Kolkata

In 2008, sixty-one years after India’s independence from British rule, Scottish heritage professionals began an ambitious project to revive a neglected cemetery in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) with the backing of both the Scottish and West Bengal governments. As the final resting place of an estimated 2,000 Scots who lived and worked in Kolkata during the British colonial period, the cemetery was deemed of significant cultural and historical importance to Scotland. Shortly after work was begun on the conservation of the cemetery, Scotland and West Bengal took a further step to foster a stronger heritage relationship, signing a Protocol of Co-operation which was intended to facilitate Scottish involvement in additional conservation projects in Kolkata.

This paper will discuss Scotland’s on-going interests in Kolkata, and will highlight the role these heritage projects play in the broader political and/or diplomatic interests held by Scotland. In taking this approach this paper will also discuss the willingness of Indian authorities to be involved in such projects as part of a broader agenda to promote the city as a global attraction. This paper will argue that in recent years the ambitions of Scotland and Kolkata have aligned, and this has ultimately facilitated a heritage partnership based on a mutual desire for recognition of the Scottish nation and the West Bengal city as modern, enlightened entities.

In this article we want to evoke two characters that each suggest different points of departure for thinking about Kolkata as a queer kind of space. By this we want to evoke something of the sexual geography and life-ways of the city, but to go beyond this standpoint too, to question ways in which ethnographic characters might be evoked in respect of any context, Kolkata or elsewhere. In one sense this is to open out a perception of Kolkata as a scene of many sexual life-worlds, inviting a plural kind of analysis suggestive of a multiplicity of perspectives; persons/subjects each with a unique viewpoint to be captured. The two characters we explore here each draw attention to issues of belonging and migration,
of both wanting to move to and away from Kolkata; creating new lifeworlds via the city amidst its shifting sexual geographies, class and caste divisions, and wider diasporic connections and fault-lines. Kolkata itself emerges as an attribute of the characterisations to hand: sometimes as distinct mise-en-scene, at others a kind of sensibility or resonance field for understanding self and others.

তখন ১৯২৫ সাল। উপনিবেশের সূর্য মধ্য গগনে। শাসন-শোষণের সুচারু ব্যবস্থাপনা আর তথাকথিত ‘হোয়াইট ম্যানস বার্ডেন’-এর নামে অশ্বেতাঙ্গদের ওপরে শ্বেতাঙ্গদের শাসনের বৈধতার প্রচারণার জোয়ারে কঙ্গো তখন নিস্তেজ, প্রতিরোধহীন। এমনি এক বন্ধ্যা সময়ে স্বাধীন কঙ্গো রাষ্ট্রের প্রতিষ্ঠাতা প্যাট্রিস লুমুম্বার জন্ম দেশের উত্তরাঞ্চলীয় প্রদেশ কাসাইয়ের সানকুরা অঞ্চলের ওনালুয়া গ্রামে। উপনিবেশের আশাহীন বাস্তবতায় জন্ম নেওয়া লুমুম্বাকে শিক্ষক বানানোর স্বপ্ন দেখেন কৃষক পিতা। কিশোর লুমুম্বাকে পাঠানো হয় একটি মিশনারি স্কুলে। নামে স্কুল, আসলে কালো মানুষদের কায়িক শ্রম প্রশিক্ষণকেন্দ্র। তবে লুমুম্বার পড়ার দারুণ আগ্রহ দেখে শিক্ষকেরা মাঝেমধ্যে বই ধার দিতেন স্কুলে বসে সন্ধ্যার আগে পর্যন্ত পড়ার জন্য। রাতে পড়ার জন্য বই বাড়ি নেওয়ার প্রশ্ন আসে না; কারণ সন্ধ্যা হলে বাড়িতে আলো জ্বালানোর সামর্থ্য লুমুম্বাদের ছিল না।

The discourse of untouchability has received much academic attention in post-colonial India from sociologists like M.N. Srinivas to Gopal Guru in the recent past. Guru, unlike his predecessors, has tried to develop a space for interrogation of different theoretical concepts from the viewpoint of the category ‗dalit‘. In one of his works, he proposes the need for the development of an archaeological framework for the study of the phenomenon of untouchability. Saying that, he mentions that such a study can only take place where untouchability is not openly practiced (unlike in rural areas where untouchables have to mark their body and spaces they inhabit). Following Guru‘s initial steps, I shall try to formulate the archaeology of untouchability in a modern urban space like Calcutta.

