| SooperKanoon Citation | sooperkanoon.com/862387 |
| Subject | Constitution |
| Court | Kolkata High Court |
| Decided On | May-16-2003 |
| Case Number | W.P. No. 1484 of 2001 |
| Judge | Ashok Kumar Mathur, C.J. and ;Jayanta Kumar Biswas, J. |
| Reported in | (2003)2CALLT625(HC) |
| Appellant | Sabarna Roychowdhury Paribar Parishad |
| Respondent | The State of West Bengal and ors. |
| Appellant Advocate | Ajit Panja, Sr. Adv. and ;Sarajit Roychowdhury, Adv. |
| Respondent Advocate | Balai Roy, Adv. General and ;Aloke Ghosh, Adv. |
A.K. Mathur, C.J.
1. This is a Public Interest Litigation whereby two questions of historical importance have been raised i.e. what is the date of birth of the City of Calcutta (now renamed as 'Kolkata') and whether 'Job Charnayak' was the founder of this city.
2. Since both these two questions raise a serious question of the history and the Court felt that it would not be proper for this Court to undertake this exercise, therefore, this Court by an order dated 12th April, 2002 appointed an expert committee to go into these questions. The order dated 12th April, 2002 reads as follows;
'The Court: By an order dated 5th April, 2002, a committee of the following persons was constituted to go into the question whether Job Charnayak was a founder of Calcutta or not, what is the date of birth of Calcutta and who was the founder:--
1. Prof. Nemai Sadhan Bose,
2. Prof. Barun De,
3. Prof. Pradip Sinha,
4. Prof. Arun Kumar Dasgupta,
5. Prof. Sushil Chowdhury.
All the five professors were contacted by the Registrar General and they have kindly consented to be the member of the Committee. Let this committee be formed and give their findings on the following two questions:-
1. What is the date of birth of Calcutta- whether it is 24th August, 1690 or some other date?
2. Whether Job Charnayak was the founder of Calcutta or not?
Let this committee give their findings within six months. The petitioner shall bear the incidental expenses of this committee like transport and other connected matters. The venue and place of the meeting of the committee is left on the choice of the members of the committee.
Let the copies of these order sheets be sent to the five members of the committee by the Registrar General, Appellate Side and the parties may also send the signed copy of the minutes of this order to the five professors of the committee.
Put up the matter after six months from date.
All parties including the Registrar General to act on a xerox signed copy of this Dictated Order upon usual undertaking.'
3. The Committee was constituted by the eminent historians namely,
1. Prof. Nemai Sadhan Bose, Former Vice-Chancellor, Viswa Bharati, Santiniketan.
2. Prof. Barun De, Former Director, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
3. Prof. Arun Kumar Dasgupta, Formerly Professor of History, University of Calcutta.
4. Prof. Sushil Chaudhury, Former Professor of Islamic History & Culture, Calcutta University.
5. Prof. Pradip Sinha, Formerly Professor of History, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.
4. The expert committee after examining all the historical records has submitted their report and answered both the questions which were referred to them. They have summed up their recommendations as follows:
'To sum up:
1. Calcutta does not have a 'birthday'. Its origin is part of a general process of rural settlement, clusters of which agglomerated in the last decade of the 17th century, into the English Company's trading factory. This grew into the town in the 18th century. No one year marks its 'date of birth'.
2. One simple 'founder' cannot be determined. Names that can be celebrated in the 17th century process, and had, indeed, been celebrated for more than one century up to today are: Charnock, who settled in Sutanuti, Eyre and Goldsborough, on English side, and Lakshmikanta Majumdar who developed the tract: the Sett and Bysack families who lived in Govindapur, and Sabarna Choudhuries who sold the villages to the English.
3. Historical texts are not meant to always emphasise exact dates and/or founders. They should deal more with processes of continuity and change, or synthesis as well as dialectical plurality, of course always backed up by data and consistent logic.'
5. After receipt of the report of the expert committee, a copy of the report of the export committee was given to the State and the learned Advocate General, Mr. Balai Roy, appearing on behalf of the State submits that the State accepts the recommendation of the expert committee and does not want to file any caveat against the findings given by the expert committee.
