutta before the English’ adds few more names pointing to Sutanuti, Govindpore, Chowringhee, and also the Creek, and Jannagar at the eastern end.

Bengal. 1550. River: From Hughli to Sea; according to Joao de Barrel and the Bengali poets. Source: Wilson.Annals.v.1

The landscape in the vicinity of the Creek was then viewed as an extension of village Chowringhee – unworthy of any distinction. It was for the first time, the map Mark Wood prepared in 1784-85 charted the chunk of land separated from Chowringhee as Colinga. Colinga includes two subareas: Talpooker and Jala Colinga within its boundary. The two villages, Colinga, and Jala Colinga, however, were already enlisted in 1717, as ‘Colimba’ and ‘Jola Colimba’, among the 38 villages the English Company was permitted by the Emperor to buy. [Ray]
Talpooker was not in the buying list of villages. In Upjohn’s Mark Wood’s maps Talpooker was prominently placed and it still exists as Taltola, an old quarter of metropolis, bearing one of the most common rural-names in Bengal, featuring habitations centered on ponds bordered with palm trees.
Jala Colinga is better known by its sobriquet ‘Dinga-bhanga’, which originated after the great 1737 cyclone that wrecked a dinga, i.e. large boat, on swampy shoreline of the Creek – the vanished man-made canal for carrying cargo boats from Chandpal Ghat toward Beliaghata at the east end. [Blochmann]

The Creek was also referred to in Company documents as Calcutta khal. The vast territory extending from Calcutta Khal to the Tolly’s Nullah, covering the whole of the maidan spread a jungle tract of heavy undergrowth and giant trees. “This jungle was intersected by numerous creeks and watercourses, where the muddy yellow waters of the Hughly swept in with the rising tide, or ebbed with the drainage of the surrounding rain-drenched country”. The old bed of the Creek remained, long after the closing of its connection with the river had deprived it of its stream, and turned it into a ditch. [Blechynden]
We normally accept unquestioningly whatever presented in a historical map, while the opposite may not be true in all cases. Whatever not presented, cannot be read as non-existent for sure since the possibility of their being existed namelessly can never be overruled without verifying the circumstantial evidences. Colinga is one of such cases. With all its parts: Talpooker and Jala Colinga appear separately in the list of 19 mauzas, and Dhee Calcutta, composed during 1767-1857.

Colinga and the newly enlisted villages were not expected to come up suddenly out of nothing. Normally, it takes ages for a geographic entity to acquire a name of its own, unlike the modern way of deciding street names on board meetings, as did the English Company in 1792. For a prolong period, when it remained essentially a part of village Chowringhee, Colinga had been a thinly populated uncultivated landscape occupying north-east segments with Dingabhanga and Talpooker on the peripheries.

Etemology
The name Colinga, assigned in Upjohn’s and Mark Wood’s maps, is a derived form of a rare Bengali word কলিম্বা (Colimba), has multiple meanings. It poses a serious challenge for us to distinguish between the etymological and the popular sense of the word in current context. Vernacular lexicon shows 25 different sets of meanings, of which the followings are found plausible attributes contributing to the naming of the village Colimba (কলিম্বা), or Colinga:
(1) Trees: পাকুড় (Ficus religiosa, sacred fig) / শিরিষ (Lebbek Tree)/ কামরাঙ্গা (carambola) / তরমূজ (water melon) (2) Terrain: marshland (হাজা। “হাজালে কলিঙ্গ দেশ”) (3) People: Kol tribe, worshiper of Bonga (বঙ্গা) [Jnanendramohan]
On the basis of such semantic interpretations we may imagine how Colinga might have been before the increasing homesteads changed its ecology. Colinga and its surrounds, by lexical interpretation, apparently looked like a jungle of Sirish শিরিষ and Pakurh পাকুড় trees and a marshland (at Jala Colinga) with abundance of kamranga কামরাঙ্গা vegetation; lived by Kol কোল and such tribal folks.

The Banks of the Hooghly River, Calcutta, Source: The Graphic, v.24, no 646, Ap.15, 1882

Ecology
The soil of Calcutta, marshy and damp, has always been displeasing, particularly in the rainy season, and more so because of proximity of the river and a widespread lake – about 3 to 4 miles long and in no part above 18 inches deep, frequented by innumerable flocks of wild geese, duck, teals, etc. The site of Colinga was the nearest to that lake [Chattopadhyaya]

Coconut palm tree, jackal, adjutant stork, vulture, cobra, kite, and centipede of India. Handcoloured copperplate drawn and engraved by Andrea Bernieri after Francois Solvyns from Giulio Ferrario’s Ancient and Modern Costumes of all the Peoples of the World, Florence, Italy, 1844.

Indian tiger underneath a tamarind tree. Handcoloured copperplate drawn and engraved by Andrea Bernieri after Francois Solvyns from Giulio Ferrario’s Ancient and Modern Costumes of all the Peoples of the World, Florence, Italy, 1844.

Colinga happened to be the last of the “typical swamp-type of vegetation including mangroves throve in and around Calcutta” for about 3000 years, as experts find. Perhaps, with the rise of land as a result of continued river silting and increased population the forest has since migrated southwards giving rise to the swampy forest of the present day Sunderbans. [Biswas]

Biodiversity

Since prehistoric eras the birds and animals travel Gangetic Bengal, migrate and settle colonies enriching natural resources contributing to improve quality of the soil and its landscape. As we all know, birds transport seeds and twigs from far and near across lands and oceans to germinate new variety of plant life, and they do it selectively by the atmospheric condition of a terrain. The birds living in and around Calcutta, and those visiting seasonally during last two centuries, have been systematically recorded by birdwatchers. Frank Finn is one of them. His Birds of Calcutta is more relevant to our theme than elaborated work, Pet Birds of Bengal [Law]. We find 24 species of birds, all familiar to us but some like Paddy-bird – once so prevalent in the City of Palace, gone out of sight for good. Those are:

House Crow পাতি কাক, Oriental Magpie Robin দোয়েল, Seven Sisters ছাতারে, Bulbul বুলবুল, King-Crow দাঁড় কাক, Common Tailorbird টুনটুনি, Oriole, বেনে বউ common? Mynah ভাত শালিক, Dhtalধুলাল, Sparrow চড়াই, Honey-Sucker মৌটুসি, Woodpecker কাঠঠোকরা, Coppersmith Barbet বসন্তবাউরি, Blue-Jay নীলকণ্ঠ, Kingfisher মাছরাঙ্গা, Swift বাতাসি, Koel কোয়েল, Parrot তোতা Owl প্যাঁচা, Vulture শকুন, Kite চিল, Dove ঘুঘু, Gull গাং চিল, Paddy-Bird ধান পাখি।

Company School Painting of a Mynah Bird, Beng

Company School painting of a Hoodhood (19th Century) By Indian School, 19th Century; watercolour on paper;

An Eastern Goshawk, by Bhawani Das, from the collection of Lady Impey Company School, Calcutta, circa 1780

Haunaville বাতাসি. Watercolor on paper. Company School. 19th century. Inscribed: ‘Martin’

Company School painting of a Haunaville, India, 19th century, watercolour on paper, depicted in flight, inscribed ''Martin'' above and ''Hauwaville''

barn owl, possibly Company School, India, late 19th century

A cursory glance through the list may suggest that not all the species were fit for habitation in early Colinga environ. Flocks arrive at in stages with different compositions, adaptable for the ecological diversity, to contribute in transforming Colinga landscape from a marshland to cultivable woodland, orchard and paddy-field. There were no woodpeckers, honey-suckers at the beginning but gulls, kingfishers, snipes and the like. [Finn]

Route dans le Bangale. c1791-1823. Artist: François Balthasar Solvyns.

The landscape of Colinga before mid-18th century, so far we see, was much dissimilar to woody Govindpore, Birji and Chowinhee villages. Colinga remained a vast inhabitable wetland for centuries, infested with insects and aquatic creatures including water-birds. Initially, a number of coarse weeds began to invade the territory and a variety of thorny shrubs and other plants, not attractive to grazing animals advanced slowly, their seedlings sheltered by the weeds until large enough to escape the trampling. Eventually a thicket of small trees and shrubs appeared, of which, the commonest constituents should have been the thorny beri কুল, benchi বৈঁচি,and their near relative dumar ডুমুর,- a quick-growing, shrubby plant with coarse hairy leaves, also arrived early on the scene.

Finally appear the large trees – the lofty palms তাল raise their crowns of fan-shaped leaves, mangoes আম, tamarind তেঁতুল and the lighter green of a neem নীম amidst them can probably be seen, and in the cold season – the naked branches of a simul শিমুল, or the spreading crown of a siris শিরিষ covered with yellowish pods stands out conspicuously from the green around them. There were some 69 trees only that Benthall considered naturalized in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, 41 were thought to be truly indigenous, 20 are natives of other parts of India, 6 originated in America, and 1 each in Africa and Malaya. On the other hand several plants, which seem to have been fairly common even in 19th century Calcutta have become scarce or lost forever, like Croton Tiglium Linn জায়ফল. [Benthall]

Orange Headed Ground Thrush. by Shaikh Zain al–Din. Calcutta 1778

Bird. Painting Artist: Shaikh Zayn-al-din. 1778

Fish. Calcutta Journal Of Natural History, 1841

Chita. After Shaikh Zayn-al-din

Benthall writes in early 20th century, “Not much more than a hundred years ago the wild rhinoceros roared near Alipore, and panthers were often hunted in what is now part of the city of Calcutta. In those days jungle must have stretched from the Sunderban to the edge of the city … Around Calcutta the country consists of treeless swamp and lake, and broad expanses of paddy-fields, interspersed with roads and paths and villages.” In such country, Benthall maintains, waste land suitable for the growth of trees and shrubs is scarce, but here and there patches may be found which for some reason or other are neither cultivated nor planted with useful trees. [Benthall]

Banyan Tree. Artist: Unidentified. Source: Journal of Residence In India By Maria Graham. 1813

Colinga was certainly one such place of marshy land that remained till recent time uncultivated, in an atmosphere totally different from the then Kalighat, Govindpore, Calcutta areas. It was then wild marshy woodland lived by tribal in hutments making minimal anthropogenic hazards barring the manmade canal created for navigation by the early village dwellers. The scenario discourages us to believe of a presence of grand shrine revered by people of all faiths as a holly place. If at all any such generally acceptable shrine erected as a place of dharma (ধর্ম), it must have been created long after, but not later than, 1764 when ‘Dhurrumtollah ka Rasta’ was rolled over a muddy beaten track that supposed to lead to the holy place.

Modern Scenario
The reconstructed view of the expansive area of Colinga, earlier a part of the forested Chowringhee for about three centuries, may prove to be a rude contrast of what we see in the colonial paintings and photographs documented by the contemporary artists and lens men. Upjohn’s 1793 map gives an idea of the expansion by marking the site of Colinga Bazar Street, and of the Colinga Tank. Colinga Bazar Street stood at the south of Jaunbazar Street, and Colinga Tank, later Monohur Doss Tank, was shown on Maidan opposite the house of Messers Stone and Hoffmann. In Bailie’s map of 1792 Chowringhee contains 45 houses and plenty of paddy-fields. Europeans have moved eastwards and southwards to Bow Bazar Street and Circular Road, while Taltola, Colinga, and Fenwick Bazar are inhabited by native Indians. [Ray] During the end of the 18th century, Europeans came to stay here. The Bengal Gazette editor, James Augustus Hickey, Justice Le Maitre resided in this neighborhood. Since mid-19th century the Colinga Street became an infamous locality of European and Eurasian harlots.
In a Calcutta Municipal Corporation meeting of 17 July 1912, the previous name ‘Collingabazar Street’ was changed into ‘Collin Street’. By dropping the last two letters from its name,‘Collinga’, a variant of ‘Colinga’, turned into ‘Collin’, which the commissioners found necessary to make the Street sound more respectable and attractive to the prospective buyers of lands and houses. Following the decision, not the street alone but everything else known by its name got changed. Colinga was erased from Calcutta map and collective mind of the people, leaving Dhurrumtollah homeless, faceless unidentified geographic entity.

