Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

by Sanyal, Sanjeev

  Most of the early British settlement was build around a preexisting water tank called Lal Dighi that had been excavated by the Bengali merchant Lal Mohan Sett. The name Lal Dighi literally means Red Pond; there is a story that it gets its name from the colours used by the locals during the festival of Dol (or Holi). The waterbody still exists and stands in the middle of the business district. Soon, the British had built a number of substantial buildings around Lal Dighi, including a fort that they named Fort William. It stood on the site now occupied by the General Post Office and should not be confused with the later Fort William that we see today.

  Commerce may have prospered but it came at a huge human cost. Surrounded by mosquito-infested swamps, the early European residents of Calcutta suffered horrible casualty rates. Alexander Hamilton, Charnock’s contemporary, tells us that there were 1200 English of various ranks when he visited the city. Within six months, 460 of them died. While this may have been an especially bad year, it gives a sense of the mortality rates that the East India Company employees had to contend with. Less than three years after establishing the trading post at Calcutta, Job Charnock too died. His body was interred in a mausoleum that can be visited on the grounds of St.John’s Church, just off Lal Dighi. His eldest daughter Mary died a few years later and is buried in the same tomb.

  Meanwhile, Calcutta continued to grow. A map from 1757 shows that the British had built a fortified trench called the Maratha Ditch all around Calcutta to defend it from attacks by Indian rulers. The name of the ditch tells us how the threat perception had shifted from the Mughals to the Marathas since the death of Aurangzeb. Most of the area within the fortifications was still largely rural, but there is a small but significant urban cluster around Lal Dighi and along the river. Nevertheless, contemporary maps of Madras suggest that it was a much more important settlement than Calcutta at this stage.

  In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah briefly occupied Kolkata and renamed it Alinagar. However, just a year later, Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey and established British control over this large province. Calcutta now became the headquarters of a rapidly expanding empire. Over the next century, Calcutta would become the largest city in the subcontinent and one of the most important urban hubs in the world. One can see the transformation by comparing the 1757 map of Calcutta with one published by Chapman and Hall in 1842. A few of the old features are still visible. Lal Dighi still exists but is surrounded by large buildings including the Writers’ Building. This is not the magnificently red Writers’ Building built in 1882 that functions today as the secretariat of the state of West Bengal. The original Writers’ Building was also a substantial building and was used as rent-free accommodation for clerks and other junior employees of the East India Company. The Maratha Ditch has been filled up but its outline is discerned in the 1842 map as the Upper Circular and Lower Circular roads—and they continue to be the city’s arterial roads to this day, albeit with new names.

  For anyone familiar with Kolkata, the 1842 map is very interesting because many of the basic contours of the modern city are clearly visible. The old Fort William has been replaced by the large star-shaped fort that is still used by the Indian Army as its eastern headquarters. The British town planners left large open spaces around the new fort in order to allow a clear line of fire for the fort’s cannons. These are now the parks of the Maidan. The Victoria Memorial, of course, does not exist at this stage and its site is occupied by a complex marked as the Grand Jail. However, the site of the Turf Club already has a race course. Well-known roads such as Park Street and Camac Street have taken shape and are clearly marked. But for the fact that many of the street-names have been changed since the 1970s, one could probably find one’s way around most of central Kolkata by using the 1842 map—especially since the old names remain in common use in many cases. The map also shows how, by the mid-nineteenth century, the rapidly growing city was spilling out of the confines of the old city limits marked by the former Maratha Ditch. We can see how the new suburbs of Sealdah, Ballygunge and Bhowanipur are just beginning to appear. Their conversion into fully urban settlements would happen very gradually. I remember that even in the early 1980s, some parts of Ballygunge retained a semi-rural feel with large bungalows, fish-ponds and weekly village markets. These open spaces are now occupied by multistorey residential towers, but some reminders of the past remain: the idiosyncratic lanes, the odd hut amidst modern buildings, the old village shrine stranded in the middle of the road.

  By the mid-nineteenth century, Calcutta was not just a commercial and administrative hub, but also the centre of intellectual and cultural activity. Indians from across the subcontinent came here to seek their fortune. There were even sizeable communities of Jews, Armenians, Greeks and even Chinese in the city. Although these communities have dwindled in recent decades, they have left behind buildings and place-names that recall them. This multicultural milieu set the stage for the next phase of evolution of India’s civilization. Over the next century, Calcutta would attract social reformers like Ram Mohun Roy, who pushed through important changes that have shaped modern India. Interestingly, these early reformers also argued in favour of providing education to Indians in the English language. This would be a profoundly important choice.

  It is popularly assumed that English education was used by the colonial rulers to create a class of Indians who would be loyal to them. This view is based a note written by Thomas Macaulay in 1835 where he argued, ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’. In fact, the matter was hotly debated by the British officials and there were many who disagreed with Macaulay. The factor that tipped the balance was that many reformist Indians favoured English. This preference for a foreign language is not as strange as it may appear at first sight. The early reformers were very conscious that Indian civilization had been in decline for a long time and correctly blamed it on lack of technological and intellectual innovation. The knowledge of English was seen as a window to the world of ideas emanating from Europe. Far from creating a class of loyal Indians, the English-educated middle-class would be at the forefront of India’s struggle for independence.