As Calcutta approaches its tricentury (1990), and urbanologists and forecasters  quarrel  over its future, nostalgia rules the day  for  a dedicated band of historians, researchers and simple Calcutta-lovers. Anthologies, histories, sketches and hitherto unknown facets of the city's chequered past are churned out with persistent regularity. The latest book on old Calcutta is mainly a reproduction of the writings of two famous 19th century British commentators who lived and worked in this city, and is profusely annotated and edited by an Indian expert....

THE PROPOSAL: To uplift the heritage status of Kolkata to a “Heritage City” from the perils of degradation, due to neglect and improper supervision, with the help of local/national authorities and support of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

This paper examines yoga āsana and bayam instruction from Bengal in the twentieth century. It focuses on three themes as they appear in materials prior to the 1960s. These themes are the focus on yoga for health, the inclusion of bayam in Bengali language sources and the introduction of women to yoga.

A number of innovations and successful models have evolved in the voluntary sector. It is becoming increasingly evident that a plurality of institutional partnerships is required for the realisation of the goals of UEE - between different agencies and institutions of the Government- between the Government and the NGO sector, between the Government and the private sector. The Government is yet to recognize NGOs as credible and full-fledged partners. Collaboration with NGOs has tended to be fragmented, although some beginnings have been made to engage NGOs in national-level concerns.

NGOs would need strategic institutional linkages in order to reach mass adaptation and replication. Innovation at the mass level will help the NG0s to move from micro action to macro application. In the intermediate stage, NGOs need to find institutional homes in the Government for their models and also recognize their own limitations.

In this short essay, I have attempted to draw a sketch of the January riots of 1964 in Calcutta which was a fall out of the Hajratbal Incident (theft of holy relic of Prophet from Kashmir) though the story was not so linear. The riots did not begin when the theft happened; rather it was initiated after its recovery. Hence the essay takes a closer look on the genesis and functioning of the 1964 riots in Calcutta and also put forward a pertinent question: to what extent the question of maintaining a peaceful balance between communities is the responsibility of state alone?  How much role the crowd have in instrumenting communal disturbances and reconciliation? This essay is formed on the basis of first-hand readings of newspaper proceedings since comprehensive work on this topic is very limited.

Inspired by the spiritual revelations crying from John Coltrane’s saxophone in the late 60’s, Jonathan Kay has been continuing Coltrane’s search for a “multicultural theory of musical transcendence” in Kolkata, India, where he lived for 10 years alongside his Gurus, Pandit Shantanu Bhattacharyya, and Sri Abir Singh Khangura, learning the art of North Indian Classical Raga music and its expression on the soprano and tenor saxophones, bansuri and esraj.
This paper is Jonathan's about cultural, psychological and spiritual journey from the improvising world of jazz into the life of a Raga musician in search for meaning and individuality as an artist in today's multicultural world.

Of the millions who stand reverentially before the thousands of Durga images in Bengal during the annual pujas, how many wonder as to why Kartikeya — the valiant general of the gods — looks away so apathetically, when his mother is locked in a mortal conflict with one of the most dangerous adversaries of the gods? Why do the daughters, Lakshmi and Saraswati look so benign and disinterested, when Durga’s eyes puff and widen in rage and fury? And their pot-bellied elephant-headed sibling, Ganesha: what is his role?....

This paper considers the importance of examples from India in the text of Marx’s Capital. In tracking Marx’s preoccupations, it is possible to show the relevance, especially for today, of his critique in a global frame, as political economy pivots and returns to its sources. Along the way, countering misreading and mistranslation, it becomes possible to see why studies of the agrarian, trading route and subaltern histories of capital in relation to the subcontinent, as well as of market spaces and early commercial exchange in Asia, are crucial for rethinking Marxist approaches to urbanism today. Targeting the archetypal corporate entity of his time, and its ideological supporters, the themes of tribute, exoticism, animals and the slave trade restore a reading practice that owes as much to Marx’s biography as to any one Marxist mode of analysis. The idea of a postcolonial, vegetarian or saffron Marx is not on the cards—since Asia is not simply a place to which Marx goes—but a more careful and at
the same time experimental reading can perhaps restore enthusiasm for the critique of political economy and provide ways of teaching old texts that remain relevant, and by remaining relevant, indicate what is to be done.

