The Mosque that Was: Siraj-ud-Daula's Alinagar Masjid

With a population of a million Muslims, Calcutta or Kolkata has well over 500 mosques. While most of these mosques are from the 19^th century, there are a few which are older. But what could have been one of the grandest and most historic mosques of the city, does not exist anymore. The mosque, established by the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula, would have existed in Dalhousie Square, the city’s central business district, and would have been a marker of the biggest armed conflict in the history of the city – the 1756 Siege of Calcutta.

Alinagar Masjid as imagined by Rounak Patra

The Ghosts of Garstin Place

One of the first references I read about there being a ghost in Garstin Place near Dalhousie Square in Calcutta (Kolkata) was in an article that appeared in The Telegraph. My friend and college classmate IftekharAhsan, who pioneered walking tours in the city was doing a haunted night tour. 1 Garstin Place was the location of the former studios of All India Radio and supposedly, a musician committed suicide in the studio and sometimes a piano can still be heard playing late in the night. “Buildings have many lives”, photographer Luc Peeters told me long ago, when I was just starting my journey as a photographer. The statement is also true of neighbourhoods, and especially true for Garstin Place which has seen some incredible changes and dramatic events over the last few centuries.

Garstin Building no.4 (left) and 5 (centre) - the only surviving buildings

Graham Building, Clive Street

One of the reasons why I do what I do, photographing and writing about old buildings, is because I personally got fed up looking at buildings and not knowing what they were. According to author Brian Paul Bach, Calcutta is one of the least demolished cities in the world and a combination of declining economic activity in the East of India, a hopelessly overstretched judiciary and antiquated laws has meant that many of Calcutta’s colonial era buildings survive, still occupied by tenants. However, pro-tenant laws ensure that the revenue generated by many such buildings is so minuscule that their proper upkeep is often not possible. The sad truth is that if you own a commercial building with a heritage tag in Calcutta, it is much more profitable for you if that building collapses or goes up in flames. Thus, many of Calcutta’s old buildings continue to exist in a precarious condition, ghostly reminders of a colonial past. One such building is the one at 14, Netaji Subhas Road (formerly Clive Street).

 

General Post Office (GPO), Dalhousie Square

Although the General Post Office or GPO, Calcutta’s (Kolkata) central post office, is one of the city’s best known, and most often photographed heritage buildings, there are many things about it that remain unknown to the general public. Not many people are aware that the spot where the GPO stands today, once stood the Old Fort William of Calcutta, which was the centre of violent battle when the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula laid siege to Calcutta. Even fewer people are aware that a few markers of the siege of Calcutta still remain.

 

Temple Chambers, Old Post Office Street

When I chanced upon Temple Chambers for the first time on my walk through Esplanade Row West in Calcutta (Kolkata), I didn’t even realize I was looking at a heritage building, leave alone a heritage building designed by Vincent J. Esch, who went on to work on the Victoria Memorial. For all its history, Temple Chambers is a rather shabby looking building, at least on the outside. It is clear that it was once quite something to look at, but now the signs of neglect are everywhere. Parts of the exterior of the building have been appropriated by squatters and pavement dwellers. The exterior has received a coat of cement but is devoid of any paint. And yet, Temple Chambers continues to serve some of the most powerful people in the city of Calcutta.

 

Royal Exchange, Clive Street

To rid the city of what it calls its “colonial hangover”, the government of West Bengal has renamed the road once known as Royal Exchange Place, to India Exchange Place, although the building that houses the Bengal Chamber of Commerce still bears the name “Royal Exchange” in gigantic letters on its façade. The list of people who have at some point occupied these premises on Clive Street (now Netaji Subhas Road), is a long and impressive one.

 

St. Andrew's Church, Dalhousie Square

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).

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).

The Calcutta Collectorate and The Black Hole of Calcutta, Dalhousie Square

The Calcutta Collectorate Building on Clive Street (now Netaji Subhas Road), at the North Western corner of Dalhousie Square (now Binay Badal Dinesh Bagh or BBD Bagh), is one of the many unfortunate victims of Calcutta’s (Kolkata) unplanned and uncontrolled green drive. Large trees have been planted at random along the pavements of many of the city’s streets, which completely blocks of the view of the architectural marvels behind them.

When the English bought the villages of Kalikata, Sutanuti and Gobindapur from Sabarna Roychowdhury in 1698, and established their factory here, they also had to take over the tasks of tax collection and policing. For this task, a European collector or zamindar was appointed who would have a native as his deputy. During the tenure of John Zephaniah Holwell, the “black zamindar” was the notorious Gobindram Mitter (or Gobindaram Mitra) who was famously rich and, legend says, the first native in the town to have a horse carriage. Gobindram Mitter was the man who built Chitpur’s famous “Black Pagoda”, a “nava ratna” or nine turreted temple that was so huge, it was used as a navigational aid by ships on the Hooghly. It was knocked down by a cyclone in 1820, and its ruins can still be seen.

