‘Song of the Road’… A Brief History of the City’s Roads (1700s ~ 1900s): Part Two

Council House Street

The peace and prosperity following the Battle of Plassey induced people from the surrounding areas to settle in Calcutta. Kutcha roads in the new localities inhabited by the natives were full of cesspools. Wealthier natives constructed roads leading to their houses in the town, or, suburbs. It is, however, interesting to note that most of the highways from Calcutta to the suburbs were constructed during the days of the Zamindar.

Steps were also taken to construct bridges over Dullendaw, Manickchurn, Gopalnagar, Dum Dum, Barasat and Beliaghata Canal in 1766.

The Justices of the Peace for Calcutta relieved the Zamindar of his municipal duties in 1794 and were authorised to levy a 5 per cent surcharge on property tax for appointing scavengers, cleansing, repairing and watching the streets. They also took steps to metal the Circular Road in 1799. The limited resources placed at the disposal of the Justices did not permit them to take up large-scale development works like construction of new roads, bridges etc; in the town.

The East India Company was always unwilling to part with their revenues for municipal improvements.  Funds had to be raised from the public for development works.   Lotteries came to the aid of the community from 1784 in the creation of public assets. It was the appointment of Wellesley’s ‘Town Improvement Committee’, later known as the ‘Lottery Committee’ (1804) that took up the initiative to improve the public thoroughfares of the city. Calcutta owes some of its best roads to the labours of the Lottery Committee (1825~1836). The roads include: Wood Street, Wellesley Street, Wellington Street, College Street and Cornwallis Street; Strand Road from Prinsep Ghat to Hatkhola; Amherst Street; Hare Street; Waterloo Street; Elliot Road; Short Street; and Colotolla~Mirzapur Street.

A group of streets that commemorated the various titles of Lord Hastings and his wife, were also the work of the Lottery Committee and were designed to afford access to the Panchkhotee, or, Five Mansions. Thus credit goes to the Lottery Committee for reconstructing chaotic Calcutta into some orderly shape of a modem town.

Circular Garden Reach Road that was called “Strand New Road to Garden Reach” was constructed in 1828, with contributions from 58 persons. As public opinion in England condemned the method of raising funds by lotteries for improvement of the town of Calcutta, the Directors of the East India Company in 1836 ordered their closure.

Lord Auckland (1836-1842) appointed the ‘Fever Hospital Committee’ to carry on the work of the Lottery Committee. But the new Committee was more concerned with community health than with roads. The Committee reported that the streets in the native part of the town were narrow and haphazard without any free circulation of air. They were always covered with filth, dust, mud or offal that were rarely cleaned by the scavengers leading to pestiferous air.

It was as the result of this Report that Bustees were cleared by the Justices of Peace between 1854 and 1876 for the construction of Halliday Street, Free School Street, and an extension from Corporation Street to Dharamtollah Street, Clive Row Extension, Beadon Street, Beadon Square, Grey Street, Allen Square, Outram Street, Grant Street and the Victoria Terrace.

Construction of new roads and maintenance of the existing ones were within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Calcutta from 1876 to 1911. The Corporation mostly cleared or improved the Bustees to build roads in the town. The Calcutta Improvement Act of 1911, created a board of trustees charged with the duty of “opening up congested areas, laying out or altering streets, providing open spaces for ventilation or recreation”.

The Calcutta Improvement Trust opened up a north-south and an east-west corridor (Central Avenue and Rashbehari Avenue) and many other roads in the city.

The completion of the underground drainage and water supply schemes resulted in the construction of the Suburban High Level Sewer Road and the conversion of many open drains or ditches into narrow lanes. The implementation of the Canal Area (between Circular Canal and Upper Circular Road) Drainage Scheme in 1907 resulted in the construction of 11,596 feet of roads, 60 feet in width and 13,970 feet of new roads, 40 feet in width, in addition to the widening of the existing ones.

