INTRODUCTION OF GREATER KOLKATA.
The Capital of West Bengal, Calcutta, lies on the Hooghly distributary of the Ganges. Its close proximity to river and sea, and hence its connection to the outside world and historical trade routes, has meant that it has developed as a major commercial centre. The city of Calcutta, unlike Banaras, Delhi or Jaipur, does not have a heritage which stretches back into the distant past. It is a parvenu city, which grew with the development of British power in Bengal. In the 17th century, the English East India Company received a royal charter to trade in Asian waters. In the process of establishing their trading network in India, British traders set up their outposts, which were called, in the parlance of the day, “Factories”.In eastern India, in the early 17th century, one such Factory was located at Hooghly, some 30 miles upriver from present-day Calcutta.
In the late 1680s, the representative of the Mughal Emperor in Bengal evicted the British from Hooghly following a local dispute. Job Charnock, the Company’s chief agent in Hooghly, was forced to retreat downriver with the entire British population. Charnock, as an alternative, chose the village of Sutanati which, together with the neighboring villages of Govindapur and Kalighat, came to form the core of Calcutta.Thus, Charnock, who is buried in St John’s Chapel, is hailed as the founder of the city-although sone observers acknowledge the Armenians as arriving prior to Charnock. Sutanati, where Charnock landed, was a mart for cotton piece goods. The British set up just south of this village, around the area of the present General Post Office. This eventually became the original site of Fort William, which was moved to the Maidan a little later. The expansion of this tiny settlement left behind by Charnock took place after the Battle of Plassey.
Towards Urbanization ::
Growing wealth led to the swift transformation of a trading settlement into a flourishing town. Calcutta came to be divided into a “white town”, with tree-lined avenues and spacious bungalows, and a “native town”, pervaded by dingy lanes and makeshift dwellings. It was this aspect which evoked Kipling’s ironic comment: “Thus the mid-day halt of Charnock more’s the pity! Grew a city.” Despite the geographical separation between these two vastly differing worlds, the sahibs openly imitated the lifestyle of Indian rajas and nawabs. Their homes boasted retinues of servants, they smoked the Hubble-bubble, rode on palanquins or even adopted various Indian superstitions and beliefs. To bridge the racial and cultural divide between the rulers and the ruled were the banian, or traders, who served as middlemen for the sahibs, mediating between the newly-arrived and the culture and practices of Indian Society that the British had conquered. When an employee-or “Writer”- of the English East India Company, docked in Calcutta, he would have been a complete stranger to Bengali society, unacquainted with the language or mores of the culture. The banian was there to provide services and procure niceties. He acted as interpreter, arranged for a house for the Sahib, negotiated with servants, made capital available for the Sahib’s initial expenditure and private trade, and even organized a “sleeping dictionary”(a euphemism for a native mistress).
From Town to City.
The plunder of Bengal, or “shaking the pagoda tree”, as it was euphemistically described in the 18th century, through trade and monopolistic control over markets allowed the British and their Indian collaborators to amass vast fortunes. It was this money which financed the expansion of Calcutta. British inhabitants began moving southwards from the old fort to build their mansions in Park Street and Chowringhee , and even further afield in Alipur, where the governor-general had his residence. In the 1740s, to protect themselves from Maratha raids, the British constructed a huge trench named the “Maratha ditch”. This served as the southern boundary for the expanding colonial area. In the early 19th century, on the command of Lord Wellesley, it was filled in, becoming a major thoroughfare known as Lower Circular Road.
The identifying characteristics of this part of the town were in place by the end of the 18th century. The area around Writers’ Buildings, where houses had been built for the accommodation of the company’s employees, and Dalhousie Square emerged as the business district. Immediately to the south of this was the Esplanade and Eden Gardens. These were separated from the residential areas further south by the green expanse of the Maidan, in the middle of which the new Fort William was erected between 1758 and 1773. The appearance of the native town also underwent radical changes as Bengalis themselves started acquiring wealth. North of Dalhousie Square, and east of Sutanati, lay Chitpur Road, the old pilgrim route to the temple in Kalighat. It was along this artery that rich Bengali began to construct their lavish mansions with pillared facades in imitation of British country houses. The interiors were marked, in some cases, by decadent ostentation and a bizarre collection of artwork.
