Ghats of Kolkata… Revisited: The Gate that lends its name to a Ghat

A view of the Water Gate as recorded by W Bailey

Although the Maidan is generally regarded as a green space like London’s Hyde Park, the lungs that help Kolkata to breathe, it was conceived strictly for military purposes. The space had to be large enough and level enough for unrestricted field of fire from Fort William in case the fort was attacked. The original fort, started by Job Charnock and named for King William III of England, was damaged during the siege of the city in 1756.

            The new fort was built, not at the centre of the White Town, but a little to the side of it in Gobindapur, on a site selected by Robert Clive for strategic reasons. The thriving Bengali community there was reluctantly persuaded, with financial compensation, to move north towards Sutanati, taking along the “tutelary deity Gobindjee and its historic shrine”.

            It took thirteen years, until 1773, and an astonishing two million pounds to complete construction work. For obvious reasons, cooperation form the local workers were grudging, and eventually the Company had to use forced labour. A substantial amount of the money was spent “to ward off encroachment by the river, which as it happens, has receded in exactly the opposite direction,” noted HEA Cotton in Calcutta Old and New. But the European residents of Kolkata were impressed. As witness, a certain Mrs Fay who lived the city from 1780 and wrote to England about Fort William in most enthusiastic terms:

As you come up past the Fort William and The Esplanade, it has a beautiful appearance. Esplanade Row, as it is called, which fronts the Fort, seems to be composed of palaces; the whole range, except what is taken up the Government and the Council Houses, is occupied by the principle gentlemen in the settlement, no person being allowed to reside in the Fort William, but such as are attached to the Army. Our fort is also so well kept, and everything is in such excellent order that it is quite a curiosity to see it, all the slopes, banks and ramparts are covered with the richest verdure, which completes the enchantment of the scene.

Although the fort still impresses military historians, to most people its not particularly striking. Its shape is that of an irregular octagon — with three sides facing the Hooghly and the other five facing the Maidan.

A defensive ditch that was designed to be filled-up with water by opening a sluice from the river surrounded the Fort’s gates. Of the seven gates, two faces the Hooghly River — the sluice, for all strategic reasons, was constructed under the northern one. 

The gate was christened as the Water Gate, and popularly known amongst the locals as the Pani Darwaza. The ditch next to the Strand Road that is now dry used to be filled with water. Pani Ghat, named after the Gate is located on the western side of this landmark. The Gwalior Monument is situated to the south of this Ghat on the riverfront.

Pani Ghat