Kolkata, ‘The City of Joy’, formerly known as Calcutta, is one of India’s largest cities. The city is housed on the east bank of the Hugli River, which was once the main channel of the Ganges River, about 154 km upstream from the head of the Bay of Bengal.
Ancient evidence suggests that Kolkata was an established trading hub much before the arrival of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Portuguese, the French or the British. The city’s origins date back to the Maurya and Gupta period. The city has also been mentioned in the ancient epic Mahabharata. The name Kalikata was mentioned in the rent-roll of the Mughal emperor Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) and also in the Manasa-mangal of the Bengali poet Bipradas (1495). The history of Kolkata as a British settlement, known to the British as Calcutta, dates from the establishment of a trading post there by Job Charnock, an agent of the English East India Company, in 1690.
For the origin of the city name, three opinions were given. Calcutta is an Anglicized version of the Bengali name Kalikata. According to some, ‘Kalikata’ is derived from the Bengali word Kalikshetra, which means Ground of Kali (the goddess. However, according to Britannica, some say that the name of the city is derived from the location of its original settlement on the bank of a canal (khal). According to the third opinion, the city’s name was originated from the Bengali words — lime (calcium oxide; kali) and burnt shell (kata), since the area was noted for the manufacture of shell lime
When the Mughal officials, not wishing to lose what they had gained from the English company’s commerce, permitted Charnock to return once more, he chose Calcutta as the seat of his operations. The site was apparently carefully selected, being protected by the Hugli River on the west, a creek to the north, and salt lakes to the east. Rival Dutch, French, and other European settlements were higher up the river on the west bank, so that access from the sea was not threatened, as it was at the port of Hugli.
By 1696, when a rebellion broke out in the nearby district of Burdwan, the Mughal provincial administration had become friendly to the growing settlement. The rebels were easily crushed by the Mughal government, but the settlers’ defensive structure of brick and mud remained and came to be known as Fort William. In 1698 the English obtained letters patent that granted them the privilege of purchasing the zamindari right of the three villages. This area around Fort William—Calcutta—became the seat of the British province known as the Bengal Presidency.
In 1717 the Mughal emperor Farrukh-Siyar granted the East India Company freedom of trade in return for a yearly payment of 3,000 rupees; this arrangement gave a great impetus to the growth of Calcutta. When the Marathas from the southwest began incursions against the Mughals in the western districts of Bengal in 1742, the English obtained permission from ʿAlī Vardī Khan, the nawab (ruler) of Bengal, to dig an entrenchment in the northern and eastern part of the town to form a moat on the land side. This came to be known as the Maratha Ditch.
In 1756 the nawab’s successor, Sirāj al-Dawlah, captured the fort and sacked the town. A number of Europeans were imprisoned in a small lockup popularly known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, and many died. Calcutta was recaptured in January 1757 by Robert Clive, one of the founders of British power in India, and by the British admiral Charles Watson. The nawab was defeated shortly afterward at Plassey (June 1757), after which British rule in Bengal was assured. Gobindapore was cleared of its forests, and the new Fort William was built on its present site, overlooking the Hugli at Calcutta, where it became the symbol of British military ascendancy.
The city of Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule in the year 1772. The city underwent rapid industrialization. Richard Wellesley, the Governor General of Kolkata, worked diligently on the architecture of the city and developed it as the “City of Palaces”. This was the era of a high British influence on the culture of Kolkata. The hold of British on Calcutta became powerful post its declaration as the capital city of British India, in 1772. With the spread of education and westernization, began the phase of ‘Renaissance’ in Bengal. Many social reform movements were carried out, and the growing intellectual population started understanding the meaning of freedom and the city became the centre of Indian Independence struggle.
On June 20, 1756, Siraj-Ud-Daullah, who was the Nawab of Bengal, attacked the city and captured the Fort William which was fortified by East India Company earlier. Calcutta was re-captured by Robert Clive in 1757 when the British defeated Siraj-ud-daullah on the battle-field of Plassey.
Calcutta was established in the year 1686 as a result of the expansion plans of the British Raj. On August 24, 1686, Job Charnock, who was believed to be the founder of Calcutta first came to the village of Sutanuti as a representative of the British East India Company to establish a factory. The city comprised three villages of Kalikat, Gobindapur and Sutanuti, which served as important trading centers in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1772, when Calcutta was announced as the capital of British India, Warren Hastings, the first and most famous of the British governor-general of India moved all important offices from Murshidabad — the former capital of Bengal during Mughal Period — to Calcutta. The end of battle in Calcutta witnessed the establishment of Supreme Court in 1774, making it the base of justice.
The period between 1820 and 1930 saw the growing of the seeds of nationalism when Lord Curzon carried out Partition of Bengal in 1905, despite strong Indian nationalist opposition. In 1911, the capital was shifted from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Delhi and east and west Bengal were reunited.
In 1947, when India gained independence, the partition of Bengal took place and Calcutta became the capital city of the state of West Bengal in India. Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal on August 15, 1947.
On January 1, 2001, Calcutta was officially renamed to Kolkata and August 24, 1686, has been celebrated as the foundation day of Kolkata before High Court order in 2003. In the year 2003, High Court in Calcutta ruled out Job Charnock — widely held to have founded Calcutta with the British East India Company in 1690 — and announced that his name should be struck from school textbooks, official documents, and websites.
Kolkata is home to many historic buildings and structures that have been declared as “heritage structures”. The Victoria Memorial, Raja Ram Mohan Palace, Fort William, Belur Math and Writers Building are some of the most significant heritage buildings in the city. Many structures adorn the classic Indo-Islamic and Indo-Saracenic architectural motifs. Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, CV Raman and Amartya Sen are some of the famous Bengalis who lived in Kolkata whose contribution to the state and the country as a whole will be remembered forever.
