Spatial Imagination and Development in Colonial Calcutta,c. 1850

Abstract

Although sanitation and improvement were seen as key considerations among planners in modern cities around the world, they were used as an important mechanism of colonial propaganda in order to shape the colonial city in accordance to the state’s understanding of the urban space and the meanings that such a space held for them, politically and commercially. This article aims to investigate the terms of planning and to understand the so-called improvement projects carried out by the colonial state in relation to their imaginings of the city and how they understood the city space and what the city meant to them. By studying the various texts written by prominent Europeans in Calcutta in the nineteenth century and their memories of the city, one could gauge how and what part of the city did the administrators at large consider to be Calcutta, and how that had a bearing on the development or improvement projects in the city. This would help give a fresh perspective on the lopsided development and improvement of nineteenth-century Calcutta. The article would finally investigate the ways in which the city was viewed commercially to help tie the other end of the explanation of the kind of improvement Calcutta witnessesd.

Keywords

Colonial space imagination planning sanitation improvement development rent commerce profit capital

During the nineteenth century the rhetoric of health, sanitation and improvement had come to dominate the discourse of the colonial administrators governing the city of Calcutta. This was in addition to the pride of place the city had come to occupy as the ‘second city of the empire’. Order and discipline for the population was another theme that was to guide the administrators. All these were interwoven to form a larger narrative about governance and the planning of the city. Historians trying to study the planning and development of major cities in colonial India have more or less accepted the fact that sanitation, health and improvement were the guiding factors for the colonial town planners and local officials. Some of them though have agreed to the fact that these ideas were part of a larger ploy of the colonial state to create a hegemonic discourse to rule efficiently and minimise the opposition to their plans and practices of rule.2

For a detailed discussion on the modes of colonial rule and the discussion surrounding the theme of improvement, see Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (New Delhi: OUP, 1998), 30–39.

Prashant Kidambi, in his work on Bombay, argued that the plague epidemic and the public violence in the 1890s inaugurated a new phase in the urban history of Bombay whereby the predominantly unresponsive and unconcerned administration used these and subsequently ideas on disease, its origins—which had a class bias, sanitary regulations, threat of contagion and disruption of public order as excuses for an increased and an unprecedented interference in the lives of the people, in which the poor bore the maximum brunt of the administration’s excesses.3

Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 236–37.

Swati Chattopadhyay has shown how health maps and the concept of pathological space used colonial ethnography and ideas of Indian society to develop a discourse of social control over the city.4

Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Nationalism, Modernity and the Colonial Uncanny (Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2005), 70–73.

Thus, disease became the point of colonial intervention according to these scholars. Not until quite recently, health was the dominant theme for historians writing urban histories and histories of planning in colonial India. Even the most recent works on the planning of Calcutta, like the one by Partho Datta, has primarily focused on the theme of health and sanitation in trying to understand the processes involved in the coming up of the city during colonial rule.

These historians studying the planning and development of Calcutta have, over the years, paid significant attention to the various ideas, intellectual currents and notions about the environment, the city, tropics and the resultant health issues that formed the discourse which came to be the driving force behind the planning of the city. Little attention was paid to the actual results that accrued due to the peculiar processes of colonial planning. It was agreed that there was uneven development in the city, especially on racial lines, but at the same time stopped short of making a proper scrutiny behind maintaining the segregation. Earlier studies by scholars like Anthony D. King spoke of a colonial model of growth and development which was based on the dominance–dependent model which worked at two levels, one where the colonial culture was dependent upon the metropolitan culture, and second, on the level of the city where the indigenous parts of the city were kept apart from the parts dominated by the colonisers.5

Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 1976), 39.

He argued that the colonial city developed in a way that promoted segregation of spaces in to zones inhabited by racially different groups. Such an analysis of urban development has come under criticism from scholars like Swati Chattopadhyay, who has correctly pointed out the inconsistencies and impracticalities of understanding the city in terms of Black and White Towns. This article intends to show that it was not race and ethnicity, but class that became the major vortex of segregation in a city like Calcutta, which was built on the ideals of commercial enterprise and the profits accruing from them.

Most of the earlier, and even some recent, works on planning and urban development do not go in to the nuances and intricacies of the meaning behind the discourse on planning and development. The question was not that health was a major consideration behind the planning and improvement of the city or that there was segregation and differentiation in the ways in which planning was carried out in different parts of the city. The question was rather why, despite the rhetoric of making the city clean and healthy and the Indian parts of the city being the breeding grounds of diseases, these same parts continued to experience a lack of development and improvement throughout the colonial period. What further needs to be probed is that why, despite the improvement measures adopted by the state in Calcutta, some of its areas and suburbs like Hastings and Entally had an increased, and not a decreased mortality rate in the nineteenth century. What the following pages would try to do is to unravel the actual reasons behind the stark differences between what the administration said and what it did with regards to the improvement of Calcutta. In short, why was there such a great difference between rhetoric and reality and what was being said and what was done on the ground.

A proper understanding and analysis of the thinking behind the ways in which the administrators planned and developed Calcutta, and in a way aggravated the disparities in the ways the different classes lived, would require a study of the ways in which the local administrators and influential people of Calcutta viewed the city and what it meant to them. It would be imperative to understand as to what space—physical and social—was seen by them as comprising the city, for only a comprehension of the ways in which the city was imagined and the material reasons behind such an imagination and representation would help understand as to why Calcutta came to be a city whose different sections received such disparate treatment and why it remained a city where as Rudyard Kipling once said, ‘poverty and pride reside side by side’.6

Rudyard Kipling, ‘Poverty and Pride Reside Side by Side, in Calcutta through British Eyes, 1690–1990, ed. Laura Sykes (Madras, OUP, 1990, p. 19). Originally published in Rudyard Kipling, A Tale of Two Cities (London: Macmillan, 1891).

