Tag Archives: Kolkata

Portraying the appearance and politics of Kolkata

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ARTS ACRE IS an artists’ village on the Eastern edge of the city of Kolkata. When there is little traffic, it takes one hour of driving to reach it from the heart of old Kolkata.  The Acre (aka International Centre for Creativity and Cultural vision)  was founded in 1984 by the artist and cultural activist Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharjee (born 1947). The beautiful modernistic campus was designed by Partha Ranjan Das.

 

Today, the fifth of January 2025, we visited Arts Acre where several excellent exhibitions,  part of the 2024/25 Bengal Biennale, were being held.  One of these was a large show of paintings and other artworks by Shuvaprasanna. His wonderfully executed paintings reflect his interest in, and connection with, the politics of Bengal: he has been closely associated with the current Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. One of the paintings depict her as being like the pied piper of Hamelin. The artist wrote of this painting that just as the pied piper attracted his followers with the music of his pipe, Mamata attracts her followers by “… the mesmerising music of her leadership.” This painting was placed next to two others that seemed to be critical of the Communist regime that ruled Bengal for many years before Mamata and her Tfollowers Congress party were voted into power.

 

Günter Grass by Shuvaprasanna

Another picture relates to the visit to Arts Acre by the German author Günter Grass. Called “In search of Oscar”, the artist depicts Grass as Oscar in the novel “The Tin Drum”. The painting is supposed to evoke solidarity with the marginalised people in Kolkata.

 

Shuvaprasanna paints beautifully in ways that capture the ideas he is trying to convey in a highly accessible way, but without compromising artistic and aesthetic qualities.

 

It was worth spending an hour in a taxi to see Shuvaprasanna’s works and the art complex he established so many years ago.

Exhibits in an exhibition at a famous landmark in Kolkata

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FROM AFAR, THE VICTORIA Memorial in Kolkata looks almost magical. However, inside it is pompous and overbearing (and not particularly beautiful), just as the British must have seemed to many Indians before their country was freed from the British Empire.

 

Visitors to the Memorial can explore the ground floor and the one above it. Much of the upper floor is dedicated to an exhibition of photographs and facsimiles of documents relating to the exploits of those who fought to make India independent.  Naturally, better known individuals such as Gandhi, the Nehrus, and Subhas Chandra Bose figure in this show. But they are outnumbered by lesser known freedom fighters. One of these is Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857-1930).  Many of you reading this might well be wondering why this man deserved to be includefacsimilesexhibition.

 

Like several other freedom fighters,  Krishnavarma went to London to become a barrister.  He returned to India and made a fortune working for the rulers of some of the Princely States.  Then, he returned to London. In 1905, when Bengal was partitioned  he conducted his own campaign against British rule in India.

 

Above: Krishnavarma,  below: Madame Cams

Amongst the many things he did in addition to starting an anti-British newspaper, Krishnavarma purchased a house in Highgate (northwest London), which he converted into a hostel and meeting place for Indians studying  in London. It was named India House. Soon, it became a meeting place for Indians who wanted to rid India of the British. I have read that amongst the revolutionary activities carried out in India House was experimentation in bomb making. Amongst those associated with India House was VD Savarkar (1883-1966). In 1910, he was arrested by the British and spent several terrible years in the Cellular Prison in Port Blair (Andaman Islands). Amongst Savarkar’s many achievements was the development of Hindutva.

 

In 1907, Krishnavarma migrated to Paris. Later, until his death  he resided in Geneva. Unlike Gandhi and his followers, Krishnavarma and his colleagues (including Madame Cama) did not believe that India could become free by relying only on non-violent protest.

