A Sacred River

As a boy, the story of the earth’s evolution filled my imagination with lakes, rivers and ocean with swimming pool like water --- transparent to the bottom. That would have been a billion years ago at least. And then little early forms of fishes swimming in these waters would have made it look like a giant fish tank. If I were there, all that I would have had do, was to stand at the bank and look deep into it, to see the fishes swimming right unto the bottom. But then that would have to be few hundred million years ago.

Not really.

In 1579 from his base in Goa, Portuguese Jesuit Father Antonio Monserrate was traveling to Agra to see the Mughal Emperor Akbar. The Emperor wished to learn about the Christian religion. The Jesuit traveled upcountry through central India and then to Agra. Somewhere in today’s Madhya Pradesh, he had to cross the Narmada River. What he saw on reaching there in his own words:

“It is full of fish, and its water is so clear that the fish and turtles, and even smaller pebbles, can be counted. It banks are covered with thick reed-beds, and with health-giving herb marjoram”

In total contrast, today Narmada’s waters are muddy and wash up a variety of filth, by the time it reaches Bharuch. Ironically, the more sacred a river is thought to be, larger the burden of human generated waste on it. Plastic bags, filth, tons of rotten flowers and food…

Looking back, the astonishing account of Narmada’s waters in the sixteenth century is hard-to-believe. But then that was only 430 years ago, not 100 million years back. We have managed to destroy so much in such little time. Our population bulge is as much to blame as the general apathy itself.

Successful Societies

What is the formula for successful and powerful nations/societies?

I have recently been reading a book where its central theme is a traveler in the sixth century, making his way into various parts of the Eastern Byzantine empire. Many of these cities were very prosperous. What strikes is that these cities are very cosmopolitan, attracting people from a large number of nationalities and ethnicities. Business and trade thrives in the bazaars of these cities. Innovative people bring their produce into these markets because these are the only few places on earth where they are quite likely to find patrons. Ideas generated in these fertile places lead to some great leaps in architecture, engineering, science, technology and art. Next, very important, these are no anarchic places. These cities are well governed. There is a rule of law; capable of enforcing itself.

The more you dig into the past, you’d find that for success, you need to be a society/state that is moderate, willing to absorb. Because that also means willingness to learn.

Which are the most powerful places today on our planet? Do they have features? To my mind, it’s been the UK in recent centuries and the US in the 19th & 20th century. They could absorb and utilize minds from various places. From Jewish bankers to Chinese engineers. From Scotsmen to Brazilians. The US fares so much better than say, Germany or Japan, that are homogenous societies. Both have been powerful, but only to a much smaller extent and only intermittently. In comparison, the US and UK have held power over a very long time.

Has our history been that of a plural society? We’ve had to absorb a large number of invaders from the west and north. In addition, internal immigration seemed to have been very much the norm in India. However, so little is really known about our past.

The Myth of Cheap

There is a popular saying that there is no free lunch. How true. In real life someone has to pay the price. Are countries like India and China really cheap? How come China produces its stuff so cheap?

Someone pays the price. The roadside foodstall is cheaper than the pucca shop 7 feet inside. Reason? The roadside stall pays an illegal rent (hafta?) which is fraction of the cost of the rent paid by a competitor housed in a legitimate piece of real-estate. The cost of transporting a truckload of sand in India is a fraction of its cost in the US. Why? Because the truck used is often very old, whose debt has been long repaid; it may not be road-fit but it can still go on and even spill some sand on the road. What about the counterpart in a developed country? He must invest heavily to keep a road-fit relatively new truck; employ safety tools to ensure that no sand spills on the road. Who pays the price for cheap sand transportation in India or similar countries? People do. The spilling sand destroys road surfaces worth crores of rupees, as moving vehicles keep rubbing the sand onto the road surface. Then goes a cycle of suffering and costs that people must endure for bad roads, including delay and larger fuel consumption.

Why it is cheap? Lands are doled out in subsidies. Especially in relation to China, I read reports of very cheap lands allocated to do business. Lack of safety regulations translating into no investments necessary for safety and health of public at large and workers more specifically. Similarly in relation to other regulations. For example, commercial production/activities in residential areas, thereby saving taxes and electricity tariff -- leaving the government and taxpayer short changed. The fault is also as much with us. We prefer all kinds of savings by evading regulations when it is related to self, but then hypocritically expect developed countries like safety norms, facilities and infrastructure.