6. Since the findings given by the expert committee have been accepted by the State, we accept the findings of the expert committee and dispose of the writ petition and direct the State to proceed in accordance with the findings given by the expert committee.
The report of the expert committee shall be treated as a part of this judgment.
All parties are to act on a xerox signed copy of this Dictated order on the usual undertaking.
Application disposed of accordingly
A.B.
In the High Court of Calcutta
Before: A.K. Mathur, CJ and S.K. Mukherjee, J.
Re: Order No. WP 1484 of 2001, dated 2.04.2002
Our committee was formed to 'give..... findings on the following two questions:-
1. What is the date of birth of Calcutta: whether it is 24th August, 1690 or some other date?
2. Whether Job Charnock was the founder of Calcutta or nut?
The preamble to the relevant 'dictated order' circulated to us mentions another question 'to be gone into'- 'who was the founder'?
It is generally held and commonly taught that Calcutta was founded by Job Charnock when he 'raised the English flag' (?) at a ghat on the river bank at sutanuti, which became a part of the city after his death (1693). From this stems the common belief that Job Charnock was Calcutta's founder. However, from the time A.K. Roy, in the Bengal Census of 1901 appended a short History of Calcutta as an official publication of the British Government of India, it has been emphasized that his ancestors the Sabarna Choudhuri family, then resident at Sarsuna near Barisha, south of the city, had sold the three villages comprising the city, including Dihi (sic) Kalikata (where a tank called Lal Dighi was located) to the East India Company in the time of Charnock's successor, Charles Eyre. Roy, late in 1926, wrote about one of the founders of his family, 'Lakshmikanta Majumdar', a book which he subtitled, 'A Chapter in the Social History of Bengal', about how this officer of the Mughal Empire had developed the region around the three villages and about the existence of flourishing rural life in the region including Kalikata, as well as Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalighat in the 17th Century. He and his descendants were Zamindars in the region under Mughal rule. For a long time it has been common knowledge that there had been settlement in all the villagers before Charnock landed and began to finally reside in one of them from 1690, and the Company shifted and expanded settlement thereafter his death in 1693. Charnock was the first company official to state a settlement in a fairly populated rural and mercantile area. It is relevant to underline that cities do not necessarily have dates of birth and/or a 'founder'. Of course, there may be exceptions/Some are set up by State fiats, or by explicit community decisions, recorded inscriptions, charters or otherwise. Amongst such instances are: Alexandria in Egypt, St. Petersburg, perhaps Jaipur below Amber Fort, Chandigarh built as capital of Punjab and Haryana. But, more generally, cities like Calcutta or Madras, even much earlier Delhi and Bararas have grown by not very perceptible changes in the process of agglomeration from settlement clusters to municipal demarcations. The regions of great and big historical cities such as Rome and London are shrouded in legends. The birth of the city of Calcutta is to be judged in similar historical background and context.
Job Charnock fled from Hugli (where the English established their first factory in 1651 and which was their chief factory) following a skirmish with the Mughals and was searching for a place for establishing a trading centre for the English company. He landed at Sutanuti on 20th December 1686. After three months he moved to Uluberia where he stayed for three months and then came back to Sutanuti for the second time in September1687. Following a war with the Mughals, Charnock and his compatriots left Fort St. George and returned to Sutanuti again on 24th August 1690. His main motive was to find out a suitable and strategic place form where the English trade could be conducted, even defy the authority of the Mughals in Bengal. He had no idea or intention whatsoever to lay the foundation of a city in an alien country, neither did he do anything to run the small hamlet of Sutanuti into at least something which could be called even the nucleus of a city. In fact, even after nine months of his stay in Sutanuti, the Fort William Council wrote to the Directors in London that 'they (the British in Sutanuti) were in a wild, unsettled condition at Chuttanuttee, neither fortified house nor godown, only tents, huts and boats.' Thus, when the so called 'founder' of Calcutta breathed his last in January 1693, Sutanuti was far cry from the later imperial city of Calcutta.