It took another 40-odd years before further development works of new roads in the city were planned.

concluded

‘Song of the Road’… A Brief History of the City’s Roads (1700s ~ 1900s): Part One

Pilgrim Road (Chitpur Road) in the 1760s

The construction of roads and their maintenance is an important indicator of urban planning. It also indirectly affects the sanitation in a city. There were practically no roads in the villages that grew into Calcutta, as they were sparsely inhabited. The only pathway was the Pilgrim Road — what is known today as the Chitpur Road — that led to the Kali Temple. The British East India Company as well as the British Government, who took over the administration of the city of Calcutta in 1857, had constructed roads for their ease of movement. Historically, construction of roads in early Calcutta can be traced over three specific periods. They are:

1. Days of the Zamindar (1700~1793);
2. Days of Justices of the Peace (1794~1876); and
3. Municipal Corporation (since 1876)

Roads in Calcutta During Eighteenth Century

Year	Streets	Lanes	By-Lanes
1706	2	0	0
1726	4	8	0
1742	16	46	74
1756	27	52	74
1794	163	520	517

Source: AK Ray: “Short History of Calcutta”; Census Report of India, 1901; Volume VII, Calcutta; ‘Town and Suburbs’; Part I, Calcutta

CR Wilson’s Old Fort William in Bengal reports that the authorities constructed new roads from Fort William to Gobindapur in 1721 for making the place healthier “by the wind’s free passage into the town”. The construction of roads in Calcutta during the days of the Zamindar was primarily carried out by taking contributions from the merchants and local residents. The English Company encouraged voluntary contributions in labour and money for development works of the town. The Company was not authorised by the British Parliament to levy tax on inhabitants of Calcutta for effecting town improvements till 1794. The Circular Road (now called Acharya Prafulla Chandra and Acharya Jagadish Bose Roads) was the result of the voluntary efforts of the citizens of Calcutta.

By 1742, Calcutta had 16 streets and 46 lanes. Few of the roads marked in Orme’s Plan of Calcutta 1742, lying within the Maratha Ditch, had received their present-day names — the ‘Avenue leading to the eastward’ (Bowbazar Street or Bipin Behari Ganguly Street); ‘Road to Dum Dum’, ‘Causeway’ (Manicktollah Road, subsequently renamed as Sookea Street, Baranasi Ghose Street etc); and ‘Road to Kalighat’.

Dalhousie Area (circa 1780)

Captain William Holcombe’s report of 1742, contained references to a ‘Road towards Pennings’ (Chitpur Road up to Baghbazar), and, an ‘Avenue towards the Water Side’ (Nimtala Ghat Street). A number of roads were also repaired by the Zamindars in 1749. The roads included:

1.    “The Road from the Dock Head to the Stable and down to the side of the Park” (Hare Street and road along Dalhousie Square to Vansittart Row);

2.   “The Street from the side and back of Mr Rooper’s House and down to Messrs Noke’s and Lascelles’s House” (Mangoe Lane);

3.   “The Road from Captain Lloyd’s house to the New Bazar, Chandpal Bazar” (Esplanade Row West);

4.   “The Road from New Bridge to Barthola Bazar” (Chitpur Road);

5.    “The Road from the Fort Gate to Mansingh’s Chowki” (Lalbazar~Bowbazar Street);

6.   “The Road from Chowrighee’s Chowki and Gusthulla Bazaar” (Bentinck Street~Chowringhee Road up to Park Street);

7.   “The Street from Margass’s House down to the Powder House” (Council House Street);

8.   “The Street from Purana Gunge to Gobindapur Chowki” (a road that has now merged in the Maidan);

9.   “The Street to the side of the Goal down to Mr Frankland’s Garden” (a road from Tiretta Bazaar to Middleton Row; and

10. “The Street from Omichund’s House to Mir Bahar Chowki” (China Bazaar~ Mir Bahar Ghat Street).