This view of Kipling differs from the way other administrators of the city viewed its position and history in the nineteenth century.

The recent work of Swati Chattopadhyay has looked at the various ways in which the city was looked at visually and in literary texts by various sections of the city’s population. She went on to argue that rather than look at the colonial concerns for health and public good as the only factors behind the sanitary improvements and spatial layout of the city, one should look at the various representations of the space behind the plan. These representative strategies would feed in to the larger discourse on British imperialism in India.7

Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta, 23.

From the point of view of an architect, she studied the impact of these representations on the spatial and architectural layout of Calcutta and the social relations created therein, but did not deeply probe the impact and links of these representative strategies with the sanitary and improvement drives of the administration in the city.

This is precisely what the following sections of this article intend to do. They intend to probe as to why a particular picture of the city was painted by some prominent European writers on Calcutta and subsequently, why that picture percolated down to the actual improvement works carried out in the city. What did the city represent to those in power in its abstract sense, as this lay behind the subsequent policies regarding sanitation and improvement in the city? This article would not only look at the way these representations influenced planning, but also how these representations came up in the first place. The study intends to follow the line of arguments put forward by Henri Lefebvre that a system of knowledge goes behind the representations of spaces, which in turn play an important role in social practice.8

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 41.

Lefebvre argued that the urban space was produced in order to achieve certain abstract purposes that included political and economic domination by the state. He further argued that such a space was highly political in nature and its aim was to create a sense of homogeneity which would iron out all differing perspectives like a bulldozer or a plane.9

Ibid., 285.

The purpose of city planning was the production of a political space with the view of absolute domination by the state. The material purpose of the abstract space was that it would be understood and worked out in terms of its exchange value and therefore a process of commodification of the urban space begins to take place.10

Ibid., 337.

With regards to the structural and sanitary development of Calcutta, this article would argue that this system of knowledge was primarily influenced by the political motives of the state in order to gain legitimacy for its conduct and practices. This was truer with the colonial government whose aim was to showcase good governance and improvement in the colonies to the outside world. Along with the political motives lay the concerns for capital, both landed and commercial, behind the sanitary and structural improvements in Calcutta. The next few sections would precisely elaborate on this point while trying to explain the lopsided development in colonial Calcutta.

Colonial Imagining of Calcutta—A Case of ‘Deliberate Myopia’?

Cities around the world have marked out spaces or important areas which have a great deal of political and social significance in the minds of the people, be it Trafalgar Square in London, Times Square in New York or India Gate in Delhi. All these places have acquired the status of politically and culturally important places in the minds of their city’s residents and also places which become centres of protests. In case of colonial cities, places gain importance in the imaginary realm of the current generation through decades, or even centuries, of long conditioning initiated by colonial administrators. Therefore, the part of Calcutta comprising the major institutions of power like the Writer’s Building, the Town Hall, the Governor’s House, the General Post Office (more fondly known as the GPO), the High Court and the adjoining areas like the Esplanade, Dalhousie Square, the Shaheed Minar (also known as the Ochtrolony Towers), Eden Gardens, Maidan and areas further up like Park Street have remained the centres of cultural and political significance for the better part of the last two centuries.

This being the area which was also roughly the centre of British imagination of Calcutta due to the meanings it attached to this place and also the obvious political importance attached to this area. The importance and meaning of the place has remained to this day and has been manifested in different forms. They have acquired the form of what Charles Taylor calls ‘social imaginaries’, whereby institutions rather than theories are taken up by society, initially though by an individual or a group, and a particular meaning is attached to it which, over a period of time and through processes of interaction acquires the status of the only meaning and any other meaning is thus seen as an aberration.11

Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Public Planet Books/Duke University Press, 2007), 1–2.

The meanings and importance the state gave to this space continue to enjoy the status of importance even to this day. In the case of Calcutta and many other colonial cities, the crystallisation of an Imaginary about a place and its importance is shaped by constant processes of appropriation and contestation over the place between the colonial state and the various forces opposing it. This furthered the prestige of such spaces within the city. Thus, writers, artists and colonial administrators depicting the history and contemporary life of late nineteenth-century Calcutta, depicted predominantly one particular section of the city which was the administrative and commercial centre as well as the area where most of the upper-class Europeans and, later, upper-class Indians came to reside; prominent among these was the Maharaja of Darbhanga, who had a summer residence in Park Street. These descriptive modes came to focus on the areas of Park Street, Dharmatallah, Esplanade, Maidan, Chowringhee, the Old and the New Fort Williams, Dalhousie Square, the Strand Road along the river Hooghly and the different buildings and ghats surrounding these areas. These descriptions and representations were about the representation of British authority and thus came to be the cultural (my words in italics) and geographical spaces of Calcutta.12

Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta, 23.

The very detailed description of a select portion of the city and a select people by most colonial writers and administrators gave minute information about the lives and activities of the people living in these parts of the city in the nineteenth century. The descriptions of these places are quite exhaustive and give specific information about each individual of consequence living in these areas. On the other hand, descriptions of the places in the town as well as the suburbs inhabited by the poorer natives and even poor Europeans is a picture painted with a general brush, that is, one of filth, crowds and the breeding grounds of the most contagious of diseases. This strategy of describing the city are derived out of what William J. Glover calls a ‘Utilitarian System’, which dwells on the principles of classification and enumeration, as they helped comprehend unfamiliar and dissimilar things comparable to one another by emphasising the range of features shared between them.13

William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 30–31.

