by Jerry Pinto
Consequently, the British moved the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi in the early years of the twentieth century. Incidentally, this happened the very same year (1911) when Mohan Bagan, a local football team, defeated the British in the Indian Football Association Shield to create a national sensation! A couple of years later, Calcutta was honoured when Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even though the city was no longer the political capital of the country, it continued to thrive as its commercial and artistic centre. Architecturally too it bloomed and soon after the First World War (1914 to 1918), the grand edifice of the Victoria Memorial Building was inaugurated by King Edward VIII.
The city got its first Indian mayor, Chittaranjan Das, in 1924 and only five years after that it saw the quiet entry of another of its most illustrious citizens. An unassuming person, called Agnes Goinxha Bejaxhu, walked the poorest streets of the city and decided to dedicate herself to its most wretched. She would be known to the world as Mother Teresa, and would eventually win a Nobel Peace prize many decades later.
As the city started to rumble with political slogans through the 1930s and 1940s, it continued to produce wonderful art, literature and films that helped to reinforce its position as a major centre of artistic production. Great film-makers like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha and Ritwik Ghatak spent their formative years in a city that bubbled with political ferment. It was steeped in a long history of storytelling through the works of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Samaresh Basu, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Buddhadev Guha and Sunil Gangopadhyay among others.
The 1930s and 1940s also saw the grand entry into the country’s rebellious landscape of one of Bengal’s bravest heroes—Subhash Chandra Bose. His political imagination was intimately tied to the history of the city. As Calcutta had always done, he too looked towards southeast Asia to develop an innovative campaign against the British by taking political and personal risks that were quite unprecedented. The debate over his choice of allies against the British still rages.
The Japanese bombed the city’s port twice during World War II. As food stocks were diverted to feed Allied troops, a huge famine was unleashed and millions starved to death in 1943.
A few years later, the country gained independence. This was tragically accompanied by a massive frenzy of violence in which over two thousand residents of the city were killed. Calcutta was no longer the capital of the united province of Bengal but saw a massive exchange of population with the partition of the country and the creation of East Pakistan.
In 1947, Dr Prafulla Chandra Ghosh became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal. However, the city’s innately political nature continued to flourish. Over the 1960s and 1970s severe power shortages, strikes and a major violent movement for tribal rights called the Naxalite movement (led mainly by students from Calcutta) kept the city aflame and inspired the rest of the country to continue a critical dialogue with the government.
Calcutta has been a strong base of Indian communism as the Left Front, dominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has ruled it for three decades now. It is the capital of the world’s longest running democratically elected Communist government. Today the city continues to be a centre of artistic, economic and intellectual growth in the country. It prides itself on its many achievements, whether it is the first Indian city to have an underground railway service or related directly to three Nobel laureates, the latest being Amartya Sen.
Its citizens are also legitimately proud of its great sports facilities that include the Eden Gardens—which is one of only two 1,00,000-seat cricket amphitheatres in the world—and Salt Lake Stadium, a multipurpose stadium which is the world’s second-highest capacity football stadium. The city continues to reinvent itself and today has adapted well to the changes in the country’s global economy—however not without very sharp critiques and acts of resistance as well—when things go wrong.
Listening to the radio in Kolkata
Amit Chaudhuri
My uncle’s Murphy, glowing and blinking like an extra-terrestrial, positioned on the wardrobe that was loaded neatly with shirts, pyjamas, trousers, and even, now I come to think of it, tailored suits. Why was the radio not palpably a part of my life in Bombay? It is the late Sixties and early Seventies I am speaking of; television was still to come, and, once it did, with its rationed programmes, would be no rival. But the radio in that house in south Calcutta, with its six or seven keys, ivory-gold, its mercury-thin tuner’s band rushing left and right across the stations, had, from difficult morning to night, its own commanding range and life. Now, there were the Bengali plays, with transcendental voices and simple and immediate sound effects: cymbals, footsteps, gunshots; now, from nowhere, came Paul Simon’s acoustic guitar on Musical Bandbox; before twilight, febrile football commentary arose from a field and a stadium; then, at some point, Manna Dey broke into frivolous adhunik song; and, most transient of all, there was the English news at the midnight hour of 10 p.m., announced by three unearthly bleeps. How did politics and fantasy, fact and fiction, joy and responsibility, ever come to be so mixed up with one another?