View of Circular Road, Calcutta. Artist: Edward Augustus Prinsep. 1848

There is perhaps another way of finding Dhurrumtollah by applying our mind more toward human elements than to the physical elements of issues. So far we attempted to understand the natural condition of the venue, now let us question how the human folks lived there when Colinga became habitable. We knew that on the plains of Bengal, two trees, peepul(অশ্বথ) and banyan(বট) tend to dominate all others, and Colinga might not be an exception. We may question now why the two are called sacred fig-trees, and try to examine how far Bentham was correct when he said, “Both these trees are venerated by the Hindus and are often planted for religious reasons near houses and temples and in villages. Beneath their branches may be seen little shrines marked by the presence of rounded stones, and sometimes small temples are erected in their shade” (my emphasis). [Benthal]

Endnote
The scenario reminds us of the beaten jungle path of pre-colonial days leading to a widely acknowledged dhurrumtollah, or ‘divine place’, where worshipers arrive from distant villages taking the eastward route that the present Dhurrumtollah Street follows. This street may not lead to a locality ‘Dhurrumtollah’ as the Chowringhee Road and Jaunbazar Street did – one to locality Chowringhee, the other to Jannagar. Instead, it can be in all probability a sacred location and not a locality. Before exploring new directions, it is important to settle a few questions bothering our focus. Should this dhurrumtollah necessarily be an outstanding devotional edifice like temple, mosque or a church? If yes, its location must have been somewhere off the street and not on the street or its sides. Secondly, how far realistically we can think of such an architecture erected before 1764 – the year Dhurrumtollah Street constructed?
I would like to take up these questions in my next post: THE HOLLY STREET DHURRUMTOLLAH

REFERENCE

Books

Bagchi, P.C. 1938. The Second City of the Empire. Calcutta: Indian Science Congress Assoc.
Benthall, A. P. 1933. Tree’s of Calcutta and Its Neighbourhood. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/TheTreesOfCalcutta).
Biswas, Oneil. 1992. Calmtta and Calcuttans From Dihi to Megalopolis. Calcutta: Firma KL. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149376).
Blochmann,H. 1978 ‘Calcutta during the Last Century’ in Alok Ray edt. ‘Calcutta Keepsake’, Calcutta: Rddhi-lndia. (https://www.amazon.com/marsh-township-east-Calcutta-Department/dp/8170740738)
Cotton, Evan. 1907. Calcutta, Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City. Calcutta: Newman. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttaoldandn00cottgoog).
Chattopadhyaya, Haraprasad. 1990. From marsh to township east of Calcutta: A tale of Salt Water Lake and Salt Lake Township. (Department of History, University of Calcutta, monograph) (https://www.amazon.com/marsh-township-east-Calcutta-Department/dp/8170740738)
Frank Finn. 1904. Birds of Calcutta. 2nd ed. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/birdsofcalcutta00finnrich).
Kathleen Blechynden. 1905. Calcutta: Past and Present. London: Thacker. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttapastand02blecgoog).
Law, Satya Churn. 1923. Pet Birds of Bengal; v.1. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/petbirdsofbengal00laws).
Ray, A. K. 1902. Calcutta: Town and Suburbs; Pt.1 A Short History of Calcutta. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=-Lo5AQAAMAAJ&q=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&dq=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDnrz11MnXAhUCN48KHdgEDQUQ6AEIJzAA).
Wilson, Charles R. 1895. The Early Annals of the English in Bengal; Summarised, Extracted, and Edited with Introductions and Illustrative Addenda; Vol.1. London, Calcutta: Thacker. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/earlyannalsofeng01wilsuoft).
জ্ঞানেন্দ্রমোহন দাস. n.d. বাংলাভাষার অভিধান. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/bub_man_c3ef006702a4d6c876970cc35b669346).

Maps and Plans

Bengal. 1550. River: From Hughli to Sea in the 16th century; according to Joao de Barrel and the Bengali poets. [Reprinted See: Wilson. page 129]
Calcutta. 1680. Calcutta before the English [map] [Reprinted See: Wilson. page 126]
Calcutta. 1792 & 1793. Map of Calcutta and its environs; by A Upjohn (http://www.museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/vmh_kol-R565-C1737-2914)
Calcutta. 1792-93 Map of Calcutta and its environs From the accurate survey taken in the year 1792 & 1793 by A Upjohnhttp://www.museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/vmh_kol-R565-C1737-2914
Calcutta. 1793. Plan of Calcutta; reduced by permission of the Commissioners of Police from the original one executed for them by Lietn Colonel Mark Wood of 1784-1785. Published in October 1792 by William Baillie. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Kolkata_Old_Map.jpg
Calcutta. 1847-49. Map of Calcutta from actual survey. Contributors: Simms, Thillier, and Smyth. London: Chapman, 1858 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7654c.ct001429/?r=0.604,0.19,0.07,0.03,0)

DHURRUMTOLLAHA AND ITS OLD BAZARS

May 8, 2018Bazaars/Superstores, british rule, Life Styles, Shops/ Marketsamerican mission home, ananda narayan ghose, anandabazar, auctioneers, barbarians, bazar, bazar at chowringhee, book-sellers, causeway jafer, chandney bazar, chandney choke bazar ka rastah, chandney choke street, chandney salesmen, chemists, chowringhee road, chowringhee square, colonel de glass, corinthian theatre, Cossitollah, cossitollah road, cri¬minations and recriminations, david drummond, dharmataladhurrumtollah tank, dhurrumtollah academy, dhurrumtollah bazar, dhurrumtollah ka rustah, dhurrumtollah street, dingabhanga, doctors, dr. jackson, engineers, esplanade row, ethiop, eura¬sians, fenwick’s bazar, general stibbert’s house, gharis, gopee baboo’s bazar, gueber, gun carriage agency, gun foundry, gun manufactory, hammersmith high¬way, hira lall seal, hookah chandney-english, horse doctors, hospital lane, hut-edifices, jackson's bazar, jaun bazar, jaun bazar road, jew, jewelers, justices of peace, khelat chunder ghose, livery stables, masjid, mattiloll seal lane, memba pirer bazar, messrs tulloh & co, methodist churches, midwifes, mootee lall seal, municipal market, municipality, Mutty Lall Seal, napit bazar, natun bazar, new bazar, New Calcutta Academy, new market, photographers, professors of music, publicans, rev. c cesry, road to rusupagla, Rudyard Kipling, sacred heart of jesus, scythians, shakespeare bazar, stuart hogg market, tipu sultan’s mosque, under¬takers, union chapel, Warren Hastings, wellington squareঅযান্ত্রিক

Dharamtala Mosque on the Corner of Chowringhee Road. WilliamPrnsep-c1840-45 — Tipu Sultan Mosque on the Corner of Chowringhee Road & the Dhurrumtollah Street opposite the old Bazar. An oil on canvas by William Prinsep, c1840. Courtesy: ANU

ধর্মতলা এবং আঞ্চলিক প্রাচীন হাটবাজার

Looking through the lenses of John Saché , the Belgian-American photographer, a long stretch of the Esplanade Row leading to Dhurrumtollah Street comes in view beyond Chowringhee Square. The photograph was taken, from the East Gate of new Government House in around 1865.

From Gov.GateJohn Edward Saché_ Views of Calcutta (ca 1865-1882) — Esplanade Row leading to Dhurrumtollah Street. Photographed by John Ward Saché. c1865. Courtesy: BL

The location of Dharmatala that we recognize today is virtually the same as when it was called Dhurrumtollah in colonial Calcutta to mean the Esplanade or Maidan in broad sense. The huge tank excavated in 1790 at the north-east corner of the Esplanade was known as ‘Dhurrumtollah Tank’ where it existed until the dawn of the 19^th century.

Dhurrumtollah had been a part of the ancient jungle remaining at the south of the old Calcutta township till the jungle cleared after 1757. The Dhurrumtollah Street came up in around 1762, so did Jaun Bazar Road, both running eastward leaving Dingabhanga mouja in between. Originally a causeway raised by deepening the ditch on either side of a land owned by Jafer, a zamadar in the employ of Warren Hastings.” [Cotton] Dhurrumtollah remained for a long while “an open and airy road lined with trees leading to Beliaghata. The Street, then called Dhurrumtollah ka rustah, goes in a line with the northern boundary of the Esplanade commencing at no.1 Chowringhee Road.“ The Street is nearly equal in dimensive character to Chowringhee Road, but Dhurrumtollah Street has the distinction of being on each side bordered by a row of houses of good elevation, and many of them even splendid in their outward appearance — with but comparatively few native hut-edifices on its line — it would claim to be considered a first-rate street in any western capital”. [Handbook of India 1844]

The old scene of Chowringhee Square, where meet four highways – Dhurrumtollah Street, Cossitollah Road, Road to Rusupagla, and Esplanade Row – has been captured by contemporary painters, and the presence of a visiting bird in one of them brings about the idyllic environ of the then Dhurrumtollah.

Maidan Cor. Dharamtala ByJohnWardSache_collections.carli.illinois.edu — Dhurrumtollah Tank. Photographed by John Ward Saché. c1865

Dhurrumtollah is relatively old a district. Chowringhee, which grew along the New Fort and groomed in spot-less English style unrelated to the local traditions and culture of community living, which have always been focused in the street life of Dhurrumtollah. The good bad and ugly in Dhurrumtollah Street scenario expose the weakness and strength of ethnic fusion and liberal thinking – a breeding ground of radical forces for social change. Dhurrumtollah can be distinguished as one of the most remarkable streets in the world of happenings toward formation of new society.

The crowd of Dhurrumtollah Street has been of a different kind than anywhere in Calcutta. To Rudyard Kipling the street is like Hammersmith Highway – the main shopping street in Hammersmith, London. “Dhurrumtollah is full of the People of India, walking in family parties and groups and confidential couples. And the people of India are neither Hindu nor Mussulman — Jew, Ethiop, Gueber, or expatriated British. They are the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in Dhurrumtollah now.” [Kipling]

On this road in 1881, Rev. C Cesry found many faiths, many occupations, many institutions existing next to each other. The Union Chapel, the American Mission Home, the small old and new large Methodist Churches, the Corinthian Theatre, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the only good looking Masjid, boarding houses, institutions, societies – all have had their part in defining the history of the street. All the largest livery stables of Calcutta were also here. About the centre is Wellington Square with a Maidan on which troops of little children frolic and gambol of an evening. Dhurrumtollah was full of shops and bazars. Here are also Engineers, Undertakers, Chemists, Doctors, Midwifes, Photographers, Professors of Music, Horse Doctors, Auctioneers, Jewelers, Book-sellers, Publicans, Barbarians, Scythians, Bond and Free. [Cesry] What Rev Cesry misses in his short list is the schools – particularly the Dhurrumtollah Academy of unforgettable David Drummond.

The stories of Dhurrumtollah Street I fear might take more space than what can be managed at one go. Hope, you would bear with my plan of publishing it in few instalments. Here I take up Dhurrumtollah bazars keeping other facets on hold for a while.

DHURRUMTOLLAH BAZAR

So far we know, the Dhurrumtollah Bazar, situated at the crossing of the ‘Road to Chowringhee’ and the Dhurrumtollah Street. Cotton maintained that the plot was in one of the sites thought of for the erection of present Town Hall. It was ‘a very eligible situation for the new bazar’, so writes Calcutta Gazette in September 1794. The bazar has ‘already contributed much to the convenience of the community at large. Such an establishment, from the great increase of the inhabitants and the situation of the Chowringhy [sic] houses, has long been wanted. [Setton-Karr Vol.2] The report indicates that the new bazar was established before 1794 and not in 1794, and that it served the demands of Chowringhee households as well. It was still called – by a generic name, Natun Bazar. Cotton suggested without any clue that the Bazar was known once upon a time by a quite unexpected name ‘Shakespeare Bazar’. There has been another supposed name ‘Memba Pirer Bazar’ mentioned in Harisdhan’s book with no reference, which sounds improbable for naming a bazar created to feed the Chowringhee residents. The Dhurrumtollah Bazar was actually referred to as the Bazar at Chowringhee – the first edition of the modern New Market.

We come to know from an advertisement issued by Messrs Tulloh & Co. dated 18^th April 1799 that the Dhurrumtollah Bazar, termed as Bazar at Chowringhee, was on sale by the auctioneers. The bazar was “bounded by General Stibbert’s house on the east, by the Dhurrumtollah road to the north, by the Chowringhee road to the west, and by the Jaun Bazar to the south.” It stood on the ground measured about nine beegahs [sic] on which there were 207 pucka built rooms or shops, 143 arched ditto, and 36 large cutcha godowns, yielding a gross monthly rent of Rs. 1,043 [Carey] We needed to know a little more of General Stibbert’s house, which luckily came handy through a different advertisement announcing the shifting of new Calcutta Academy from Cossitollah to General Stibbert’s House. The house was described as a large, airy, commodious, and eligibly situated house in the west end of the Dhurrumtollah and in the vicinity of the Esplanade, of which, as well as of the river, it commands a view. [Setton-Karr Vol. 3]

Rev. Long put forward another hint to spot out where exactly the Bazar stood ‘half way between Wellington Square and Government House’. He held that the Bazar actually occupied the site of the residence of Colonel De Glass, the then superintendent of the gun manufactory, which has since been removed to Kasipur. [Long]. The account of Rev. Long, however, leaves some doubts as to Colonel De Glass’s occupancy since the said ‘gun manufactory’ was actually established in 1802 as ‘Gun Carriage Agency’, and only in 1830 it was shifted to Cossipore renaming as ‘Gun Foundry’. The history of Dhurrumtollah Bazar so far revealed disallows any chance of De Glass’ occupancy in either no.1, or no.2, Dhurrumtollah Street where Dhurrumtollah Bazar housed. The street directories authenticate that the first two premises, number 1 & 2, on the right side of Dhurrumtollah Street was where the Bazar stood.

