Calcutta Page 10

  It was an obtuse miscalculation by Curzon. What his partition did was to trigger a form of revolution in Bengal that continned almost until the British finally left India in 1947, that incited other people in the sub-continent to imitate the Bengalis. It was to cripple the politically moderate unity of the Indian Congress. It was also to play its part in stirring the rivalries between Muslims and Hindus, which were to come home to Calcutta at their most ghastly extreme in 1946. Immediately, it set the land aflame with opposition. Curzon had already experienced something of Bengali intransigence. When he was meddling with Calcutta Corporation, Surendranath Banerjea had led twenty-eight Indian councillors out of the Town Hall with a vow never to return till official impositions were removed, and there had been press campaigns, protest meetings and angry deputations ever since. Something much tougher now began to happen, though Curzon did not stay to watch it. He resigned his Viceroyalty two months before his master plan was put into effect, and left Lord Minto to deal with the repercussions.

  On the eve of partition a public meeting in the Town Hall announced that all true Bengalis would boycott all British goods from now on. They would vow themselves to the purchase and use only of swadeshi (literally, of one’s own country) things. And as the swadeshi movement began to swell, people began to open new schools dedicated to nationalism through education; Sarala Debi started a gymnasium in her father’s house at Old Ballygunge for the physical regeneration of Bengali youth. The Bengali newspapers, their columns hot with passionate denunciations of the Raj, found their circulations soaring; Amrita Bazaar Patrika went from 2,000 copies a day in 1904 to 7,500 in 1905, The Bengalee rose from 3,000 to 11,000, Sandhya from 500 to 7,000.

  Then terrorism began. Bengalis were reminded that Kali the Terrible had been created by the gods to destroy demons who would take their kingdom from them, and the parallel was obvious. Someone was sent off to Paris to learn about revolutionary explosives and before long there were backyard bomb factories from one end of Calcutta to the other. Young men organized into small and highly disciplined groups began to use them, not always finding their mark, aiming occasionally for a District Judge up-country but killing a couple of English gentlewomen

  women instead. Foreign newspapers such as L’Humanité applauded their bearing when they were caught and stood their trial with composure. For the British turned fiercely on these assassins and the population that urged them on. Newspapers were suppressed, editors and printers were imprisoned, hundreds of Bengalis at a time were rounded up and grilled. Security officers descended almost daily on Calcutta University and its surrounding student bastions; and at the very least they would bear away any copy they could find of War and Peace or Jethro Brown’s Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation with that sinister first chapter entitled ‘The Challenge of Anarchy’; but they were almost as likely to haul somebody off for deportation on information laid by a secret agent previously insinuated into the campus.

  This was to be one pattern of relationship between the British and the Bengalis until deep into the 1930s. It was not to be changed by Lord Minto, even though he had merely inherited another man’s blunder and wished to make real concessions to Bengali feelings. Together with John Morley, a new Liberal Secretary of State for India, he constructed an Indian Councils Act which would allow Indian majorities on legislative councils in every province. He got rid of the Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal and Assam, the monocled Bampfylde Fuller, who ruled his province with a zeal that his patron Lord Curzon had approved and intended. But neither of these strategies cooled the Bengali hotheads. They continued to sling their bombs and they still preached anarchy, when Lord Minto returned to England and when Lord Hardinge took his place. They were not even restrained much when Lord Hardinge engineered part of what they asked for and when, on top of it, he infuriated the British in Calcutta as carefully as Curzon had antagonized the Bengalis with partition. Lord Hardinge, at least, knew exactly what he was doing.

  When Hardinge came to Calcutta in November 1910 the population of the city was well over one million. There were perhaps 14,000 British among them, insulated from the native mob by 16,000 half-caste Anglo-Indians whose loyalty to the Raj established them in positions of minor responsibility on the railways, in the post offices and along other vital lines of communication. The British themselves had a power quite separate from that of Government and they used it without scruple for the interests of anyone else; they applied pressure on Government through the Chamber of Commerce and through the columns of their four newspapers, The Englishman, The Statesman, Capital and Commerce; and when these devices sometimes failed to produce desired results, they wrote letters home to influential friends lurking in and around Westminster. They were obstinate and they were arrogant (they inhabited the second city of the whole British Empire, after all) and Hardinge was to snub them utterly and unforgivably. So was someone else, and he was George V.

