Preserving Kolkata's Heritage

PRESERVING KOLKATA’S HERITAGE

Jawhar Sircar

Urbana October 2019

When the Grecian pillars and the imposing pediment of the Senate Hall of Calcutta University were being demolished in 1960, little did Kolkata know that it was not tearing down a building: it was actually ripping out a bone from one of its very ribs, that protected its pulsating heart.   Very few protested and ABP brought out a sepia-tint poster of this demolition which hangs in my house in Kolkata, with the legend focusing on the workmen, “Forgive them, for they knew not what they were doing; But some did, and did not care!”

It sums up the tragedy of the “second city of the Empire” that housed not only some of the finest edifices of the colonial period which would make any citizen of the world feel at home. It also boasted one of the largest numbers of palatial buildings for which it was once called “the City of Palaces”.  The wealth that flowed into the city from the early part of 19^th century and continued unabated for the next 120 to 130 years assured that allocable surpluses to the ruling classes, as well as to their British overlords, and a sizeable part of this found itself in the magnificent mansions. 

One by one, they were pulled down from the 1950s, either for public conveniences or sometimes for widening of roads, like Choudhury’s palace of Sahib, Bibi or Gulam had to make way for Central Avenue. Others were handed over to promoters for building multi-storey flats, often by squabbling siblings. But each time a building with neo-classical features or rococo or even ostentatious baroque was ripped apart, we lost an irreplaceable specimen of colonial Bengal’s superb craftsmanship.  Even after independence and CIT’s expansion of the city, art decors sprawled and became common place.  Thus few of us realised what these architectural specimen means to eyes that are tired of ungainly boxed buildings of all sizes in the same tinted glass and concrete.

I was trying to photograph some of the exquisite cast iron sculptures that adorned the facades of many such buildings, either as balconies or balustrades, and one is amazed to find the finest and the most delicate designs that man could ever weave with iron.  Quite often large parts of such cast iron dreams are found to have been taken away and sold by weight and replaced by unimaginative factory produced wrought iron.  I think it is time to focus not only on stucco and on plaster and on architectural styles but also on railings, balustrades, windows and of course wonderful doorways and marble flooring.  Unless we educate ourselves on what they mean and how valuable they are, how would we know what we destroy at periodic intervals?

But is it all right for connoisseurs to make whatever comment they want on somebody else’ property or for heritage lovers to bemoan the passage of time and necessary modernisation? Don’t the owners need money to sustain uneconomically large buildings, so that the city’s heritage can be preserved at the cost of someone else who has to bear the burden? This logic is accepted. But how is it other self-respecting countries or cities manage to cling on to what they will never able to replace?  One of the methods to save heritage is to provide state or municipal funding, but I do not think we should even discuss this subject in India.  After 40 years in administration, I hardly know any municipal body in India that has not taken an active part in the destruction of the history and heritage of the very cities that were entrusted to them. 

One idea that comes to my mind is that of a ‘Lottery Fund’.  Let us not forget that large parts of early Kolkata were built through by lotteries conducted by the Company’s government and one of the best examples of these is the Strand Road that was financed completely from such funds.  The UK has its Heritage Lottery Fund to which citizens can contribute with no sense of guilt and some hope of win.  It earns millions, but its funds ultimately go to subsidised maintenance of heritage buildings and historical areas. Bank of China and HSBC take an active part in providing heritage funds for their cities in China.  There are many such ideas which government just needs to clear and citizens can take over from that point, to maintain their own heritage. At the same time public bodies need to observe the highest level of transparency, while they absorb themselves in the task of saving every small part of priceless and irreplaceable history of their communities, cities, State and the nation.

 Kolkata must remember that while Delhi has four World Heritage Sites declared by the UNESCO and Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad all have such prestigious buildings of international fame, the grand old capital of British India, Kolkata, is yet to earn this award for even a single site. Since Kolkata does not have any notable architecture of the pre-colonial era, we could propose the Victoria Memorial or the Howrah Bridge or even Fort William to UNESCO, Paris, for World Heritage statue — but that requires a lot of documentation of multiple dimensions and maintaining the purity of the original structure. These entail a heritage consciousness and pride to be existing or developed among the citizens of this city — which is missing where serious tasks of this nature are concerned.

   But we can always make a start — so let us begin, now.