 

I first became interested in Krishnavarma when visiting Mandvi in Kutch (part of Gujarat). Shyamji was born in Mandvi, and his ashes are kept at a memorial centre a few miles outside the town. The centre includes a full size replica of Highate’s former India House. Seeing this building standing on its own in a flat sandy semi-desert landscape intrigued me, and got me interested in Krishnavarma.  I became so fascinated that I wrote a book about Krishnavarma and what happened in and around his India House. The book is called “Indian Freedom Fighters in London (1905-1910)”, and is available from Amazon (e.g., https://www.amazon.co.uk/INDIAN-FREEDOM-FIGHTERS-LONDON-1905-1910/dp/0244270716/ ).

 

The exhibition at the Victoria Memorial includes several photographs and documents relating to Krishnavarma and his India House. I had seen some of these elsewhere, but a few were new to me.

 

Although the Victoria Memorial is not one if my favourite things in Kolkata,  I  am pleased we visited if only because there were exhibits related to Krishnavarma.  In addition,  I was pleased to see several paintings by Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and one by an artist I like very much : John Zoffany (1733-1810). Both of these men spent several years living and working in India.

A peaceful place of rest in bustling Kolkata

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 IN ITS HEYDAY, the Jewish community of Kolkata consisted of as much as 6000 people. That was in the early 1940s. Today, less than about 20 Jewish people reside in the city. Most of Kolkata’s Jewish inhabitants were members of families that had migrated mainly from Iraq, but also from Syria. They were all Sephardic, rather than Ashkenazi, Jews. They began arriving in Kolkata in the very late eighteenth century. Most of Kolkata’s Jewish people have migrated to other countries – not because of anti-Semitism, but for economic reasons (as have many other Indians of all religions).

 

One can get an idea of the size of Kolkata’s Jewish community of yesteryear by visiting the Jewish Cemetery on Narkeldanga Main Road. It contains at least 2000 gravestones. We visited it on New Year’s Day 2025.

 

The genizah standing amongst the gravestones

The cemetery is beautifully maintained. Flowering bushes,  trellises, and trees punctuate the sea of white gravestones. According to Sephardic tradition, the stones are horizontal, rather than vertical. Most of them consist of a rectangular base surmounted by a hemi-cylinder. Each grave bears the name of the deceased in Hebrew and/or Latin script. It seemed to me that all of the graves are oriented in the same direction: roughly speaking the long axis of each grave runs in an east/west direction (more accurately,  the west end of each gravestone is slightly north of the east). The majority of the gravestones are simple, without ornament. A few of them are ornamented often with a stone carving of an open book.

 

Several of the stones record the deaths of military service personnel,  who died in action. Notices on these record that the bodies of these people were buried in military cemeteries elsewhere, at Ranchi.

 

In the centre of the gently undulating burial ground, there stands a circular tower, which is higher than all of the other graves. The tower, looking a bit like an enlarged pillar box (letter box). has a rectangular opening like that found on post boxes. This structure is a genizah.

 

A genizah is a place for disposing of worn out or no longer required sacred texts. These can include any documents that contain the name of God. These can be anything from holy texts to commercial contracts, legal documents,  and personal letters. If you wish to know more about the contents of a genizah, you could do well to read “In an Antique Land” by Amitabh Ghosh. I have read this autobiographical novel that includes much about a very ancient genizah discovered in Cairo,  and was very excited to see a real genizah in Kolkata.

 

I am not sure how easy it would have been to visit this fascinating Cemetery – a record of a once thriving community  – had we not known one of Kolkata’s few remaining Jewish inhabitants. Mentioning this person’s name persuaded the security officials to allow us to enter.

Hindoo Stuart and a son of  a great author

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THE SOUTH PARK Street Cemetery in Kolkata was opened in 1767 and was used as a burial ground for Europeans (mainly British) until 1830. It contains a large collection of funerary sculpture (mostly mausoleums and obelisks), much of which is in the neoclassical style. This now peaceful oasis in central Kolkata with much greenery is the final resting place of many people who had roles in the British East India Company (including its armies) and their families.  Although the place contains the remains of many interesting people  I will concentrate on two of them, both of whom had military careers.

