From Calcutta to Kolkata..!

There is no real connection between ideology and poor decision making except that sometimes the latter maybe induced by very wild varieties of the former. Yours truly, like most well-minded citizens of the city of Calcutta was aghast at this decision to rename the city as Kolkata.

The idea was first mooted by the ‘intellectuals’ of the ‘Bhasha Smarak Samiti”, a self-styled organization which has taken upon itself the onerous task of preserving Bengal (or Bengali’s) caaltural heritage. They were otherwise sensible and intelligent people who somehow got it into their heads that Calcutta be rechristened Kolkata at the taxpayer’s expense.

These members of the Bengali intelligentsia or the ‘cream’ of Calcutta’s society as they would like to be known, complain that philistines are abusing Bengalis and the Bengali language. They feel that Calcutta’s increasing cosmopolitanism is swamping it’s Bengaliness and what’s more, they even perceive a real threat to Bengali culture and lineage as a whole. The rampant use of English everywhere also adds to their agony.

Such apprehensions on their part are highly misplaced and only exposes the fragility of their cultural identity. In fact things have come to such a passé that the ageing Marxists, as a newspaper likes to call Mr. Jyoti Basu and his entourage, now have to take a leaf out of the books of the likes of Bal Thackeray, who at best can be described as a fanatic.

The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions Calcutta in 1596 as being a small rent paying village in Akbar’s empire. It is only after Job Charnock and later when the British East India Company came here that Calcutta became the British empire’s second capital after London. The British established Calcutta as one of the most important industrial and commercial centers of not only India but the entire East. We must also not forget that in the high noon of the Bengali Renaissance, probably the greatest era in Bengali history, Bengali culture flourished not by cocooning itself but by freely imbibing from other cultures. And must we forget that almost all the places that are enlisted on Calcutta’s tourist brochures owe their allegiance to the British. The Fort William, the Victoria Memorial, The National Library, the Indian Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, etc are all their gift to this hallowed city. The only indigenous contribution to the city, some argue, are the sewage poured into the Rabindra Sarobar, heaps of rubbish in Esplanade, and yes, processions and strikes at the drop of a hat. In a nutshell, Calcutta without its British connection is unimaginable and let us not do ourself the utmost indignity by disowning them. We prefer to call central Calcutta, Esplanade and Dalhousie and not Dharamtolla or BBD Bagh. What is more revealing of them and their true nature is the fact that the seat of west Bengal government is called Writer’s Buildings and not some Bangla Bhavan.

Calcutta without any iota of doubt is the city of Bengal, but by no stretch of imagination is it the city of Bengalis. It has been home to people of all hues, religions and countries, a fact which has enriched its cosmopolitanism. To strip it off this very image would be an ahistorical exercise.

“Bengal thinks today what India thinks tomorrow”, used to be the mantra some decades ago. But unfortunately much water has flown down the Hooghly since and the saying no longer holds much ‘water’.

Calcutta is redolent of what it once was and what it might have been had we been a little more responsible. But Kolkata takes us back to the obscure little village it once was. Calcutta once stood for progress in all fields. Let us not try to insulate ourselves. It is time we reinvested in this city, the attributes of modernity. I hope wiser counsel prevails.

Vivek Saraf.
Published in 'Pulse' 2000, Annual Magazine of Calcutta Boys' School, Calcutta.