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register reported the government approval of the Tipu Sultan’s Mosque to be erected at “the corner where the Dhurrumtollah and Cossitollah roads join each other, opposite Jackson’s Bazar” revealing the fact that the Bazar at Dhurrumtollah was once named Jackson’s Bazar. [Asiatic Vol 29]

From a news published in December 14, 1844 we knew more of the Dhurrumtollah Bazar. It was nicknamed ‘Jackson’s Bazar’ after one Dr. Jackson who owned the Bazar until he sold out the property to Mootee [Mutty] Lall Seal. Thereafter the name ‘Dhurrumtollah Bazar’ came to stay. We still have no good guess what the Bazar was called before Dr Jackson, but we know by now the formal name of the Bazar, its exact position and the names of the owners since 1839. [Ben.Catholic vol.8]

As it appears, Dhurrumtollah Bazar was being managed ably by Hira Lall on behalf of his father Muttee Lall Seal, and mainly responsible for its commercial success and reputation competing against rival forces. The first contender Anandabazar of Ananda Narayan Ghose went out of competition after a while, but the second one, The New Market of the Municipality, that came up in 1874 proved to be too powerful and desperate to fight out. The two cases of rivalry are being summarized before ending the story of Dhurrumtollah Bazar.

Dhurrontallah Steet scene from Govt Housec_byJohn Edward Sache_Collections.carli.illinois.edu — Dhurrumtollah Street with Tipu Sultan Mosque on the left and the spire of the Sacred Heart Church on the right behind the Dhurrumtollah Bazar opposite the Mosque. A hand-coloured print from the Fiebig Collection: Views of Calcutta and Surrounding Districts, taken by Frederick Fiebig in 1851. Courtesy: BL

ANANDABAZAR AND DHURRUMTOLLAH BAZAAR

Around 1844, when Mutty Lall Seal bought up Dhurrumtollah Bazar, a new bazar was established at no. 157 Dhurrumtollah Street, next to Hospital Lane, by Baboo Anandanarayan Ghosh, uncle of Khelat Chunder Ghose as a rival enterprise of Dhurrumtollah Bazar, which was variantly known as ‘Ananda Baboo’s Bazar’, new Dhurrumtollah Bazar, or Anandabazar. This has led to a number of assaults. The two belligerent powers have hired clubmen,—(this in the city!) and the Police has been vigorously employed in preventing disturbances. The new market will cost Eighty Thousand Rupees, and the competition will reduce prices”. [Ben. Catholic vol.8.] The ambition of Anandabazar never fulfilled. Their objective was failed. The proprietor has leased it out. Miscellaneous shops were established throughout; but no market is held here.

NEW MARKET AND DHURRUMTOLLAH BAZAAR

It was long felt by the Europeans of the posh Chowringhee neighbourhood that the old Dhurrumtollah Bazar was no good any more to meet their everyday needs. To cater all kinds of food for European consumption they resolved in 1866 to construct a large-scale market on the ground of the old failing Fenwick’s bazar and its surrounding bustee areas. The New Market, as it is still called, was housed in an extensive building, forming three sides of a quadrangle opened in 1874. The land and the building cost about Rs. 6,65,000.

Newmarket-_Sir_Stuart_Hogg_Market — Vintage Postcard with view of Sir Stuart Hogg Market Dharmatala Calcutta. A Pre 1914 anonymous photograph. Courtesy: oldstratforduponavon.com

At the outset of its career, the new market suffered severely from the competition of the Dhurrumtollah Bazar, and its fortunes did not prosper until the Justices subsequently bought the bazar for seven lakhs. The whole of this money was raised by Government loan, the interest of which is far more than met by the rents of the stalls and shops in the market. The municipal executive tried to entice stallholders and butchers away from the Dharamtolla Bazaar. There were unseemly scuffles, followed by “criminations and recriminations”. A local paper predicted that the Stuart Hogg market would soon be seen as a “white elephant”. [Furedy]

Hiralall brought a suit against the chairman of the municipality charging that he had no right to use municipal funds for the market and for the opening ceremonies. The Dharamtolla Bazaar owner did not win his case. The government of Bengal hastily passed an act to legalize the decisions of the Corporation. [Furedy] A few years later Hiralall had to sell the market premises to the Justices of Peace of the Calcutta Corporation at 7 lakh to let their newly created Municipal Market, later Hogg Market, runs out of competition. The old Dhurrumtollah Market was demolished and its ground was distributed in small plots and a lane in between. In 1890 the Calcutta Corporation was generous to name this new lane as Mattiloll Seal Lane in memory of Hiralall’s father.

Besides Dhurrumtollah Bazar and Ananda Bazar, there is another deshi daily bazar called Napit Bazar on nos. 103-5, Dhurrumtollah Street. There is also another food bazar, Gopee Baboo’s Bazar situated between the Jaun Bazar and Dhurrumtollah Roads [Setton-Karr Vol.2]

CHANDNEY BAZAR

Chandney Bazar has never been for fresh food retailing as the other ones were, but a sort of native shopping complex mainly for domestic accessories and handymen’s tools. Chandney shops and entrances are on no. 167, Dhurrumtollah Street, standing at the crossing of Chandney Choke Street, or Chandney Choke Bazar ka Rastah, on the north side of Dhurrumtollah.

Chandney Bazar is a labyrinth of ill-kept passages, lined with shops, in which may be found a wonderful collection of sundries, from a door nail to a silk dress. [Cotton] The list can be lengthening endlessly by adding items like “Brass and iron hand-ware, clothes, umbrellas; shoes, stationery, and various other articles of domestic use.” Cotton left a piece of helpful advice for shopaholics that “very similar shops and stalls may now be found, but under conditions infinitely more advantageous and comfortable, in the Municipal Market in Lindsay Street, off Chowringhee”. [Cotton] While shopping in modern New Market was more comfortable and reassuring, it lacked the adventurous spirit of shopping, getting favorite picks at pocket-friendly price by bargaining at your heart’s content. For that, one must essentially be guarded with sharp shopping skill. Besides, the shop-goers should be extra-cautious as Chandney has been apparently a notorious receptacle for all stolen goods, and such encourages theft by domestics”.

R.J Minney in 1922 penned a typical picture of the Chandney Market, its inside and outside, in few lines. The following passage on Chandney may also contribute to our understanding of Dhurrumtollah characteristics in its totality:

“Gharis wait outside shops, the horses hunched up in their shafts and harness, limp-legged, asleep. The drivers are asleep on the box and syces slumber behind. Water and rubbish on the pavements. The air is heavy with a fetid smell of hookah and food; paint, oil and cycles. In the shadow of the gold-tipped minarets women swathed in sheets clatter their slippered feet along the road. Children’s garments flutter in the wind from the line that dangles outside the open shop front. Shopkeepers glare expectantly but have too much self respect to solicit custom. A stout undressed Bengali sits on the mattressed floor, laid with white clean linen, fanning himself lazily. By his side stands a hookah with a long stiff spout. There is more bare body than shop. He probably does not depend on his shop for a living. An inquisitive passerby, who peered in to gaze at his stock, was not even hailed as a possible customer. Idle barbers sit by their doors hailing passers-by. The patrons of the Chandni bazaar, scowling, busy; bargaining, wrangling; smiling, smirking. Cycle shops, camera shops, pigeon stalls for cigarettes and sherbet. Pavement vendors with their wares in their baskets, pavement barbers assisting the needy with their toilet; street hawkers who pause on the roadway at the hailing of a customer; quarrelsome ghari men lashing their whips at one another.” [Minney]

Chandney market has its own world of business. They operate in their own style and communicate with their European and Eurasian customers in typical Chandney-English – a pidgin dialect of Anglo-Bengali concoction. Chandney salesmen were not always as unconcerned as Minney had found in his visit. A funny dialogue of Chandney bazar touts was in circulation in my boyhood days: “Take, take; no take, no take; একবার তো see!”, or in plain language, “You take it, or you don’t, why not give a quick glance for once?” This may serve as an instance of how Chandney salesmen approach their nonchalant customers in typical Chandney-dialect. It represents a proactive selling approach, often hatefully nagging and annoying, but can hardly be defined as unfriendly or indifferent as Minney suggested.

UPDATES

New Market

Richard Roskell Bayne (1836-1901)designed the New-Market. The unique architecture of this public market of some 7.200 square meters exerted substantial influence on the design of large urban markets throughout South Asia. [Welch]



REFERENCES

Asiatic Journal. 1839. “Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register.” 29. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books/download/Asiatic_Journal.pdf?id=vCsYAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&capid=AFLRE71UN1fNXSmO80NUacGNXrTijYacn5XNM0vBRP4b3jb4htcUQHOMuHowsJWtwtIw7k70PPOyXbnuS46vH3aR0-16f5ZTsA&continue=https://books.google.co.in/books/download/Asiatic_Journal).
Bengal Almanac. 1851. Bengal Almanac , With A Companion and Appendix. 1851st ed. Calcutta: Hurkaruh. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books/about/The_Bengal_Almanac_for_1851.html?id=4UNBAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y).

Bengal Catholic Herald. 1844. Bengal Catholic Herald. Calcutta: D’Rozario [printer]. Retrieved (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=YmKXiWDrh8QC&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false).

Bengal Hurkaru. 1838. Bengal Directory and Annual Register for 1838. Calcutta: Harkau. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.68584).

Carey, William. 1882. Good Old Days of Honorable John Company; Vol.1. Calcutta: Quins Book. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/goodolddaysofhon00careuoft).

Cesry, Rev. C. 1881. Indian Gods Sages And Cities. Calcutta: Catholic Orphan Press. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.128152).

Cones. 1877. Directory and Almanac, 1877. Calcutta: Cones. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.91820).

Cones. 1874. Calcutta Directory, 1874. Calcutta: Cones. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.94126).

Cotton, Evan. 1907. Calcutta, Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City. Calcutta: Newman. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttaoldandn00cottgoog).

Firminger, W. K. 1906. Thacker’s Guide to Calcutta. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/thackersguidetoc00firm).

Furedy, Christine. 1979. “Retail Trade in Calcutta.” Capital 183(4587):4–10. Retrieved (https://www.google.com/search?q=RETAIL+TRADE+IN+CALCUTTA+Offshoot+from+the+land+of+shopkeepers+by+++CHRISTINE+++FUREDY&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b).

Hobbs, Major H. 1944. John Barleycorn Bahadur: Old Time Taverns in India. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.53429).

Hurkaru. 1841. Bengal-Directory and Annual Register for 1841. Calcutta: Harkaru. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.68587).

Kipling, Rudyard. 1899 The City of Dreadful Night. New York: Alex. https://archive.org/details/citydreadfulnig02kiplgoog

Long, James. 1852. “Calcutta in the Olden Time – Its Localities.” The Calcutta Review 18:275-. Retrieved (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002715346).

Minney, Rubeigh James. 1922. Round about Calcutta. Calcutta: OUP. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/roundaboutcalcut00minnrich).

Ray, A. K. 1902. Calcutta: Town and Suburbs; Pt.1 A Short History of Calcutta. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=-Lo5AQAAMAAJ&q=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&dq=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDnrz11MnXAhUCN48KHdgEDQUQ6AEIJzAA).

Setton-Karr, W. S. 1864. Selections from Calcutta Gazettes. Calcutta: Military Orphan Press. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.195937/2015.195937.Selections-From-Calcutta-Gazettes-1864#page/n5/mode/2up).

Setton-Karr, W. S. 1864. Selections from Calcutta Gazettes; Vol.3. Calcutta: GOI. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531269).

Setton-Karr, W. S. 1865. Selections from Calcutta Gazettes; Vol.2. Calcutta: Military Orphan Press. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.44506/2015.44506.Selections-From-Calcutta-Gazettes–Vol-2#page/n3/mode/2up/search/beerbhoom).

Stocqueler, J. H. 1844. Handbook of India: A Guide to the Stranger and Traveller and a Companion to the Resident. Calcutta: Hurkaru. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/handbookofindiag00stoc).

Thacker Spink. 1876. Bengal Directory, 1876. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.68578).

