Markets all over the world have a story
to tell… not just about what they offer, but, the places, people and
socio-economic development of the entire region. In this context, Sir Stuart
Hogg Market (‘New Market’ to the world) of Kolkata offers unique insight into
the whims, fancies, vision and a myriad other things that contributed to the
grandeur and growth of British Raj in India.
In 1871, moved by a well orchestrated
outcry from English residents, a committee of the then Calcutta Corporation
began to contemplate a market that would be the preserve of the city’s British
residents. Spurred by the Committee’s deliberations, the Corporation purchased
Lindsay Street, made plans to raze the old Fenwick’s Bazar located there, and
commissioned Richard Roskell Bayne, an architect of the East Indian Railway
Company, to design the Victorian Gothic market complex which would take its
place.
Interestingly, this masterstroke to temporarily
salve the ego of the Britishers — with a view to create a modern, well-appointed
market for all in the long run — was conceived by Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg, the
then Chairman of the Corporation. Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg CIE (February 17,
1833 ~ March 23, 1921) was a civil servant in the Indian Civil Services of
British India. Born in 1833 in Delhi to Sir James Hogg, formerly a director of
the British East India Company and the Registrar of the Calcutta High Court — in
1853, at the age of twenty, Stuart Hogg entered the Indian Civil Services.
During the Sepoy Mutiny, he was posted in the Punjab. Later, he joined the
Bengal government as the Police Commissioner of Calcutta where he established
the Detective Department. It was perhaps his close association with the locals
that may have spurred the idea of creating this landamark.
The giant shopping arcade was thrown open
to the English populace with some fanfare on January 1, 1874. News of
Calcutta’s first municipal market spread rapidly. Affluent colonials from all
over India shopped at exclusive retailers who were housed in the New Market. As
a tribute to his tenacious support for the plans to build the New Market — 28
years later, on December 2, 1903, the Market was officially named Sir Stuart
Hogg Market and later shortened to Hogg Market. Bengali society, in the British
era, called it Hogg Shaheber Bajaar,
a name that is still in use, just as a painting of Sir Stuart Hogg still hangs
in the Corporation’s portrait gallery.