  One of the important venues for the Anglo-Indian intellectual interaction of this era was a unique college founded in 1800 by Governor General Wellesley. The College of Fort William was set up for the training of British civil servants who spent their first three years studying and training there. The curriculum for the three-year course was surprisingly eclectic and tells of a generalist ethos that remains embedded in the Indian Administrative Service of today: 2

  Choice of Languages: Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Marhatta (Marathi), Tamalua (Tamil), Bengali, Telenga (Telugu).

  Mahomedan Law

  Hindoo Law

  Ethics, Civil Jurisprudence, and the Law of Nations

  English Law

  The Regulations and Laws enacted by the Governor General in Council at Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay for civil government in the British territories in India

  Political Economy and particularly the commercial institutions and interests of the East India Company.

  Geography and Mathematics

  Modern Languages of Europe

  Greek, Latin and English Classics

  The History and Antiquities of Hindoostan and Deccan

  Natural History

  Botany, Chemistry and Astronomy

  The college was meant for training civil servants, but it brought together a mix of remarkable Indian and British scholars. This interaction generated both new scholarship as well as new thinking. One of these scholars was Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, who taught there in the 1840s. An extraordinary polymath, his contributions include giving the Bengali language its modern form, the emancipation and education of women and the teaching of Sanskrit texts to low-caste Hindus. Indian c
ivilization would benefit enormously from this new way of thinking.

  Meanwhile, the students of the college were not always immersed in their studies. A student named Mr Chisholme was sued in 1802 and brought before the court by one Jagonnaut Singh, a lawyer. A cat had been sitting in a shop near the deponent’s house. The student set his dog on the cat but it fled into the lawyer’s house and into the women’s quarters. Mr Chisholme and his dog followed in hot pursuit. When Jagonnaut Singh objected to this intrusion, the student punched him in the forehead. In the end, Mr Chisholme admitted his guilt and was reported for proper action.

  Not all the young officials of the East India Company were quite so loutish. One of the most talented was Thomas Stamford Raffles, who was sent by Governor General Minto to Penang (now in Malaysia) to keep an eye on the Dutch in South East Asia. The British and the Dutch had long been bitter rivals in South East Asia, and the English East India Company wanted to ensure that the shipping routes between India and the Far East were secure. When Napoleon annexed Holland, the British occupied the Dutch possessions in the East Indies. Raffles played a leading role in these events, and we get a wonderful insight into the man and the times from the letters he sent back to Calcutta for Lord Minto and other senior officials. It is amazing that, in the middle of organizing military operations and administrative systems in far-flung islands, people like Raffles found the time to study the flora and fauna, record local customs and investigate ancient ruins.

  After Napoleon was defeated, the Dutch wanted their colonies back. There were heated negotiations between Calcutta and Batavia (the Dutch headquarters, now Jakarta). The Dutch would eventually get back most of their possessions as per the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824, but not before Stamford Raffles had ensured that the British would retain effective control of the Straits of Malacca. The key to his strategy was the establishment of a new British outpost in Singapore. The island had been under the nominal control of the Sultan of Johore but Raffles was able to secure it in exchange for the payment of an annual rent and British support against the Sultan’s local rival. Singapore was formally founded on 6 February 1819 with a great deal of pomp and the firing of cannons. Raffles wrote, ‘I shall say nothing of the importance of the position I have taken in Singapore; it is a child of my own … Our object is not territory but trade; a great commercial emporium, and a fulcrum, whence we may extend our influence politically as circumstances may hereafter require’. 3

  Raffles is remembered mostly as the founder of Singapore, but his writings show an extraordinary curiosity about the natural and cultural history of South East Asia. He avidly collected samples of plants and animals and even sent back a Sumatran tapir for the Governor General’s garden in Barrackpore. He wrote extensively about the Indianized culture of Java and Bali, and is said to have ‘rediscovered’ the great stupa of Borobodur during the British occupation of Java. I wonder if he ever saw the panel carved with the windblown ship—a memory of an earlier age of mercantile trade. Just before he returned to England, Raffles set up an institute in Singapore inspired by Calcutta’s Fort William College. It survives as the Raffles Institution, an elite school, although its original location on Bras Basah Road is today occupied by the Raffles City Shopping Mall, just across from the famous Raffles Hotel. As anyone visiting Singapore will have noticed, the liberal use of the founder’s name can be quite confusing.