Tomb of Hindoo Stuart

Charles Stuart (c1758-1828) was born in Ireland (Dublin) and joined the East  India Company when aged 19. He served in one of its armies, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  In India, he was attracted to, and fascinated by, Hindu culture and traditions. He adopted many Hindu ways of life including religious practices. For example, when off duty,  he wore Indian clothes and bathed in the Ganges (the Hooghly) daily. In addition,  he wrote many articles, published in the newspapers of Calcutta,  which extolled the Indian ways of living, and encouraged Europeans to wear Indian garb rather than western clothing. He felt that ladies from Europe would feel more comfortable and look better wearing saris in India. His sympathy for the Indian modes of life and admiration of Indians earned him the nickname ‘Hindoo Stuart’, but did not impede his military career.  His funerary monument in the South Park Street Cemetery is in the form of a small Hindu temple, quite different in form from all of the other monuments in the graveyard.

 

The other military person commemorated at South Park Street  has a very modest, barely legible gravestone. It records the death of the short-lived Walter Landor Dickens (1841-1863).  He was the fourth child and second son of the author of “Oliver Twist” and many other famous novels: Charles Dickens. Walter became an officer cadet in the East India Company armies, arriving in India in 1857, just before the so-called Indian Mutiny began. After the end of this revolutionary activity and the end of the Company’s rule in India and the start of the British government’s control of the country, he became a soldier in the British Army. Illness resulted in his death in a military hospital in Calcutta.

 

Walter was buried at the Bhowanipore Military Cemetery in Calcutta.  In 1987, some students at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University raised funds and had Walter’s gravestone moved to the South Park Street Cemetery. This was done because it was not being cared for and to honour his father, the famous author.

 

Having recently become a fan of the novels of Charles Dickens,  I  was pleased to have been able to view Walter’s gravestone.  The lettering on it is legible, but not too easy to read.

 

During our recent visit to the Cemetery, which we made in December 2024, we saw the two graves mentioned above and many others which we had not noticed on previous visits.  For those interested in the early history of Kolkata during its British occupation, the South Park Street Cemetery should not be missed.

From Myanmar to the garden of Eden in Kolkata.

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THERE IS A MAJOR cricket stadium in Kolkata called Eden Gardens. This world renowned sporting venue is adjacent to a far less well-known park: Eden Gardens Park. Established in about 1842, its fame was eclipsed by the opening of the cricket stadium in 1864. The stadium is named after the park.

 

Lord Auckland, the governor-general of India from 1836-1842, had ordered the construction of this pleasure ground. The garden was named after his sisters, Emily and Fanny Eden.

 

For a modest entry fee (20 rupees per person) one can enter the park, which contains a bandstand, flower beds, a rather rundown Japanese garden, a lake, a café, and a surprising feature that I will describe shortly. When we visited the park on a Saturday afternoon,  there was a discotheque operating in the bandstand.  The volume of music coming from the bandstand was excessive and unbearable. A local division of the Kolkata Police Special Department were having a party. Despite the racket, we strolled through the park to the attraction, which makes the park quite distinctive: a pagoda from Burma (Myanmar).

 The wooden pagoda, which is in need of a little repairing,  stands almost surrounded by the lake. The British brought it in pieces from Prome in Burma in 1854 at the end of the second Anglo-Burmese War (1852-1853), and reconstructed it in the park in 1856. Burmese workers put it together in the park.

 

Prome is known as ‘Pyay’ in Burmese. Regarding the period when the pagoda was removed to Calcutta,  Wikipedia related:

“Called Prome by the British … the city became part of British territory after the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1853. The town was taken by the British in 1825 during the Battle of Prome and again in 1852, on both occasions with hardly any opposition”. In 1862, the city was almost completely destroyed by fire. So, in a way, it was lucky that the wooden pagoda was saved from this conflagration.