Therefore, one of the first works on the medical topography of Calcutta written by James Ranald Martin also used this strategy of classification while writing about the city and its climate and the sources of its diseases. This book, written in 1837, points to a picture of utter chaos and decay of the places in the town and suburbs which were usually inhabited by the poorer sections of society. Places like Barra Bazar, Machua Bazar, Entally and Ballygunj received immense criticism with use of common tropes like crowded, chaotic, filthy and having a lack of ventilation and emitting foul odours;14

James Ranald Martin, The Medical Topography of Calcutta (Kolkata: Military Orphan Press, 1837), 26–27.

whereas, areas like Alipore and Chowringhee that housed the important officials were described as the healthiest and the most suitable places to live.

Martin’s work though, was not merely one limited to classification and enumeration, but also on proper noting and observation. There was obvious truth in these claims, but at the same time Martin also pointed out that these areas which were the unhealthiest were also the ones most neglected by the administration. In fact, he went on to say that it was easier to find fault than to actually rectifying these faults.15

Ibid., 19.

He also made a constant criticism of the British for giving more importance to commercial interests over those of health while choosing the site for the capital of their empire in such an unsuitable place.16

Ibid., 1.

Partho Datta argues that Martin’s zeal anticipated the future problems that Calcutta had to face in the nineteenth century regarding drainage and sewers.17

Partho Datta, Planning the City: Urbanisation and Reform in Calcutta, c 1800–1940 (New Delhi: Tulika, 2012), 97.

The question that therefore needs to be repeatedly asked is that despite all these prescriptions what stopped the state from applying the proper medicine to cure the city of its ailments.

As pointed out earlier, the spaces mentioned and spoken of highly by the writers, European travellers and administrators in Calcutta do represent a significant political message and histories of these places were written in order to evoke a particular memory of the city and the British Empire at large. Histories of the city written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century alluded to the chivalry, benevolence and perseverance that, according to the writers of these histories, went in to the making of Calcutta and simultaneously the British Empire in India. In all this, the area around the Fort, Esplanade, Dalhousie Square up to the Armenian Ghat in the North and Alipore, which was part of the suburbs till 1889, the site of activity for the East India Company from the mid-eighteenth century, was shown in the light of the above mentioned values of the colonisers. Harry E.A. Cotton, a member of the law commission and an advocate in the Calcutta High Court, mentioned that one of the main purposes of his writing the history of Calcutta was to remind his audiences of the ways in which the Empire built its second city, which later came to be fondly known as the ‘City of Joy’ fighting and gaining victory over the forces of nature and it being reared amid every surrounding of difficulty and disadvantage.18

H.E.A Cotton, Calcutta Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City

(W. Newman & Co., 1907), 258.

Each site or monument of the city was linked to a particular event which reminded one of heroism and valour. Overall, the history of Calcutta, as perceived and written by these men, became the history of the Europeans in Calcutta and very rarely, when it suited their intellectual or imperial designs, were little snippets of upper class Indian life included in their histories and descriptive strategies.

The architecture of the place was seen by many writers as the proper reservoir of memories as other sources had perished, either from the ravages of time or the incuriousness of those in office.19

Ibid., 1.

The naming of key streets in nineteenth-century Calcutta and the placing of statues of Governor-Generals and other important political figures was another way of invoking the memories of the days of chivalry and imperial arrogance, names which were changed in the post-independence era with those of nationalist freedom fighters and revolutionaries, like the area around Esplanade and Dalhousie Square being renamed Binoy–Badal–Dinesh Bagh or BBD Bagh. These historians and writers like H.E.A. Cotton, Henri Busteed and John Rainey constantly glorified the period of the Company rule of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. This gave the sense of European exclusivity in the city and its social life and also a sense of imperial arrogance. Of these, Busteed and Cotton had a close association with the imperial government and Lord Curzon. Cotton was also instrumental in setting up the Calcutta Historical Society in 1907 with assistance from Lord Curzon, with Busteed serving as an important member.20

Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of the Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (New Delhi/Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2012), 264–66.

Constant references were made to the ever inquisitive Mr Hickey, the founder of the Bengal Gazette in the 1780s, running to the coffee house in search of a new story or Mrs Hastings sitting by the veranda enjoying the afternoon sun with other ladies or, more famously, Alipore witnessing the duel between Warren Hastings and Philip Francis. The shift of the landing place and the port of departure from Chandpal Ghat to the more visible Prinsep Ghat in the 1840s was part of the strategy of showcasing the might of the empire and making the presence of the imperial authority more visible in the eyes of the people. It is something entirely different that the Ghat itself came under criticism from different writers for its plan, position and architecture.21

J.C. Marshman, ‘Notes on the Left Bank of the River Hooghly’, in Calcutta Keepsake, ed. Alok Ray (Kolkata: Ridhi India, 1978), 171. Originally published in the Calcutta Review iii, no. 6 (January 1845).

There are constant references of the loss of the ‘good old days’ in the early twentieth century due to the loss of European or Imperial exclusivity in the prominent parts of Calcutta. This was added to the loss of the values that had helped build Calcutta, and these were together seen as a precursor to the ultimate decay of the city which, according to some, would see the same fate as Delhi, Lucknow or Patna.22

James Long, Calcutta in the Olden Times: Its People and its Localities (Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1974). Originally published in 1887, 3–6.

