Yet another brick in the wall
Aritra Mukhopadhyay

European Calcutta: Images and Recollections of a Bygone Era
by Dr Dhrubajyoti Banerjea. UBSPD Publishers. Pages 339. Rs 595.

Cities, they say, have certain chemistry, a charm, of possessing you. Especially so when the city happens to be Calcutta. The charm of the city grows on you and you don’t even realise. It is this charm of Calcutta that the author, Dr Dhrubajyoti Banerjea, has tried to capture through a photographic documentation in his book, European Calcutta: Images and Recollections of a Bygone Era.

The book talks about the physical history of the city in the first part, while the second part deals with the commercial history, documenting the arrival and growth of European business firms and their slow absorption in colonial trading system that held sway till the Independence.

However, the main attraction of the book is the 80 marvelous illustrations and photographs, which give readers a systematic idea of the book. Collected from varied sources like the Calcutta Historical Society, the famous Bourne and Shepherd photographers, Calcutta Club and Bengal Club libraries, and Victoria Memorial, these efficiently reproduced images date back to the early 18th century. The pencil sketches of Calcutta by eminent artist Rathin Mitra give a special feel to the book.

Banerjea attempts to trace the history of the city right from ancient to pre-colonial era to colonial landscapes. While tracing the beginning of the city, the author has gone back to the geological foundation, during the filling up of the Tythes Sea by alluvial deposits and to the mythological description through Kalighat (believed to be the spot which received the right foot of Sati).

There are lots of quotes and references to other books and research done since the arrival of Job Charnock, who after two earlier visits, landed in Sutanuti (one of the three villages which combined to form Calcutta; the other two being Gobindapore and Kalikata) on October 24, 1690, and set up the final anchor of the East India Company to form what would once become one of the most animated cities of India. Some of the main references are AK Ray’s Census of India, Blanford and Mendicot’s Manual of the Geology of India, JP Lostly’s Calcutta, City of Palaces and P Thankappan Nair’s Calcutta in the Seventeenth Century.

As you go along, some interesting facts unveil themselves. Like a mention to the early visit of Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Tegh Bahadar to these parts of the country. It quotes the biography of Guru Nanak Dev as stating that the Guru visited here in 1503 on a tour of India to preach. The places where he lived and preached were near Chitpore and Harrison Road. Guru Tegh Bahadar, later bought the site, according to the book, in 1666, where he built Gurudwara Bada Sikh Sangat.

The author, a doctor and an active Rotarian, gives you a fair idea of the city and its colonial impact. Though there is no doubt that the book is a product of good, articulated research work, somehow, it stops before offering a new point of view on one of India’s most written-about cities. Calcutta, a mega city of the world, which served as capital of the British Empire in India till December 1911 and subsequently became capital of the undivided Bengal, needs more to attract readers, especially non-Bengali readers who haven’t been to Calcutta yet, but want to know about the city. More so when you have a number of books on similar subject available in the market (Books like Calcutta: the Living City (Vols I & II), 1990, edited by well-known English professor Sukanta Chaudhuri (1990) in English; and Kalikata-Darpan, 1980, written by Radharaman Mitra in Bangla). Despite odds, the book can be a good guide to the City of Joy.

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