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 19^th 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.

Colonial Calcutta II: St John's Church

Our next visit was to the St John’s Church. The St John’s Church is less visited today and is (probably) the oldest surviving Church in Calcutta. he church is situated diagonally opposite to the south-west of, what was once the original Fort Williams, and is now the Customs House. The entire area around the Lal Dighi is dense with monuments of the colonial era.

The old Fort Williams had the original St John’s church, housed in a modest structure, built shortly after the victory at Plassey’s field. In 1782, at Hastings instance, Maharaja Nabo Krishna Deb donated the land for construction of a new St John’s Church. The Maharaja was a very wealthy and powerful Hindu royal and a personal friend of Warren Hastings. The land was transferred to Hastings’ personal name. Satyaki and I entered through the iron gates into the large yard. Probably two & quarter centuries ago, it was a quiet site near the Dalhousie square. What set St John’s church different from just about any other place was its understated past, elegance and welcome approach. Though St Paul’s cathedral is an awesome piece of edifice, it seemed less a match for St John’s graceful heritage. A tablet somewhere near the entrance said that the church land was donated by the Maharaja.

The church is spacious inside with ornamented wooden work. A large and glowing painting decorated the walls, with the theme being the angels. The older painting was of The Last Supper by Zoffany, but I forgot to see this, being in a hurry to visit more places during the day. The hall walls are filled with tablets in memory of someone’s someone lost. One of them was from a military officer for his infant daughter, starved to death at Lucknow’s siege at the Sepoy Mutiny. Another was for one captain James Kirkpatrick, by his brother. We could recall Kirkaptrick as William Dalrymple’s lead character in thebook ‘White Moguls’, being the romantic Resident at Nizam’s court.

It was the ‘Organ’ that caught our attention next. While the keys were the size of a piano, it had multiple levers to enable it to replicate sounds of flute, harp etc. The whole set is original and had 2 very big rooms dedicated to its mechanism -- pipes of all sizes and shapes for the air to pass and refine further. Then there was a chamber to generate air. In the earlier era, the church official explained, it was done manually – with men pulling. Now the same work is performed by an electric motor. The organ is used for the mass on Sundays.

There is monument dedicated to the English officers who died at the Rohilla War. We stopped for a while. I thought to myself about the countless Indians who died defending their lands from the brutal assaults of the English. There are no monuments anywhere for the blood lost by these men. There was monument for the Black Hole victims. But I didn’t look at it. I read of an entire village population in Bengal being burnt to death by the East India Company, to punish them. Their fault: growing opium, a threat to Company’s monopoly over opium production and export (to China).

To the north side of the church lies buried, the Calcutta founder, the English agent Job Charnock. Job Charnock’s tomb was built by his son-in-law, Eyle. Built around 1693, it is a relatively simple white and round structure, with a miniature replica of itself set on its crown. Charnock had moulded himself in the Indian way and had married a Bengali widow he rescued from being burnt to death at her husband’s funeral pyre. He ably withstood the immense forces of Bengali society that believed that its pride and piety would be destroyed should she not be killed immediately by burning. Their 3 daughters were married to well off English men in India.

To the side of Charnock’s tomb is a little tomb for the Admiral who was in-charge of at the time of Black Hole and Plassey.

The bonus was here. We could have a look at Hastings’ study room furniture. His table and chair; used for writing the lives of millions.

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The Raiders

Civilizations have been torn down after they reached pinnacle of organization, culture and sophistication. Empires have been built on power, technology and management. Comfort and refined then combined with declining military might. And then they have been met with brave and desperate raiders. Desperate raiders come from lands that cannot sustain them. So, often it is a about a desperate effort to find livable lands. A long civilization/dynasty gets torn down and raiders rule. The cycle then repeats itself.

Have things changed?

For millennia, man has always been led to lands where his sustenance would require less toil. Aryans and people from up North, including the Armenians have flocked to India. Afghans, Central Asians and Arabs have poured into India for centuries in the name of Islam. Stories of India’s fertile land and abundant water, sunshine, food made this sound like heaven to every prospective raider. A repeated trend has been that of relatively cultured people being displaced and ruled over by men of low sophistication, but possessing greater skill and zeal for battles. Often civilizations based on logic, knowledge etc have crumbled and given in to brute force. Moors poured into from their desert lands in North Africa, to raid the life sustaining lands of Spain. They were stopped only by organized European powers from moving further up. Seljuks moved south from their inhospitable terrains in the North to the beautiful and easier life in the Byzantine. Similarly Vikings invaded lands. Chinese from certain parts moved southwards in search of greener pastures, to settle in South East Asia and alter its racial mix for ever.