References were made of the lack of balls and parties thrown at the Governor-General’s residence or that of other high officials as a sign of the declining imperial splendour.23

Montague Massey, Recollections of Calcutta from over Half a Century (Calcutta: Thacker, Sphinx & Co., 1918), 2.

Thus, in order to stop the Empire from slipping in to oblivion, it was felt by the writers and administrators alike to preserve and revive the memories of the past heroes and their achievements through changes in the spatial structure of the city, for as Cotton said ‘modern Calcutta thrives on the achievements of its illustrated dead and there is no need therefore to obliterate the records of the great graveyard of the past’.24

Cotton, Calcutta Old and New, 280.

The period following the revolt of 1857 saw urgent steps being taken for the redesigning and reshaping of the business and political hub of the city in order to give a picture of imperial splendour and dominance. Important buildings representing state power either came up or were renovated and enlarged during the decade of the 1860s, with buildings such as the General Post Office, the Imperial Secretariat and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and some prominent thoroughfares coming up in this period. This was in order to give a particular image to the city and the Empire at large.

Any material or structural evidence which painted a picture contrary to these beliefs and imaginings were subtly destroyed and removed. The most significant of such evidence came in the form of the removal of bustees or clusters of dwellings comprising thatched roofed huts dotting the area along Dharmatollah, Theatre Road and Circular Road in the 1860s. These usually belonged to coolies and labourers. The authorities decided to do away with bustees like Money Bustee and the Bamun Bustee in the name of improvement. Considered to be a nuisance these were removed and broad roads were constructed with thoroughfares and iron railings on the side. The bustees were seen as an eyesore for the administrators.25

Government of Bengal (GOB), Judicial (Judicial), No. 5341, 20th December 1861, State Archives of West Bengal (WBSA).

The practice of clearing out bustees from the predominantly European quarters was also carried out due to the other abstract purpose of the urban, that is, its commercial and exchange value, a theme that will be discussed in the next section.

Another significant move by the authorities in Calcutta to remove any evidence contrary to their imagination of the capital, was the clearance of Matiya Burj, in the Garden Reach suburb of Calcutta. Home to Wajid Ali Shah, the Nawab of Awadh exiled by the British in 1856 along with his family and entourage of servants. This place had grown in opulence and included a palace, libraries and harems. This area also came to be known as ‘Chota Lucknow’, and gave the semblance of the existence of a second capital of the Nawab within the Imperial capital to the colonial authorities.26

Chatterjee, The Black Hole of the Empire, 219.

Abdul Haleem Sharar, an observer in the Nawab’s court at Lucknow recounted the grandeur with which the exiled Nawab led his life in Calcutta. He constructed a number of buildings, parks and gardens where animals and birds of different species were displayed; tanks and ponds where he along with his many temporary wives would enjoy a leisurely time; and the court was embraced with some of the finest musicians.27

Abdul Haleem Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, translated by E.S. Harcourt and Fakir Hussain (Delhi: OUP, 1989), 71–74.

Contemporary writers also pointed out that by destroying the Nawab’s establishment immediately after his death, the authorities were trying to wipe out symbols of despotism from near Calcutta and in place set up symbols of progress and liberal enterprise like Jute Mills, Tidal Docks and warehouses.28

Cotton, Calcutta Old and New, 278.

Also, one of the key reasons for depicting certain parts of the city in a glorified manner, was because these were also the places which acted as the commercial hub of the city where the state expected good returns in terms of rent from the numerous establishments like shops, retail outlets and hotels, and therefore every effort was made to attract investors to invest in properties in these areas by painting a magnificent, clean and salubrious picture of these places. This was the reason that one saw the clearing out of bustees from the main arterial and commercial roads of the city, and also why one saw an overall continuity in the imaginary cum representative strategy of the city and the actual development and sanitary improvement of the city.

Interestingly, similar structures belonging to zamindars and other political and economic collaborators of the colonial state, a section which formed the core of the local elites in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and were given titles like Raja, escaped criticism and many times destruction by the city authorities. Whatever mention is made of them and the places they inhabited is in the context of the ways in which they added to the regal paraphernalia. A good example of this is found in Cotton’s account of the dinner hosted by the Raja of Paikpara in 1875 to honour the visiting prince of England.29

Ibid., 270.

He laments how the public at large had forgotten to give people like Raja Nabkisen their due credit, which was evident from the absence of any mention of his contributions in the writings of people like Mills and Malcolm.30

Ibid., 353.

Cotton pointed out how the place from where the commerce of Calcutta had originated, Sutanati, had been forgotten by the British.31

Ibid., 345.

This picture gave a sense of who the state prioritised and considered its friend and who an enemy. These notions and imaginaries of the city were to be one of the foundations for the future course of planning and sanitary developments in the city. The next section would look at the other foundation involved in the planning of the city, that is, the abstract meaning of the city in terms of its commercial and exchange value.

The Politics of Improvement and the Economics of Planning

Though there was a definite understanding and imagination of the city of Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it would be erroneous to claim that the city itself had acquired a fixed shape till the last decade of the nineteenth century. The development of Calcutta began around the Old Fort area and the Mint from the mid-eighteenth century. This was the period when the English had started moving out of Sutanati to these places and rendered the former as a mere suburb. Topographers and planners considered the area to the South of the Fort to be the most favourable for European settlers. Medical reasons like the condition of surroundings, the direction of winds bringing miasmas and the atmospheric pressure were cited for the choice of settlement. The northern part of the city which was dominated by the Indians was glossed over as being unsanitary breeding grounds for diseases in order to show the colonial superiority of habit and lifestyle.32

Datta, Planning the City, 91–93.