  THE GREAT INDIAN ARC OF THE MERIDIAN

  As the British became more entrenched in India, they quickly discovered the need for good maps of the country’s interior to help with administration, revenue collection and military movements. Till the mid-seventeenth century, European mapping had been concentrated on the coastline but now the interiors had to be systematically charted too. The key survey tool was the perambulator—essentially a large wheel set up to allow the measurement of distance. East India Company troops would often take a perambulator along on marches and an estimate of distance would be worked out by adjusting for the twists and turns of the road. While this was hardly accurate, it provided readings that were a vast improvement on earlier estimates. For instance, a map of Sri Lanka and the Coromandel coast from this era carries the note, ‘The route from Tritchinapoly to Trinevelly ascertained by a march of English troops in 1755’. This was quite typical.

  With the conquest of Bengal, the British decided to carry out a more scientific survey of their new possessions. In 1765, Robert Clive assigned James Rennell, a young naval officer, the task of making a general survey of Bengal. Rennell took a detachment of sepoys and criss-crossed the countryside for seven years fixing latitudes, plotting productive lands and marking rivers and villages. It was hard and dangerous work. While surveying the Gangetic delta (the Sunderbans), Rennell wrote in his notebook ‘We have no other Obstacles to carry on our Business properly than the extensive thickets with which the country abounds, and the constant dread of Tygers, whose vicinity to us their Tracks, which we are constantly trampling over, do fully demonstrate’. 4

  A tiger did carry off a soldier on at least one occasion. On another, a leopard jumped out of a tree and mauled five sepoys. In an act of extraordinary bravery, Rennell grabbed a bayonet and thrust it into the beast’s mouth. On yet another occasion, Rennell sustained deep sabre wounds while fighting off bandits. At thirty-five, Rennell returned to England and produced the famous Bengal Atlas. He was hailed as ‘the Father of Indian Geography’.

  Although it was the best that has been done thus far, Rennell’s work had covered only a small part of the subcontinent. As British conquests expanded, the need for further surveys was felt. The task fell to acerbic genius William Lambton, who had had a long but unremarkable career in India till he was made the Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. He got the job quite by chance. In 1798, he happened to be sailing from Calcutta to Madras on the same ship as a young colonel called Arthur Wellesley. He would go on to become famous as the Duke of Wellington and the victor at Waterloo, but in 1798 he was better known as the younger brother of the Governor General and was on his way to fight against Tipu Sultan of Mysore. He seems to have been impressed with Lambton and took him along for the expedition. Tipu Sultan was defeated and killed at the siege of Srirangapatnam. Lambton played his part with distinction. By consulting the stars he was able to avert a major disaster during a manoeuvre when British troops were unknowingly marching north into enemy lines rather than south to a defensible position. 5

  It was during the campaign that Lambton came up with the idea of doing a survey of India using triangulation. Basically, this requires three mutually visible points as corners of a triangle. If one knows the length of any of the sides and can measure the angles, the length of the other sides can be established by trigonometry. The newly determined sides can then each be used to establish a new triangle and so on. It is tedious work but provides very accurate measurements. Lambton had another motive beyond just creating an accurate map of India. Using this methodology, he wanted to also use the measurements to establish the exact shape and curvature of the earth. This was not just scientific curiosity; it was of vital importance to a naval and commercial power like Britain. Lambton told Arthur Wellesley his plan, who in turn spoke to his brother the Governor General. Lambton got the job.

  The first thing that Lambton did was to order a state-of-the-art theodolite to help with the survey. A theodolite is basically a telescope that has been specially adapted to allow the very accurate measurement of angles needed for triangulation. The equipment Lambton ordered weighed half a ton and had to be shipped from England. On the way it was captured by the French and taken to Mauritius. However, when the French realized that it was a scientific instrument, they gallantly repacked and sent it to Madras. At last, Lambton could start on his work.

  Lambton began by establishing a baseline at sea-level in 1802. He did this just south of Chennai’s famous Marina beach. From a flagpole on the beach, he ascertained the horizontal distance to the grandstand of Madras racecourse. Once he had es
tablished this base-line, Lambton set in motion a sequence of triangulation that would crisscross India for the next sixty years, consuming not just his life but that of his successor George Everest. In 1802, the East India Company had expected the work to have finished in five years! It is a testimony to the prestige and usefulness of this project that it was not stopped for six decades, despite the time and resources it would ultimately consume.

  Trudging through jungles, mountains, farmlands and villages with a heavy theodolite in tow must have been very difficult work. Often there were bandits, hostile local populations, and suspicious kingdoms that were still not reconciled to British rule. Many a time there were long delays because dust and haze obscured visibility. At each location, the theodolite had to be dragged up to a height in order to provide a reading. Tall buildings were used where there were no hills. In 1808, Lambton decided to use the massive eleventh-century Brihadishwara temple in Thanjavur. The temple dedicated to Lord Shiva had been built by the Cholas at the height of their power and is a huge structure even by modern standards. Unfortunately, the ropes slipped and the theodolite was smashed. For all its size, it was a delicate and minutely calibrated instrument. A lesser man would have given up. However, Lambton ordered a new one from England at his own expense but then spent the next six weeks painstakingly repairing the damaged equipment.