Before the palaces

A City in the Making

Aspects of Calcutta’s Early Growth

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

Niyogi Books

564 pages; Rs 995

On March 31, a flyover in north Kolkata collapsed, killing 27 people and injuring 80. The incident was not unprecedented and it reaffirmed what everyone living or going to the city – once the capital of British India and second only to London – experiences. It is held together precariously, ready to collapse. One of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s election promises was urban beautification. How the promise, like many previous ones, went unfulfilled is evidenced by a joke, doing the rounds of social media after waterlogging last monsoon, claiming Ms Banerjee’s city planners had got it all wrong and transformed Kolkata into Venice.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury’s volume looks at the other end of his city’s hapless history: When a group of Englishmen on the run cleared tropical forests to set up a trading outpost. A Kolkata-based journalist with The Statesman and The Hindu, Mr Ray Choudhury has authored four books on his hometown’s 19th century history and culture. His research is extensive and he has the emotional investment of a resident; the book throws light on a little-explored part of the city’s otherwise over-excavated history: The troubled 18th century.

In the early chapters of the book, we are introduced to the maverick English factor Job Charnock, credited with the establishment of the city. Mr Ray Choudhury writes when Charnock arrived at the village called Sutanuti, which along with Gobindopur and Kalikata would grow into the metropolis, in August 1690, “there was nothing distinctive about the place”. It was a sparsely populated rural setting, among tropical forests and marshlands. Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003 that the city did not have a founder, denying Charnock posthumous credit. That Mr Ray Choudhury begins his narrative with him — while noting mentions of Chitpur in 15th century poetry — reveals which side of the debate he is on.

What I would argue with, though, is a silence on what compelled Charnock to abandon Howrah, where the previous British factory was, and seek a new site. Purnendu Patri speculates in Je Kalkatay Charnock Eshechilo that the English factor was compelled to abandon the Howrah establishment after a marketplace brawl between East India Company and Mughal soldiers, escalated alarmingly, invoking the ire of the Bengal nawab and the sacking of the company’s factory in Patna. Mr Ray Choudhuri, though, provides detailed accounts of why Balasore was rejected and a cluster of villages on the Hoogly chosen.

Not all the tales in the book are necessarily new, but where Mr Ray Choudhuri triumphs is in influencing perceptions, especially in three key areas. First, in revealing how the Company government negotiated between its profit motive and necessary public works. Second, showing how the city fathers enshrined rights of private citizens and their property — thereby ushering in a rudimentary civic society. Finally, the book manages to provide a slightly different portrait of Governor General Warren Hastings, routinely – and rightly – vilified in post-colonial studies.

Since the very beginning of its rule and administration, the Company board in London continuously tried to curtail costs involved in the improvement of the city. Very early on, directors of the East India Company were telling the Bengal Council that “Natives” should incur the cost of public works. “As the Company saw it, protection was being offered to those residing within its zamindary... for which payment... had to be made.” 

Yet, this mercenary protective contract seemed to have disappeared when a group of “Natives” were compelled to dig the Maratha ditch. As Bengal plunged into chaos following the death of nawab Murshid Quli Khan, the Marathas sent a force under Maharaja Raghuji of Nagpur, only to be stopped by the new nawab, Alivardi Khan. In an effort to keep the raiding Maratha forces, known as bargi, the Company allowed a group of Kolkata denizens, including the legendary Amirchand, to start digging a ditch around the city, and even lent them money. This policy was replicated for other development work as well. One contemporary lesson of this could be to be wary of having private profit-making enterprises in charge of civic administration, as is routinely suggested.

As far as private property was concerned, the Company held it sacrosanct — even in case of “Natives”. This would continue right through the 200 years of British rule. In the early 19th century, as plans were drawn up for the expansion of the city towards the south, the government vehemently defended the property of rights of the citizens who would lose their land. (A strange legacy of this crippled the Kolkata Metro’s eastern project in recent years.) A Board of Revenue determined the prices of land parcels to be acquired and set the total cost of Company at Rs 1 lakh, which was in fact paid to landowners. This, in part, set in motion the modern participatory civic administration we are now familiar with. Where else in 18th century India would petty landowners dare to demand compensation, leave alone take to court, the local zamindar or satrap for taking away their property?

Finally, Mr Ray Choudhury deserves praise for adding another shade to the colourful character of Warren Hastings, who served as the Governor General from 1774 to 1785. For most history students, he was the subject of an infamous (and failed) impeachment by Edmund Burke in the House of Lords, or his extrajudicial conduct in the trail and hanging of Raja Nuncomar. But, Mr Ray Choudhury reveals how he could also act in a humane manner as he did in the Khidderpore case, where he refused to evict settlers who had been misguided by his government.

The events in this book are unlikely to be new, but they surely make one look at them newly.