Gillander House, Clive Street

It is fairly simple business to pigeonhole a building based on its architectural style. The Writers’ Building is Greco-Roman. The High Court is Gothic. The Esplanade Mansions are Art Nouveau. But one building in Calcutta completely defies such pigeonholing, partly because it was designed by a man who was a musician, alongside being an architect. The man in question is Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel, and the building is Gillander House.

Gillander House

Turner Morrison & Co., Lyon's Range

The whole reason Calcutta developed into what she is today, was shipping. There are those who deny the role of the British in the formation of the city, or those who say that Charnock’s landing here could not possibly mark the birth of the city. But even such people agree, and the historic evidence is difficult to refute, that this part of the world was fairly active in trading, especially in textiles. The village of Sutanuti, some say got its name from the yarn, or suta, that was spun and sold from here, to European and other ships, which would venture up the Hooghly. During the British era, the imperial capital was the largest and most important port in the East of India, and many of the shipping companies that operated then, are still active today. Among them is Turner Morrison.

Martin & Co., Clive Street

There is a red building that stands sandwiched between Gillander House and Coal Bhavan on Clive Street (now Netaji Subhash Road). One look at the building and you’ll know that the top two floors were added on much later. While the bottom three floors are ornamented the top two are bland and uninspiring. Get closer to it and you will find a door with a most striking design. I am no architect so I can only guess that the correct word to describe the projection all around the door would be a canopy; an arched canopy to be exact. It is painted in the red and yellow shade of the building and has quite a bit of ornamentation inside. The door itself is fancy looking, made of wood with glass panes with cast iron grilles on top. The old, dirty, cracked wooden boards on its right side contain the names of the many offices which occupy the building, but there is nothing to identify what the building once was. This was the original office of one of Calcutta’s most important and powerful engineering firms; Martin & Co.

Martin & Co. building today

Hong Kong House, Dalhousie Square South

Photographers, who place a subject off-centre in a photograph, will often attempt to balance the frame with something else on the other side. Something similar happens in Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square. The entire Northern side is dominated by one single building, Writers’. It is the supreme, the ultimate of Calcutta’s heritage buildings, perhaps challenged only in importance by the Victoria Memorial. The Southern side, says author Brian Paul Bach, in his book Calcutta’s Edifice: The Buildings of a Great City, forms an impressive “jawaab”, so to speak. Dalhousie Square South contains four or three buildings, depending on how you count. There is the CTO complex, which may be counted as one, or as two separate buildings, one older, and one newer. There is the Standard Life Assurance Building, which is one of the most flamboyant buildings in the area. And finally, there is Hong Kong House.

Hong Kong House

The Imperial Department of Commerce & Industry, Council House Street

The Imperial Department of Commerce & Industry, North view

Taking up an entire city block, on the corner of Hare Street and Council House Street, on the South Western corner of Dalhousie Square (now BBD Bagh) is an Edwardian office block known today as the Commercial Library Building.  Montague Massey’s book, “Recollections of Calcutta for Over Half a Century” identifies this as the offices of the Imperial Department of Commerce and Industry. The book also says that this building was built on the grounds where the old Foreign Office once stood. 

Ralli Brothers, Hare Street

Mention Ralli’s to anyone in Calcutta today and they will think of the sherbet and syrup making company. But Ralli Singh Arora who started that Ralli’s in 1898 in Calcutta, has no connection whatsoever with the Ralli’s building that stands today on Hare Street. The story of the company begins in 1815, in the Aegean sea, in the port of Chios, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ralli Brothers, a family of Greek merchants began importing corn, timber and hemp from the Black Sea to Leghorn on the Ligurian Sea, and from there to England, under the protection of the British fleet, stationed in Naples. By 1823, they had set up shop in England, expanding to Tabriz, Iran, by 1837. But important changes had happened in another part of the world by then. The East India Company’s monopoly in the Indian trade had been abolished, and Pandias Stephen Ralli, realizing that that’s where the future lay, decided to expand to India in 1851.

Ralli Brothers, Hare Street

In Print - 2

If there's one thing I love more than taking photographs, it's telling stories, and war makes for some of the very best stories. Hidden in plain sight, in Calcutta's Dalhousie area, are remnants of a war that happened 258 years ago, when the Nawaab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, sacked Calcutta. The ill-prepared and ill-equipped English were routed, and in a controversial, and hotly debated incident, 123 of them perished in what was to become known as The Black Hole Tragedy. I told this story for the readers of Alaap Parba magazine, in Bangla. 

There are some embarrassing typos in the article, including one which says that the original Holwell Monument was 500 feet tall (!!!), but I wasn't given the chance to proof check the article, so I can't really take responsibility for that. Also, had I known that they would print the photos in black and white, I'd have processed them differently. But inspite of the shortcomings, I think it's not bad for a start. I am grateful to Barnali Jana and the folks at Alaap Parba magazine for giving me this opportunity.