Theatre in Kolkata was a sudden occurrence. It wasn't a natural, or gradual, evolution of the public form of entertainment that had existed in proximity, which one might consider cultural proximity in a more informal situation, but an adaptation of sorts, that wasn't completely, if at all, intrinsic to the region before the imposition of Modernity through colonial rule. This paper will try to chronicle the history of 19 th century proscenium plays in erstwhile Kolkata and the surroundings, up until, and a little beyond, the establishment and initial success of the Public stage in 1872. Following that, it will try to compare the effect of the proscenium on social standing and how it fared in perpetuity in comparison to other, supposedly more indigenous, forms of art. It shall try to understand the importance of the stage as a modern influence in a societal circumstance that is perhaps not in the same temporal plane, and how that defines the artist and the art of the theatre itself. The history in Kolkata The history of Bengali theatre, defined by the presence of Bengali as the linguistic medium through which the characters communicate began with the intervention of a Russian Indologist, Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedeff. In 1795, he decided to set up a stage for the Bengali audience in order to fill a void which had existed in the form of public entertainment. So he, as an expert in Indian languages, translated two English plays, namely 'The Disguise', and 'Love is the best Doctor', to be presented to a Bengali Audience. He showed the translations to a few language experts trying to gauge the paucity of his translation and claims to have been pleased with the effects it produced on them. Following that, his language trainer Golaknath Das approached him with the suggestion of actually staging it with Bengali actors which he could provide. Following this, he designed and erected a public stage near Dome lane, and advertised in the Calcutta Gazette on 5 th November 1795 and again on 26 th November, the day before the performance. The play was staged the following day to apparently undocumented success, which is hinted at by another advertisement by him, thanking the audience and a declaration of a repeat show. 1

For more than eight decades, Bengal begins its Durga Puja season with a very sombre rendition of Devi Mahatmya over All India Radio, just before dawn. Even the most argumentative Bengali would surely agree that Birendrakrishna Bhadra's Chandipath is one of the rare programmes that really links the people with India's ancient culture. It is amazing to see millions of late-rising Bengalis take special efforts on the day of Mahalaya to get up before dawn, just to listen to this soul-stirring invocation to the goddess which recounts the battle between good and evil through Durga's war with the powerful buffalo-demon, Mahishasura, in a radio programme....

This paper is based on a study of women who organize and participate in the Durga Puja of their neighbourhood. It is a yearly public festival around the ritual worship of the Hindu goddess Durga in parts of eastern India. This study aims at understanding the dynamics of women’s participation in Durga Puja through an examination of their motivations for organizing this festival. Focusing on the public religiosity of hindu women, the paper attempts to plot negotiations with socially acceptable gender roles, their personal desires and what it means in terms of women's public life.

This paper tries to analyse how Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, emerges as a logistical hub in the vision of India's Look East Policy. The vision of Kolkata as a logistical hub rests on its locational advantage, history of infrastructural accumulation and increasing potential as a transnational nodal point in the new Silk Route. But how far does this logistical vision take account, make use and replicate the colonial political economy of infrastructural networks? In our understanding, this question is important in order to locate the specific modes of accumulation of built-in capital and political will that contribute to the emergence of Asia as the new leader of post-financial-crisis globalisation. What
are those forces, ideologies and negotiations that signify this shift of focus from trans-Atlantic to
trans-Asian trade and political networks? How did this imagination come into being and how does it
acquire new meanings in public discourses and gather resounding endorsement from individual nation states and private investors? As we shall see in the course of this paper, Kolkata, and more specifically its port, often depicted as a hopeless reminder of (post)colonial decadence, transmits useful signals for navigating the murky waters of logistical visions and revisions in South Asia.

The Kolkata Metro Railway is the first and only underground project implemented in India. The importance of Metro Railway Transport is increasing day by day because of huge population explosion in the eastern part of India. But recently due to some reasons it faces many problems. Here an attempt has been made to find out the problems of metro railway in Kolkata city. The intensity of these problems has discussed with the help of some cartographic techniques. Side by side effort has been made to throw some light on change and present situation of metro railway and the suggestive measures which are taken by the passengers and the authorities to overcome those problems.

A collection of short stories set in contemporary Kolkata, India. One city, many stories. A clerk visited by a colonial ghost, an incorrigible lover facing mid-life reality check, parents accepting their son's suicide due to their own ambitions around him, a seventy-three year old man discovering his hidden talent, and many more.

This research examines the ways in which Bengali men and women " do gender " in the setting of north Kolkata's Indian Coffee House as a converging point of Adda, by expanding upon existing literature on doing gender, ethnography, and narrative interviews. The expression, conceptualisation and performance of gender is further studied under the light of an acclaimed modernity that is informed with and through a colonial identity, suspending the same into a limbo of nostalgia. This research also looks at how certain practices and modes of exchange get credited as ideals of masculinity through the conversations and activities in Adda, and how Bhadrolok masculine identities are produced and circulated in the same, against a constant establishment and re-establishment of the 'non-masculine' and feminine. The findings are based on attempts at capturing 'moments' through ethnography as well as photography.