  The King had visited India as Prince of Wales in 1905–6 and he had thought then that the partition of Bengal was a mistake. On his own throne he now told his Viceroy that he still thought so. After getting his bearings, Hardinge agreed. The King was anxious to return to India as Emperor, to attract in person the loyalty of his increasingly restless subjects there, and he believed that nothing but goodwill would follow if he told them face to face that Bengal was to be reunited. At this point the Viceroy’s Home Member in the Imperial Council, John Jenkins, suggested that Indians might be even more mollified if the Imperial throne were removed from Calcutta to Delhi. Delhi, after all, had a magnetism for both Hindus and Muslims that Calcutta could never match; it was where the Pandava Princes had engaged in epic struggles with the Kurawas in far distant times; it was where the Moguls had proudly ruled in the name of the Prophet. There was the additional thought that Imperial Government might function more coolly and more comfortably if it were shifted from the violent atmosphere of Bengal. So a decision was taken, and a magnificent Durbar was planned, and memoranda shuttled back and forth for six months between Lord Hardinge and Lord Crewe in the India Office at home. There was enormous and quite remarkable secrecy. Only a dozen people in each country were aware of what was to happen. Even Queen Mary hadn’t heard a thing until she arrived in India and Lord Hardinge brought the matter up in his first audience with the royal couple.

  The King proclaimed his news on a Durbar field of brilliance in Delhi. His Queen wore a crown with 4,149 cut diamonds, 2,000 rose diamonds, 22 emeralds, four rubies and four sapphires. He had 20,000 of his British and Indian troops drawn up in full-dress parade before him. There were trappings of Maharajahs, Rajas and princelings galore to make that December day in 1911 a gorgeous memory for everyone present and there were 50,000 of them at least. And when King George said ‘We are pleased to announce to Our people that … We have decided upon the transfer of the seat of the Government of India from Calcutta to the ancient capital of India …’ there was first of all a stunned silence in his audience. Then there was wild and incredulous cheering all round.

  In Calcutta that week, life had proceeded at its normally assured pace, with its customary sounds of turbulence from certain sections of the native community. The London Repertory Company was playing The Rivals at the Grand Opera House and The Passing of the Third Floor Back was on at the Empire. There was some tut-tutting in the Bengal Club at the news of a hurricane on the South coast, which naturally meant somewhere between the Goodwin Sands and Portland Bill. The King Emperor would be visiting his capital city soon, when he had finished showing the flag in Delhi; full-scale Durbar quite proper, of course; the Mutiny had been at its worst up there, so it was a good idea to impress those people with maximum pomp and circumstance from time to time.

  On Durbar day, five thousand troops paraded on the Maidan. As noon approached, when the King would speak in Delhi, a bugle call was followed by a royal salute of a hundred guns, then a feu de joie, after which the whole parade advanced on the flag while the band played ‘The British Grenadiers’. Captain
Brancker, Quartermaster-General at Fort William, read the proclamation in a loud and clear voice which could be distinctly heard by troops and spectators. Half a mile away the Deputy Sheriff, Mr E. W. Foley, did the same from the steps of the Town Hall. The list of Durbar honours was read out, with a Kaiser-I-Hind Gold Medal for Mr Lindsay, joint secretary of the Calcutta Club, and a knighthood for Mr Justice Ashutosh Mukherji. A Royal Clemency was announced for 651 prisoners in the Calcutta gaols. They included ten Europeans and a couple of political detainees, and many of them went straight down to Kalighat, to bathe in the river and to make sacrifice to Kali. They are said to have cheered when His Majesty’s name was mentioned and Bengalis generally were mightily pleased at the King Emperor’s news. At a meeting in College Square sometime later, Surendranath Banerjea said that future generations would point to December 12 as the start of a new epoch in Bengali history; he also said that reunification represented ‘the triumph of British justice and the vindication of constitutional methods in our political controversies’. Even the bully boys with bombs, who had long since decided against constitutional methods, briefly held their fire with gratification.