With the recapture of Calcutta from Siraj-ud-Dowlah in 1757, new roads were laid out in the Maidan in the early part of the nineteenth century. Englishmen, who were confined to their settlement at Tank Square, moved out to Chowringhee and the suburbs after 1760. The acquisition of the Zamindari rights of the 24-Parganas in 1757 helped the Company to expand the limits of Calcutta from time to time.

to be continued

On The Drain Front… A Brief History of the City’s Sewerage & Drainage System (1700s ~ 1950s)

It appears to have taken 16 years to complete the main sewers of Clark’s Scheme.  By 1875 nearly 38 miles of brick and 37 miles of stoneware pipe sewers were constructed. The pumping plant at Palmer’s Bridge comprised two 30 and one 45 PHP vertical centrifugal steam pumps and two huge silt-pits provided with penstocks. These penstocks also shut off the flow of the sewers from the channel to the Beliaghata Canal. During the rainy season they were opened so that the sewers could discharge fully into the canal providing a great relief from storm-water overflows between Upper Circular Road sewer and the Circular Canal. The drainage works of the Southern Division were finally completed in 1878 and those of the Northern Division between 1885-86.

Clark’s original scheme was not complete when the Corporation was compelled to undertake additional works to prevent the discharge of storm-water into the canal. Calcutta’s Canals (Circular, New Cut, Bhangur Khal, Kestopur and Tolly’s Nullah) though excavated principally for navigation, helped in draining the City to a considerable extent by carrying storm-water until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1880, however, the Government Irrigation authorities objected to the storm-water being discharged into the canal, although there could be no doubt that the canal had intercepted the natural surface drainage channels of the city.  The Government in 1881-82 stopped the discharge of storm water into the Circular Canal. The city drainage was thus disoriented and the escapes into the Circular Canal had to be checked by a long intercepting sewer that diverted the drainage to the existing Town Head Cut.

After a long controversy with the Government the Corporation reluctantly agreed in 1881 to: (i) construct an intercepting sewer to increase the dimension on the outfall channel (the open cut) to a capacity of about 90,000 cubic feet per minute; (ii) to construct tide-gates of four openings 10 feet wide at Makalpotta; and, (iii) to divert the storm-water of the northern area of the city to the Beliaghata Canal below Dhapa. 

This intercepting sewer ran parallel with and close to the canal from Habsi Bagan Road to Palmer’s bridge, where it joined the outfall channel. But unfortunately it was constructed, like most of the city sewers, with the smaller sections joining the larger invert to invert and the levels at which it was constructed did not allow it to take the required discharges from the storm overflows without causing the water to stagnate in the low-lying areas of the city.  There were 37 miles of main or brick sewers and 147 miles of pipe sewers in Calcutta by 1890.

The Added and Fringe Areas, covering 8188 acres, were incorporated in the town of Calcutta in 1889. The development of these areas was entrusted to a committee, called the Suburban Improvement Committee. For the purpose of drainage the new areas fell naturally into 3 blocks:

                       I.         The portion west and south of Tolly’s Nullah, including the new docks. This drained towards the south and southwest;

                     II.         The area east of Tolly’s Nullah, including Ballygunge and Entally. This drained towards the Bidyadhari; and

                   III.         The area lying between the Circular canal, Circular Road and the Eastern Bengal State Railway lines, devoid of all drainage except in so far as the drains of Calcutta provided outlets

Under the Suburban Sewerage Scheme executed between 1891 and 1906, 12.5 square miles (32 sqkms) in the newer southern areas of the city were covered. A new pumping station was constructed at Ballygunge and the capacity of the Palmer’s Bridge station augmented. The drainage system could, therefore, dispose off storm-water from one-fourth of an inch rainfall per hour plus 40 gallons of sewage per inhabitant per day. This ‘combined drainage’ flow was brought through the underground sewerage network to Palmer’s Bridge and Ballygunge pumping stations. It was then pumped into high-level sewers meeting at a place called “Topsia A”. From here, the discharge flowed by gravity directly into Raja Khal, a creek of the tidal river Bidyadhari.