 

The pagoda is an example of Tazoungs (idol house) architecture. It is surrounded by Burmese stone carvings. The pagoda used to contain a Buddha effigy,  but this is no longer to be seen.

 

Kolkata is full of surprises. The Burmese pagoda is just one of them. I am glad we put up with the background noise in the park because I would have been disappointed not to view this unusual souvenir from Burma.

Praying along a busy street in Kolkata

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SEI VUI IS OUR favourite Chinese restaurant in Kolkata. It is located on Black Burn Street that runs through what remains of the city’s old Chinatown. Black Burn Street runs off a busy main thoroughfare: Khirode Vidya Binode Avenue.  On Friday, the 27th of December 2024, we walked to Sei Vui from Dalhousie Square at just after midday. 

 When we arrived at Khirode Vidya Binode Avenue,  we saw something we had never observed before. There were many Muslim men in rows of four or five lining the north side of the road for many hundreds of yards. They were all facing the same direction.  Some of these rows had many more men and extended into side streets including Black Burn Lane. Each man was barefooted and had his own prayer mat. This long line of men were performing Friday prayers. Every now and then they prostrated themselves on their mats, and then stood up again.

 

Our host and friend at Sei Vui explained that the local mosque is too small to accommodate the large number of Muslim men in the area. So, they pray in the street, facing the mosque.  He said that he thought that what we had seen was a phenomenon unique to Kolkata. He believed that most other Muslims would not consider worshipping out on a busy street. On special occasions, there are so many worshippers that Khirode Vidya Binode Avenue has to be closed to vehicular traffic during the prayers.

 

It so happens that Khirode Vidya Binode Avenue runs in a mainly east/west direction. Also, the east end of the avenue is very slightly south of its west end. This being the case, by facing westward,  as the worshippers were doing, one is looking approximately towards Mecca, which is west of Kolkata and slightly north of it.

 

We had an excellent lunch at Sei Vui.  After we had finished, the prayers were over, the worshippers had left, and the avenue was back to normal.

 

Blackening the British perceptions of India and Indians

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THE FIRST TIME I  heard mention of Calcutta was when I was less than 11 years old. It was in connection with the so-called ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. Without knowing anything about it, I got the impression that whatever happened there was extremely unpleasant. Today, the 27th of December 2024, we revisited the monument to the victims of the Black Hole incident, which now stands in the churchyard of Calcutta’s St John church. Formerly, it had stood in Dalhousie Square, where the Black Hole (a small prison cell) was located before it was demolished. Originally,  there was a memorial on the spot, but this disappeared. The viceroy Lord Curzon had a new one made, and this is the one now standing near St John’s.

Part of the Black Hole memorial

 When the British, unlike the French, refused to agree to the demands of the Nawab of Bengal,  Siraj-ud-Daulah (1733-1757), the Nawab attacked Calcutta. Despite having some forewarning of the attack, the British did little to prepare their defences. On the 20th of June 1756, Calcutta’s Fort William fell to the Nawab.

 

The British survivors were rounded up by the Nawab’s forces and locked into the small prison now known as the Black Hole. The number of people incarcerated varies according to which account you read, but suffice it to say there were far too many people crowded into the tiny cell, and many of them died of overheating and thirst. It was a tragedy. Of that, there is no doubt.

 

The news of the Black Hole disaster  led to an attack on the Nawab by the British led by Robert Clive (1725-1774). The Nawab was defeated at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

 

The problem is that what happened in the Black Hole damaged British perceptions of Indians. As the historian John Zubrzycki wrote:

“The Black Hole would come to symbolise Indian barbarism in the minds of English policymakers and be used to strengthen the case for British rule.”

Worse than this, events such as the Black Hole and killing of British citizens during the so-called ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857, could be used to justify the many horrendous acts perpetrated by the Brits on Indians. Two notable examples of this are the cruel punishments meted out to the Indian soldiers who rebelled in 1757, and later the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of innocent Indian civilians in 1919.