While Europe’s centuries long crusading efforts were largely in vein, losing West Asia & Turkey while regaining Spain, things changed with Renaissance. Advances in technology and management gave them unprecedented advantage to build colonies in all other inhabited continents. Their long enemies were biting dust as well.

Today some lands like China and India that long sustained huge inflow of people, seem too overpopulated themselves. India has absorbed Aryans, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Armenians, Central Asians, Africans and so on. But Indians seldom looked beyond its shores for making a living. Today things seem vastly different. Indians seem to be running into every part of the earth to make a decent living. Has the time come for cycle to reverse? Today’s raiders will obviously be of different kind. Conquests will probably not through savage means, as we saw how Taliban were destroyed. Vietnam’s defeat of Khmer Rouge in 1979 can also be termed as victory of a better set of people over savages.

Probably, given the tectonic shifts in technology, empires can combine refinement and easy going life with enormous power, only if they can maintain economic might. Can’t imagine a bunch of gun-toting men conquering UK or US, unlike the zealous Genghis Khan conquering lands.

So, who might be the next raiders?

Colonial Calcutta I: Chitteswari, Princep, Hastings and Belvedere

To me, Kolkata (Calcutta) had always been a city of Bengalis. The origin of Bengal Renessance and a continuing centre of Bengali art and culture. However, the city was founded by the world’s largest ever multinational company, and continued to be its Asia head quarter until its demise a few decades after the Indian sepoy mutiny of 1857.

I had seen Dakshnineshwar, I had shopped at Gariahat and been to practically every place in the city that mattered to Bengali consciousness. But I hadn’t seen much of those buildings and places that made up what was once the Imperial capital in the east. I recalled Busteed’s (1895) comments in his book referring to Calcutta in the early/mid nineteenth century as the most magnificent European city anywhere in the world. The British Officers resented the choice of Calcutta as the head-quarter. It was extremely warm for more than a half of the year, with humidity levels exceeding anywhere one had known. Add to it the problem that the entire landmass resembled a web of water bodies – ponds, canals, water drains, marsh lands. However, not that most Bengali officers liked it any better. The weather was quite difficult to deal with, for Bengali officers who came from landed classes of Bengal from the upper areas that were cooler and less humid. But for the locals who preceded the British, Calcutta villages were just a way life—their home. There were local landed classes (Rajas) who paid taxes to the Imperial Treasury during Mughal Power and then to Murshidabad as Delhi faded. Then I read an account of how Charnock (the East Indian Company agent, and founder of Calcutta) bought villages in the watery lands to consolidate as a single town. The constituent towns/villages of Calcutta had civilization older than the city itself.

We were heading towards North Calcutta’s eastern banks, because somewhere here lay one of the oldest temples in the city. I wasn’t sure of how Chitteswari was pronounced, but could explain to the locals that we were looking for an old temple of Goddess Kali. Satyaki accompanied me and was probably much better equipped with Calcutta’s history. This helped us to get to places with flashing speed. I knew we were venturing into areas that weren’t the safest places. Additionally, the lanes were so narrow in these suburbs that at times I felt that our car was rubbing the walls on either side. In trying to locate, we had moved from one suburb to another, further deep inside and far beyond our initial time and distance estimates. Very close to the sandy banks of the river, stood Chitteswari temple. We were informed that there was no regular worship anymore. The temple was opened once a week. The temple was built in 1615 or so, years before Charnock set foot. I tried to imagine what it would have then been. Probably thick vegetation of banana, coconut, other fruits, sundry trees and plants, lots of overgrown grass all around and heavy breeze through the sandy banks of the giant river. It must have been a temple amidst water bodies and drains criss-crossing all the lands for hundreds of kilometers around and the faithful families from nearby villages making regular pilgrimage to Goddess.

