Partition, famine, Maoist insurgency, war: Kolkata, known as Calcutta until 2001, endured a difficult 20th century. Once renowned as the city of palaces, and celebrated as the second city of the British Empire, it's best known to outsiders today as the home of Mother Teresa's charity or as the site of the Black Hole.
That’s now changing. The state of West Bengal has embarked on a major tourism campaign, and its chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, aspires to make Kolkata the London of the East.
The city’s superb heritage buildings could be a powerful draw. Constructed between the end of the 18th century, when the East India Company first came to dominate the subcontinent, and 1947, when India achieved independence, these buildings are second to none in Asia as examples of British classical and neo-Gothic architecture.
Like earlier visitors to the city, I begin my survey of Kolkata’s historical heritage at the Hooghly River, the distributary of the Ganges that first brought European traders here. The British weren’t the first Europeans to arrive – when Job Charnock landed in 1690 to establish a trading post, Armenians, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Danes were already settled nearby.
On a Saturday afternoon, I board the comfortable and nearly empty double-decker MV Ahalya on a lunchtime cruise starting from Millennium Park. Looking back onshore, I can just see Metcalfe Hall through thick vegetation. Finished in 1844 and modelled on the Athenian Temple of the Winds, the building now houses the manuscript collection of the Asiatic Society, founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones to study Asian culture, especially Indian languages.
Today, swarms of boats no longer choke this river as they once did. Exports of textiles, jute and opium went out, in return for manufactures and luxuries – including ice, quarried from frozen New England lakes and transported by sea round the globe.
The sparse traffic and a dearth of shoreline buildings initially remind me of Manhattan, another place where residents make little use of their river. Yet as we float along, cooled by a pleasant breeze, and start to pass “ghats” – sets of wide steps leading to the river – I realise I couldn’t be more wrong. Fifty-four of these largely 19th-century structures line the Hooghly’s shores, each constructed according to western architectural precepts. With some now in advanced states of decay, and others the centres of illegal activity, the safest place to view them is from the river.
Initially, we hug the Kolkata bank of the river, where most of the ghats are clustered. We first pass a crowded ferry ghat, from which passengers cross to the river’s Howrah shore opposite. Next up is one of several bathing ghats, where devout Hindus fulfil their obligation to bathe in the river’s holy waters.
Farther out in the channel, fishermen clad in lungis (sarongs) cast nets from small hand-propelled wooden boats that I imagine haven’t changed much since Charnock’s day.
Directly ahead looms the magnificent cantilevered span of the Howrah Bridge (1943). It stretches from crumbling warehouses on one shore to the red-brick Howrah railway station, the oldest in India, on the other. One of the busiest bridges in the world, this is no place for a gentle stroll. I watch as countless vehicles – cars, lorries, chrome-yellow taxis, bicycles – trundle across, while porters with massive loads balanced on their heads jostle pedestrians along the flanking footpaths.
On our right soon appears Mullick Ghat, from which spills Asia’s largest flower market, with garlands of orange and yellow marigolds, creamy jasmine, fiery hibiscus and red roses. Eventually, we pass Nimtala Ghat, the site of a squat, white building capped by two blue-and-white smokestacks. This is a burning ghat, where Hindus are cremated, before having their ashes immersed in the river. Next, I notice the striking cast iron columns of Ahiritola Ghat, named for the “ahirs”– milkmen – who once lived nearby.
The boat turns round at the humpy Vivekananda Bridge, the ugly sister to its cantilevered counterpart, retracing our previous meanderings, before arriving back at Millennium Park three hours after we began.
My second day's explorations begin with a lavish buffet breakfast at the Lalit Great Eastern Hotel. The hotel occupies the same site as The Bakery, established in 1830 to provide breakfast to "writers" – junior East India Company clerks. The Bakery morphed into a hotel that became the finest hotel east of Suez, before declining into decrepitude. Renovations have been continuing for many years, with the final phase due for completion next year.