Welch, Anthony, and ors. 2009. Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne.
Canadian Art Review.Vol.34, No.2 (2009) (https://www.jstor.org/stable/42630806?read-now=1&loggedin=true&seq=10#page_scan_tab_contents)

হরিসাধন মুখোপাধ্যায়। ১৯১৫। কলিকাতা সেকালের ও একালের / Kalikata Sekaler O Ekaler / কোলকাতা। পি এম বাগচি (https://archive.org/details/Kalikata-Sekaler-O-Ekaler-Harisadhan-Mukhopadhyay#page/n0/mode/2up)

Chowringhee: Against the Backdrop of Fort William II

November 22, 2017Blacks, british rule, Club Houses, Garden House, Lake / Talao, Land View, Landscape, Life Styles, Maidan/ Esplanade, New Township, Palaces, Parks/ Pools, Public Institutions, Racial Profile, Religious Profile, Residential House, Roads & Streets, Roads/Bridges, Ways of Life, Whitesadjutant birds Indian stork, alligators, and Bengallee gentlemen, and Firpo's, Armenian architects, Armenian merchants, Arun Chundra Singha, B. C. Mitter, baboo ghat, bamboo- groves, Bazar Calcutta, Bentinck Street, Bhowanipore, Bible House, Bishop John Thomas James, Black Towns, Blanchard, British India Street, Bullygunge Circular Road, Burying Ground Road, calcutta, Camels, Cherangy, Chitreswari temple, chowringhee, Chowringhee High Road, Christian colony, Circular Road, City of Palace, Colingah, collective will, Colvin's Ghaut, corporation street, Cossitollah, country houses, Cucha-goody Ghaut, deer, Dhee Birje, dhee calcutta, Dhurumtollah, Elijah Impey, english factory, English zamidary, esplanade, Esplanade-bound tram, Farrell, five mansions, fort william, free school street, garden houses, General Stibbert, globalization, Govindpore Creek, govindpur, Gunendra Mohun Tagore, Hastings Place, Hindu Stuart, Hungerford Street, idolatrous customs, Jackals, Jamsedjee Ruttunjee Parsee community, Jaun Bazaar, John Bazaar, Josua Conder, Jungal Giri Cherangi, jungle, Kalighat temple, King's Bench WalkChandpaul Ghaut, Kumartooly, Lord Valentia, Lord Vansittart, lordly Chowringhee, Loreto Convent, lottery committee, Loudoun Street, lower circular road, maidan, Middleton Row, military architecture, Minney, Miss Eden, Miss Emma Roberts, Miss Graham, Moira Street, Montgomery Massey, Mr. Beverley, mud huts, mules, museum, native houses in Chowringhee, New Calcutta Academy, new market, Old Town, Oriental identity, paddy-fields, Panchkotee, Parsees, Pergunnah of Calcutta, Pilgrim way, plassey, Promotho Roy Chowdhury, Rajendra Dutta, Rajendranath Mookherji, Rawdon Street, Regent’s Park of Calcutta, Rev. K. M. Banerjee, Rossapagla Road, Rustomjees, Sobhabazar, social malady, social ranking, Soonderban, St Paul's School, standard of living, Surman’s gardens, The Grand, theatre road, Tolly’s Nullah, Toltollah, tope, trees and flowers, upper-class, vernacular society, village Govindpore, water birds, water-fowl, waterloo street, way of living, westernization, wild beastsঅযান্ত্রিক

Chowringhee Road. 1787. Artist and engraver: Daniell, Thomas

চৌরঙ্গীঃ কোলকাতার দক্ষিন দ্বার

Genesis of Chowringhee

After Plassey, the necessity of keeping the English factory at Calcutta within the Fort was at end.[6] There was no felt need any more for reviving the ravaged Fort that proved its inadequacy in defending the old town and its own bulwark. The Fort was encumbered with houses close by, and had no proper esplanade for guns. Their triumph might not have been spirited enough to free the minds of English commanders from the dread of another war. That was why the East India Company favoured Clive’s decision of erecting a second Fort William expending two millions sterling.[8] The new Fort essentially differs from the old one being exclusively a military establishment and not a fortified factory of English traders as the old Fort was styled. Its construction set off in 1758 on the riverside ground of Govindpur village about a mile away from the old Fort. Before the Battle of Laldighi, the English were cooped up in the neighbourhood of the old Fort.[17] The prospect of an aerial, liveable habitation in the neighbourhood of the New Fort, attracted the European population to gradually move from the already crowded old township around the Tank Square and the old Minta, to settle in commodious Chowringhee.[6]

New Fort in Backdrop

Equipped with huge defense machinery and a formidable military architecture, the new Fort William was ready by 1773, but had no occasion ever since to exchange fires with enemies. Instead its resounding tope of canon ball routinely announced mid-day hours to regulate working life of the Calcuttans. The presence of the imposing Fort on Maidan silently reminds us of the significant role it had played in transforming the town Calcutta into a city – famously called ‘City of Palace’, the centre of British India. Following inauguration of the Fort, the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William was founded. The Governors of Bengal became the Governor Generals of India. Calcutta was reborn ushering a modern society to stay connected with rest of the world.

Fort William, Govindpore. Chowringhee Gate. Photographer: unidentified. 1880’s Source: eBay,

Beyond the European buildings lying around the Old Fort were four villages of mud and bamboo, all of which were included in the zamindary limits of the first settlement. These villages were the original three with the addition of Chowringhee. Chowringhee in 1717 was a hamlet of isolated hovels, surrounded by water-logged paddy-fields and bamboo-groves, interspersed with a few huts and small plots of grazing and arable lands. The chosen site of the Fort was on the river-bank of village Govindpore, considerably south of the old Mint. As Colonel Mark Wood’s Map of 1784 inscribes.[19] Govindpore began where the Northern boundary of Dhee Calcutta ended at Baboo Ghat, and then went up to the Govindpore Creek, or Tolly’s Nullah and that was the extreme end of the English zamindary. As Rev. Long indicated, it was ‘immediately to the South of Surman’s gardens, marked by a pyramid in Upjohn’s map.’ [17] At West, the area includes King’s Bench Walk with a row of trees separating it from the riverbank between Chandpaul Ghaut and Colvin’s Ghaut , then called Cucha-goody Ghaut At North, Esplanade Row, from Chandpaul Ghaut, hard by the New Court House on the riverside, runs into Dhurumtollah in a straight line past the Council House and the old Government House standing side by side.

Govindpore was a populous flourishing village when its entire population was removed to make room for the new Fort and its infrastructure. The inhabitants were compensated by providing lands in places like Toltollah, Kumartooly, Sobhabazar expending restitution-money. In Govindpore itself great improvements took place. The jungle that cut off the village of Chowringhee from the river, was cleared and. gave way to the wide grassy stretch of ‘Maidan of which Calcutta is so proud’.

Pallanquin on jungle road. Illustration in book ’India’ by Richard Mayde 1876

The jungle, presumably, had been once a part of the Great Soonderband (সুন্দর বন). Many traces of trees were found at a considerable depth below the surface of the ground. These remains are thought to be those of the soondrie forest that covered the site of Calcutta when newly emerged from the waters of the Gangetic Delta. [6] Early 1789, Government resolved on filling up the excavations in the Esplanade and levelling its ground. The plan was prepared for the benefit of Calcutta in general, and of the houses fronting the Esplanade in particular. The plan extended to drain the marsh land, in expectation that the digging a few tanks will furnish sufficient earth and thus save the project cost and time. A new tank was made at the corner of Chowringhee and Esplanade, which existed till the dawn of the twentieth century. [20]

Road to Chowringhee

The road dividing the Maidan and Chowringhee was named, Road to Chowringhy [sic] by Colonel Mark Wood in his 1784 Plan of Calcutta, which in fact was a midsection of the oldest and longest thoroughfare of Calcutta, known as Pilgrim Way starting from Chitpore, Chitreswari temple at extreme North and ending at Kalighat temple in South. As late as in 1843, the proclamation included in the Special Reports of the Indian Law Commissioners has no mention of ‘Chowringhee locality’, but of a ‘Chowringhi[sic] High Road’.

Chowringhee area aerial view. Photographer: Samuel Bourne. c1870

A wide-angled view of Chowringhee area, Wood engravings by unidentified artist. Source: The Graphic, 1875.

Chowringhee Road near Park Street crossing. Details not known. Source: Wikiwand

Strollers along the Esplanade, a wood engraving. Artist:Louis Rousselet. 1877

Panoramic View of Chowringhee Road. Photographer: Samuel Bourne. 1865

The Road to Chowringhy[sic] was initially a short stretch between Dhurumtollah and Park Street that subsequently developed into an 80 feet broad and nearly two miles long roadway commencing from the Creek where it crossed Cossitollah (later Bentinck Street) between Waterloo Street and British India Street, and ended at Theatre Road where from Rossapagla Road took the queue. Before the modern Chowringhee came into being, Cossitollah, was thronged with a large proportion of European shops and often called ‘the Indian Elysium of plebeians’. [6]. The eastern side of the Chowringhee Road is lined by handsome houses, facing the fine grassy Maidan which lies between them and the river. Houses are generally ornamented with spacious verandahs to the south, that being the quarter from which the cool evening breeze blows in the hot weather. [12] The Bishp’s Palace was the most imposing among those.

Chowringhee View from the Verandah of the Bishop’s Palace in Calcutta. Watercolour with pen and ink. Artist: James, Marianne Jane. 1828

Bishops House. Photographed by Francis Frith. 1850s.

Changing Landscape

When Josua Conder visited Chowringhee, this city was ‘the quick growth of a century’, and ‘still half jungle’. He wrote, “at Chowringhee, where you now stand in a spacious verandah supported by Grecian pillars, only sixty short years ago, the defenseless villagers could scarcely bar out the prowling tiger.” His presumptions about the future of Chowringhee however were all wrong. Contrary to his beliefs, in sixty more years the city never depopulated but its strength intensified; and all these perishable palaces of timber, brick, and chunam did not disappear but multiplied more time than it should have. [7]

Calcutta. A French map. 1839. credited to Dufour and Benard. [Read ‘Rue’ for ‘Road’]

So far back as 1714 ‘Cherangy’[sic] is named among the township neighbourhood within the Pergunnah of Calcutta either possessed or desired by the Company.[23] Originally, Chowringhee was an ancient village named after one Jungal Giri Cherangi, a pious worshipper of Kali. Between 1726 and 1737, Cherangi (sic) came to be treated as a part of the English settlement. It was still separated on the West from Govindapur by jungle, where now the grassy level of the Maidan extends. The creek wandering inland past the southern wall of the burying ground divided Chowringhee-Govindapur from the Old Town – the township around the Old Fort. Until then Chowringhee had been a native portion of Dhee Calcutta and Bazar Calcutta.[23] There were “only a few miserable huts thatched with straw : a jungle, abandoned to water-fowl and alligators, covered the site of the present citadel and the course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta”. [8]

Chowringhee Road. Jaun Bazaar

Chowringhee Road. The Bishop’s Palace

Chowringhee Road. Harrington Street. Elliot’s Tank

Chowringhee Road. Speke Street

Chowringhee Road. Theatre Road Theatre

Chowringhee Road. General’s Tank

Chowringhee Road. Middleton Street

Chowringhee Road. Park Street

Chowringhee Road. General Post Office, Lindsay Street, Manohur Doss Tank Tank

The above 9 lithographs of William Wood’s paintings included in his album, Views of Calcutta.published in 1833. The elegant forms of the buildings of European Calcutta heralded an important stage in the history of architecture of the subcontinent: the evolution of Western styles into forms which would become commonplace in the Indian context. This building depicted shows what became the conventional pattern, a two or three storeyed block, well-proportioned and set in a garden, and with columned verandahs protecting its rooms from the heat. Courtesy British Library

Colonel Mark Wood in 1784 marked Chowringhee on the South of Park Street away from the original locale of the village Cherangi. A decade later, Upjohn put back the district of Chowringhee as Dhee Birje, on the North of Park Street. The boundaries were shown with Circular Road on the East, Park Street on the South, Colingah on the North and a part of Chowringhee Road on the West. [17] After half a century, Dufour and Benard in 1839 put Chowringhee on both the sides of Park Street spreading over Dhurumtollah to Theatre Road. [3] Bit by bit its boundaries extended from the village at North of Park Street, then called the Burying Ground Road, to cover the whole South-East part of Calcutta. In 1802 Lord Valentia writes : “Chowringhee, an entire village, runs for a considerable length at right angles with it (the Esplanade) and altogether forms the finest view I ever beheld in any city.” In 1810, Miss Graham found Calcutta ‘like London a small town of itself ‘, but its suburbs swell it to a prodigious city. [14] Chowringhee in 1824, is no more a mere scattered suburb, but almost as closely built as, and a very little less extensive than Calcutta. [23] , “separated from Calcutta by an ancient John bazaar [Jaun Bazaar]”.[16] Chowringhee, to Rev W K Firminger, was the West End of Calcutta, socially but not geographically, a district bounded by Park Street on the North, Lower Circular Road on the East and South, and the Maidan on the West. [13]

The modern view ignores the historicity of Chowringhee. The row of buildings on Esplanade Row at the edge of Maidan becomes its Northern skirt. Its territory is nowadays more or less compatible with old Govindpore – a place no more exists.

Chowringhee Road View from No 11 Esplanade Row , across Dhurrumtollah Tank. Col. Lithograph. Artist: Sir Charles D’Oyly

Growing Chowringhee

A year before the construction of Govindpore Fort stared, there had been only a couple of European houses in Chowringhee. One at the corner of Dhurumtollah with entrance from that street, the other was at a little distance from it, with an entrance facing the Maidan. Most likely the first house was the General Stibbert’s House in the west end of the Dhurumtollah and in the vicinity of the Esplanade, where Mr. Farrell’ New Calcutta Academy moved in from Cossitolla Street as gazetted on 31st May 1804, much before the foundation of St Paul’s School, which was sometimes referred to as one of the two first houses in Chowringhee. The second one was indisputably the manor of Lord Vansittart at number 7 Middleton Row. It was better known as Sir Elijah Impey’s house where Impey happily stayed surrounded by an expansive deer park. In those days Maidan was ‘strangely treeless’, and Impey’s manor happened to be the foremost erection stood across it’s stretch. The site is now occupied by the Loreto Convent.

