Memory, renaming and the socio-cultural dimensions of the ‘Royal Roads of Calcutta’

Calcutta like any other old city, inheres in her roads, streets, lanes and by-lanes as much metaphorically as literally since for a city that evolved in stages from the early 18^th century, the asphalt or brick conduits of connectivity are witness to many untold tales of urban space, cultures and personalities. While in the post-colonial stage, she continued with the majority of her roads that were laid during the days of the Company and the Raj; with time new streets were pavedand old ones renamedin a bid to honour freedom fighters or distinguished Indian people, to blot out semblances of colonial hegemony and also perhaps to reclaim the spaces and createnewer memories in a bold post-1947 existence. Such renaming however, in most cases, failed to obliterate the sanctity of the old street names especially with regard to certain principal roads. For instance how many of us identify Park Street with Mother Teresa Sarani or Red Road with Indira Gandhi Sarani? A staggeringly large number of citizens don’t, as in most cases such renaming do not as yet evoke associative memories(there are however prominent exceptions like the wide acceptance of erstwhile Central Avenue as Chittaranjan Avenue or C.R Avenue named after legendary freedom fighter C.R Das) which, for a historical city as Calcutta, is deeply layered. And the memories which usually ensure the longevity and legitimacy of such naming/renaming, do not relate only to the concretized realities embodied by the roads. Insteadthey refer as much to the socio-cultural worlds of the times when the roads were first laid and used as to the evolving transport system of the city.

Discussions on the fascinating world of memories woven around Old Calcutta and their outreach to the private and public domains through diaries, letters, memoirs and scholarly works continue to constitute one of the richest genres of the city’s history, much in tune with similar heritages in London or Paris.“Kolikatar Firiwalar Daak Aar Rastar Awaz”(Street Cries of Calcutta, Ananda)—a classic by Radha Prasad Gupta, a bibliophile and polymath and more significantly alover of Calcutta,was a glorious addition to this genre. He went on to recollect and document the distinctive ‘cries’ of the multiple street vendors, itinerant peddlers as for generations they travelled down Calcutta roads, selling their wares– advertising those through their unique ‘sales cry’ which were, if not musical, often amusing and definitely memorable; and thus making connections with the customers, passer-bys and neighbourhoods at large. By recollecting his own youth in north Calcutta of the early twentieth century which was still tied to its old ways of living and being, Gupta unravels how Calcutta, her lanes (as peddlers seldom chose the main roads to walk by and sell their wares) were receptive to such cries thus perhaps hinting at creation of communities based on commercial and cultural transactions. Thus the figure of an unassuming Bihari or suburban Bengali carrying a non-descript tin box on their heads, was much loved and awaited in various localities as they brought delicious cakes, patty, pantheras etc. Satyajit Ray’s “Jokhon Chhoto Chhilam” vividlydocuments the love for such cake-sellers who were part of Calcutta life and streets till the 1950s and began disappearing only when bakeries started spawning beyond the Anglicised and upscale locales of the city, into areas which earlier were unfamiliar with such tastes or habits.Kolikatar Rajpath: Samaje O Sanskritite (Royal Roads of Calcutta:Socio-Cultural Dimensions, 2019) by Late Sri Ajit Kumar Basu is a recent valuable addition to this genre.

The book furnishes valuable and relevant information onthe social and cultural dimensionsof the main streets of Kolkata. It traces the history of the streets from varied perspectives like their names, cartographic presence and socio-cultural semblance by identifying and interpreting histories of residences of prominent personalities, monuments or parks. Interestingly socio-cultural worlds of 19^th century Calcutta arehere envisioned through mappable roads of the city, with the Hooghly flowing past perennially around her western flank. Other than many small yet significant arteries of the city, the work principally focuses on Chitpur, Bagbazar, Upper and Lower Circular Roads, Beadon Street, Cornwallis Street, College Street, Bow Bazar Street, Wellington Street, Nimtala Ghat Street, Lalbazar Street, and Dalhousie Square. Tracing the history of the streets in this manner also gives an idea of the urban space of the city itself and how that space made a long journey since the colonial times to be what it is today.

Interestingly, going beyond the streets per se or the street-names, the work concentrates on the wider history of Calcutta, tracing it to pre-colonial times when jungle and sparse settlements dominated the space that constituted the wider grid of the city, i.e., the three villages of Sutanuty (North Klokata), Dihi Kalikata (Central Kolkata) and Gobindapur (South Kolkata).  Before the arrival of the British to this village complex, native traders like the Setts, Basaks,followed by the Tagores, Duttas, Mitras, and Debs arrived, cleared the jungle, set up their homes, established gardens, dug lakes (pukur) and set up bazaars. This explains the genesis ofSett Bagan, Jora Bagan, Kala Bagan, Goa Bagan, Ram Bagan; water tanks like Lal Dighi and Basak Dighi; and a network of local bazaars like BurraBazaar, Bow Bazaar, Radha Bazaar, Lal Bazaar, Baghbazaar, Sova Bazaar, and Shyam Bazaar along with the market for cotton thread at Sutanuty. The book also merits special mention due to its unique point of departure as it provides glimpses of this early history through the stories of Chitpur road, the oldest road known in the city and Baghbazaar.

Thus it is an enchanting story of how in 1698 the English East India Company acquired the zamindari rights of the aforementioned three villages and provided Kolkata with its first official boundary. As the British settled down, they set up the Old Fort William in Dihi Kalikata near the Tank Square (present Dalhousie Square) that became the pivot of European trade. Thus while the section on Clive Street reveals how the Old Fort was adjacent to the Burra Bazaar, short snippets and tales on Circular Road ( whose origins can be traced to the Maratha Ditch)are connected to the growth of the three villages as the British seat of power in India. The Ditch was commissioned to be dug encircling the city in 1742 by the rich Hindu elite class as a protection against an imminent Maratha threat against the English. The fortunes of the city thus got entwined with the fortunes of the Company.

With the English victory at Plassey in 1756, Kolkata began to emerge as the fiscal capital of the colonial rulers. The city began to flaunt characteristics of a typical colonial city in her emergence as a racially segregated urban space. The northern part of the city from Baghbazaar to Burra Bazaar was the Black Town or the native part of the city. The White or the European Town was from Dihi Kalikata, Tank Square to the New Fort William (now Maidan) further down into the village of Gobindapur. In fact, the history of the emergence of these spaces is quite interesting. Following Charnock’s arrival at Sutanuty, in 1694-95, it was declared as the seat of the English trade in Bengal. When the Old Fort came up in 1696, the English shifted from their early place of settlement at Sutanuty to Dihi Kalikata and transformed the Tank Square as the heart of their activities. The natives remained concentrated in the Sutanuty and the Gobindopur region thus encircling the White Town. It was not till about 1746 that the English began to inhabit Chowringhee (the suburbs) attracted by its open spaces and distance from the native part of the town. Finally, with the New Fort at Gobindopur, concentration of the European population now extended up to this village in the south with the native population mainly relegated to the northern part of the town.

Such racial profiling of this urban space eventually got reinforced by the various socio-cultural factors which overlapped and were informed by the individual and collective stories of the royal roads and arteries of colonial Calcutta. A recent discussion on this book by the editors unpacked how histories of urban spaces, colonial power and connectivity in and across the city intersect thus creating fascinating memory montages.

Somdatta Chakraborty

Senior Adjunct Researcher, AGA

&

Shrimoyee Guha Thakurta (Basu),

Assistant Professor, History, Scottish Church College