Amit Chaudhuri is a noted author who now lives in Kolkata. His novels include A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raga and Freedom Song.
Lucknow
On the banks of the Gomti, the delicacy of the nawabs
The prehistory of Lucknow is rich in myth. The city is said to have been given to Lakshman by his brother Ram as a reward for his bravery and loyalty after their Sri Lankan adventure. There is no historical record of the city from those times and its erstwhile glory is reflected more from legends surrounding the neighbouring city of Ayodhya, about fifty kilometres away.
Lucknow’s history begins somewhere in the thirteenth century AD. The centre of the city has the bare remains of a fort, called Lakshman Tila, built by a princely clan from Bijnore.
At the end of the thirteenth century, the Sharqi rulers of Jaunpur captured the fort and controlled it for about 200 years. Subsequently, it was taken over by Sher Shah Suri, who was then the Sultan of Delhi.
The fort and its accompanying townships remained undeveloped until the Mughal emperor Akbar came to power in north India from the middle of the sixteenth century. That was when the kingdom of Awadh, with the region of Lucknow as its focus, started to flourish. Awadh was a large kingdom that included important cities like Mathura, Allahabad, Kanpur and Ayodhya in its folds.
In 1724, the Mughal emperor Mohammad Shah appointed Nawab Sadat Khan Burhan-ul-Mulk as the governor of this kingdom. Sadat Khan was an adventurer originally from Khurasan in Persia. So pleased was the emperor with Sadat that he soon changed his title from Nazim (governor) to Nawab (lord). This appointment inaugurated the reign of the legendary Nawabs of Awadh, who continued to rule the kingdom until the end of the eighteenth century.
However, it was far from smooth sailing for them. They had to protect their kingdom from the greedy tentacles of the East India Company. Eventually, after the battle of Buxar in 1764, Awadh lost many hectares of land to the Company and the reigning Nawab Wazir came to be referred to as the Chief Native Ally of the East India Company.
The nawabs continued to surrender their independence bit by bit over the years. For example, to pay for their protection by British forces (and for their assistance in war), they gave up the fort of Chunar, then the districts of Benares and Ghazipur, and finally the fort at Allahabad. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the reigning Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula finally accepted the presence of a British Resident at Lucknow, and surrendered all control over foreign policy to the Company. Soon it was the Resident who became the real ruler even though he continued to show (some say almost a mocking) ceremonial respect to the nawab. The Resident lived in a large settlement called the Residency—a slice of British life in the middle of nawabi splendour—complete with ballrooms and salons and green lawns.
Today, the Residency is a ruin but there is so much standing that you don’t have to use much imagination to recreate a bustling town full of red-coated soldiers and mems taking the air under parasols.
The son of Shuja-ud-Daula, Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, soon moved the capital of Awadh from neighbouring Faizabad to the exact location of present-day Lucknow. No one is quite sure why he moved. Some historians suggest he moved on a whim. Others claim he wanted to escape the clutches of a dominating mother!
Whatever the reason, under his able rule, Lucknow emerged as a prosperous city. Historians describe him as ‘a generous, sympathetic ruler, an inveterate builder of monuments, and a great patron of the arts’. When the region was struck by a famine in 1784, he started a food-for-work programme, which saw the construction of many iconic buildings in the city, including the Rumi Darwaza and the Bara Imambara. The Darwaza was an impressive replica of a gate in Istanbul.
Asaf-ud-Daula employed more than 22,000 people to build the Imambara. According to some records, during the day the work on the Imambara continued in a normal manner, but at night, the workers were asked to destroy parts of what had been built! This was to ensure that no one remained unemployed. Understandably, it took twice the time to complete this monumental edifice. At the end of the process the complex included the largest vaulted galleries in the world, an amazing labyrinth called the Bhool Bhulaiya, a ‘bottomless’ well and some magnificent views of the city from its roof.
During Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula’s reign, Lucknow became an important centre for the arts. Artists, musicians, dancers and storytellers arrived in large numbers. The community of storytellers, called kathaks, travelled to Lucknow from Benares and Ayodhya. Initially, this was a folk style but it became sophisticated thanks to the patronage of the courts Then there were the rasadharies from Mathura and Braj and the Kashmiri bhaands—each coming with their rich folk traditions and getting transformed through the special patronage of the courts.
There were also the famous dancing girls, the tawaifs (courtesans) of Lucknow who charmed their patrons with songs and dances in exchange for small fortunes in money, land or jewels.
Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula’s son, Wazir Ali, however, had always regretted his grandfather’s acceptance of a British Resident at Lucknow. Since this knowledge was well known, the Governor General publicly announced his doubts whether Wazir was at all the true son of Asaf-ud-Daula. He removed him from the throne and replaced him with Asaf’s brother, Sadat Ali Khan. Sadat turned out to be a good manager and an enthusiastic builder. He commissioned many grand palaces, including Dilkusha, Hayat Baksh, Farhat Baksh and the famous Lal Baradari.
The deposed Wazir Shah did not take his removal lightly. Consequently, he was considered the main culprit behind the assassination of a British Resident in 1798 in Benares.
This only gave the Company another excuse to interfere in administrative matters and Lord Wellesley (brother of the Duke of Wellington) was just the man to exploit it. He helped draft a treaty that made the nawab give up his own army, while paying heavily for the British one that would replace it.
In the early nineteenth century, Nawab Ghazi-ud-Din ascended the throne. He was a good monarch, and as enthusiastic a builder as his ancestors. He built the Mubarak Manzil and Shah Manzil and laid out the Hazari Bagh gardens. His son Nasir-ud-Din was very fond of the English way of life—especially their dress and their eating and drinking habits. He too was a popular monarch, responsible for the construction of an astrological centre, Tarunvali Kothi. Equipped with sophisticated instruments, it was looked after by a British astronomer. On the nawab’s death, the British insisted that Muhammed Ali, another son of Sadat Ali, be enthroned and during his reign, Lucknow regained its splendour for a while. Sadat Ali’s grandson, Wajid Ali Shah, succeeded him in 1842. He was an enthusiastic patron of the arts and a self-proclaimed lover of Lucknow. However, the English did not have charitable things to say about him. A writer of that time, William Knighton harrumphed in his book The Private Life of an Eastern King: ‘He is entirely taken up in the pursuit of his personal gratifications. He has no desire to be thought to take any interest whatever in public affairs and is altogether regardless of the duties and responsibilities of his high office. He lives exclusively in the society of fiddlers, eunuchs and women: he has done so since his childhood, and is likely to do so till his last.’
This portrait of Wajid Ali Shah was used to justify British annexation of Awadh. Some historians believe that if the charges of mismanagement levied against Wajid Ali Shah were true, the British were as much responsible for this as the nawab. After all, they were more in control of the administration and finances of Awadh and Lucknow since the 1780s, than the nawab himself!
In 1854, the British, under Lord Dalhousie, captured Lucknow. As the story goes, an unconcerned Nawab Wajid Ali Shah continued to play chess, a game with which he was obsessed, while British troops entered and occupied the city. (The noted Hindi writer Munshi Premchand has written an evocative short story about this and Satyajit Ray has made it into a fine Hindi film called Shatranj Ke Khiladi.) By the time he understood the consequences of his actions it was too late. The British had come to stay. In 1856, the whole of Awadh was annexed. Wajid Ali Shah was shipped off to virtual imprisonment in Metiaburj in Calcutta. One of his wives, Begum Hazrat Mahal, remained in Lucknow, and when the revolt erupted in 1857, she led many battalions in the fight. It is said that she never surrendered and died in Nepal in 1879.