The number of houses continued to grow in isolation till 1770s. Between Jaun Bazar Road (or Corporation Street as called later), and Park Street, forty European residences, mostly with large compounds, are depicted in Upjohn’s Map. An equal number may be counted in Dhee Birjee – the quarter immediately south of Park Street. Even so late as 1824, Chowringhee was regarded as a suburb. Miss Eden calls it the Regent’s Park of Calcutta. Miss Emma Roberts spoke about suburb Chowringhee of 1831-33 – the favourite residence of the European community. From the roofs of their houses, they viewed “a strange, rich, and varied scene discloses itself: the river covered with innumerable vessels,— Fort William, and Government House, standing majestically at opposite angles of the plain,— the city of Calcutta, with its innumerable towers, spires, and pinnacles in the distance,— and nearer at hand, swamps and patches of unreclaimed jungle, showing how very lately the ground in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital of Bengal was an uncultivated waste, left to the wild beasts of the forest.” [25]

“In this part of the town,” notes Mr. Beverley in his census report for 1876, “ the streets are laid out with perfect regularity, very different from the rest of the town” – the town rising about the old Fort. [9] The report was contrary to what Miss Emma viewed over half a century ago and said, “No particular plan appears to have been followed in their erection, and the whole, excepting the range facing the great plain, Park-street, Free-School street, and one or two others, present a sort of confused labyrinth,”. and then she added ,”however, it is very far from displeasing to the eye; the number of trees, grass- plants, and flowering shrubs, occasioning a most agreeable diversity of objects.” [25] The difference between the observations of Miss Emma of Beverley evidenced the good works done in between by the Lottery Committee. “To them Calcutta is indebted for a long catalogue of improvements: and they may justly claim to be held in grateful remembrance as her second founders. Roads and paths were run across the Maidan and the familiar balustrades set up. Numerous tanks were excavated The New Market, which was built between 1871 and 1874, is another monument to the energy of the Justices which the ordinary citizen of Calcutta probably feels better able to appreciate. The grand success of the Lottery Committee encouraged the government to undertake further developmental programs under the management of the Fever Committee [9]

Chowringhee Redefined

An illustration is from a picture drawn by Captain F. J. Bellew, illustrating his book entitled, A Griffen, on Landing at Calcutta, 1818

“Chauringi [sic]) is a place of quite modern erection, originated from the rage for country houses.”, At the beginning of 19th century the people of Calcutta, as of Bombay and Madras, loved to live in garden-houses midst trees and flowers. They preferred living away from the hot, unhealthy and already crowded Town of Calcutta, to a place ‘where they could enjoy some privacy’.[17] They admired the landscape of Chowringhee. Chowringhee premises themselves were often very extensive, the principal apartments looking out upon pretty gardens, decorated with that profusion of flowers which renders every part of Calcutta so blooming. [25] The surroundings were mostly open fields among which were scattered villages, with here and there a garden house, standing in wide grounds where roamed plenty of deer, water birds, particularly the adjutant birds, or the Indian stork with a pinkish-brown neck and bill, and a military gait seen walking around. Camels and mules were not uncommon sight on Chowringhee Road. Jackals roamed at night mischievously to undermine foundations of old houses, as they did so to the Free School’s old house that fell in 1854. In spite of such small inconveniences the ‘lordly Chowringhee stood ‘equal to the finest thoroughfare anywhere; and the blessed Maidan – that enormous lung responsible for all the health and happiness of the people of Calcutta’. [20]

The name ‘Chowringhee’ denotes a new found ‘comfort zone’ in the South of Town Calcutta for the Europeans who loved a trendy hassle-free life to lead in airy environs. Whenever their comfort-zone shifted its focus the habitat moved along revising its boundaries but keeping the name unchanged. The historical maps may well justify redefining ‘Chowringhee’ in terms of habitation socially and not geographically in terms of territorial location. Chowringhee like two other old localities, John Bazaar and Taltallah, ‘came adrift from their moorings and carried away by the surging tide of population beyond Dhurumtollah toward Bhowanipore.[18] Somewhat like a Gypsy camp, the community moved on southward leaving some cohabitants behind in lesser locations.

Chowringhee Stratified

Plan of Calcutta. 1784 & 1785. Credited to Colonel Mark Wood

Chowringhee, we may notice, is a cluster of residential blocks of distinctive characters, categorized by racial, religious, economic differences. Blanchard in his memoir mentions: “A house in the “City of Palaces” is very apt to look like a palace. But the comparison applies only to that portion of the town where dwell the Europeans of the higher ranks, the Civil and Military officers, and principal merchants of the place. These congregate for the most part in the Chowringhee road and the streets running there from, which make up the only neighbourhood where it is conventionally possible for a gentleman to reside.” [5] This description of Blanchart found inapplicable to the whole of Chowringhee, but to some exclusive neighbourhood like. Hastings Place, at the southern end of Chowringhee. The group of streets which commemorate the various titles of Lord Hastings and his wife, who was Countess of Loudoun in her own right, are also the work of the Lottery Committee, and were designed to afford access to the Panchkotee (92 Elliot Rd ?), or five mansions, which will be found surrounding Rawdon Street, Moira Street, Hungerford Street and Loudoun Street (as it should be properly spelt). [9] We are informed by different authors that while barristers had their houses in the neighbourhood of Supreme Court, the officials, medical men, and merchants, have their residences in Garden Reach, and the numerous streets contained in the district rejoicing in the general name of Chowringee [sic]. [16] All these points out to the practice of social ranking among the European residents in Chowringhee. Chowringhee was built by Europeans for residing there in European way life, surpassing the standard of living prevailed in their homeland. Montgomery Massey penned an intimate and lively picture of Chowringhee of relatively recent time covering half a century from 1870s. [20]

Social & Religious Reservations

Procession of the Churruckpooja in Chowringee. Coloured lithograph by Charles D’Oyly. 1848

For a long time Indians had no place in Chowringhee, excepting very few. We find in a late 18th century map three Rustomjees on Chowringhee Lane, Jamsedjee Ruttunjee on Lindsay Street. Chowringhee allowed these rich business men of Parsee community to stay with the sahibs rightfully. It took a hundred year for the native gentlemen to share the privilege liberally with the Europeans to settle in Chowringhee. Some of those privileged ones were: Kumar Arun Chundra Singha at house 1(?) Harrington Street, Sir Rajendranath Mookherji’s house on 7 Harrington Street, Sir B. C. Mitter’s 19 Camac Street, Raja Promotho Roy Chowdhury’s 9 Hungerford Street. The presence of native houses in Chowringhee before coming of Europeans may not be improbable. Rev. Long spoke of a ‘large house’ identical to Sir Elijah Impey’s, stood on the very spot, nearly half a century before Impey. That house as referred to in the ‘Plan of Calcutta’ of 1742 ‘cannot have been an English residence’ he continued, ‘and was possibly the property of a native official’. [17]

Chowringhee in its first two centuries had been exclusively a Christian colony. The two early Bengali converts, Rev. K. M. Banerjee, and Gunendra Mohun Tagore had houses in European quarter on Bullygunge Circular Road at premises numbers 1 and 2. We are never sure if Chowringhee would have welcomed these two native Christians as residents, if so they desired. It is interesting to note, however, that there was a Hindu, of European origin, living in posh Wood Street area. Hindu Stuart was more a conservative Hindu than many native Hindus were. The European residents had tolerated Stuart’s conformity to idolatrous customs. It shows that the Europeans had no problems with native faith as such, but to them the native way of living was utterly disgraceful and unhygienic. Besides their own experience, the reactions of the overseas visitors gathered from their memoirs and letters, reinforced European antipathy toward the way of living of the Calcutta people in general, and of the lower-class in particular. One of the serious objections they had against native citizens was ‘lack of sensitivity’ and indifference toward their own surroundings. They called the native town, a black town, as it was a ‘wretched-looking place – dirty, crowded, ill-built, and abounding with beggars and bad smells’ [30]. Beyond Black Towns, even the best neighbourhoods were not completely free of such menace. “The whole appearance of Chowringhee is spoiled by the filthy huts that exist everywhere, almost touching the ‘palaces’.” These eyesores are to be seen even in the ultra-fashionable Park Street and Middleton Street, and on the Maidan in front of Chowringhee. [12] It is a repulsive scene for civilized members of any society. The problems are often thought of economy oriented and related to lower-class of the society, overlooking their cultural significance.

Living Conditions and Style

The Black Towns also includes the upper-class genteel who lived in ‘handsome houses enclosed in court-yards between the mud huts, the small dingy brick tenements, and the mean dilapidated bazaars of the middling and lower classes of natives. These Armenian merchants, Parsees, and Bengallee gentlemen of great wealth and respectability’ did never mind their environment. [25] Interestingly, the lowly tribal folks of Bengal, like the santals, keep their homes and villages clean and beautiful. The underlined social malady is an issue of critical importance for investigating the root cause of stagnation of the vernacular society. The matter is beyond the scope of present discussion. Elsewhere we discussed related issues in historical context. See: Rajendra Dutta 1818-1889

Chowringhee Today & Tomorrow

Since 1754 Chowringhee revealed itself variantly in maps, paintings, and texts. It is almost impossible to separate Chowringhee from boundary areas, or to imagine a Chowringhee excluding North of Park Street, a Chowringhee without the old Hogg Market, the Museum, Bible House, The Grand, and Firpo’s, and the like – attractions of old and recent past. For Chowringhee goers, riding an Esplanade-bound tram across the green of Maidan was a special pleasure. Alighted at Esplanade they felt already in Chowringhee, and perceived the two as inseparable. To them and some modern scholars, Chowringhee and Esplanade denote the same place and are generally called by any of the two names irrespectively. The comprehensive view of modern Calcutta embraces the grand view of Maidan and on its opposite, shiny lines of shops, hotels, restaurants, cinema halls and range of magnificent edifices built mostly by the Armenian architects who were responsible more than others for upgrading Calcutta to the City of Palace. Minney in his time wondered “if all these mighty edifices will be abandoned some day by those for whom they were built. Will the Britons say to the Indians, “We built all this for ourselves, and for you; but we can no longer live together?” [20] And so it happened. Calcutta has been losing her Oriental identity for good. The little collective will the society had earned to resist the lure of westernization is being siphoned off in the process of misconceived globalization.

NOTES
The name of the rural Cherangi (চেরাঙ্গী) changed during its transformation into urbane Chowringhee (চৌরঙ্গী). The original vernacular name [26] acquired variant renditions with some twists to suit English tongues, and spelt out fancifully by writers of last three centuries. Among the good alternatives, ‘Chowringhee’ is found most popular in the works consulted. That is the only reason why I used ‘Chowringhee’ and some other place names in certain anglicized forms as standard.