  The British seem at first to have been totally crushed by the news. Their papers next day merely recorded events in Delhi, the bare facts of proclamation in Calcutta, and added that ‘Durbar day passed off quietly’ there. After that they let their feelings go, and these were infinitely more bitter and angry than the chagrin and disappointment’ Lord Crewe had foreseen among members of the commercial community in one of his memoranda to Hardinge.

  One by one, in the next few days, the newspaper reporters picked up the grudges and the smarting calculations of the British man in the street. ‘It is the European community that will suffer and every member of that community will have to bear the burden,’ said one gentleman under interview. ‘It is quite likely that, Delhi being a great distributing place, goods that now come to Calcutta will go to Bombay and Karachi.’ Another entrepreneur, who had invested a lot of money in developing estates and building houses and blocks of flats, was very despondent. ‘Calcutta is done,’ he said, ‘and men like myself, who have tried to cope with the demand for places of residence, have lost our money.’ The head of one of the biggest firms in the city, deciding that he spoke for tradespeople generally, said that ‘we have spent a very great deal of money in recent years in order to cope with the business which the influx of the Government officials and cold-weather visitors has brought us. Now it seems to me that there will be no cold-weather season in Calcutta and we need not have extended at all, for our premises for the most part were quite big enough for the ordinary population of Calcutta. We are the people who will suffer …’ A man wise in the ways of influence remarked that ‘As everyone who has had dealings with the Government knows, little satisfaction is to be obtained by writing and it is only by personal contact and personal explanation that we can make Government officials realize our needs.’

  For weeks now, the correspondence columns of the local press were to be filled with letters which the sub-editors thoughtfully presented under the generic headline ‘The degradation of Calcutta’. The correspondents never put their names and addresses to these communications; they signed them Civis, A Liberal Disgusted, Ichabod, Patria Cara, An old Anglo-Indian and Cricket. Their general flavour was perfectly reproduced in one of the leading articles The Statesman was publishing at the time: ‘It is upon the Government of India and in particular upon Lord Hardinge that the responsibility rests for what can only be described as an insult to the people of Bengal and to the people of India, rulers and ruled alike … The Viceroy and his Council decided the matter without consulting a single prominent man in the Province, whether official or unofficial, and then they turn round and plead for a generous view from the people they have insulted. Our answer is that before Bengal can look at the question on its merits, the men chiefly responsible for this utter disregard for the principles of constitutional government must go. Lord Hardinge has made use of his high office to mislead the King

  Within a few months Lord Crewe, briefing the first Governor of the reformed Bengal, was to characterize these people thus: ‘The Calcutta English … community includes, I am sure, a number of honest, capable and likeable people; but I am not less sure that they are spoilt children in many respects, full of their historical and social importance, anti-Indian au fond, and keen to scent out ‘disloyalty’ in any independent expression of opinion, hidebound too in class prejudices.’ And, indeed, only The Statesman’s turf correspondent appears to have viewed the disaster philosophically. ‘Would a change of capital from London to the ancient capital, Winchester‚’ he asked his readers one morning, ‘have any effect upon racing at Epsom, Newmarket, Ascot or Doncaster?’

  Calcutta was not, of course, done, as the property developer had feared. There were still two or three decades left in which an Englishman could turn his fortune out of it The essentials of its life continued, bereft only of the opportunity for some to have a pointed word in the most useful ears, stripped merely of the most glittering social functions that were patronized with a sigh periodically by the latest Viceregal tenant of Government House. Nothing but these most superior benefits of Empire was to be missing from the lives of the British citizens for more than a generation to come. Yet a line had now been broken, which stretched back vividly and firmly at least to Warren Hastings and, in a way, even beyond to Job Charnock himself. For this was the first time the Raj had retreated before its subject people. This was symbolically the beginning of an end, not only for the British of Calcutta but for the alien rulers of India as a whole. There were even a few men, mostly in London, who could see it as such. And maybe they allowed themselves a wry grin when they realized that the moment in 1912 when it was appointed that Calcutta should cease to be capital of India, was none other than April Fool’s Day.

  Notes

  1 Quoted Howrah Census Handbook 1951, p. ix

  2 Quoted Woodruff, vol. 1, p. 19

  3 Stewart, p. 143

  4 ibid., p. 210

  5 East India Company Letter Book 1690

  6 Kipling, A Tale of Two Cities

  7 Hamilton, cap. XXIII

  8 ibid.