They were also a way of showing how the colonisers, due to their intellectual and physical superiority, able to overcome the adversaries of a hostile environment.

The first official declaration of the boundaries of the city was made in 1794 when the limits of the city in its four directions were pointed out in a proclamation made on 11 September by the government which declared that

an Act for continuing in the East India Company, for a further term, the possession of British territories in India together with their exclusive trade, under certain regulation for establishing further Regulations for the government of the said territories and for better administration of justice within the same, for appropriating to certain uses the revenues of the said company and for making provisions for the good order and governance for the towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.

The Act was passed which made the Governor-General in Council for Fort William the final authority regarding the limits of the town of Calcutta.33

E. Hay, ‘Proclamation of the Boundaries of Calcutta in 1794’, in H.J. Rainey, A Historical and Topographical Sketch of Calcutta, ed. P. Thankappan Nair (Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1985). E. Hay was Secretary to the government. Rainey’s original book was written in 1876 and the piece was originally taken from W.S. Seaton-Karr, Selection from Calcutta Gazettes, Vol. 2 (1789–97) (Calcutta, 1865).

The northern boundary of Calcutta was fixed at a place then called Jackapur directly opposite the entrance of the Chitpur Canal and extended southwards to the entrance of the Dum-Dumah Bridge. The southern boundary started opposite the entrance to the Tolly’s Nallah and extended eastwards towards the Great Burial Ground, presently the area in and around Park Street. The eastern boundary was the western side of the Circular Road, now divided into the Upper Circular Road or Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road and the Lower Circular Road also called the Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Road, which was subsequently formed along some portions of the Marhatta Ditch, which was made in 1742 to form a line of defence against the Marathas.34

James Rainey, Historical and Topographical Sketch of Calcutta, 1.

The initial settlements of the English included the acquisition of landed property from the local zamindars. These had been earlier ceded tracts of lands which were subsequently ceded to the company officials for building up their establishments.35

Chatterjee, Black Hole of the Empire, 6.

Later when the company obtained some hold over the territory, these locals were paid off and told to leave.36

Ibid., 104.

The area around the Fort came to house the Military establishment and by the end of the nineteenth century the Army came to hold sway in the area which formed the neighbourhood of the fort.

There were constant cases of legal disputes between the state and the ones whose lands had been taken away, with the latter complaining that such acquisition was creating a lot of financial and social inconvenience. These complaints, which were mostly made in the first half of the nineteenth century, spoke of the loss of monthly rent collected from these tracts of land which was a major source of profit and sometimes even income to these former landholders.37

GOB, Judicial (Criminal), No. 8, 4^th September 1818, WBSA.

There were others who complained of these acquisitions complaining inconvenience to the smooth movements of goods and services and still others who spoke of these acquisitions causing harm to the sanctity of religious spaces.38

GOB, Judicial (Criminal), No. 36, 22^nd August 1822, WBSA.

These petitions made one thing pretty clear that these were high value properties which could accrue immense profits from rents. The boundaries were again redrawn in 1841 with the Upper North Division including areas such as the Mahratta Ditch, Meerbhurs Ghats, Cotton Street and Machua Bazar Road. The Lower North Division comprised of areas such as Bow Bazar Road, Boitukhannah and Hare Street to Police Ghat. The Upper South Division included places up to Dharmatoolah Street to Esplanade Road and Chandpla Ghat and the Lower South Division included areas up to the Lower Circular Road to Khidirpur Bridge and Tolly’s Nallah including the Fort and Coolie Bazar.39

GOB, Judicial (Criminal), No. 193, 27^th May 1841, WBSA.

The Circular Road and the river Hooghly formed the eastern and western boundaries of the city respectively. In the first half of the nineteenth century the town of Calcutta had forty police thanas including the predominantly European ones like Bamun Bustee, Chowringhee, Armeniantoallah, Laul Diggy (Lal Dighi) and Dharmatoolah, and also areas dominated by the Indians like Sutanati, Bagh Bazar, Chandni Chowk and Machua Bazar.40

Datta, Planning the City, 60.

The boundaries of the city remained more or less the same up to 1889 when seven new wards from the erstwhile suburbs were incorporated into the existing eighteen wards of the city taking the number up to twenty-five.

Administratively, Calcutta comprised of areas which included both the rich and the poor sections of the city, but in terms of an imaginary and a developmental framework of the city chroniclers and administrators tended to focus on the parts inhabited by the rich and the neglect of other parts of Calcutta was reflected in the sanitary and ornamental improvements of the city and also in the maps and directories of that period. For example, the map that Jean Augaustine Schalch made at the behest of the Lottery Committee, and which came out in 1824, was more or less holistic with minute details. But, the engraved versions of the maps produced by the Lottery Committee a year later, excluded names of some Indian house owners, smaller ghats and some parts of the north. It also left blank spaces for the areas which had huts of the labouring poor. Thus, Partho Datta remarked that the state tended ‘cartographically disenfranchise’ the poor who were on the lower strata of the society.41

Ibid., 70.