 

That the monument to the victims of the Black Hole still stands in pristine condition so many years after India became independent is remarkable.  In 1940, several leading independence activists, including Subhas Chandra Bose, campaigned to have the monument removed from Dalhousie Square. In July of that year it was moved to its present location. Today, we saw visitors, both Indian and Westerners, viewing the memorial.

The power of faith and a polluted river

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING (2024), we walked leisurely beside the Hooghly River (a stretch of the Ganges) between Prinsep Ghat and Eden Gardens, a distance of about 1.3 miles. With a good paved footpath,  this is a pleasant, picturesque, tree lined place to stroll.

 

Near Eden Park railway station,  there is a popular bathing ghat (a flight of steps leading into the water). From a  bridge that overlooks this, we watched people bathing in the river. Many of them immersed themselves fully several times. Others washed themselves. We saw people applying shampoo to wash their hair. I noticed a few men wading out into the water, carrying small trays containing flowers for puja. They threw these floral offerings into the fast flowing stream.

 The Ganges, of which the Hooghly is a part, is considered to be a place of great holiness by Hindus. They believe that bathing in this river conveys several benefits including: cleansing the soul; connecting with divine cosmic forces; washing away bad karma from the present or previous births; health giving and healing; and removing negativity. So, if you are a believer, bathing in the Hooghly/Ganges must be a good thing. But, must it?

 

Signs along the path on which we strolled exhort people not to dump rubbish in the river. But it is clearly obvious that these signs are not obeyed.  It is not only strollers’ rubbish that enters the sacred river. The river is being continuously polluted by sewage, industrial effluent, and decomposing corpses. This has resulted in high levels of toxic chemicals including heavy metals, and frighteningly large amounts  of bacterial and other microbial pathogens.

 

According to several official bodies, the Hooghly  has been deemed totally unsuitable for bathing. Yet despite this, there is no shortage of people entering the river to bathe, putting  their entire heads underwater, and washing themselves with this water that carries a real risk of causing ill-health. Such is the power of faith that the well-publicized risks of bathing in the river are outweighed by the belief that the water can only benefit the bather.

Oh no, the baby is missing!

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ON CHRISTMAS EVE (2024), we visited the Victorian gothic St Paul’s Cathedral in Kolkata (Calcutta). There was a creche (Nativity scene) in the garden. Unlike other such cribs we have spotted in the city, in which all the human characters look European,   all of the (lifesize) models in the St Paul’s creche depict Indians. The three kings look like Rajput maharajas,  a small boy near the crib is wearing kurta pyjamas, a shepherd carrying a lamb sports a turban, Joseph is wearing a dhoti, and Mary is dressed in a blue sari.

 This beautifully made ensemble illustrating happenings in Bethlehem, where there was no room at the inn, is lacking one person. There was no baby Jesus to be seen. The model of Mary seems to be looking adorably at an empty patch of ground. I wondered whether someone had stolen the model of Jesus. We asked a gardener what had happened to baby Jesus. He replied: “It’s Christmas Eve. Jesus has not been born yet. He’ll come tonight.

The Golders Green Complex in Calcutta  (Kolkata)

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DURING THE LONG taxi ride from Kolkata’s airport to the city centre, I noticed an intriguing sign on a building we passed. It read: “Golders Green Complex”. The reason that this interested me was that I was brought up in a northwest London’s suburb called Golders Green.

I have no idea if the proprietors of Kolkata’s Golders Green Complex know of the existence of my childhood haunt in northwest London. The idea that someone might suffer from a malady named the Golders Green complex flashed through my mind. How this would manifest itself, I will leave to your imagination. In my case, the lasting effect of a childhood in Golders Green led me to write a book about the place (https://www.amazon.co.uk/GOLDERS-GREEN-HAMPSTEAD-GARDEN-SUBURB/dp/B0BHG873FB/  )