Ghats of Kolkata… Revisited: Mutty Lall Seal Ghat

Left: Baboo Mutty Lall Seal; Right: Mutty Lall Seal Ghat… circa 1880

To the south of the Armenian Ghat one will stumble upon the Mutty Lall Seal Ghat. It was originally located more to the north, however, the East India Company forcibly shifted the Ghat to its present location. Mutty Seal’s eldest son Heera Lall fought a long drawn legal battle and obtained significant compensation from the Port Commissioner courtesy of the Company’s decision.

Mutty Lall Seal was born in a Bengali Hindu family in Kolkata around 1792. His father, Chaitanya Charan Seal who was a cloth merchant died when Mutty Lall was around five years old. His early education started at the ‘pathshala’, thereafter he went to Martin Bowl’s English School and finally passed out from Baboo Nityananda Sen’s High School.

However his life took a turn, when in 1809, at the age of seventeen he was married to Nagri Dassee, the daughter of Mohan Chand Dey of Surtir Bagan. Mutty Lall Seal accompanied his father-in-law on a pilgrimage to northern and western parts of India, and the experience greatly enlightened him. Around 1815 he started working in Fort William, then the bastion of British power. It is said that while working at Fort William he was involved in supply of essential commodities for the British Army. Later he also worked as an inspector of Indian Customs at Balikhal.

Mutty Lall commenced his business career humbly by selling bottles and corks to a certain Mr Hudson who was one of the most extensive importers of beer in those days. He traded in cowhides, was the founder and promoter of the first indigo mart that was established under the name of Messer’s Moore, Hickey & Company. The English merchants used to hire him for his sound judgements on indigo, silk, sugar, rice, saltpetre etc

He got appointed as “Baniyan” to around twenty first-class agency houses out of around fifty or sixty such houses in Calcutta. Later he also became a landed property speculator as well as merchant successively in partnership with Fergusson Brothers & Company, Oswald Seal & Company and Tulloh & Company and in these three firms he was said to have lost some thirty lakh of rupees. He got into exporting of indigo, silk, sugar, rice, saltpetre to Europe and importing of iron and cotton-piece goods from England. Mutty Lall got up a number of cargo boats that were then a new speculation in the market. He worked the old Flour Mills, and shipped whole cargoes of biscuits to Australia for the first emigrants to its newly discovered gold fields. Later he put up a mill to refine sugar on the centrifugal principle.

Seal was the first to use steamships for internal trade in Kolkata, and he prospered in competition with Europeans. In due course he amassed around thirteen trade ships including a steam tug named ‘Banian’. He made a vast fortune in a single generation through money dealing, a phrase that does not merely refer to money lending, bill discounting and other banking business. There was scarcely a speculation into which he did not enter, and for which he did not supply a portion of funds.

From dealings in internal exchanges to contracts for station building, for the erection of new bazaars to revival of transit companies, there was scarcely an undertaking in which he was not an important a stakeholder. Mutty Seal funded every promising enterprise he found and made profits in the shape of interest. At one point of time he was in complete control over the market dealing in Company’s papers.

Mutty Lall Seal was one of the founders of Assam Company Limited. Under his influence, the then Oriental Life Insurance Company (later reconstructed as New Oriental Insurance Company in 1834) founded by the Europeans, being the first life insurance company on Indian soil, accepted to underwrite Indian lives. He was among the founders of Bank of India apart from being on the board of Agricultural And Horticultural Society of India.

In the course of time he amassed as much wealth as Dwarkanath Tagore and Rustomjee Cowasjee. In 1878 Kissori Chand Mitra delivered a lecture on the life of Mutty Lall Seal calling him the “Rothschild of Calcutta”.

Seal perhaps is best remembered as the donor of an extensive tract of land, then valued at INR 12,000 to the then British Government on which the Calcutta Medical College was built. The then Government of Bengal recognised his liberality by naming a Ward in his honour, The Mutty Lall Seal Ward, for native male patients. Mutty Lall Seal subsequently supplemented this gift by a donation of a lakh of rupees for the establishment of a female (lying in) hospital that started functioning in 1838 under his munificence.

On Wednesday, March 1, 1842, a gathering of respectable people took place at Seal’s house for the formal opening of the Mutty Lall Seal’s Free College. Among those present were Sir Lawrence Peel, the Chief Justice; Sir John Peter Grant; Mr Lyall, the Advocate-General; Mr Leith and the other principal members of the Calcutta Bar; Captain Birch, Superintendent of the Police; Mr George Thompson, Right Reverend Dr Carew; Baboo Dwarkanath Tagore; Baboo Ramcomul Sen; Baboo Russomoy Dutt and Reverend Krishna Mohan Banerjee.

The Catholic Bishop and all the clergy of the Catholic Cathedral, as well as all the Professors of St Xavier’s College, were likewise present. Nearly the whole of the dissenting ministers and missionaries of Calcutta and its neighbourhood also attended. There were eloquent speeches in testimony to his noble generosity and liberal mindset with Mr George Thompson complimenting Seal as, “a Hindu gentleman, who had nobly resolved to consecrate a large portion of the substances he had acquired by honourable exertion, to the intellectual improvement of the youth of his own nation to transmute his money into mind”.

Mutty Lall Seal’s Free College (later renamed as Mutty Lall Seal’s Free School and College) was to provide for the education of the Hindus to enable them to occupy posts of trust and emolument in their own country. The course of education included English Literature, History, Geography, Elocution, Writing, Arithmetic, Algebra, Philosophical Sciences, Higher Mathematics and practical application of Mathematics. The Institution was opened free of cost, only one rupee was charged per month to cover the expenses of books, stationery etc; and the surplus being expended towards furnishing the school with mathematical instruments. The number of students receiving education at one time was to be limited to five hundred.

During Seal’s lifetime the native society of Kolkata was divided into two parts. One was the reformist section led by Raja Ram Mohun Roy and the other was the conservative section led by Radha Kanta Deb. Most of the rich people of Kolkata were in the latter group. Radha Kanta Deb strongly opposed both the move to ban Sati and efforts for remarriage of widows, many of who were child-widows. Although Mutty Lall Seal was a conservative, he was in favour of Raja Ram Mohun Roy’s efforts of abolishing Sati, supported the cause of women’s education as well as remarriage of widows. He made a public offer for a dowry of 1000 rupees to the person who should have the courage to break through the ancient prejudices of caste, and marry a widow. 

On May 20, 1854 Mutty Lal Seal breathed his last. Seal’s obituary that was published in the Hindu Intelligence described him as the, “richest and most virtuous Baboo of Calcutta”.

As a philanthropist, Mutty Lall Seal founded an alms house at Belgharia (in the suburbs of Kolkata) in 1841 where on an average five hundred people were fed daily and that is even now open to the poor. 

Seal also constructed a bathing ghat on the bank of the Hooghly River that was christened after him as the Mutty Lal Seal Ghat. The Ghat stands on four Corinthian columns that support the parapet. A Shiva temple that has been built at a later date can also be seen at the Ghat.

Ferry service from Mutty Lall Seal Ghat commenced in 1980. Today commuters can go to Baghbazar, Sovabazar, Cossipore and Howrah from the Mutty Lall Seal Ghat.

Mutty Lall Seal Ghat