Moreover, in all the correspondence of Job Charnock and his compatriots, the dateline was invariably 'Chuttanuttee' and not Calcutta or even 'Kolkata'. Later, the dateline used was For William and it was not before early eighteenth century that the name 'Calcutta' appeared in official correspondence of the English Company. In other words, neither Charnock himself nor his later compatriots were ever aware of the existence of a city called 'Calcutta', nor were they connected consciously with the foundation of Calcutta.
As late as 1782 Warren Hastings in a minute, preserved in the British Museum, complained about the unsuitability of Calcutta as the 'capital of a powerful dominion and the source of a vast political system.' The reason he gave were its humidity and its choice as a British settlement by a few frugal adventurers.
The rise of a city, historically, is more a process rather than an isolated fact. Undoubtedly, British historians and rather recent British literature, over the years, were instrumental in promoting and establishing the ideathat on 24th August, 1690, Job Charnock laid the foundation of the city of Calcutta. There is an obvious lack of exactitude in the imperial idea that it is Charnock who, as an act of imperial destiny, founded the city. In 1990 the Calcutta Tercentenary was observed by the British as well as the Government of West Bengal. On that occasion, in a companion volume to the British Museum's lavish exhibition, Calcutta, City of Palaces' in that year, J.P. Losty, the Curator incharge of Prints and Drawings, India Office Library, the British Library of London, an eminent scholar, wrote about Charnock's final return after two previous visits to the villages that would later become Calcutta: 'On 24th August 1690 (he) established himself once again at Suttanuttee' (p. 15). Sutanuti, as Losty says, meant 'cotton bale' and the place was actually called Sutanuti Hat or cotton bale market. Losty is quite explicit in clarifying that Charnock died in 1693 and 'had done little to establish a permanent factory. His son-in-law. Eyre was the man who build his grandiose mausoleum in St. John's Churchyard. If (an) extract from the records (which Losty quotes) is to be taken as it stands, then it is to Goldsborough (the Company's Governor of all its settlements in India at that time)....... visiting Suttanuttee in 1693 after Charnock's death.... .that the credit must go for shifting the nucleus of the settlement southwards to Calcutta, for, the lines drawn by Goldsborough became the walls of the factory compound within which the Agent (Eyre) was already living in 1695. (p. 17)
Goldsborough did not 'found' Calcutta. Nor did Charnock who addressed his reports to the Company in his records from 'Chuttanuttee', not Kalikata, which had not been purchased at that time. Nor did Eyre, after whose time the address is shown as whatever spelling was given at that time of Calcutta as it has become by the 18th century. Kalikata was the place to which the company shifted to build its Fort William, which was the exact address at that time. Kalkata is mentioned in the late 16th century Ain-I-Akbari, and as a pargana after that in Bengal literature. Dihi Kalikata was one of the villages bought by the Company. There is reference also in the literature, (e.g. C.R. Wilson, Old Fort William in Bengal, volume I, 1906) to another location called Bazar Kalikata, presumably between Laldighi and Sealdah. It may be recalled in this connection that early in the 20th century when the capital of the British Indian Empire was transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, it was the British merchant community which vigorously protested against the move, calling Calcutta 'Queen of the East' by virtue of its trade and commerce and the so-called 'pleasure' derived from them. From the late 19th century, Writers like Cotton, Wilson and Hunter poured their love and admiration on that luminous object of British achievement, the jewel of jewels that was Calcutta. The 'founder' of that great city, Job Charnock came in for much adulation. In the preface to the first volume of his Early Annals (1895) C.R. Wilson had written, 'Charnock, and Charnock alone, founded Calcutta'. Wilson's admiration for Charnock exceeded reasonable limits. Job Charnock may be identified as the person who first set up an English factory (that is a business house), in Sutanuti in the immediate neighbourhood of Kalikata. When British historians wrote about the origins of the imperial city of Calcutta they looked for a convenient starting point.