Situated in Alipore, the Hastings House isn’t known by that name anymore to most people in the city. And while we came close with the help of an older map, it was finally a policeman who directed us to go to the women’s college. The building now acts as the B.Ed college for women. As you enter through the gate, the heavy vegetation gives you a sense of timelessness. The house has a giant open space around it. So big that it would elude the imagination of most people. Many believe that Hastings’ ghost is out there looking for a large bunch of papers his managers had left behind in 1785, when he sailed back to England. I read a newspaper report of this building being one of the most haunted in the city. The building is typical of the early period and is devoid of architectural splendor that adorns later buildings of the British era. The building is more characterized by its simplicity, strength and size. I was not clear why it was called Hastings House. Did the famous governor general Warren Hastings stay here before he became governor general? And then at the time of leaving India he sold the house? Indeed this was Hastings' private house before ascended to the post of Governor General. He had a flair for building houses and selling, according to Thacker. Hastings house changed occupants before being acquired by Lord Curzon in 1901 for entertaining Indian princes.

We headed further east to reach the banks of the river, the next place was Princep Ghat. A ghat is supposed to be a stairway leading to the water. And a ghat building could be the big/glorified gate that leads to these stairways. Situated on the Bank of the river, the building is now landlocked and somewhat scarred by the new Hoogly Bridge (Vidyasagar Setu) that runs over its shoulders. Nevertheless, the monument seemed quite different from what I was made to expect from a couple of old pictures posted on the internet. It gleaned white with clean interiors and sported lush green lawns around it. The government has brought to life so many of these monuments, which would otherwise decay and crumble. I was happy to see the building but have no idea if the restoration had in any way damaged the heritage. The river, a few meters away looked splendid from there. In the old days river water came up to the Princep Ghat building? Or was the building always loandlocked and was just a recreation facility on the breezy banks of the Hooghly? James Princep was a great architect to built many bridges and even rebuilt mughal buildings. But he is best known as decipherer of Pali script. Princep ghat was built to welcome incoming Governor Generals. Its several arches are now gone. Also gone are extra rooms etc built. But the stairway that once reached from Princep to the river is also gone, buried probably deep down?

We moved along and entered the grand Strand Road. At its pinnacle, the Strand Road must have been witness to one of the grandest cities of all, with so many of the city’s landmarks decorating its length. Many of the famous buildings of the colonial period are situated on the Strand Road, or just off it. Metcalfe Hall was our next destination. It took us a bit of time to locate most of these buildings because their names had changed and the people recognized the buildings just as office of the current occupier. Metcalfe Hall could be recognized by a description in a book that said the building was at the intersection of Hare Street and Strand Road. Once we had found it, people who we had earlier queried said we should have asked for ASI office. A Governor General, Charles Metcalfe had contributed heavily to creation of the free press in India. May I add free English press? Built 165 years ago in 1844, this imposing building housed the public library and the Agricultural Society of India to begin with. But probably library consumed all the space eventually. Lord Curzon innaugrated the National Library here in 1903, which later moved to Belvedere House. Metcalfe House today is Archeological Survey of India’s (ASI) publication sales centre. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and I could lay my hands on nothing.

The National Library of India is housed in the Belvedere House in Calcutta. It is one of the most imposing buildings I had ever seen. An architectural colossus rises in the middle of the 30-acre lush green gardens. East India Company housed its Governor Generals here until the still bigger and grander Govrnment House (now Raj Bhavan) was constructed. We walked around the library building in a circle. Every which way you look, it gives you an idea of the Company Empire’s power. From this house the empire made decisions and stitched plans to wage wars on Rohilkhand and reduced it to dust, sacked the rich Benaras ignoring the treaties and then went on to bring swathes of the country under their control and taxes. Shamefully, it is also from here that Hastings ordered the siege of Awadh’s zenana on Awadh ruler’s advise to extract the rich treasure of zenana. It was in the woods outside the compound of Belvedere (and not the courtyard as popularly thought) that Warren Hastings and Philip Francis sought to settle their differences through gun. Philip Francis was one of the 3 men whose vote was necessary for Hastings to take any major decision. Hastings himself was the 2^nd man and the 3^rd was Judge Elijah Impey. There was enormous political/power rivalry between the two. But this time, it was a woman, both wanted as theirs. Marian was widow of a French painter, met Francis first and was now Hastings wife. The two men shot each other. For Francis it was double misfortune as he missed his target, and Hastings found his. Fortunately, injury was non-fatal and Francis lived on, for Francis was a lone voice of dissent to the Company's excesses.

to be concluded...

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