St. Andrews Church, located at the North Eastern
corner of Dalhousie Square, has two other names; The Scotch Kirk and Lat Sahib
Ka Girja. The second name it probably acquired from the fact that the
foundation stone was laid by the Countess of Loudon and Moira, wife of the then
Governor General, The Marquess of Hastings. The former nickname stemmed from
that fact that it was built to serve the Scottish Presbyterian community of
Calcutta (Kolkata).
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| St. Andrew's Church. The tram seen here is entering the B.B.D. Bag Depot |
The place where St. Andrews Church now stands was once
occupied by the Old Court House. It may have originally been a charity school,
which then became the Mayor’s Court, and finally the Supreme Court, before the
magnificent Gothic pile on Esplanade Row West came up. The road leading from
the Church to the Maidan is still known as Old Court House Street. This was the
same court house where Maharaja Nandakumar was tried and sentenced to death in
1775. The Old Court House eventually fell into disrepair, and was pulled down
in 1792. The Anglo-Indian Presbytery was created by the Charter of 1813 along
with the Anglo India Episcopate. The Court of Directors in a public general
letter dated 12th November 1813 informed the Governor General of the Presidency
of Fort William in Bengal of the appointment of “one Minister of the Church of
Scotland with the same Salary as is granted to the Junior Chaplain at each of
the Presidencies, and we direct that a suitable place of Worship be provided or
erected”. The Rev. Dr. James Bryce arrived in Calcutta on 28th November 1814 to
fill the position of Chaplain on the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment. It
seems that right from the beginning a bitter rivalry existed between Rev.
Bryce, and the first Bishop of the Indian Episcopate, Bishop Fanshawe Middleton,
who headed the Anglican St. John’s Church located at the North Eastern corner
of Government House (Raj Bhavan).
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| Evening traffic rushes past St. Andrew's |
After some initial delay, the Court of Directors
allotted the plot of the former Old Court House for the building of the Church,
and contributed the sum of Rs. 1,00,000. The foundation stone was laid
at the North Eastern corner of the Church on the 30th November 1815. The
builders were Messrs Burn, Currie and Co who executed a design inspired by St
Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. The Church stands on a plinth 7 feet
high. On the Northern and Southern sides are elegant porticos supported by
lofty Doric columns. Determined to do the Church up in style, Rev. Bryce is
said to have had the marble for the floor imported, duty free, using his connections in the government. But a major
controversy erupted over the Church’s spire. Bishop Middleton firmly believed
that the Anglican Church should have the monopoly in spires, not only in
England, but in all British territories. He was most irritated when Rev. Bryce
announced that not only would his new Church have a spire higher than that of
St. John’s, but he would also put a cock on top of it, to crow over the Bishop.
To placate the fuming Bishop, the government announced that while the Public
Works Department would take the responsibility of repairing the rest of the
building, they would not touch the "audacious bird". St. Andrews Church was
dedicated on Sunday, the 18th of March 1818, and maintenance or no, her cock
may still be seen crowing over St. John’s.
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| The "audacious bird" |
When we say British Empire, it is the English people that
mostly come to mind. But the fact is that the business end of the Empire was
more Scottish than English. Scottish names are still to be found all around
Dalhousie Square, in the names of firms like Balmer Lawrie and Mackinnon
Mackenzie. For many years, the St. Andrew’s Day Dinner was one of the most
important events in Calcutta (Kolkata). But even when few Scots remained in
Calcutta, St. Andrew’s Church continued to serve expatriates from all over
Europe and North America who wanted to worship in a reformed church even if
they were not Presbyterians. The Church
today is open to visitors, although photography inside is not permitted. It is
also one of the rare Churches in Calcutta to be fully air-conditioned! Sunday
service is held and the congregation, I am led to believe, is respectable in
size. Over a period of several years, the Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptists,
Methodists, Anglican and other non-Catholic Churches in North India had formed
a union known as the Church of North India, or CNI. St. Andrew’s Church joined
the CNI in 1970.
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| Sunrise in Dalhousie Square |
- by Deepanjan Ghosh
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
SOURCES
European Calcutta: Images and Recollections of a Bygone
Era – Banerjea, Dhrubajyoti
Jute and Empire: The Calcutta Jute Wallahs and the
Landscapes of Empire – Stewart, Gordon Thomas
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