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Antony Kuriakose visits Tranquebar, a sleepy fishing village in Tamil Nadu, a former TO visit the past, one does not always have to hop into a time machine. Sometimes history lives on in tiny forgotten nooks and crannies of the earth, waiting to be rediscovered, as it does in Tranquebar, a sleepy fishing village in Tamil Nadu. Originally known as Tharangambadi — the place of the singing waves — Tranquebar owes its name and identity to the Danes, who made it one of their major trading posts in the early 17th century. If Pondicherry is distinguished by its French legacy, Tranquebar is distinguished by its Danish past. Its relics include a gateway sporting the Danish Royal Seal, a fort that’s Scandinavian in appearance rather than Dravidian, a string of imposing colonial bungalows and two early 18th-Century churches. In 1620, a Danish fleet landed at this spot on the Coromandel Coast, and its Dutch captain Roland Crappe immediately realised that its strategic location made for an ideal trading post. Ove Gjedde, an admiral in the Danish Navy, then negotiated a treaty on behalf of the Danish king Christian IV with the Thanjavur king, Vijaya Raghunatha Nayak, and acquired a 10-mile by three-mile-strip of the fishing village from the king at a rent of Rs 3,111 per annum and renamed it Tranquebar. In 1622 the Dansborg Fort was built.
The first Protestant missionaries to set foot in India were two Lutherans from Germany, Bartholom`E4us Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau, who began work in 1705 in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar. They translated the Bible into the local Tamil language and afterwards into Hindustani. They made little progress at first, but gradually the mission spread to other parts of South India. The original trading post, Tranquebar, occupied only a small area (approximately 30 hectares). It was from here, the Danish East India Company traded in spices, silks and other textiles until 1845, when it transferred the place to the British for a sum of `A310,000. Tranquebar sank into obscurity for the next 150 years, a forgotten little ex-colonial outpost, overrun with vegetation, full of crumbling structures. The fort was used as a Public Works Department Travellers Bungalow for government servants and colonials till 1977. Then it was declared as a protected monument by the Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu. Ms Karin Kundsen, a Danish citizen who visited it in 1989, was instrumental in restoration of many old and historic Danish structures. Spellbound by the magic of this bit of Danish presence on far off shores, she decided to do her bit to restore the old buildings in the settlement and recreate Tranquebar’s lost glory. Thus were sown the seeds of the Tranquebar Association, formed in 2001 by Karin, her husband Viggo. The next important impetus came with the arrival of a Danish NGO, the Bestseller Foundation, after the tsunami tragedy of 2004, with proposals to make the life easier for the inhabitants of Tranquebar, who had suffered a lot from the disaster. Armed with excellent references from Denmark and with the support of the Danish Royal family, the association began negotiations with the state government, which finally resulted in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Indian National Trust for Cultural Heritage (INTACH), the Arcahelogical Survey of India and the Danish National Museum taking up the restoration of Fort Dansborg in 2001. The 300-strong Tranquebar Association has many restoration plans on the anvil for Tranquebar. Six months in a year the members of the aAssociation spend time in India coordinating the repair work. To house some of these activities they also decided to buy some derelict and damaged Tamil houses in the Goldsmith’s Street and partnered with INTACH to restore them. Thus, five old traditional goldsmith houses were returned to their former glory. One is now a guesthouse; two are housing the INTACH office and a permanent exhibition on Tranqebar history and architecture. The rest two will be devoted to development of local handicrafts for sale to visiting tourists. The fort, named as Dansborg, was the administrative and military centre of the Danish East Indies. It has been restored and houses a museum containing a varied collection of items from the Danish era of Tranquebar. "King Street" or Kongensgade is Tranquebar’s main street, and some of the most important buildings of the old Danish colony are still there. The main ones are the large Governor’s House, built in 1784 and now refurbished into an elegant hotel by the Neemrana Group, and the New Jerusalem Church, built in 1718 by Lutheran missionary Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, who is buried there. The churchyard has one of the town’s three Danish cemeteries, which were the last resting place of many Danes and other Europeans. Another outstanding monument in Kongensgade is the town’s old Gate, built in baroque style in 1792 with the Danish Royal arms presiding over the main arch. Tranquebar conserves many other reminders of Danish heritage, most of them being colonial houses scattered around Kongensgade, which remind us of the times when this busy trading centre was a rare outpost of Danish culture in the tropical Indian Ocean. It was designated a special tourism area in the early 90s. There are plans to get Tranquebar recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. As was pointed out
earlier, the Neemrana group has spruced up the Governor’s House as a
heritage hotel. The Queen of Denmark has also made a liberal donation.
Tranquebar is a classic example of a former Indian colonial settlement
getting renovated through its erstwhile European occupants. — MF
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