Job Charnock arrived in India in 1655. He was a minor member of the Council of Bengal in 1657. He was first seen in Kasimbazar around 1658. He became the chief of the Patna factory in 1664 from where he returned to Kasimbazar in early 1681. He was embroiled in a dispute with the local merchants and administration, ordered to pay Rs. 43,000/- to the former but he gave a slip and fled to Hugli where he took over as the Agent in April 1686. Be that as it may, the skirmish at Hugli signalled the outbreak of hostilities. The intervention of the Dutch at the instance of the Nawab resulted in cessation of hostilities but the British, considering it not safe to stay in Hugli any longer, moved down to Sutanuti, 26 miles downstream and south of Hugli. This was 20th December 1686. From here the British sent the Nawab their terms for a settlement, including grant of a land for building a for which the latter regarded as insolent and rejected forthwith. The British decided to show more force and destroyed the Nawab's salt golas, demolished Thana and Garden Reach Forts, seized Hijili and set the native ships on fire. The Mughals failed to expel the British from Hijli and opened negotiations for settlement. After three months a cessation of arms was agreed upon and the Nawab permitted them to settle at Uluberia.
Though Charnock regarded it as 'honourable peace', he was cautious that 'such a peace is best made with sword in hand.' But the British were not serious about peace unless they had wrested some extra privileges, especially a fortified settlement as is evident from a Surat letter. However, Charnock stayed in Uluberia about three months, but he found the place so 'improper' for his purposes that he came back to Sutanuti again in September 1687. Meanwhile a fresh naval force from England was sent to Bengal under Captain Heath and the Court's instruction was emphatic that no peace be made without having a fortified settlement. When Heath arrived at Sutanuti on 20th September 1688, the British negotiation with the new Subadar, Bahadur Khan was still on. But Heath and Charnock, without waiting for the final outcome, attacked Balasore and set sail to seize Chittagong. The expedition to Chittagong, however, proved abortive and the British decided to take refuge in the safe haven of Fort St. George where they arrived in February 1689. But later, when they made a 'humble petition' and expressed their 'repentance' to the Mughal Emperor, they were 'pardoned'. The British under Job Charnock returned to Sutanuti on 24th August 1690 and finally settled there which became the nucleus of the future imperial city of Calcutta. He died shortly after (1693). In 1698 his son-in-law Charles Eyre, by giving a present of Rs. 16,000/- to the then Bengal Subadar, Prince Azim-Us-Shan, got the permission to buy the Zamindary rights of Govindapur, Sutanuti and Kolikata from the Sabarna Roychoudhuri family. When the fort was constructed, they named it Fort William after the king of England. The Fort William became the nucleus of the future imperial City of Calcutta. Thus, the growth and development of Calcutta was closely connected with the British trade both corporate and private. In other words, the early history of Calcutta is inseparable from the history of British imperialism in India. And in the final analysis, neither Job Charnock can be regarded as the founder of Calcutta nor the claim that Calcutta was born on 24th August 1690.
When Charnock died in January 1693, Sutanuti was a far cry from the later imperial City of Calcutta though, undeniably, his name rightly came to be significantly associated with the history of the development of Calcutta as a colonial city.
The early history of Calcutta does not begin with the arrival of Job Charnock. Among others, attention may be drawn to an article by Sukhamaya Mukhopadhyay, 'Ingraj purva juger Kalikata' (Kalikata before the coming of the English) in aitihasik (6th July, 1978). He asserts that Kalikata, before the English, was not a petty village but an important place in its own right. It was not inhabited by low-caste people only. There were settlements of high-caste social groups along a narrow strip of high ground on the banks of the Ganges (the Hooghly River of the British documents). The medieval Bengali poet Krishnaram Das (1676-77) in his Kalikamangal, mentions the Brahmin family, the Sabarna Chaudhuries.
Sanatan Ghoshal (1678-80), another medieval Bengal poet, claims Kalikata to be his birth place. This indicates that the Brahmin family of Ghoshals lived there. Mukhopadhyay goes on to mention that the map of Van den Brock, a Dutchman, shows 'Calcutta' as a place name. This was in 1660. Even earlier, Abul Fazal's Ain-I-Akbari mentions 'Calcutta' as a mahal under Sarkar Saptagram (1585). The importance of Kalikata was derived from the fact that it was an administrative division under the Mughals. Whichever way one may call it, a pergunah, as the medieval Bengali poets did, or a mahal as Abul Fazal did, it was recognised as a revenue-paying unit.
