The oxymoron “a painful pleasure” seems to be in effect when Kolkata gets global recognition ~ the city has ranked 19th by Savills’ Growth Hub Index for its rapid development. Is Kolkata burdened with the enigma of despair? Is it a great urban disaster? At least the graffiti on walls would lead one to believe there is no hope. What troubles the lovers of Kolkata most is that the questions could lately be answered spontaneously in the negative. Every discussion about the “city of joy” tends to become a sentimental journey into the past.
Inevitably a confrontation with the rot eating into the vitals of the city is like being a victim of one’s own hubris. For a hardcore Kolkatan, harshly chastised by the relentless reality around him, the virtuous delights of organizing an unorganized system is a distant dream. He is cocooned in a defunct time-machine that neither takes him forward nor lets him bask contentedly in days of yore. In a way, he is trapped in a city which he loves and is unable to lift the malaise that has robbed it of its vibrancy.
So why is Kolkata so special amidst all its traffic jams, bandhs, michhil, adda, et al? Even an individual being part of the swarm of citizens hurrying towards Sealdah and Howrah stations in the afternoon will proudly proclaim that it is difficult to find another city whose name one can associate with six Nobel Prize winners. In retrospect, there is something intense about Rudyard Kipling’s relationship with Kolkata, where he was born and to which he came back in 1888 to work as a journalist. Characteristically, his first reaction was effusive but deeply proprietoral.
As he looked at the large number of ships below the Hooghly Bridge, he exclaimed: “What a divine place to loot!” It seemed not only wrong but a criminal thing to allow natives to have any voice in the control of such a city “adorned, docked, wharfed, fronted and reclaimed by Englishmen, existing only because England lives and is dependent for its life in England.” The word “loot”, though used in a light-hearted manner, indicates the attitude typical of colonisers. Among Kipling’s initial reactions to life in Kolkata was a holistic outburst at what he called the “Big Calcutta Stink”.
“The reek of Calcutta beats both Banaras and Peshawar … It is faint. It is sickly, and it is indescribable… It resembles the essence of corruption that has rotted…” More than three hundred years ago, Calcutta was promoted by a band of adventurous British traders with a vision to make it a competitive business centre. When by an irony of history the traders became rulers of the country, it was Calcutta which remained as the citadel of British imperial power in the Indian subcontinent for well over a century and a half. But what is often overlooked is the British perception of the city’s strategic importance in international trade and commerce.
In terms of imperial political management, Calcutta had always played a vital role. In terms of furthering British business interests in the Far East too, it played a big role. Calcutta had been the main centre of Britain’s flourishing trade with China and its trade with Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong with the entire eastern region serving as the supply line through excellent manufacturing, mining and agricultural activities. Meanwhile, much water has flowed down the Bhagirathi and the city has changed. Lord Macau l ay, who had initiated the Indians into Western culture and education, speaks of the same wilderness that Mrs Kinders Leigh disparaged as the “city of palaces.”
In 1803, Lord Valencia wrote: “Chowrin gh ee, an entire village of palaces runs a considerable length at right angles with it, and altogether forms the finest view I ever beheld in any country.” When Daniel Moy nihan, former US Ambassador to India, described Calcutta as a necropolis, he was criticized. And late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s reference to Calcutta as a “dying city” was thought to be uncharitable. However, of late Kolkata appears static in a setting where progress is increasingly becoming an obsession. Every decision about the city tends to become a sentimental journey into the past. However, the crowds hardly suggest that it is a dying city.
In spite of its feeble economic structure, Kolkata has been trudging along the path of survival with stoic persistence. Now the city brims with the mystic festive spirit. And soon all will be back home celebrating Christmas and welcoming the new year with joy, fervour and enthusiasm. Whether we call it Kolkata or Calcutta, the city haunts everybody’s mind. It remains a collage of multi-hued, multi-textured events, an abode of eminent intellectuals, keeping the Bengali spirit vibrant and ever enthusiastic and inspiring others to call it the intellectual capital of the country. It was not without reason that the city remained as the citadel of the British imperial power in the Indian subcontinent for well over a century and a half.