REFERENCES
1. Anonymous. 1859. The East India Sketch-Book; Comprising an Account of the Present State of Society in Calcutta, Bombay, Etc. London: Bentley.
2. Bellew. 1880. Memoirs of a Griffin; Or, a Cadet’s First Year in India, by Captain Bellew. London: Allen. Retrieved (https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QaeFDZ31SuKS9kDHiV6UQ99iWso9Gpe7upyHKD7uJymaDFKZOeWiERI3n2I2aX4TozdjSzDJP8KSMGKwxIp2QyYMijIkC9LDrZ5rrD8ee7utuIuTAt4mkqAM9uu-jq3vjAx2M3xYMFMxXW8OHNamEuOXWPDkU0yA-yq9EUwZPN8_ifFCoA2tHKD61OGFj9SPebPjy).
3. Benard, Dufour and. 1839. “Calcutta 1839: A French Map 1839_DufordandBernard.” Retrieved (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/colonial/calcuttamaps/rouard1839/rouard1839.html).
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5. Blanchard, Sidney Laman. 1867. Yesterday and Today in India. London: Allen. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/yesterdaytodayin00blan#page/n3/mode/2up).
6. Blechynden, Kathleen. 1905. Calcutta Past and Present. London: Thacker. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttapastand02blecgoog).
7. Candor, Josua. 1828. Modern Traveller: Popular Description, Geographical, Historical, and Topographical ; Vol.3 India. London: Duncan. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/moderntraveller05condgoog).
8. Carey, William. n.d. Good Old Days of Honorable John Company; vol.1.
9. Cotton, Evan. 1907. Calcutta Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook of the City. Calcutta: Newman. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/calcuttaoldandn00cottgoog).
10. Curzon,George Nathaniel, Marquis of Kedlesta. 1925. “British Government in India; vol.1.” Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=t_qdnQAACAAJ&dq=british+government+of+India+curzon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtgteC2MnXAhVEqI8KHe-DBeoQ6wEILTAB).
11. Deb, Binaya Krishna. 1905. The Early History and Growth of Calcutta. Calcutta: RC Ghose. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/earlyhistoryand00debgoog).
12. Dewar, Douglas. 1922. Bygone Days in India; with 18 Illustrations. London: John Lane. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/bygonedaysinindi00dewauoft#page/n15/mode/2up).
13. Firminger, W. K. 1906. Thacker’s Guide to Calcutta. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/thackersguidetoc00firm#page/n7/mode/2up/search/’socially+but+not+geographically).
14. Graham, Maria. 1813. Journal of a Resdence in India. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Costable. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/journalaresiden00callgoog#p age/n6/mode/2up).
15. Hamilton, Alexander. 1727. A New Account of the East Indies; Being the Observations and Remarks of Capt. Alexander Hamilton from 1688-1723. Vol.1. Edinburgh: John Mosman [print]. Retrieved (https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QacjxhiAm8rzif8UIk9TDXspCahRSpGTJAm4B4cNBUSur1ofIcI-zAg5Za6SGU0KEoBJJ0rawcvPDm3vIiVfY_AZMXqlsbCB7DFd_Q2mmMeTe-lppWWArhBGhJyND193wpzwke4Pr80-cyeInTGT6QK0EtQ5684QSuXLM8N5EGEHC5kHd6fucZw-MT5827LyRLvNA).
16. James, Edward. 1830. Brief Memoirs of John Thomas James, D.D: Lord Bishop of Calcutta. London: Hatchhard. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/briefmemoirsofla00jamerich#page/n5/mode/2up/search/ancient).
17. Johnson, George W. 1843. The Stranger in India; Or, Three Years in Calcutta. Vol. 1(2). London: Henry Colburn. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/strangerinindia00johngoog#page/n46/mode/2up).
18. Long, Rev.James. 1852. Calcutta in the Olden Time – Its Localities. Art.2 – Map of Calcutta. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=cQc2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA275&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false).
19. Mark Wood. 1792. “Plan of Calcutta: 1874-1875.” Retrieved (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Kolkata_Old_Map.jpg).
20. Massey, Montague. 1918. Recollections of Calcutta for Over Halh a Century. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. Retrieved (https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjRr_WylsPXAhUDV7wKHTWJAXcQFggxMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Frecollectionsofc00massiala&usg=AOvVaw3uvydXqyjqB3xbkOOZe4jp).
21. Minney, R. J. 1922. Round about Calcutta. London: Oxford U P. Retrieved (https://archive.org/stream/roundaboutcalcut00minnrich#page/n5/mode/2up).
22. Monkland. 1828. Life in India, or the English at Calcutta; vol.2.
23. Montefiore, Arthur. 1894. Reginald Heber: Bishop of Calcutta, Scholar and Evangelist. New York: Revell. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/reginaldheberbis00bric).
24. Ray, A. K. 1902. Calcutta: Town and Suburbs; Pt.1 A Short History of Calcutta. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=-Lo5AQAAMAAJ&q=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&dq=calcutta+town+and+suburbs+ak+Ray&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDnrz11MnXAhUCN48KHdgEDQUQ6AEIJzAA).
25. Roberts, Emma. 1843. “Memoirs of Emma Roberts. In Memoirs of Literary Ladies of England; Ed. by Mrs Elwood; vol.2.” in Oxford University, vol. 2. London: Colburn. Retrieved (https://books.google.co.in/books?id=ROsQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq=memoirs+of+emma+robert&source=bl&ots=c_ubDSyGKS&sig=PW6CgPPZ3uZuZq0Ev71kl_Ll7vU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI5PPQ0cjXAhXHto8KHTQ7DFQ4ChDoAQgmMAA#v=onepage&q=memoirs of emma robert&f=false).
26. Thacker, Spink. 1776. “Alphabetical List of the Streets in Calcutta, Howrah, and the Suburbs.” Calcutta: Thacker, Spink.
27. Wilson, Charles R. 1895. The Early Annals of the English in Bengal; Summarised, Extracted, and Edited with Introductions and Illustrative Addenda; Vol.1. London, Calcutta: Thacker. Retrieved (https://archive.org/details/earlyannalsofeng01wilsuoft).

Barrackpore House & Its English Park: 1803-1912

February 18, 2017British, british rule, Christianity, Company Rule, Garden House, Government Establishments, Landscape, Life Styles, New Township, Official Residences, Palaces, Parks/ Pools, Raj Officials, Residential House, River Banks, Ways of Life, Whites.honeymoon bungalow, agriculture, alured clark, anne monkland, aviary tank, bamboo tunnel, banyan tree, Barrackpore, barrackpore church, barrackpore house, barrackpore park, belvedere, bishop heber, bungalows, burlesque poem, calcutta cathedral, canning, carey, charles d'oyly’s, clearing, colonel everest, colonial architecture, convict labour, cornwallis, court of directors, curzon, d'oyly, danish church at serampore, draining, dunes, electric light, english charm, english landscape, english park, english-ness, flagstaff, flagstaff bungalow, fort william college, gardens, george barlow, golf links, government houses, green house, griffin, hastings, hillocks, hms kent, jungle, kendleston, lady canning, lady canning's tomb, lady ripon, Lord Auckland, lord canning, lord cornwallis, lord hastings, lord lytton, lord minto, lord ripon, lord wellesley, lotus basin, mahogany avenue, marble fountain installed in front of the south entrance, marquis curzon, marshman, menagerie, monkland, moti jheel, nishan ghaut, ornamental water, park, plan of barrackpore park, private park, rosery, seed house, semaphore stations, semaphore tower, st john's church, stravornius, swamp, symons, temple of fame, tennis court, tiffin-party, tom raw, trigonometric survey, viceroy lodge, ward, Wellesley, white townঅযান্ত্রিক

government-house-barrackpore-from-the-south_bourne-1865 — Barrackpore House, South view. Photo Samuel Bourne. 1865. Courtesy: BL

রাজভবন লাটবাগান

In sequence of the previously posted essay, ‘Barrackpore, a little Calcutta’, I am tempted to bring about the subject once again to share with you the fascinating details of the making of Barrackpore House and the Park as revealed in ‘The Story Of The Viceroys And Government Houses’ of Marquis Curzon of Kendleston. Curzon started his research during his Viceroyalty (1899-1905), continued with it, and finally readied his work for Cassell to publish in 1925 before he took rest in peace. A condensed and revised version was published in 1935 entitled, Story of Government houses by N V. H. Symons.

Although Curzon had a fond association with Government House at Calcutta as it was modelled after his ancestral manor Kendleston Hall, he took every care to follow faithfully the crazy path of history of the Barrackpore estate since Lord Wellesley started it all by himself.

bungalow-in-the-park-barrackpore_ed1 — A Bunglow in the Park. Artist: James, Marianne Jane. 1828. Courtesy: BL

Barrackpore is complementary to Government House in the same way that Viceroy Lodge, Simla, is complementary to Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. The Governor General used to spend the whole of the year in Bengal, apart from tours, Barrackpore being his habitual summer residence. [Symons] As Stravornius had mentioned in 1768, Belvedere might have served as Barrackpore did after Wellesley [Cal. Rev, Dec.1852]. Even after 1864 the Viceroys and the Governors of Bengal used Barrackpore House as a country house for week-ends.

a-carriage-with-three-outriders-approaching-barrackpore-house_daniell_1810x — A carriage approaching Barrackpore House. Artist: Daniell, William. c1810. Courtesy: BL

The English lady traveler, Monkland, to my mind, described best what Barrackpore was in early 19th century. [Monkland]. Barrackpore was then having ‘a quiet and retirement like air’ of countryside that combined with its military neatness and propriety making it ‘one of the sweetest places in India. ‘The bungalows in four lines stand each separated from the others, every one surrounded by its own corn-ground, flower-garden, and neat trimmed hedge; while the whole cantonment is at right angles intersected by well kept roads, smooth as bowling-greens, and has the river in front and the parade ground in the rear. Government-house, and its beautiful grounds, are merely separated from the cantonments by a piece of water from the river, over which there is a bridge; and the park, as a drive, is at all times open to the European inhabitants.’ [Symons] Seemingly, nowhere else the Britons raised an exclusive white town as satisfyingly as they did it in Barrackpore. To the natives of the town, লাটবাগান (the Park) remained a prohibited place.

Lord Wellesley was the first to find Barrackpore a great place for peaceful living; and it was he who desired to build government palace amidst an English park. On 31st December, 1800, Wellesley advised Sir Alured Clark, the Commander-in-Chief, that his official residence was intended to resume for the use of the Governor General, and the day after Wellesley appeared on the scene. He started to occupy the house almost at once. He was content with it for the next three years, though he immediately set about enlarging and improving the Parks. It was not till the beginning of 1804, he bethought of building a new palace at Barrackpore, as the present house was considered unsafe. On the site he erected a large bungalow for a provisional residence, and nearby he laid the foundation of a palace that involved an estimated cost of four lakhs of rupees. In July 1805, when its structure had come up to the ground storey level, Wellesley resigned and returned to England. The relationship between the Court of Directors and Lord Wellesley had never been too cordial. When Wellesley left the country, the Court peremptorily prohibited ‘the outlay of so large a sum on such an object’. There were, in fact, many ‘such’ projects Wellesley initiated that the Court of Directors found unjustifiable. Mysore and other campaigns apart, Wellesley’s enterprises in India were characterized both by wisdom and imagination. They were as a rule too expensive, particularly in a country like India prior to coming under the Crown administration. He was time and again cautioned for his extravagant monetary commitments for setting up Fort William College project, schemes for the encouragement of agriculture and horticulture and the study of the flora and fauna that led to the institution of the Gardens and Menagerie at Barrackpore. Being a conscientious and upright administrator, Wellesley remained untouched by any of such public scandals about his wasteful expenditure on pricey projects as reflected in Sir Charles D’Oyly’s anonymously published book of burlesque poem :

BARRACKPORE
…….

Wellesley first stampt it his. He was the boy
For mating ducks and drakes with public cash,
Planned a great house that time might not destroy:
Built the first floor, prepared bricks, beam and sash
And then retired, and left it in this dismal hash.

[*Tom Raw, the Griffin. 1824]

[*Tom Raw, the Griffin: a burlesque poem; descriptive of the adventures of a cadet in the East India Company’s service, from the period of his quitting England to his obtaining a staff situation]

By the order of the Court of Directors the construction work of Barrackpore House was suspended. The beams, doors, and windows, etc. were sold by auction. The shell of the house stood for some more years until Lord Hastings finally cleared the ground and put up a Green House there.

While constructing his dream palace, Wellesley stayed in a temporary accommodation he had made with three large bedrooms opening on to a wide verandah to the North-West. This bungalow happened to be the nucleus of the future Barrackpore House. The three rooms made up the central block of the new building. Sir George Barlow (1805-1807) erected small rooms at every corner of the southern verandah. Lord Hastings (1813-1823) added side wings, a Portico, and the upper Entrance Hall that was used later as a billiard room. These structural changes, however, ruined the prospect of its being a good summer residence. What needed was “a series of rooms which will catch the South breeze at night” – this condition was fulfilled by the original three-roomed house.

Government House Walk. Photographer: Bourne, Samuel. c1865

It was Hastings who shaped the house into its final form, and took interest in glorifying the building with appropriate decorations. The lovely lotus basin and the marble fountain installed in front of the South entrance, were two such decorative pieces he brought from Agra. By doubling the building area he also ensured a comfortable accommodation for the Governor and their family members and some guests as well. No other structural changes were attempted ever since, except for some minor modifications and additions of certain features. Lord Auckland (1835 – 1842) added the balcony on the Western side; Lord Lytton (1876-1880) replaced the unseemly iron staircase on the South front. Lord Ripon (1886-1884) installed a wooden porch In front. Lord Minto (1905-1910) equipped the building with electric light, laid the floor in the drawing room and redecorated the entire house.

The house has always been used as a place of relaxation and recreation. Within the house there have been balls and entertainments, and also services were being held at the large central drawing room before Barrackpore Church was established in 1847. Here, Bishop Heber preached in 1823. Carey, Marshman and Ward, often visited Barrackpore House as guests of the Governor General.

Barrackpore House was occupied by as many as twenty-four Governors-General of India Until its final abandonment as the residence of the Viceroy in 1912. Despite so much efforts made over a century for its betterment, the Barrackpore House emerged as ‘a shadow of the house there would have been had Wellesley started this project earlier and been able to see it through before he left India’.[Curzon] William Carey, who was a regular visitor to Barrackpore House, considered Barrackpore House had scarcely any claims to excellence, as a specimen of architecture. [Carey]
Stoqueller tipped off his readers of 1844 Guidebook that there was nothing remarkable about the Government House, but a plain one storied edifice with lofty rooms and very ordinary furniture. [Hand-book of India, a Guide / Stocqueller. 1844]

Barrackpore Park – Lake scene. Photographer: Samuel Bourne. Bar… Creator: Bourne, Samuel. 1860

‘Barrackpore Park was created by the taste and public spirit of Lord Wellesley’. [Carey] It was believed that he had a desire ‘to have brought all the public offices up from Calcutta and established them in the vicinity of the park’. From his day-one in Barrackpore, Wellesley started acquiring land for developing the Park. The whole park-area was nearly 350 acres, and the cost of the land acquisition amounted to £9,577. It was originally a flat land covered with swamps and jungle.

barrackpore-riverside-lipoo-tree_williamprinsep_1827 — Lipoo Tree at Riverside, the natural landscape outside Park. Artist: William Prinsep. 1827

Wellesley converted this landscape into an English Park by engaging convict labour to do the task of draining, clearing and shaping the land into hillocks and dunes, and installing pieces of ornamental water. In the beginning there had been little or no distinction between the Park and the Garden. It was through a gradual process the Park turned out to be a public-access property. The Gardens grown within the Park remained private. There was, however, no borderline between the two, and the public roads ran through the Park and the Garden areas as well. barrackpore-park_plan-symons

A detailed plan of Barrackpore Park, reproduced here from Lord Curzon’s book, The story of the viceroys and government houses, helps us to understand the distribution of items described by him and other narrators. The Park looked best at the river-side. Barrackpore House stands nearest to the Nishan Ghaut – the platform for landing ships. Lady Canning (1856-1861) made a raised pathway leading from the house to the upper landing stage, and much later Lord Ronaldshay (1917-1922) made a bridge from there to the landing stage.

honeymoon-lodge-barrackpore-park_hawk_ed2 — Honeymoon Bunglow. Photographer: Not known. c1878. Courtesy: BL

Some other old bungalows are found close by. Bungalows#1 and #2 were designated for the guests while the one at the Eastern side, the Military Secretary’s quarter, was better known as ‘Honeymoon Bungalow’ because of its being available on rent to newly married couples. On the North-West Beach stands the Flagstaff – a broken up mast enshrined in memory of the flagship HMS Kent, smashed in 1757. The bungalow next to it is called ‘Flagstaff Bungalow’.