Out onto Waterloo Street and a quick left onto Dalhousie Street brings me to Raj Bhavan (1803), the site from which British India was governed until 1911, when Delhi assumed that role, and now the residence of the governor of West Bengal. The British built large, and they built well, as a conscious strategy to assert their political dominance. The confident structure is modelled on Kedleston Hall, the seat of the Curzon family, one of whom, George, would later became viceroy of India in 1899.
Without special permission, entry is prohibited, so I stroll slowly around the streets encircling its grounds, before turning left onto Esplanade Row. The neoclassical perfection of the Town Hall (1813) beckons to my right. Although I only wish to study the building, I find myself reluctantly roped into a tour, and I'm soon half-listening to the guide's staccato patter. One room is devoted to a multimedia pastiche celebrating India's independence movement, mixing historical stills and pirated clips from Richard Attenborough's Gandhi film. There's also an animatronic, doe-eyed Rabindranath Tagore – India's first Nobel laureate – bobbing and lip-synching to a recording of one of the thousands of songs he composed.
For those who want to delve into Kolkata’s history, the Victoria Memorial, on Queens Way, is much more enlightening. There’s no better place to study the trajectory of Anglo-Indian relations, from first encounter to cross-cultural stimulation, wary symbiosis, disillusionment, resentment, hatred and, finally, an independent India.
I leave the Town Hall, turn right, then right again, to stroll past the handsome neo-Gothic Calcutta High Court (1872) based on the 13th-century Cloth Hall in Ypres, Belgium. Continuing to the intersection, crossing the street and heading right, I dodge between cast-iron columns supporting a shopping arcade, the once-elegant space now housing barbers, used-book sellers and cheap food stalls.
I enter the grounds of St John’s Church (1787), a copy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London’s Trafalgar Square. Stepping inside, I admire the tall Corinthian columns supporting its roof. Light shining in through large windows illuminates Burma teak chairs and marble wall plaques, many honouring soldiers fallen in long-forgotten colonial wars.
While the church seems in good repair, the city is slowly invading its grounds. I follow a sign to the Black Hole of Calcutta monument, commemorating in high-Raj style East India Company soldiers who suffocated one night in 1756 after being jammed into a sweltering dungeon following the Nawab of Bengal’s capture of Fort William.
A car park nearly severs the footpath that leads towards Charnock’s octagonal mausoleum. This lack of reverence is perhaps unsurprising. This churchyard lauds the imperial city’s founders, and by so doing, reminds contemporary Kolkatans of that long period when Indians didn’t rule India.
Retracing my steps, and leaving the church behind, I turn left onto Council House Street, and walk past a string of assured commercial buildings, their hauteur making me wonder – not for the first time– whether Victorian Britons ever harboured any self-doubt.
After about 10 minutes, I reach Dalhousie Square, once second only to the City of London in its economic importance to the British Empire. The high rotunda of the white General Post Office building (1864) looms to the left.
The magisterial 150-metre-long, red-brick Writers’ Building, where East India Company clerks once toiled, demarcates the square’s far side. A mustachioed, pot-bellied policeman eyes me as I stop dead centre in front of this structure to gaze up at the Minerva statue crowning its pediment. The building has been modified many times since construction began in 1777. I’m pleased to recall that Banerjee’s state government is supporting work to remove slapdash extensions added since independence.
Later that evening, while mulling Kolkata past and present, I head towards the airport to welcome a friend, and my enthusiasm wilts a bit. En route, I drive through the Lake Town suburb, and pass the newest addition to Kolkata’s architectural pantheon– a one-third-size, floodlit replica of Big Ben – Banerjee’s vision of what the London of the East most needs today.
“Why should we be wasting taxpayers’ money trying to create a fake London?” asks Damayanti Lahiri, who spearheaded efforts to block this construction. “Kolkata has its own unique architectural heritage. We should be focusing on conserving that heritage, or if we want something new, commissioning original public art.”
I concur.
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