  9 ibid.

  10 ibid.

  11 ibid.

  12 ibid.

  13 Seth, p. 421

  14 ibid., p. 422

  15 Woodruff, vol 1, p. 103

  16 Quoted Kincaid, p. 180

  17 Quoted Woodruff, vol 1, p. 106

  18 Macaulay, Essay on Lord Clive

  19 Quoted Busteed, p. 11

  20 Busteed, p. 23

  21 ibid., p. 25

  22 Holwell, p. 21

  23 Even Woodruff appears to accept Holwell’s own evaluation of the Black Hole incident without question. The most careful analysis of all available sources, concluding that Holwell was certainly exaggerating, has been made by Brijen K. Gupta in Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol xix, No. 1, November 1959

  24 Spear, A History of India, Penguin 1965, p. 84

  25 Quoted Woodruff, vol 1, p. 112

  26 Quoted Feiling, p. 83

  27 Quoted Kincaid, p. 60

  28 Quoted Busteed, p. 147

  29 ibid., p. 60

  30 ibid., p. 97

  31 Ibid, p. 104

  32 Hickey, p. 239

  33 Fay, pp. 181–2

  34 Quoted Kincaid, p. 163

  35 Quoted by R. C. Majumdar, Glimpses of Bengal in the 19th Century, Calcutta 1960, p. 8

  36 Quoted Woodruff, vol 1, p. 149

  37 Minute on the Foundation of a College at Fort William 10 July 1800

  38 Quoted Kopf, p. 63, from Calcutta Journal 1 New Series, 3 January 1822

  39 Quoted Kopf, p. 161

  40 ibid., p. 184

  41 Quoted Gupta, p. 29

  42 ibid., 144

  43 Valentia, vol 1, p. 236

  44 Quoted Smith, p. 165

  45 Ghosh, p. 424

  46 Quoted Cotton, p. 193

 
; 47 Ghosh, p. 264

  48 Quoted Kincaid, p. 152

  49 Quoted Woodruff, vol 11, p. 38

  50 Quoted E. G. B. Reynolds, The Lee-Enfield Rifle, London 1960, p. 52. See also article by F. G. Aylott in Bulletin of the Military Historical Society, November 1966

  51 Quoted Gupta, p. 3

  52 The Englishman, 16 July 1884

  53 Government of India, Home Education, file A34–42, Feb 1904

  54 Chaudhuri, Jaico edition 1969, p. 298

  55 Statesman, 15 December 1911

  56 Mary Carmichael, Lord Carmichael of Skirling, a Memoir, London 1929, p. 151

  * Storage sheds.

  POVERTY

  WHEN the international and jet-propelled traveller disembarks at Dum Dum he finds, if he has come by the right airline, that a highly polished limousine awaits his pleasure. It will be 6.30 or thereabouts in the morning, and the atmosphere will already be faintly sticky with heat and so unmistakably sweetened with a compound of mainly vegetable odours mat the visitor can almost taste it. He need fear no discomfort at this stage, however, for he is to be transported into the city in air-conditioned splendour behind delicately tinted windows. From this smooth and relaxing position he can begin to observe how the other half of humanity lives. From the outset he notices some things which are reassuringly familiar. Along the first mile of this wide and tarmacadamed airport road are spaced the very same collection of gaudy hoardings that signal the way in and out of Heathrow or J. F. Kennedy or Fiumicino; ‘Try a Little VC-Ioderness’, says one – and some untidy idiot seems to have thrown up a collection of chicken coops in the shade of BOAC. Beside these homely reference points, however, the peculiarities of India are to be seen. The road is bordered by ditches and ponds, all brimming with water, in which women even at this hour are flogging garments clean, in which men are taking the first bath of the day. Beyond the spindle-elegant sodium lights, with buzzards and vultures perched on top, stand thickets of bamboo-and-thatch huts among avenues of palm. Along a canal, a large black barge top-heavy with hay is being poled inches at a time through a mass of pretty but choking mauve water hyacinth. And in the distance, lurking on the horizon, a range of tall factory chimneys is beginning to smoke.