Hooghly by Robert Ivermee

Author:Robert Ivermee [Ivermee, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Hurst
Published: 2020-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

6

CALCUTTA

THE UNFINISHED CONQUEST OF NATURE

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Hooghly was the busiest it had ever been. On the water, simple wooden boats competed with barges and ferries for the transport of people and goods upriver and down, from one bank to the other. Where once nature had held full sway, producing a dense thicket of mango trees, tamarinds, banyans, neems, and palm groves, human life had staked its claim. The banks of the river were studded with villages and towns, temples and ghats. From Murshidabad to Serampore, handsome stone villas and luxuriant gardens claimed much of the riverside terrain. The esplanades of Hooghly, Chinsurah, and Chandernagore evoked faded glory and wealth, while acting as the focal point of bustling industrious towns. The view from the river was enhanced by lofty new constructions—most strikingly the Hooghly Imambara, a grand two-storey mosque and ceremony hall bequeathed by a local Shia landowner, Muhammad Mohsin.

The volume of people and activity on the Hooghly increased with proximity to Calcutta. Below Serampore and Barrackpore, both banks of the river were lined with mills, factories, warehouses, and docks, presenting a scene of industrial activity which, in the view of one contemporary observer, ‘rivalled that of the largest cities of Europe’.1 Calcutta had long outgrown Fort William and the European quarters surrounding the open ground—the Maidan—on which it stood, with Chowringhee to the east, Ballygunge and Alipore to the south, and northwards to the great tank in what would become Dalhousie Square. Bowbazaar and Barabazaar developed as commercial and residential centres to the north; the outlying industrial areas of Cossipore, Chitpur, Maniktola, and Garden Reach were integrated into the city as it grew. In 1900, the city stretched six miles along the Hooghly’s left bank, covering some 20,000 acres of land.2 Opposite, on the right bank of the river, lay the ever growing suburb of Howrah.

By reputation, Calcutta was a ‘City of Palaces’, defined by its attractive European architecture combining elements of the classical and neoclassical, the Gothic and the Baroque. The most palatial residence of all was Government House, opened in 1803 with a porticoed central core and four radiating wings. It was situated just a stone’s throw from other architectural landmarks: St John’s Church, the Town Hall, the Writers’ Building, and the General Post Office among them. The skyline of European Calcutta consisted of ‘innumerable towers, spires and pinnacles’.3 To focus on the city’s landmarks, however, obscures the fact that Calcutta was home to a population of staggering size and diversity. In contrast to the wide avenues and open spaces of the colonial ‘White Town’, most residents lived in narrow lanes in one-storey brick homes or tiled mud huts. Through the course of the nineteenth century the city’s population grew rapidly: in 1830 it was estimated at 200,000; forty years later, when the first municipal census was taken, it had more than doubled; and in 1901 it was officially recorded as 847,796.4 When suburbs such as Howrah, beyond the city’s official limits, were added, the total exceeded a million.

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