Calcutta’s cultural and architectural neglect lay at the heart of Amit Chaudhuri’s lecture titled “An Incisive Talk on Calcutta: The Cultural Inheritance and the Political Future” which was presented by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in association with The Telegraph and LIC Housing Finance Ltd .
Calcutta has witnessed a sea change since the late 18th century. Yet, Chaudhuri pointed out that several houses have stood the test of time, only to be rewarded with demolition, thanks to the influence of a booming real estate industry. Chaudhuri raised important questions such as what constitutes the city’s heritage and what can or cannot be a part of that idea of heritage. Calcutta’s architectural legacy is usually associated with the northern part of the city with its colonial architecture and rajbaris. Chaudhuri wondered why dwellings in Landsdowne, Paddapukur or on Pratapaditya Road are not considered a part of Calcutta’s heritage. He sees in these houses a desire for the new. These houses that were once inhabited by bhadraloks, the patrons of high culture, share common features such as slatted windows, ventilators carved in the walls, knockers on doors and red oxide floors. Yet, no two houses are the same. This expression of a desire to make anew while retaining the basic features charms Chaudhuri. He emphasized that these houses cannot be categorized as either colonial or Bengali or Indian, and that they are marked by a lack of nostalgia for either a Hindu past or the European renaissance. He lamented that while in cities such as Berlin and London, people have invested in buildings so much so that their prices have gone up in the estate market, in Calcutta they are disappearing. He reiterated the need to hold on to these neighbourhoods as they form an integral part of Calcutta’s identity.
Greatly disturbed by the inaction on the part of the heritage commission and the heritage committee of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, Chaudhuri pointed out that, besides political conflict, the inaction stems from a misunderstanding of the word, heritage. He added that a house is declared a heritage property only if someone famous once resided in it. Chaudhuri drew an analogy between the cultural legacy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the one that modern Calcutta will leave behind. He spoke about Charles Wilkins, William Jones and Warren Hastings, whose secular works led to the emergence of an intellectual and secular discourse, which dispelled the notion that “the history of humanism is limited to the Mediterranean basin”.
The cultural and literary flux of the late 18th and early 19th century have been replaced by fixed notions of what Bengali culture is. The inhabitants of the bottola society of the Hutam world were intellectuals, modernists and eclectic people. “We have moved from an interim world... back to the early 19th century,” Chaudhuri said. People, according to him, are apathetic to Calcutta’s heritage because they are not taught to engage with it. The city is seen as a kindergarten where children can prepare themselves so that they can move to another country. These architectural spaces of antiquity must stop disappearing because these very spaces can become the locations from where the renewal of the city can begin.