Burdened with the outfall of the entire city’s drainage system, the Bidyadhari began to show signs of rapid deterioration. In 1928, the Government declared it to be a dead river. The city was thence almost trapped in a drainage deadlock. At this juncture, Dr Birendranth Dey (1891-1963) came up with a new scheme for both the outfall and the internal drainage system. The Outfall Scheme comprised of:

                       I.         Lined dry-weather flow channel from Topsia A to the river Kultigong at Ghusighata, discharging into the river through a sluice at the outfall

                     II.         Storm-water flow channel (the Suburban Head Cut) from Ballygunge drainage pumping station to the Kultigong at Ghusighata, discharging through the above mentioned sluice

                   III.         Storm-water flow channel (the Town Head Cut) direct from Palmer’s Bridge Pumping Station, joining the dry-weather flow channel near Topsia A at Bantala, where provision was made for two sedimentation tanks for primary treatment of the dry-weather flow

                   IV.         Storm-water flow channel from the Dhapa lock pumping station, joining the channel with the above mentioned one at Makalpota

     This Scheme was commissioned only in 1943. It has since undergone major modifications and expansion to meet the rapid growth of the city’s area and population.

 

concluded

On The Drain Front… A Brief History of the City’s Sewerage & Drainage System (1700s ~ 1950s)

In the initial years of the city’s growth, the merchants of the East India Company were not much interested in providing improved civic amenities to the citizens. Some of money the Company collected by imposing taxes, duties and licenses in Calcutta between 1690-1723 by virtue of the zamindari rights they had acquired over the villages of Sutanuti, Kolkata and Govindpur in 1698 was put to develop the settlements’ civic structure.

The civic services rendered by the Zamindar mainly consisted of: water supply, drainage, cleansing of streets and street lighting. The development activities undertaken by the Zamindar included: cutting down the jungles in the town, bridging the watercourses, surveying the lands and other such affairs. The provision of ‘civic amenities’ in the city was brought under the Municipal Administration in 1727.

Calcutta had its natural drainage through the Khal (creek) that originated from the Salt Lakes in the east and joined the Hooghly River just below the Prinsep Ghat, after meandering through Beliaghata, Sealdah, Creek Row, Dharamtollah and Government Place North. The great cyclone of 1737 rendered this creek useless as a watercourse for navigation.

Small surface drains had existed in the city since 1695 when a trench was dug round the Sutanuti factory. A deeper trench was constructed in 1710 to separate the British settlement from the indigenous settlement and keep the former dry and wholesome. The ditch ran from Lalbazaar probably to Baboo Ghat. It was protected with drawbridges and a guardhouse — as it basically served the defense rather than drainage purposes.

In 1742 the Maratha Ditch was constructed initially from Baghbazar to Park Street and then extended to Alipore.  This was mainly for the defense against the Maratha raids but it served also as the grand drainage outlet for the whole city until 1801 when it was filled up.

But the state of affairs changed for the better on June 16, 1803. In a meeting of the “Town Improvement Committee” chaired by Lord Wellesley, the then Governor General of Bengal, a historic initiative was undertaken.

It was at Wellesley’s behest that the “Town Reforms Committee” was formed for improvement of the town. Since the construction of the public drains and watercourses of the Town was extremely defective, he assigned great importance to the improvements of its drainage.

This led to the appointment of a Committee in 1804 to look into the matter. This Improvement Committee, later called the Lottery Committee, undertook extensive development work for Calcutta by constructing roads and filling up filthy tanks in the town and excavating new ones. Beliaghata Canal was the Lottery Committee’s permanent contribution to the city’s drainage system.

It is reported that during the early nineteenth century, the drains in the northern part of the town were unpaved and filthy. Coolies were employed regularly to clean these drains manually that would overflow on to the streets after a light rainfall as these drains had no outlet.

As a result, various proposals came up between 1835-1855 for the construction of a new drainage system in the ‘Town’:

•      The Committee opted for an underground drainage system

•      Captain Prinsep of the Bengal Engineers preferred a surface drainage system to carry off the water with sinks and ash-pits for every house, to be cleansed by manually. He strongly opposed to any scheme of underground drainage in Calcutta

•      Mr Blechynden, proposed to drain the northern portion of the town, in which no large drains had yet been made, either towards the river or to the east by a large underground tunnel running from the Hooghly down Nimtala and Manicktollah streets to the Circular Canal. The tunnel was to be flushed by the admission of the Hooghly water

•     Captain Thomson provided for an elaborate system of large underground drains or sewers that he proposed to flush partly by river water and partly by means of a reservoir to be formed at the western end of the Entally Canal