This disenfranchisement extended from the cartographic and enumerative realm to that of planning and development. Right from the early nineteenth century to the 1870s the developmental works were skewed towards a limited portion of the city. Works like installing light, public latrines and urinals and the sweeping of the streets was limited to the richer and more affluent portions of the city. The projects carried out by the Lottery Committee were more of an ornamental nature like the widening of roads, putting lights and railings on their sides and beautifying the Strand. This, despite the emphasis on providing a healthy and clean environment in the famous Minute of Wellesley of 1803, was supposed to guide the future sanitary improvements in Calcutta. It is unfortunate that it failed to achieve the goals that it had set out to achieve.

An important work such as the illumination of streets which was crucial for the safety and security of the people was only limited to places like Esplanade, Chandpal Ghat up to Strand Road and Chowringhee. These were considered the principal roads of the city and crucial for the safe passage of goods in and out of Calcutta,42

GOB, Judicial (Judicial), No. 30, 16th November 1841, WBSA.

which was the key to a flourishing mercantile set-up. Such a neglect of the poorer parts of the city was written about in newspapers. An appeal in the popular newspaper The Englishman in 1837, talks of the neglect of lighting in the area from Moorgeehata to Armenian Street. This plea, by an Armenian, shows the threat of dacoits and pickpockets faced by the people living in and passing through these places in the night.43

From a report in The Englishman titled ‘Lights, More Lights’, dated Saturday, 7 February 1837. This was later compiled and published along with other such old newspaper reports in Ranabir Ray Choudhuri, Glimpses of Old Calcutta, 1836–1850 (Bombay: Nachiketa, Publications Limited, 1978), 15.

Similar complaints of neglect also came from the educated and elite sections of the local society which formed a major part of the critique of colonial planning from the second half of the nineteenth century. Matters relating to the routine like the sweeping and watering of the streets was limited to the affluent parts of Calcutta, as if hinting that only those who had the means to pay for the services were entitled to a better condition of living and basic sanitation. These developmental measures served the dual purposes of showcasing to the world the colonial version of the city, and second, it fulfilled the material purpose of profit which over rode all other factors.

Archival reports show the lopsided development of the city, where a person no less than the Police Commissioner of Calcutta, S. Wauchope complains of the inadequacy of proper drinking water to the poor of the city, other than the aqueducts whose water was filthy and bacterial and unfit for human consumption, along with a lack of public urinals in the major streets of the city other than the area around Tank Square. He also spoke of the lack of proper facilities for the removal of night soil. He further stated that rather than making stringent laws against insanitary behaviour it would be better to provide proper facilities for sanitation and sanitary amenities for all classes of people.44

GOB, Judicial (Judicial), No. 377, 2^nd April 1864, WBSA.

In fact, even by the turn of the century there were only sixty-eight public latrines, both free and Jamadari, and about seventy-two urinals in the whole of Calcutta.45

A.K. Ray, A Short History of Calcutta (Kolkata: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902).

There was an obvious reluctance on the part of the authorities to initiate measures of conservancy, which would stop the birth of disease-carrying agents, like the construction of urinals and latrines, taking adequate measures for waste disposal, keeping surroundings of all localities clean by daily sweeping and watering, etc. The focus was more on the curing of an already occurring disease through inoculation and quarantine of the affected people. This too, was mostly due to the concerns of the army, as fears of epidemics and fevers affected members of the military establishment and it came as no surprise that the Army Sanitary Commission was the one who made the most detailed scrutiny of the actual condition of the different parts of Calcutta. Thus, of the total amount earmarked for the Municipality in 1891–92, the amount earmarked for conservancy works was a bare minimal. In fact, it was noted that there was decrease in the relative amount spent on these conservancy works from the 1860s onwards. Even those giving loans to the Municipality did not initially consider it worthwhile to spend money on building urinals and latrines and it was much later that they marginally increased spending on these.46

Government of India (GOI), Home (Municipalities), No. 44–52, May 1891, National Archives of India (NAI).

Similarly, in the case of the expenditure by the Municipality on the different aspects of the city’s improvement, it was considered more viable to spend money on road improvement, ornamentation and widening than on improving the state of the bustees where the labouring poor resided. Statistical figures from various years show that the maximum amount was spent on the construction and improvement of key arterial roads in the city, for example in the financial year 1892–93 the Municipality spent around ` 4,33,580 on the construction and widening of roads and in the next year it spent around ` 3,66,133 on the same. On the contrary, its expenditure on bustee cleaning in 1892–93 came to about ` 107,817 and the next year it was only ` 102,431.47

GOI, Home (Municipalities), No. 36–41, March 1895, NAI.

In fact, so less was the expenditure on bustee improvement in the last few decades of the nineteenth century that the Government of India and the local government had to constantly remind and even reprimand the Municipal Commissioner on this issue. In the year 1886–87, the Government of India noted that although good work was being done for the improvement of the most unhygienic bustees, still considerable work was left and it pointed out that the amount spent on bustee improvement for the years 1884–85 and 1885–86 were ` 118,863 and ` 117,673 only, which was way less than the minimum amount that needed to be spent, that is, ` 150,000.48

GOI, Home (Municipalities), No. 14, January 1887, NAI.

It was not merely the problem of a paucity of funds but how the funds were utilised and what the administration considered its priority.

Much of this depended on the interest groups that came to dominate municipal politics in Calcutta. Of these, a major chunk was formed by the Anglo-Indian groups; prominent among them was the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Calcutta Trades Association. By the 1880s, the former had become the mouthpiece of all commercial interest groups in the city. These groups had started demanding the acknowledgement of their economic interests through the grant of political status and symbols.49

Chris Furedy, ‘Interest Groups and Political Management in Calcutta, 1875–1890’, Communications Historiques, The Canadian Historical Association 8, no. 1, 1973: 193.