Lord Wellesley had a good amount of time to devote for developing the Barrackpore Park before he finally resigned, leaving his other project, Barrackpore House, abandoned.

Rhinozeror [rhinoceros] tank Photographer: Fiebig, Frederick . 1851 — Rhinozeror tank Photographer: Fiebig, Frederick . 1851 Courtesy: BL

He had completed many other constructions inside the Park, including a stable for 36 horses and standing for four carriages together with a coachman’s bungalow; he erected the balustrade bridge over the ‘Moti Jheel’ lake to the North of the House, an aviary for large birds, and also a menagerie in the North-East corner of the Park. The Menagerie existed there till the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta were opened by Edward VII as Prince of Wales in 1876, where most of its collections were transferred. Wellesley had constructed the high way from Calcutta as the first section of the Grand Trunk Road, and planted trees on either side before he handed over its charge to his successor, Lord Cornwallis. Wellesley might have also planted the mahogany trees on both side of the shady road known as ‘Mahogany Avenue’ as the cross-dating of tree-rings suggested.

Bear Garden. Photographer: Fiebig, Frederick. 1851. Courtesy: BL

a-llama-and-its-young-in-a-park-presumably-barrackpore-hastings-albums-e7gp0r — Llama and its young at Barrackpore Park Chiriakhana. Details not known. Courtesy: Alamy

elephants-stable-at-barrackpore — Elephant Stable. Barrackpore Details not known. Courtesy: Alamy

barrackpore-park_giraff_fiebie1851 — Giraffe at Barrackpore Park. Photographer: Frederick Fiebie. 1851. Courtesy: BL

On the other side of the Avenue, Lord Curzon grew a fine rosary with a large circular lawn surrounded by pergolas. Lord Minto construct¬ed a large stone basin and fountain, 40 feet in diameter and holding 23,000 gallons of water. Though intended for the rosary, the basin and the fountain were placed in front of the Seed House and often used as a bathing pool. There have been many more formal gardens in the Park designed and developed by the successors of Wellesley. Lord Auckland (1835-1842) had started an aviary near the Lily Tank, which is also called ‘Aviary Tank’ in reference to his lost aviary. The ‘Deer Tank’ ,situated in between the House and the ‘Temple of Fame’, was made by Lord Lytton (1922-1927) for the half-a-dozen deer he had brought from Barisal in an attempt to revive the charm of the old time Park. The name ‘Rhinoceros Tank’ brings back the memories of Lord Wellesley’s menagerie. Likewise, the word ‘bustee’ reminds us of his aviary once existed opposite Chiriakhana.

019xzz000000666u00016a00svc2 — Menagerie at Barrackpore. Artsit: Charles D’Oyly. 1848. Courtesy: BL

Moti Jheel, the long tank, near the ‘Temple of Fame’ stretched up to the Cantonment church, had been a prolific breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Lord Curzon arranged to drain and turf Moti Jheel, and Lord Minto filled it further along with other restoration works he undertook. Minto built the magnificent ‘Temple of Fame’ following Greek style – a tribute to the 24 officers who fell in the conquest of Java and Mauritius in 1810 and 1811.

Lady Canning (1856-1861) made some memorable contributions toward improvement of the Park facilities. She had built a road from the House to the new landing stage, which was converted into a leafy tunnel of bamboos by Lady Ripon in 1880. On the South of the house, she put the pillared balustrade round the semi-circular terrace and planted blue Morning Glory to grow over it and spread out over the giant Banyan tree. The tree was 85 feet high; and with nearly 400 aerial roots it covered an area of 60,000 square feet; It was smaller in circumspect but older than the Shipbur Ba-nyan tree. Lady Canning realized the possibilities of the great tree as an outdoor pavilion. banian-tree-in-barrackpore-park-_bourne1865ed1 Under the shade the members of the House and their ho-nourable guests liked to spend whole day, enjoying the meals and refreshments served there, and perhaps watching games on the Tennis Court from distance. Beneath the shade of Banyan Tree many a viceregal *tiffin-party had assembled. There was also an excellent Golf Links much resorted to by Calcutta folk.

[ The British in India referred to ‘tiffin’ as a light lunch and the Sunday tiffin was ‘an occasion for over-indulgence, with mulligatawny soup (always), curry and rice, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding washed down with a bottle of iced beer, and tapioca pudding’. – Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A taste of empire*, by Cecilia Leong-Salobir. Routledge, 2011]

One of the most beautiful sites in the Park was the grave of Lady Canning, 500 yards down the river bank from the House. She died in Calcutta and, as her husband wished, buried in Barrackpore Park where she, a proficient painter, used to sit in the quiet. gothic-ruin-with-creepers-in-barrackpore-par_bourne1865ed Bishop Cotton consecrated the ground. Her sister, Lady Waterford, designed a monument for her grave – a large mar-ble platform ornamented with inlaid mosaic. The monument, for its proper up-keeping, was required to be shifted in 1873 to Calcutta Cathedral and from there to other places until the relic found its place at the North portico of St John’s Church.

To the North of the House, near Flagstaff there was a tall masonry tower, and some more were found along the road. According to Lord Curzon, those were semaphore stations for the Governor General’s use but abandoned after installation of the Telegraphic system in India. There are, however, some official records suggesting that the towers were built by Colonel Everest in 1830 for his Trigonometric Survey.

(c) British Library; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Apart from the things we discussed here, my previous post on Barrackpore dealt with some issues of relevance highlighting the Englishness in the government estate of Barrackpore. “There is said to be nothing else in India or indeed in Asia to compare with the Park and its broad stretches of undulating grassland . . . much though his successors have owed to Wellesley for providing the, magnificent Government House in Calcutta, their debt for the peaceful English charm of Barrackpore is almost greater.” [Curzon]

To the West on the river-side there was a masonry chabutra on which the band used to play English tune flowing over the hillocks and dunes of the Park. To complete, the illusion of English scenery, Lord Wellesley, wished for a constant view of a Church spire. To fulfill that wish, Wellesley spent unhesitatingly a sum of Rs. 10,000 towards the building of the Danish Church at Serampore – a church adhering to non-Anglican creed.

A view of Serampore Artist: Fraser, James Baillie 1826. Courtesy: BL

The chronicle of the Government estate at Barrackpore may serve as a unique case of colonial architectural experience of a century long endeavour by different masters with variant ability and outlook – the Governors General, Viceroys and Bengal Governors, whoever considered the place their temporary home, had attempted to make things changed their ways for improving conditions of living in Barrackpore House.

The Park is almost like a huge collage of English landscape composed collectively by talented men and women, in succession, adding patches of vibrant colours and forms of their choice, and most significantly, adhering to a thorough English style.

REFERENCE

Tom Raw, the Griffin; a Burlesque Poem, in Twelve Cantos: Illustrated by Twenty-Five Engravings, Descriptive of the Adventures of a Cadet In / Charles D’Oyly. 1828

The Hand-book of India: A Guide to the stranger and the traveller… / Joachim Hayward Stocqueler. 1845.

“Calcutta in the olden time – its localities” In: Calcutta Review; v. 18. Dec. 1852

The Good Old Days of Honorable John Company …v. 1/ William Carey. 1882

Life in India; or, the English at Calcutta / Anne Catharine Monkland; v.2. 1882.

British Government in India: The story of the viceroys and government houses /
George Nathaniel Curzon of Kedleston (Marques). 1925

Story of government houses/ N. V. H. Symons. 1935

Barrackpore : Story of a Little Calcutta

December 20, 2016Administrative Buildings, British, british rule, Company Rule, Garden House, Government Establishments, Life Styles, Living Conditions, New Township, Official Residences, Parks/ Pools, Raj Officials, Whitesabul fazal, acacia, achanak, ain-e-akbari’, aquatic birds, avenue, aviary, ba-nyan tree, Barrackpore, barrackpore bridge, barrackpore bungalows, barrackpore cantonment, barrackpore house, battle of delhi, bears, belgravia, belvidere, binda tiwary, Bipradas Pipilai, bolios, Bow Bazar, cassowary, caste, casteism, chanak, chhota calcutta, chiriakhana, chittagong, chowringhee, colinga, cox’s bunglow, custom, dead bodies, decades, dharmatallah, dinga, dow, East India Company, east lndiaman, emma robert, fireworks, flamingo, fort, funeral, funeral fires, gar-dens, garden, george smith, golf links, government house, grab, hatikhana, hindu pagoda, horse race, hotel charnock, hounds, insurgency, j h stocqueler, jackal, james long, java pigeon, job charnock, lady callcott, little calcutta, lord moira, lower hindoos, maha deo temple, manasa vijay, mangal pandey, maria graham, marquis hastings, marquis wellesley, menagerie, nona chandanpukur, pagodas, pariah, peepil, pelican, pilgrim road, proa, races, residence in india, river-side, sarasa, sepoy mutiny, serampore, shyambazar bridge, silken streamers, stavorinus, stork, syrus, tamarind, tank square, thames, Theatre, tigers, Warehouses, wild dog, william carey, zoological gardens at calcuttaঅযান্ত্রিক

Governor General’s House & Park at Barrackpore. Water colour by Edward Hawk Locker. 1808. Courtesy: British Library

ব্যারাকপুর – কলকাতার অদূরে ‘ছোট কলকাতা’

Barrackpore, some 16 miles away from Calcutta, turned into a little Calcutta or Chhota Calcutta. This happened because of the mastermind of Marquis Wellesley, who moved to Barrackpore in 1801 and occupied the Commander-in-Chief’s residence – one of the two bungalows bought by the Government with 70 acres of land when the cantonment was founded in 1775. This is where Wellesley lived for about 3 years devoting his mind in enlarging and improving the surrounding park area. He landscaped the gardens in the ‘English Style’, added an aviary, a menagerie and a theatre. The rustic hamlet emerged as a fashionable abode of the Britishers for sojourning.

by Ozias Humphry, pencil, chalk and watercolour, 1783 — Marquis Wellesley (1760-1842) by Ozias Humphry, 1783

Barrackpore had a long history that began much before the coming of Job Charnock, who had been in Barrackpore for a while, raised a bungalow, and gathered a little bazaar closed by. Here his beloved wife of native origin had died. The area was previously ruled over by a line of Zamindars based in Nona Chandanpukur, Barrackpore. In ‘Ain-e-Akbari’, Abul Fazal (1596–97) referred to this place as Barbuckpur, and it was Chanak in `Manasa Vijay` written by Bipradas Pipilai (1495). Chanak and the other nearby towns were developed into chief marketing, trading and populous towns along the side of river Hooghly. The local name Achanak seems to be a localized version of Chanak.

Barrackpore, however, went into the British colonial history more significantly because of the two revolts. The first one was the 1824 insurgency led by Sepoy Binda Tiwary, and the second was the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 led by Mangal Pandey. With the exception of these two horrifying experiences of tumult and fury, Barrackpore have always been a calmly country seat for the white’s leisurely pursuits contrary to the demanding living condition of the up-and-coming city of Calcutta.
In pre-Plassey Calcutta, the servants of East India Company used to live in dark and damp lodgings in the Fort, and warehouses where the gates shut upon them at night. After Plassey, the growth of the garrison and the influx of European officers and troops from Madras worsened the lodging condition. New quarters came up along the Avenue, Pilgrim road, and Bow Bazar and, bypassing the native quarters of Dinga, and Colinga, spread over the open ground of Chowringhee and Dharmatallah. [See The Social Condition of the British Community in Bengal: 1757-1800 By Suresh Chandra Ghosh. 1970] No wonder that the Europeans, gradually migrated from Tank Square – ‘the Belgravia of that day’ — and took up their abodes in Chowringhee ‘out of town’. [See ‘Calcutta in the olden time — its localities‘ In Calcutta review. Sept.1852.]. Earlier James Atkinson in a verse, published in 1824, described the condition of Calcutta more pungently as ‘an anxious, forced existence’. [ See City of Palaces, a poem by James Atkinson. 1824]

barrackpore-bridge_fiebig1851 — Barrackpore Bridge, hand-coloured photograph by Frederick Fiebig. 1851. Courtesy British Library

The road from Calcutta to Barrackpore was opened to the public on the 26th July, 1805, perhaps the best road constructed so far. Miss Emma Robert,the English lady traveller, wrote after two decades, that the ‘drives and rides about the city are not very numerous, nor very extensive, excepting towards Barrackpore.’ [See Scenes and characteristics of Hindostan; with sketches of Anglo-Indian society; v.1 by Emma Roberts. 1835]

In 1830 the Barrackpore Bridge, commonly called, ‘Shyambazar Bridge’, was constructed connecting Barrackpore Road to Calcutta at its northern end. The 100 ft long and 30ft wide Bridge was built by the Canal Superintendent, James Prinsep at the cost of Rs 20,529. It was a beautiful bridge, as revealed in the hand-coloured photograph of the bridge and the road with running horses and carriages, taken by Frederick Fiebig in 1851.
J H Stocqueler while journeying through Brarackpur road looked out from his palanquin [ see Hand-book of India, guide to the stranger and the traveler, ..ed. by Joachim Hayward Stocqueler. 1844], to the pleasing view of an extensive avenue of trees skirted by villages, gardens, and rice-fields. Cox’s Bunglow, the site of a building then used as a stables for relays of horses, was on the right-hand side of the road, and there the first change of relay proceeds onward through Barrackpore Cantonment.