•      Captain E Forbes proposed to construct a large masonry aqueduct from the river Hooghly at old Chitpur Bridge to the Old Park Street cemetery and link it with the Salt Lakes by a wide-open canal nearly parallel with Entally canal. The canal was to be connected by sluice gates with the river and lake, so that water might be admitted or excluded from both these sources. On either side of the canal masonry sewer or covered drain was to be constructed and linked with a system of subsidiary drains discharging into these two main sewers all the filth and surface drainage of the city

•      William Clark proposed a “water-carriage system” for the town. The original report was submitted to the Municipal Commissioners in 1855, and adopted in 1857 with some modifications and was sanctioned in 1859. Clark’s scheme was a ‘combined sewage-cum drainage system’. It carried off both rainfall and sewage from the Hooghly to the Salt Lakes from where the sewage was to be pumped out. The total town area that was covered under Clark’s Scheme amounted to 4730 acres

Clark’s Scheme comprised of five main sewers with their branches, accessories and outfall works. Three of the main sewers stretched from the Hooghly to the Circular Road along the Nimtala Ghat Street, Colootola Stree and Dharamtollah Street. There were two main intercepting sewers:

•      One from the north, starting from Hooghly at Sova Bazaar Street running eastward to Circular Road and continuing along Upper Circular Road to a level at Dharamtollah junction. It intercepted the three main sewers already mentioned. Between this Circular Road sewer and the Circular Road canal, he provided four storm-water overflows of much larger capacity than the sewers 

•   The other intercepting sewer started from Tolly’s Nullah near Zeerut Bridge, and following Lower Circular Road to Dharamtollah junction. It discharged together with the sewer from the north and the Dharamtollah sewer through a main outfall to Palmer’s Bridge Pumping station in Entally, and thence into the Beliaghata Canal

to be continued 

“Deshbandhu” Chittaranjan Das… Saluting Kolkata’s Premier ‘First Citizen’

Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das

On April 16, 1924 ‘Deshbandhu’ Chittaranjan Das was elected as the first Mayor of Kolkata. Subsequently with the promulgation of the new Calcutta Municipal Act of 1923, he was reelected on April 1, 1925. Thus began a glorious chapter in the history of Kolkata’s civic administration. A successful lawyer, it was Chittaranjan’s vision that propelled Kolkata’s development — for the first time in an indigenous model.

Chittaranjan Das was born on November 5, 1870. His father, Bhuban Moahan Das who was a Solicitor at the Calcutta High Court, who hailed from a well-known family of Bikrampur in the Dhaka district of the then Bengal Province.

After completing his education from the London Missionary Society’s School, Calcutta, Das joined the hallowed Presidency College and took his Bachelor’s Degree from Calcutta University in 1890. It was during his student days that Chittaranjan became a firm believer in the political ideals of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. At Presidency, he was a leading figure of the Students Association where he was baptised by the fire under Surendranath Banerjee in the first lessons in public service and elocution.

In 1891, Chittaranjan Das went to England and joined the Inner Temple to study Law and was called to the Bar in 1892. During his stay in England he made several political speeches, notably in support of the Parliamentary candidature of Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons. 

Das returned to India in 1893 and commenced his practice as a Barrister in the High Court of Calcutta. His career reached a new height in the year 1909 when he successfully defended Aurobindo Ghosh in the famous ‘Alipore Bomb Blast Case’. It was this momentous event that made him ‘Deshbandu’, or, ‘Friend of the Nation’ in the eye of millions of his fellow countrymen.

In 1917 Das came to the forefront of nationalist politics when he was invited to preside over the Bengal Provincial Conference held at Bhowanipore. This triggered off Chittaranjan as a major figure in the Non-Cooperation Movement from 1919 to 1922.

As man Das set high morale standards, thus it was not surprising that for someone who maintained a permanent laundry in Paris to ship his clothes to Calcutta — it was he who started the boycott of western dresses — setting an example for others to follow by burning his own western clothes and instead, adopting the handmade desi Khadi garments.

