Calcutta IV: Tagore, Jones and Shaheed Smarak

Calcutta’s Shaheed Smarak was its tallest edifice for a formidable period of time. Some of the early photographs of the city were taken from this tower’s crown. Situated at the vast grounds of Moidan (which itself means ‘ground’), the tower overlooks a very important part of the city, which continues to be its core. Original name of the tower was Ochterlony Monument, named after David Ochterlony. Ochterlony was a general in the army. The monument was erected in memory of his leading the East India Company to a face-saving treaty against the Gurkhas. The British were outmaneuvered by the Gurkhas in their earlier attempts on the hill kingdom. The English learnt the hard way that the Gurkhas were no easy meat like the Nabab’s wet cannons at Plassey. What was at stake, was the illusion of English invincibility in the eyes of Indians. If the illusion went, with it would go the Empire. Under Ochterlony, there was a face-off leading to a treaty that allowed a face-saving exit to the English. However a monument in his name at Moidan would be a constant humiliation for us. The renaming saves that, and so also a heritage. Ochterlony was also a lover of India, and British resident (ambassador) at the Delhi court. He lived like an Indian prince and unlike other English officers who indulged in pleasures of Indian life, Ochterlony did not get up one day and boarded ship for England, abandoning Indian wives and children. He lived with his family, found suitable matches for his Anglo-Indian daughters. He has been romanticized in William Dalrymple’s several books.

We moved on to see Sir William Jones’s tomb at the Park Street Cemetry. Jones was the pioneer in Asiatic studies. Read Indian studies, or more specifically, read this as uncovering of Hindu heritage. From deciphering of ancient Hindu texts, to digging history, he did it all. He laid foundation to a systematic study of our heritage. John Prinsep (of Princep Ghat fame) completed his one major incomplete work many years later – decoding the remaining syllables of the lost script of Brahmi. The tomb seemed the tallest at the cemetery and certainly, was the only one that seemed cared for – and not without reason.

We visited several other edifices of heritage, such as the grand post office headquarters (GPO), St Stephen's Church in Alipore, St Andrew's Cathedral, Town Hall, High Court and the dilapidated ‘Currency Office’.


Jarasanko was the ancestral Tagore residence in Kolkata. Much smaller originally than its current size, the building kept growing as members grew. Each member of the family left a legacy of his own. The building now houses a university. You could take a guided tour of the building and see most of its parts, complete with display of things used by the Tagore family. The soft Tagore music floating around was magical, to a point that I considered it an illusion. The most striking thing you’d learn is the Japanese influence on the family. By the 19th century, Japan was adopting western technology and management styles (including for military), to add to Japan’s traditional techniques and technology. This propelled Japan very fast towards an industrial and military power status that few western nations had achieved. Tagore mansion is full of Japanese gowns, cutlery etc. It also displays pictures of masters of Japanese martial arts. The martial arts were taught to the Tagore family by Japanese masters brought to Calcutta. Tagore stood for the idea itself, as articulated by Amartya Sen so well in his essay on Tagore. Tagore disagreed with the idea of boycotting English ideas and things. He maintained that it is only through adapting better ideas and technology, irrespective of where it comes from, that we can become a formidable social and military power one day. India’s progress of the last 18-years, since economic liberalization, is probably a proof of this idea.

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Calcutta III: Ram Mohan and Armenian Ghat


Next, we had some disappointments. I was interested in visiting the Armenian Ghat. Armenians had been coming to India for over a thousand years. Of what I knew, they had mostly been coming to work as soldiers under Indian states in the earlier years. Since the Mogul era and subsequently, they came in actively as merchants, just like they had been doing so in West Asia for a much longer period. I learnt that Calcutta had a strong Armenian presence in business & commerce in that era. But I had not been able to learn more regarding the Armenians the city. We overshot the Armenian Ghat turn by 100 meters and given the traffic rules, were forced to board the Howrah Bridge. It meant losing half an hour to return to the same spot, and lost our way. We returned a week later to visit the Ghat. As one looks from the Ghat into the breezy river, Howrah Station stares at you from the opposite bank. The Armenian Ghat was built and donated by a group of wealthy Armenian merchants. Unfortunately, the huge building looks all set to crumble down. We saw a few men wrapped in gamchha (thin cotton towel, generally dyed in red, popular in Bengal and Bihar), bathing in the revered waters of the river. We decided to leave after we realized that all eyes were set on us, as if we were aliens from mars.

Our search for the Armenian Church proved futile. We found the Armenian Street -- a (very) narrow road, guarded from air and sunlight, by the seamlessly connected buildings on either side. But the church was not there. Change in names, of roads and buildings can prove to be very inconvenient. We were actually pretty close, as I would learn later.


But the day was made, when we succeeded in locating Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s house. The influential lord of his times had it seems, many houses in Calcutta. This was the principal one though. We assumed that finding the house on Ram Mohan Roy Sarani (street) would be easy. The street had been renamed recently. The street name was alien to our cabbie. Once there, he recalled it with its earlier name. I had expected to see a wall or two surviving from the original building, after seeing a dated photograph of the dilapidated edifice. To our utter surprise, this seemed like a new mansion. Fortunately for the generations to whom this heritage belongs, a charity-based trust in the Raja’s name acquired the building from its illegal occupants who had stripped the building down to its last wooden window-frame. The building structure is original, but everything else is replica. It was heartening to see a bunch of academics driving the entire project with devotion. They spent a good deal of time educating us on the Raja’s life. There is a museum dedicated to the Raja and is still being populated with fresh acquisitions, mostly from private collections.

The Raja’s activities in the city were broadly from this building, which has a large tank (now a deadly marsh) in the backyard. The college, which I believe was instituted by the Raja, stands behind the tank.