019xzz000000666u00016b00svc2 — Entrance to Barrackpore. Lithograph ( coloured ).Charles D’Oyly. 1848. Courtesy: British Library

Though a large station, Barrackpore presents an air of quiet and retirement like a country village; which joined to its military neatness and propriety, make it one of the sweetest places in India. The bungalows in four lines stand each separated firom the others, every one surrounded by its own corn-ground, flower-garden, and neat trimmed hedge; while the whole cantonment is at right angles intersected by well kept roads, smooth as bowling-greens, and has the river in front and the parade ground in the rear. Government-house, and it’s beautiful grounds, are merely separated from the cantonments by a piece of water from the river, over which there is a bridge; and the park, as a drive, is at all times open to the European inhabitants. [See Life in India: Or, The English at Calcutta; v.2 by Monkland. 1828]

maria_callcott_by_thomaslawrence — Maria Graham (b1785-d1842) (in later life, Maria, Lady Callcott) An Englsh travel writer. Portrait by Thamas Lawrence. 1819

How Barrackpore was in the first half of 19^th century can be figured out more from the true-to-life excellent paintings and photographs than the textual documents handed down to us – mostly official transactions and records, and also letters and diaries of the travellers and residents, which provide human-side view, factual information apart. Unfortunately, not many travel-writers visited Barrackpore. The English lady, Maria Graham(later Lady Callcott) was an exception. In her book, Journal of a Residence in India, she left her lively and credible impressions of everything she saw there. Her account of Barrackpore commenced from Nov 20, 1810.

RIVER-SIDE

It was a delightful day she arrived by boat. The weather was so cool that ‘one really enjoys a river view walk’. Close to Calcutta, it is the busiest scene one can imagine; crowded with ships and boats of every form,—here a fine English East lndiaman, there a grab or a dow from Arabia, or a proa from the eastern islands. On one side the picturesque boats of the natives, with their floating huts; on the other the bolios and pleasure boats of the English, with their sides of green and gold, and silken streamers. Up the river, the scene became more quiet, but not less beautiful.

barrackpore-ghaut_fiebig_1851 — Barrackpore Ghaut, A hand-coloured photograph by Frederick Fiebig. 1851. Courtesy British Library

The trees grow into the water, and half hide the pagodas and villages with which the banks of the river are covered on both sides. It was late when we arrived here, and some of the pagodas were already illuminated for a festival; fireworks, of which the natives are very fond, were playing on the shore, and here and there the red flame of the funeral fires under the dark trees threw a melancholy glare on the water. From the opposite river bank, The missionaries Serampore had enjoyed the same view of Barrackpore riverside. Carey’s biographer, George Smith reproduced William Carey’s memory of ‘The garden slopes down to the noble river, and commands the beautiful country seat of Barrackpore, which Lord Wellesley had just built’. [See Life of William Carey, by Gerge Smith. 1909]

THE PARK

conservatory-barrackpore-park-_fiebie1851 — Barrackpore Ghaut, A hand-coloured photograph by Frederick Fiebig. 1851. Courtesy British Library

Many of the Barrackpore goers maintained that it was not the Barrackpore House itself ‘but its accessories were the best features it can boast of’ – an aviary and a menagerie, a garden and a pleasant promenade, where the society of the station assemble, while one of the regimental bands plays upon the green sward, constitute the chief agremens of the place’. [See Hand-book of India, a Guide, ed by Stocqueller. 1844]

When Mrs Graham came to the Park of Barrackpore, the tamarind, acacia, and peepil trees, through whose branches the moon threw her flickering beams on the river, seemed to hang over our heads, and formed a strong contrast to the white buildings of Serampore, which shone on the opposite shore. We landed at the palace begun by the Marquis Wellesley, but discontinued by the frugality of the Indian Company; its unfinished arches shewed by the moon-light like an ancient ruin, and completed the beauty of the scenery. The area of the whole Park is nearly 350 acres and the cost was £9,577. Lord Wellesley started acquiring the land and making the Park. In the North-East corner he established the menagerie that continued to exist till the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta opened in 1876.

MENAGERIE

“A little nulla, or rivulet supplies several fine tanks in the park, which embellish the scenery, and furnish food for a number of curious aquatic birds kept in the menagerie. The pelican, whose large pouch contains such an abundant supply of food, the produce of her fishing, for her young; the syrus, or sarasa, a species
of stork, whose body is of a delicate grey colour, and whose head, which he carries above five feet from the ground, is of a brilliant scarlet, shading off to the pure white of his long taper neck; and the flamingo, whose bill and wings are of the brightest rose-colour, while the rest of his plumage is white as snow,—are the most beautiful of those who seek their food in the water. Among their fellow-prisoners are the ostrich, whose black and white plumes attract the avarice of the hunter; the cassowary, whose stiff hard feathers appear like black hair; and the Java pigeon, of the size of a young turkey, shaped and coloured like a pigeon, with a fan-like crest, which glitters in the sun like the rainbow. [Graham]

the North-East corner of the Park known as Chiriakhana. The Governor General’s elephants used to be kept at Barrackpore. The place across the Grand Trunk Road to the North North-East of the Park was known for a long while as Hatikhana, although the last of the elephants was sold in Lord Elgin’s time. It was here in the Park that the poet-bishop first mounted an elephant — “the motion of which,” he confesses, “I thought far from disagreeable, though very different from that of a horse.” [See Thacker’s Guide to Calcutta ed. by Walter Kelly Firminger. 1906]

On Nov. 25, she wrote ‘The north winds are now so cold, that I find it necessary to wrap up in a shawl and fur tippet when 1 take my morning’s ride upon one of the governor-general’s elephants, from whose back I yesterday saw the Barrackpore hounds throw off in chase of a jackal’. “The quadrupeds in the menagerie are only two royal tigers, and two bears, one a very large animal, precisely like the bears of Europe; the other was brought here from Chittagong, where it is called the wild dog. His head is shaped like that of a dog, but bare and red about the muzzle; his paws are like those of the common bear, but his coat is short and smooth; he refuses to eat any kind of vegetable food, which the large bear prefers to flesh, and is altogether the most ferocious creature I ever saw. ”

GAITIES

On December 5, 1810, Graham was in great expectation of the festivity in Barrackpore. In three weeks, she mused, all the gay world will be asembled at Barrackpore, on account of the races, which are run close to the park-gate. This year there will be little sport, as the horses are indifferent, but I am told the scene will be very gay, “ with store of ladies, whose bright eyes rain influence”. Barrackpore had a tradition of public merriments to celebrate important events. Three years ago. On the 12th September 1807, Barrackpore celebrated the anniversary of the battle of Delhi. A splendid entertainment was given in ‘the new Theatre at Barrackpore’ at which were present the Right Hon’ble Lord Minto, the Governor General, General St. Leger and Staff, the whole of the officers and ladies at the station, and a numerous party of visitors from Calcutta. [See Life of William Carey, by Gerge Smith. 1909]

Lord Wellesley was not in favour of horse race. He stopped horse racing and all sorts of gambling as soon he arrived India; yet at the end of November 1809, there were three days’ races at a small distance from Calcutta. After a lull the Calcutta Races again commenced under the patronage of Lord Moira. Stocqueler tells us “there at Barrackpore a race-ground existed, but races have not taken place any more. The sports of the place are confined to an occasional steeple-chase, a run with the Calcutta hounds, and a few balls and public dinners.” [See Hand-book of India, a Guide, by Joachim Hayward Stocqueler. 1844]

cheetah-chasing-a-deer-with-huntsmen_doyly1802 — A Cheeta Hun in Wellesley’s Park. Lithograph ( coloured ). Charles D’Oyly.1802. Courtesy: British Library

In the Park there was also an excellent golf links much resorted to by Calcutta folk. Closer to the house there was a vast banyan tree beneath whose shade many a viceregal tiffin-party had assembled. Mrs Graham had some fascination for Indian custom s and traditions. On the first day she mentioned in her journal whatever she had seen on the river bank – the illuminated Hindu pagoda, festivity, fireworks, and the melancholy glare of the flame of funeral – all important elements of Hindu life in a flash.

The cultural difference between the European and Asiatic societies did not deject her spirit of inquiry and appreciation of the estranged tradition of India. She writes: “The other day, in going through a small bazar near one of the park gates, 1 saw five ruinous temples to Maha Deo, and one in rather a better state to Kali. As 1 had never been in a pagoda dedicated to her by that name, I procured admittance for a rupee. Her figure is of brass, riding on a strange form that passes here for a lion, with a lotus in the place of a saddle. Her countenance is terrific; her four hands are armed with destructive weapons, and before her is a round stone sprinkled with red dust. The sacrificial utensils are mostly of brass; but I observed a ladle, two lamps, and a bell of silver; the handle of the bell was a figure of the goddess herself. The open temple in the square area of the pagoda has been very pleasant, but is now falling into ruin, as are the priests houses and every thing around.”

hindoo-pagodas-hunt1824 — Hindoo Pagodas below Barrackpore on the Ganges. Geoge Hunt. 1824. Courtesy: British Library

As it shows, Graham was not unfamiliar with the Hindu themes of deities, and also her feelings on seeing the ruinous state of the temple. In a later note, however, she showed her deep concern, silently, about the desperate order of the native society, while recounting the horrid scene of dead bodies uncaringly floating in the river, vividly and dispassionately.

Bodies of the Dead

“The other night, in coming up the river, the first object I saw was a dead body, which had lain long enough in the water to be swollen, and to become buoyant. It floated past our boat, almost white, from being so long in the river, and surrounded by fish; and as we got to the landing-place, I saw two wild dogs tearing another body, from which one of them had just succeeded in separating a thigh-bone, with which he ran growling away. Now, though I am not very anxious as to the manner of disposing of my body, and have very little choice as to whether it is to be eaten by worms or by fishes, I cannot see, without disgust and horror, the dead indecently exposed, and torn and dragged about through streets and villages, by dogs and jackals. Yet such are the daily sights on the banks of the Hoogly. I wish I could say they were the worst; but when a man becomes infirm, or has any dangerous illness, if his relations have the slightest interest in his death, they take him to the banks of the river, set his feet in the water, and, stuffing his ears and mouth with mud, leave him to perish, which he seldom does without a hard struggle; and should the strength of his constitution enable him to survive, he becomes a pariah; he is no longer considered as belonging to his family or children, and can have no interest in his own fortune or goods. About thirty miles from Calcutta, there is a village under the protection of government, entirely peopled by these poor outcasts, the numbers of whom is incredible.

Earlier, Graham expressed her mind loudly and clearly– reacting to the unconditional submission of the Hindoos to the evils of caste system. She felt degraded seeing the half-clothed, half-fed people, covered with loathsome disease, without attempting ever to overstep the boundaries which confine them to it indelibly. “Perhaps there is something of pride in the pity”, she says, “I cannot help feeling for the Lower Hindoos, who seem so resigned to all that I call evils in life”. The story of this hapless lot stands in glaring contrast to the vibrant city life of Barrackpore.

The park-city of Barrackpore was designed and developed by the British and for the British. It was an English garden Lord Wellesley planned and laid there. An English theatre, ballroom, race-ground, golf-link, a Hotel Charnock came in place for their entertainment. There was something in the scenery of this place that reminds Maria Graham of the beauty of the banks of the Thames; ‘the same verdure, the same rich foliage, the same majestic body of water’.

The local inhabitants were, however, never allowed to enter park-area except for work. Graham met few of them while moving around, and had glimpses of their repulsive way of life. Graham never tried to pass a judgement, nor any advice either. She questioned about the root of their malady – ‘how they came into the state, and what could amend it’. The spontaneous reply she received was: “It is the custom — it belongs to their caste to bear this”. At the end of the century, Swamy Vivekanada found the key to her final question what unfortunately remains ignored ever since.

II

III

∞

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DHURRUMTOLLAH STREET Away From Durrumtollah

COLINGA

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[*Tom Raw, the Griffin: a burlesque poem; descriptive of the adventures of a cadet in the East India Company’s service, from the period of his quitting England to his obtaining a staff situation]

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