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DHURRUMTOLLAH STREET: WAY TO BENGAL RENAISSANCE

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.

GreatMarket_Solvyns,

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.

CamelCarriage_Atkinson_1860

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.

DHURRUMTOLLAHA AND ITS OLD BAZARS

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 19th 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.

DhurrumtollahBazar_section ofDhurrumtolla Churchitho_dOyly

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.

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 18th 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]



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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)