Even after 1912, when the capital was shifted to Delhi, Calcutta continued to enjoy a special preferential status from the British Indian government. The development of Calcutta during the British Raj has to be viewed in terms of its strategic role in the imperial management of both politics and economics. To play this role the sustained development and creation of supportive infrastructure facilities was a basic prerequisite, and Calcutta rose to the occasion. At the same time, the 19th century Calcutta, faced with the domination of the West, was looking for a definition of selfidentification. The aim of thinkers like Bankimchandra, Bhudev Mukherjee, Vivekananda and Rabindra nath was to rescue their countrymen from a state of mind where they were longing to hear if they were superior, in any way, to the most civilized nations.
Bankimchandra identified the crucial difference between European and Indian attitudes to knowledge and action. While the European believ ed that Nature could be conquered and lead to a better life on earth, the Indian view was that Nature was unconquerable, and was the source of all misery. Vivekananda strongly believed in the superiority of the Indians to the Europeans in their spiritualism. Tagore’s vision of Indian history led to a rich fulfillment in spite of conflicts, sufferings and even invasion. And, we must not disown Rammohan’s letter, datelined Calcutta, to Lord Amherst, urging him to brush aside the decision on “a new Sanskrit school in Calcutta” and instead allocate all the money to “instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences.”
We must be all proud of the Bengali Renaissance, or for that matter, the “Politics of Young Bengal”, as Pearychand Mitra called it in 1877, started by Henry Derozio, whom Susobhan Sarkar calls the “Calcutta Eurasian of Portuguese Indian ancestry”. A whole corpus of literature grew around Sri Chaitanya Deb’s Vaishnavism, drawing Bengalis and Oriyas, Manipuris and others close together. NonBengalis also started learning the language just to go through Ramakrishna’s Kathamrita, and Bankimchandra, Saratchandra and Rabin dranath in original. The English writings of Vivekananda and Aurobindo served to bridge European and Bengali culture. Religious thoughts and practices also emanated in the city and had a profound resonance across the globe.
Other than great spiritual thinkers like Rammohan Roy, Keshav Chandra Sen, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Aurobindo, the lesser known who came to the city include Angarika Dharmapala and Nichidatsu Fujii. The profound spiritual legacy has been an inegral element of Kolkata’s culture. Kolkata is a miniature of the whole world. Every race is represented and every culture can be traced here. A walk through its streets is an experience. The city teaches lessons of constant sharing with those poorer than oneself, tolerance towards all beliefs and castes, respect for strangers, true charity for beggars, the deformed, and the lepers. This is the city where Mother Teresa had visualized God among the millions. Kol kata today is a living, thinking, struggling, idealistic city.
Its people are still concerned with something other than making money, spending money and hoarding money. It remains one of the most aware, sensitive, intelligent and intellectual cities of the world. Even though the time when Gokhale said, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow” is long gone, there is reason to find the much-vaunted Bengali arrogance at a low key. Even though we are twice in receipt of the Nobel Prize in Economics, the city has reason to weep for having slipped into obsolescence. We see only the tip of hope in the quagmire that threatens to devour the city’s vitality.
The hiatus between the idea and its translation into reality still appears to be unbridgeable. Its laid-back culture is now eating into the youngest rung of its populace. School goers are now planning their careers away from the city. Kolkata needs to shrug off its persecution complex and take charge of its destiny. The glorious intellectual isolation must end. Instead of basking in past glory, the city ought to author an inspiring future which appeals to common logic. Perhaps the hope lies in Kolkata’s growing cosmopolitanism, and, of course, the recently earned glory
(The writer, a former Associate Professor, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata, is presently associated with Rabindra Bharati University)