Apart from Brahmin families there were other settlers in an around Calcutta who had moved into the place before the English. The Seths and Basaks, who were weaver merchants, moved from Saptagram to Kalighat and later on to Kalikata. The presence of the Armenians has already been noticed Mukhopadhyay refers to Suniti Kumar Chatterji's discovery of a gravestone in the yard of the Armenian Church in Calcutta of a woman named Rezabebeh and carrying the date of 1632. It seems clear that outside merchants from all over India and abroad frequented the busy mart of Sutanuti and the neighbouring Burra Bazar area. Mukhopadhyay's reference to Ghulam Hussain's Riaz-us-salatin (1788) opens up another dimension of the history of Kalikata. The book says that the image of Kali was long established here and the revenue earnings of the area was earmarked for the worship of the goddess. The locality was known as 'Kalikarta' which means that Kali was the Karta or lord or owner of the place. The word 'Calcutta' may have been a distortion of Kalikarta. There is also the oft-quoted passage of Manasavijay by Bipradas Pipilai (1495-96).
Evidently, when Job Charnock arrived at Sutanuti in 1690, Calcutta was not a pestilential marshy land inhabited by lower class people only. There were settlements of high-caste groups on the river side stretching from Sutanuti, through Kalikata, Gobindapur right upto the Kalighat shrine located on Adi Ganga, that is Tolly's Nullah. Sutanuti was a flourishing cloth market which attracted a variety of Indian and foreign merchants. Under the Mughals Kalikata was recognised as a parganah under Sarkar Saptagram. It was a sacred place due to the presence of the image of goddess Kali (ati punyamay dham) and the Government allocated the local revenue for the upkeep of the shrine. Many medieval Bengali poets have mentioned Kolikata as an important place which was in existence at least as far back as the 15th century.
So, pre-Charnock Calcutta had two attractions. It has a holy shrine and a flourishing cloth market and there was a relation between the two. Seagoing vessels sailing along Bhagirath combined trade with religion. It was customary for ships going out to Gangasagar for pilgrimage or to take part in inter-Asian trade to offer puja at the famous shrine of Kalighat. No wonder that Kalikata before the coming of the English was an important place.
In the absence of dependable historical sources and narrative one has to fall back upon assorted pile of legends, stories and beresays to write up an authentic account of this riverside settlement called Kalikata. Nevertheless, it appears right to hold that the Sabarna Chaudhuri family and the outstanding figure of Lakshmikanta Majumdar of that family occupied a central place in the history of early Kalikata. The Sabarna Chaudhuries played a significant historical role in the expansion of Bengali socio-economic and cultural life, Sutanuti, Govindapur and Kolikata, which formed part of the zamindary of the Sabarna Roychoudhuries, became the nucleus of the future imperial City of Calcutta. The Sabarna Choudhuries were certainly important in the development of commerce and religious activities on the east bank of the Hugli River from Dakshieswar to Behala in the 17th and early 18th century. But the final question-- 'Who was the founder of Calcutta' leads to a problem of historical method. Determination of truth in history is a question of different interpretations of either the same evidence or different sets of evidence. Historians do not act as Judges, arbitrating one specific version. We have examined the problems in calling Job Charnock, 'The Founder of Kalikata'. There are similar problems in calling Laksmikanta or any of his descendants The Founder' of Calcutta.
To sum up:-
1. Calcutta does not have a 'birthday'. Its origin is part of a general process of rural settlement, clusters of which agglomerated in the last decade of the 17th century, into the English Company's trading factory. This grew into the town in the 18th century. No one year marks its 'date of birth'.
2. One simple 'founder' cannot be determined. Names that can be celebrated in the 17th century process, and had, indeed, been celebrated for more than one century up to today are: Charnock, who settled in Sutanuti, Eyre and Goldsborough, on English side, and Laksmikanta Majumdar who developed the tract: the Sett and Bysack families who lived in Govindapur, and Sabarna Choudhuries who sold the villages to the English.
3. Historical texts are not meant to always emphasise exact dates and/ or founders. They should deal more with processes of continuity and change, or synthesis as well as dialectical plurality, of course always backed up by data and consistent logic.
Nemai Sadhan Bose (convener)
Barun De
Arun Kumar Dasgupta
Sushil Chaudhury
Pradip Sinha