A firm believer of non-violence and constitutional methods for the realisation of national independence, Das advocated Hindu-Muslim unity, cooperation and communal harmony and championed the cause of national education. This led to the formation of the Swaraj Party in 1924 after he resigned his presidency of the Indian National Congress at the Gaya session along with Motilal Nehru and Hussain Suhrawardy. It was around this time that Das also launched a newspaper named Forward to spread his message to the public and fight the British Raj that was later rechristened as Liberty.

As the first Mayor of Kolkata Chittaranjan blueprinted his vision of liberating India from British Rule by means of proper self-governance. For him, Corporation was the ‘Working model of Swaraj’. In order to realise his dream, Chittaranjan appointed Subhas Chandra Bose as the first Chief Executive of the Corporation who ably furthered the former’s goal of serving the country and its people.

In 1925, Das’s health began to fail due to overwork and in May he withdrew to “Step Aside”, his retreat in Darjeeling. On 16 June 1925 Chittaranjan breathed his last with a severe fever. Mahatma Gandhi, who led thousands in Calcutta, during Das’s funeral procession, famously opined, “Deshbandhu was one of the greatest of men... He dreamed... and talked of freedom of India and of nothing else... His heart knew no difference between Hindus and Mussalmans and I should like to tell Englishmen, too, that he bore no ill-will to them.”

A few years before his death Das gifted his house and the adjoining lands to the nation to be used for the betterment of the lives of women. Today it is a major hospital called Chittaranjan Seva Sadan and has gone from being a women’s hospital to one where all specialties are present. The Chittaranjan Cancer Hospital that was established in these premises in 1950 is now the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute. The Corporation and the citizens paid tribute to Chittaranjan Das by erecting a commemorative tower at the Keoratala Mahasmashan where Chittaranjan was cremated.

It is indeed a privilege for us at Corporation to pay our tribute to Deshbandhu every year at this monument.

Step Aside… Das's residence at Darjeeling

 

Remembering Kshitish Prasad Chattopadhyay… The ‘Renaissance Man’ of our City’s Primary Education

Kshitish Prasad Chattopadhyay

Amongst the visionaries who blueprinted Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s destiny Kshitish Prasad Chattopadhyay’s name stands tall, for his immense contribution in shaping the Corporation’s roadmap in the domain of education. In this piece, we pay our humble tribute to Kshitish Prasad ─ whose vision helped materialise Subhas Chandra Bose’s “mission of spreading primary education to the grassroots in Kolkata”.

Kshitish Prasad Chattopadhyay was born on December 15, 1897 in Kolkata. Chattopadhyay’s father, Yamani Mohan was the descendent of Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the ‘Bengal Renaissance Man’ and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. While his mother, Motimala was the granddaughter of Dwarkanath Tagore.

In 1913 Subhas Chandra Bose passed the Matriculation standing second, while his batch mate Kshitish stood seventh from the Metropolitan Institution. This paved the way for Chattopadhyay’s brilliant academic career ─ two years later, he stood first in the ISC Examinations. In 1917 he passed BSc in Physics with first class and followed it up with his MSc in Anthropology from Cambridge University receiving ‘Anthony Wilkins Fellowship’ in 1922.

On his return to India Chattopadhyay joined Calcutta University as a Professor in 1923. In 1924 Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das assumed office of the Mayor in Calcutta Corporation and appointed Subhas Chandra as its first Chief Executive. It was on Bose’s behest that Kshitish Prasad was chosen as the Corporation’s Education Officer.

What followed was unprecedented in the history of the Corporation, not to mention the City. Under Chattopadhyay’s stewardship the number of Corporation Schools swelled from a meagre three to a total of 232. A momentous feat that changed the face of primary education of Kolkata forever.

Till 1935 he served Calcutta Corporation as the Education Officer and then, on the invitation of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, once again joined the Calcutta University. A man of scholastic proportions, Kshitish Prasad, a student of WHR Rivers in his later life also Headed the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta.

A recipient of the prestigious Sarvabhauma Award from the Calcutta Pandit Samaj, Kshitish Prasad was a member of Permanent Council of International Congress of Anthropology. He passed away on March 31, 1963.