The Calcutta Trades Association constantly sent memorandums and petitions to the government demanding a restructuring of the municipality. Their presence in the municipality was defined by their constant reshaping of the municipal policies and petitioning the higher authorities of the Imperial government to pass orders that suited their own economic interests. In fact, even some elite Indians started to have a semblance of voice in municipal affairs after the introduction of elective principles in 1876, but these principles merely benefited those Indians who held considerable property, as was the requirement laid down by Act IV (BC), that required one to be paying a minimum amount of property rate or tax to be eligible to be elected to the municipality.50

Act IV (BC) of 1876—New Municipal Act, GOB, Municipal (Municipal), 1876.

This resulted in the predominance of those with commercial and propertied interests. Even the Imperial government subtly tried to advance the interests of these groups.51

Furedy, ‘Interest Groups’, 206.

But, unlike Bombay, the local elites found it very difficult to assert their voices independently without the backing of the Europeans or the Anglo-Indian interest groups in Calcutta. As Claude Markovits has pointed out, due to a difference in the styles of capitalist development, whereby the local Indians had a major stake in the development of the business of Bombay, they also enjoyed an assertive voice in the running of municipal affairs of the city. Whereas, in Calcutta the local Indians had very little stake in the commercial enterprise which was dominated by the Anglo-Indians and the Scottish, and therefore the non-propertied Indians, with little or no commercial enterprise of their own, had very little say in the municipal affairs of Calcutta.52

Claude Markovits, ‘Bombay as a Commercial Centre in the Colonial Period—A Comparison with Calcutta’, in Bombay: A Metaphor for Modern India, ed. Sujata Patel (Mumbai: OUP, 1995), 24–46.

Though they were important stakeholders when it came to matters of landed property, the lack of hold over commercial property in Calcutta made their say slightly less important in the municipal matters of Calcutta in the nineteenth century.

Thus, right from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the state saw its priorities in the structural development of those areas of the city which it saw as important for the smooth commercial enterprise through the smooth transfer and movements of goods and people. This was seen in their emphasis of the building of key thoroughfares along the river, bridges and other roads. The speculated value of land after certain infrastructural projects had been developed on it, was a key consideration for taking up the structural improvement of the city. Although, health continued to be cited as an important factor for carrying out improvements in the city, it was the expected increase in the money gained through rent or the sale of property after such improvements that came to dominate the consciousness of the planners and administrators. The initiation of beautification and ornamental development of the areas which the state thought would provide a good rent also fulfilled the purpose of showcasing an orderly space and the god governance of the colonial state. This orderliness and cleanliness was showcased to attract potential increase in these properties and the capital generated through these investments and buying of these properties was used for future developmental works. The clearance of bustees in the 1860s in the Esplanade and Dalhousie area was part of the dual plan of creating a favourable picture and making the land more valuable for future investments. Since one of the main sources of income for the state, which it used for development purposes, was the income from the sale of property, therefore all attempts were made to make the property look attractive and worth buying to potential consumers. The lands that cleared off the bustees falling in these places, was to be sold for constructing houses for the rich Europeans, who were in a position to pay high rent for these properties, as the proceeds from these would help raise money for further works in the city.53

GOB, Judicial Proceedings, No. 23, 20^th January 1859, WBSA.

Although, fear of miasmas from the villainous smells emitted and the spread of diseases cannot be ruled out as one of the factors for the clearance of bustees from different parts of the city, it has to be kept in mind that the advantages and profits which the sale of these improved and filth-free areas would accrue to the state was the overbearing consideration. Thus, considerations for building a thoroughfare from Jauna Bazar—an area dominated by the locals through Dharmatatollah—the business district of the city, and a further extension to Sudder Street pointed to an initial concern for people’s health, ventilation, the quality of air and cleanliness in the crowded parts of the city, but what seemed more important for the state was the rent it could earn from the lease of a much improved land it leased for a public institute or from the rent of the houses it made for the upper and middle classes.54

GOI, Home (Public), No. 3282, 18th July 1860, NAI.

The need for maximising profits made the state bend towards the interests of private property. Therefore, a petition seeking to make the Dharmatollah market more sanitary was politely turned down stating the inability to tamper with private property. The solution suggested was the removal of beggars and vagrants from the streets.55

GOB, Judicial (Judicial), No. 3721, 27^th July 1863.

Another reason for this suggestion was to ensure safety for the commercial properties in this area. It was said in no lesser terms by some members of the Municipality that it was financially more viable for them to construct and improve the main arterial roads of the city like Harrison Road and Lansdowne than improve the bustees built upon them as that would mean expenditure on the part of the state and the profits being solely enjoyed by the bustee owners. They said that it was a better financial proposition for the Municipality to demolish the bustees and widen the roads and the surplus land could be leased out on rent to give profits to the municipality.56

GOI, Home (Municipalities), Nos. 29–33, September 1896, NAI.

It is interesting to note that the state, while clearing bustees, was hardly doing anything for the labouring poor who were being displaced. These poor would move out of one bustee and move in to another which was already overcrowded and make them breeding grounds for diseases. It is also interesting to note that very little was being done in terms of improving the condition of the places which the state considered as the breeding grounds of diseases. The condition of the bustees and suburbs was pointed out by military officials or medical topographers like Ranald Martin. Though work was done for the richer suburbs, the poorer suburbs, neither found place in the imaginary framework of the officers and administrators nor was any work done for them. Their lack of sanitation was explained with excuses that they were not under a proper or efficient administrative set up.57

GOB, Municipal (Municipal), No. 2019, 30^th July 1883, WBSA.