During the revolt, Lucknow became the ground for a particularly bloody battle. The British troops in and around Lucknow retreated into the city’s Residency while Indian sepoys and civilians lay siege to the complex for eighty-seven days. Some 3000 people including officers, soldiers, their wives, children and other members of the garrison took shelter in the Residency under the command of Sir Henry Lawrence. The siege took the lives of two-thirds of the inmates and severely damaged the buildings in the Residency. On 17 November 1857, the siege was finally lifted when Sir Colin Campbell and his troops arrived. Calm was restored, and British rule re-established. You can still see the Residency in Lucknow. It has been left exactly as it was at the time of the final battle. There are shattered walls scarred by cannon shots; musty cellars where many of the women and children sought refuge; and in a courtyard, a cemetery with the graves of over 2000 people.
In her book, The Making of Colonial Lucknow: 1856–1877, Veena Talwar Oldenburg points out how the decline of Lucknow can be traced to the way in which the map of the city was hurriedly redrawn after the revolt. The British razed large portions of the city to the ground. Earlier, the streets served as the meeting place for people to share a leisurely conversation over a paan, where ‘the street itself was a destination and an event’. Unfortunately, Colonel Robert Napier of the Bengal Engineers transformed not only the cityscape, but also the entire way of life of a once vibrant city. ‘Hardship will no doubt be inflicted upon individuals, property may be destroyed, but the community will generally benefit, and may be made to compensate the individual sufferers,’ he is said to have declared.
The presence of the British, however, also resulted in a strong physical modernization, especially with the development of the Charbagh Railway Station in 1914. The presence of universities and colleges run by missionaries and the colonial government after the decline of the nawabs provided Lucknow with a modern, contemporary flavour. The St. George Medical College was formally opened in the early years of the twentieth century by the then Lieutenant Governor of United Provinces, Sir John Prescott Hewett. In the decades before Independence, Lucknow had become a popular home for English colonial officers. They shaped the contemporary landscape of the city considerably. The popular British singer Cliff Richard was born in Lucknow in 1940.
Lucknow’s history is a powerful tale of syncretism. The nawabs were responsible for providing an urbane setting that allowed for a coexistence of diverse talents. The courts patronized the arts allowing individuals from different religious and community traditions
to come together to share a vibrant cultural space. Kathak of course is only one manifestation of this process. A number of folk forms, visual arts and musical traditions thrived and evolved in these courts. The sensual courtesan and the devotional singer managed to find niches for themselves. Along with the arts, the famous textile embroidery called chikan also flourished providing a prosperous base for the city’s colourful bazaars. The cuisine of Lucknow, a perfect blend of sophisticated courtly tastes and local rustic flavours, is another expression of the city’s heritage.
The courtly culture was also known for its elaborate, ceremonial modes of address. There were many honorific words and elaborate descriptions for a game of chess, making and serving paan and even flying a kite. Lucknowi tehzeeb (dignified politeness) and nazaakat (delicacy of manners) could give Japanese social etiquette a run for its money!
It is interesting to note how nineteenth century European visitors responded to the city. Irish journalist W.H. Russell rated the city ‘finer than Constantinople or Rome’. However, Dr Fuehrer, who was the curator of the Provincial Museum in Lucknow, described its buildings as ‘debased’—‘the influence of a depraved oriental court and its politics upon art and architecture’.
Lucknow today retains little of the elegance and sophistication for which it was once legendary. Several of the stately buildings have been chopped up into dreary sarkari offices. After Independence, the city has settled down to being the capital of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India.
Laughing in Lucknow
Vinod Mehta
Lucknow bestowed on me an invaluable gift. It taught me to look at the human being rather than his religion or his caste or the colour of his skin. My secularism, which I wear as a badge of honour, comes directly from the experiences and the environment of my early years—years which shaped my personality and character. Of course, I knew there were Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Parsees, even Jews, in Lucknow and I was dimly aware there was occasionally some tension among these groups. However, for me Muslims meant Id sweets, Christians meant Christmas cake, Sikhs meant hot halwa …