The aim of this study is to find out the influence of locality on study orientation of secondary school students. A modified Study Orientation Scale (SOS) was used on the sample of 360 students those were studying in class X in different schools of Purulia district for obtaining the study orientation scores. Similarly, academic achievement was measured through marks obtained by the students in the school level examination of class IX. From the analysis of data, the results showed that the urban and rural students have average level study orientation. The study orientation of rural students is slightly better than urban students. The study also revealed that locality has no significant influence on students' study orientation in secondary school.

Next to agriculture, the economic condition of the largest number of people in Bengal depended on cottage industries. Yet this important branch of the economy remained neglected for a long time with the result that many cottage industries decayed and many more were in a moribund condition. The Bengal Home Industries Association, founded in 1917 by Lady Carmichael, aimed at the revival and regeneration of cottage industries of the Presidency. This article tends to explore the organization of production, marketing of products, and other activities of the Bengal Home Industries Association during 1917 to 1940.

This article focuses on the Sealdah railway station in Calcutta, West Bengal, as a site of refugee 'settlement' in the aftermath of British India's partition. From 1946 to the late 1960s, the platforms of Sealdah remained crowded with Bengali Hindu refugees from East Pakistan. Some refugees stayed a few days, but many stayed for months, even years. Relying on newspaper reports, autobiographical accounts and official archives, this article elaborates how a busy railway station uniquely shaped the experiences of partition refugees. Despite severe infrastructural limitations, the railway platforms of Sealdah provided these refugee residents with certain opportunities. Many preferred to stay at Sealdah instead of moving to any government facility. However, even for the most long-term residents of Sealdah, it remained a temporary home, from where they were either shifted to government camps or themselves found accommodation in and around Calcutta. The article argues that by allowing the refugees to squat on a busy railway platform for months and years, the state recognised a unique right of these refugees, their right to wait, involving at least some agency in the process of resettling.

December, 1921. The Calcutta race course. Backers and bookmakers were screaming themselves hoarse as the thundering phalanx of horses drew closer to the post. The steward discreetly observed the Prince of Wales mopping his regal brow, as frenzied punters broke into hysterics. ‘Galway Gate’ streaked past the winning post — nose, neck, hood, head and all length.

A little later, the beaming owner led his mount in and made a slight bow before the grandstand. With confident steps, he strode up to the smiling prince, while the crowd cheered lustily. Shaking hands with the KingEmperor's son, he received the coveted Prince of Wales Cup from the Royal Heir himself and held it high for the adulating race goers to see. Turning around, he casually informed His Royal Highness that he was making over the entire stake money to him — for charity!

This paper provides a description of the Durga Puja religious festival that is held each autumn in Kolkata. During the ten days of the celebration, the Indian city is enriched by a multitude of temporary temples, where local communities come together for both religious and social gatherings. The colourful marquees host rituals and music, flooding urban space with a festive atmosphere that has become a hallmark of Kolkata, attracting large crowds of visitors and tourists who are interested in the folk festival and in its religious connotation. The description focuses on the emotional response to the transformed space, analyzing how the rituals performed in the temporary temples, and the urban and architectural features of the festival’s instalment affect the visitors’ corporeal feelings.

Cities since their inception are continuously being accrued by design, reconfigured by designers ,stripped of their riches by the insensitive plunderers, enriched by the builders and churned by transformative agents looking for new beginnings in old remnants and as a result have evolved as vastly different agglomerations from their predecessors. At present, various contextual changes involving functional realignment, aesthetic redefinition and emerging social, political and cultural remodifications and heterogeneity in composition and enactment have turned these cities into collages which functions as a whole through discrete patches networked by various urban connectors. Additionally, these cities are also expected to embrace the incessant demands of the new times in shining edifices but at the same time cannot forgo the lessons of past which have proved themselves invaluable for preserving their identity time and again. Under these circumstances, contemporary cities require a renewed definition which acknowledges the addition, alteration, differences and chaos they harbour and validates them as places where the old and new mingle. Motivated by this renewed insight on contemporary cities, this paper investigates the progression of cities from 'totalitarian entities' to 'agglomeration of collage fragments' where the 'strands of memory' embraces the 'ideals of prophecy'. The treatise 'Collage City' authored by 'Colin Rowe' and 'Fred Koetter' and published by MIT Press in 1978 is zeroed on as the most worthy advocate of collage city principles after literature study and various urban constructs particularly those pertaining to the dimensions of morphology, enactment and time are derived from its reading. The paper then takes up Park Street, a street in Kolkata soaked in multiple layers of history and representing the working collage of the metropolis it is situated in. The research proceeds by grading the different segments of Park Street using urban form coding, elevation coding and interview coding to discern how in spite of differential contexts and heterogeneous agencies, the said street is unified through different modes of reconciliation scripting an existence of coherence .