Therefore, one saw an increase in mortality rates in places like Hastings and Entally over the second half of the nineteenth century. The point which was made at the beginning of the article was about the unchanging or unimproved sanitary conditions of some parts of the city over the decades of the second half of the nineteenth century, as compared to the steadily improving commercial hub of the city. Mortality rates remained to be quite high in areas like Shyampooker, Jorashanko, Hastings and Jorabagan with respective mortality rates of 34, 37, 33, 3 and 41 per 1000, whereas the commercial areas like Park Street and Waterloo Street showing significantly better figures of 16.7 and 17 respectively, for the year 1882–83.58

GOI, Home (Municipalities), Nos. 41–42, December 1884, NAI.

Similarly, mortality rates varied from a lowly 10.7 per 1000 in Park Street to an alarmingly high 45.8 per 1000 for the year 1885.59

Memorandum of the Army Sanitary Commission on the Administrative Report for the city of Calcutta for the year 1885–6, NAI.

It is interesting to note that the practice of structural improvement in Calcutta was comparable to that in post-Napoleonic Paris. After attaining power in 1851 and declaring himself the Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte decided to deal with the political unrest by repressing alternative political movements. The economic problems of labour and capital surplus were dealt with by the introduction of massive infrastructural projects. For Paris, it meant a total reconfiguration of its streets, drains and sewage under the guidance of Georges-Eugene Haussmann.60

David Harvey, ‘The Right to the City’, The New Left Review 53 (September–October 2008): 28.

Since rebuilding Paris required considerable amounts of labour and capital, it helped solve the above mentioned economic problems. Paris became the ‘City of Lights’ with well lit streets, wide boulevards, departmental stores, cafes and a flourishing fashion industry—all created to develop a new way of life a culture of consumerism for the bourgeoisie in Paris.61

Ibid., 26.

This was done so that vast capital could be absorbed by the consumers. Though successful initially, the program failed after the economic crash of 1868. The colonial state in India did not face as much an economic crisis as post-Napoleonic France, but the intent and means of developing the city was more or less the same amongst the planners of Calcutta. A considerable amount was raised through the sale of assets like land and house tax along with loans and debentures. The capital thus generated was used for the infrastructural development of the city. This whole process involved a circulation of capital, that is, capital first invested in infrastructural and sanitary improvements of some areas and later the capital generated from the sale of these improved places was used in further projects of the same nature.

No wonder that most of these improvements were carried out in the affluent areas of the city and its suburbs, and the same areas fell in the imaginary realm of what consisted of ‘Calcutta’ amongst the writers, travellers and administrators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In fact, the imagination of an ideal space of Calcutta fit in perfectly with the needs and aspirations of a rate-paying upper middle class whose geographical spread and numbers increased in the late nineteenth century and with this increased the spread of the administrative machinery for improvements, albeit after some time in the twentieth century, but the focus of the administrative machinery continued to be the imaginary heart of the city, even with the incorporation of the suburbs in to the administrative fold of Calcutta. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century there remained a preferential treatment towards the owners of high value property giving the impression that for the state the focus of sanitary improvement and structural developments was the development of capital and capitalism. Therefore, in conclusion it would be safe to say that the commercial and capitalist heart of Calcutta also remained the imaginary realm of the city’s administrators, as the imagination and representation of these areas of Calcutta was to induce and attract potential investors and therefore, these same places saw improvements in the real terms. These improvement and sanitary programmes followed the principle of differential distribution and allocation of resources like drinking water or cleanliness to different localities of the city, depending on the rent paying capabilities and the inhabitants and the rent-generating capacity of the locality. Therefore, it came as no surprise that commercial hubs of the city were the ones which were portrayed as being the city and thus being substantially developed, as it was from these markets that the state generated a major chunk of its revenue. So for example, the municipality earned about Rs. 525,413 from taxes on trades and professions in the year 1891–92 and Rs. 122,478 from markets in the same year.62

GOI, Home (Municipalities), Nos. 13/17 Part B, 1891–92, NAI.

Through this unequal distribution of goods and services social inequalities were being reinforced by the institutions of local government. It was a strategy common to all the capitalist systems of the world whereby, it has been argued by historians, general access of all was restricted to the basic resources and facilities in the urban centres through a territorial compartmentalisation of the city in terms of housing. It has been seen and argued in other capitalist systems of the world, that in the urban centre the role of the state was reduced to a facilitator of the capitalist modes of production.63

Blair Badcock, Unfairly Structured Cities (Basil Blackwell, 1984), 243.

In Calcutta, like in other parts of the capitalist–colonial world the local government through its policies tried to create a conducive image and atmosphere for investment in the city.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Amar Farooqui, Department of History, University of Delhi and Dr Biswamoy Pati, Department of History, University of Delhi for their comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank the two referees whose comments helped improve the article. The author would also like to thank Bidisha Chakrabarty and Sarmishtha De of the West Bengal State Archives for their guidance and help.

Spatial Imagination and Development in Colonial Calcutta,c. 1850–1900

Abstract

Abstract

Keywords

Colonial Imagining of Calcutta—A Case of ‘Deliberate Myopia’?

The Politics of Improvement and the Economics of Planning

Acknowledgements