Here then, is the article for your reading pleasure.

In Print - 1

My first ever all colour photo publication, and of all places, it's in the Kolkata Police magazine! The April-May issue of The Kolkata Protector carried a photo-feature, by your's truly, on some of the architectural curiosities of the Dalhousie Square area. Here is the feature, for your viewing pleasure. I am grateful to Subhajit Bhattacharyya for this opportunity. Do leave your opinions and feedback in the comments section.

Town Hall, Esplanade Row West

As Calcutta grew from Charnock’s small outpost of mud huts into a major city with a substantial European presence, the need for a proper Town Hall for social gatherings was felt. Up until that time, major gatherings would happen at the Old Court House, which stood where the St. Andrews Church stands today, or at the Harmonic Tavern (presently the grounds of Laalbazaar Police Headquarters), which was frequented by Warren Hastings’ friend, Richard Barwell. On 31^st May, 1792, at Monsieur La Gallais’ Tavern the decision was taken to raise funds for a Town Hall, through public lottery. The building was to contain a spacious ballroom, a concert room, dining room, card rooms, dressing rooms, suitable offices and separate entrances for palanquins and carriages, with detached sheds for vehicles and their horses. Through successive annual lotteries, adequate funds were arranged by 1806, and the task of construction was entrusted to Colonel John Garstin, the Chief Engineer.

Garstin’s design was French Palladian, with magnificent Doric columns, and construction began on 1^st December, 1807 and was completed and opened to the public on 22^nd March, 1814, but problems plagued the Town Hall right from the start. Contemporaries of Garstin, including prolific diarist Richard Blechynden viewed Garstin as a bit of an upstart, and did not approve of his design, or the fact that the building cost a monumental Rs. 700,000 to build. Soon after opening, a portion of the front portico collapsed. Sometime later, the floor of the ballroom began to spring, and the whole structure had to overhauled in 1818-19. As per the terms of his contract, the expenses of the overhaul had to be borne by Garstin, which must have left his critics overjoyed.

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, Clive Street

Of all the heritage buildings in Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square area, three are banks. There is the old Alliance Bank of Simla, which failed and got taken over by the Imperial Bank, which later became The Reserve Bank of India. There is Hong Kong House, headquarters of The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and there is the magnificent building of The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. I refuse to consider the Reserve Bank of India’s depressingly Stalinist looking headquarters a heritage building. The Chartered Bank Building is located at the corner of Clive Street (now N.S. Road) and Royal Exchange Place (now India Exchange Place). With its byzantine theme, and distinctive red and white stripes, it is one of the more easily spotted buildings in the area.

Finlay Muir & Co., Royal Exchange Place

Although some of the heritage buildings of Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square area are government buildings, the majority of them are, or were, offices of mercantile houses of the colonial era. The vast majority of these mercantile houses were Scottish, and among them was the headquarters of Finlay Muir & Co..

Finlay Muir building today

The company began with the Finlay family of Glasgow, who were in the cotton trade. James Finlay had, by the time of his death in 1790, established the firm in his name, as a manufacturer and merchant, trading in cotton, muslin, and other textiles. James’ second son, Kirkman Finlay, expanded the business further. He used his influence as MP for Glasgow, to break the East India Company’s monopoly in trade in Asia, and the first Finlay ship arrived in India in 1813. Demand for Finlay’s cotton fabric was so astronomically high in India that the company found this one market to be getting them more profits than all their other outlets in Europe and America. The first Finlay agency to be set up in India was in Bombay, in 1816.

Wallace House, 4 Bankshall Street

Although it is the English that most Indians think of when they think of the British Raj, there was a very large Scottish presence in Calcutta, and it was the Scots who ran the majority of businesses in Calcutta, and most of India. One such firm was Shaw Wallace, a name that most Indians are familiar with even today. Their building, called Wallace House, on 4 Bankshall Street, remains in good condition today.

The company was established in 1886 in Calcutta by Robert Gordon Shaw and Charles William Wallace. While not much information is available about Shaw, Wallace, it is known, was born in Calcutta in 1855, and was the brother of Major General Sir Alexander Wallace. Returning to India after completing his education, in 1875, he was invited by Shaw to join him as a consultant. The company at that point, managed tea estates in India and among them The Budla Beta Tea Company Limited. Under Wallace, they diversified into timber and textiles. Offices were established in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, in 1909, in the name of R. G. Shaw & Company, with Rufus Wilson in charge. On 1st January 1912, it became a branch of Shaw Wallace & Company (India). The address was No. 28, Chatham Street in the Fort. Wallace eventually became the Vice Chairman of the Anglo Persian Oil Company, which later became British Petroleum.