The Park Street Cemetry – A Calcutta Romance
South Park Street Cemetery, is an old, colonial cemetery, opened in 1767 and an oasis of calm, in the centre of Kolkata. Tranquil and quiet, but for the shrill cry of a rare peacock, or the squawking crows, on the tall, mossy gravestones. As one of the oldest, Christian burial grounds in the city, the earliest grave dates to 1768 and the last memorial, was erected in 1895.
Upon entering the main gate, a large porch bearing a number of plaques, embedded in its walls, gives a glimpse of the dates and ages of its inhabitants. A walk down the main cemented path, reveals a vast, imperial necropolis, and an open-air museum, of a large number of neo-classical, funerary sculptures. The various pyramids, mausoleums and tomb statues, within this place are at present, in a state of decay.
The architectural feature of each tomb in the cemetery, imitates the glory of the British Raj. In ‘City of Dreadful Night’ (1891) – a scathing commentary on colonial Calcutta, Rudyard Kipling, sarcastically writes about the Park Street cemetery, “The tombs are small houses. It is as though we walked down the streets of a town, so tall are they and so closely do they stand – a town shrivelled by fire, and scarred by frost and siege. Men must have been afraid of their friends rising up before the due time that they weighted them with such cruel mounds of masonry.”
Death, in those days, was the chief occupational hazard, for the foreign community. Tropical illnesses and childbirth were the main causes. Battle wounds for soldiers and shipwrecks for mariners. Strangely, a surprising number were recorded as having been struck by lightning. They lived at the mercy of the inhospitable climate and the environment, and all too often passed away, when they and Calcutta were still young. The shocking feature which strikes one, from a tour of the grounds, is the number of infant and children, who lived no more than a few years.
The cemetery contains the tomb of Colonel Vansittart, whose wife was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Other graves of note, are those of Lt. Col. Robert Kyd, the distinguished botanist and founder of the East India Company’s Botanical Gardens, down the river; Lt. Col. James Lillyman, who supervised the building of Fort William; sons of Captain Cook and Charles Dickens; and many others, such as Charles Short and Sir John Royds, after whom streets in Calcutta were named.
One of the tallest monuments, clean and whitewashed, is that of Sir William Jones, the founder of the Royal Asiatic society of Bengal. He possessed such literary genius, that he was reputed to have mastered every European language, including many oriental languages. He arrived in India in September 1783 and was a judge in the Supreme Court, in Calcutta. For the next ten years, he would produce a flood of works on India, launching the modern study of the subcontinent, in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany and geography, and made the first English translations, of several important works of Indian literature. On 27th April 1794, at only 48 years, he passed away, due to an inflammation of the liver.
The most interesting tomb is that of Major-General Charles Stuart, an eccentric Irishman, who was nick-named “Hindoo Stuart”, after he became a Hindu, within a year of his arrival, in Calcutta. Stuart adopted several Hindu customs, including bathing in the Ganges every morning, the habit of chewing paan, as well as wearing Indian clothes. He even encouraged European ladies in India, to adopt the sari. He amassed a large collection of idols of Hindu deities, which he took to England. When he died on 31st March 1828, he was buried with his idols, in his coffin. His tomb takes the form of a Hindu temple, surmounted by an elaborate edifice, with stone carvings of the Goddess Ganga.
A few feet away from Stuart’s tomb, lies a stalwart of the early history of Bengal - Henry Vivian Louis Derozio. He was the youthful, Anglo-Indian poet, rational thinker and inspiration, behind the extraordinary, Young Bengal Movement, of the early 19th century. He was influenced by the ideas thrown up by the French Revolution and as a 21 year old teacher, sought to transmit these, to his pupils at Hindu College, (subsequently renamed Presidency College). His unconventional teaching methods, resulted in his being accused of promoting Atheism, to his radical students and led to his dismissal from the College. He died soon after, still a very young man, at the age of 22, but he left a rich heritage of poetry, that inspired future generations and left a permanent impact, on the social outlook, of the Bengali- Hindu community.
The cemetery is the final resting place, of ordinary men and women, who built Calcutta out of a simple, trading establishment. Here rest, not only soldiers and prominent people, in the service of the Raj, but an unsung army of the middle class. British. traders, travellers and those seeking their fortunes here. Then, there were those women, who came to India, some with their husbands, others, searching for husbands amongst the English officers. Many stayed on, married or otherwise, devoting their lives to the ‘women and children of India’ and whose service and devotion, is recounted for all time on their tombstones.
Lucia Palk, the heroine of Kipling’s sketch, “Concerning Lucia,” in his ‘City of Dreadful Nights’, is buried here. Here also, lies the tomb of Lady Anne Monson, a great-granddaughter of Charles II, whose coffin was carried to the cemetery gates, by Warren Hastings amongst others, where it was handed to six ladies of gentle birth, who bore it the rest of the way, to the grave.
Rose Aylmer, as a carefree girl of 17, used to stroll with the poet Walter Savage Landor, on the mountains and shores of Wales. Within a year of her arrival, she died of cholera at age 20 and Landor was heartbroken. Thoughts of the young Rose, came to the fore, in a famous ode dedicated to her, which was added to the tomb in 1910.
Elizabeth Sanderson, con-sidered the most beautiful woman in Calcutta, when she arrived in 1775, had all the men spellbound. Before one of Calcutta’s grand balls, Miss Sanderson had mischievously told her suitors of the Parisian dress she intended to wear. She said it would be marvellous if they wore a similar costume of pea-green, with pink silk trimmings. The result was, that sixteen young bloods, all arrived in the same ridiculous outfit. Fortunately, they took it in good grace when she danced with them all. When she departed, they lined up on either side of her palanquin and sang her home, through the torch-lit streets. Eventually, she married Richard Barwell, gambler and womanizer. Two years later, weakened by childbirth and fever, Elizabeth Barwell was beneath her pyramid, aged only 23.
The names of the descendants, of those who sleep in the cemetery, are familiar today. Some have hereditary titles, others have distinguished careers. Their only record is an epitaph, on a brick and plaster memorial, which today, after two hundred years, is threatened by complete ruin, for want of care. Many of the tombstones and graves, have disappeared altogether, disinte-grated by the ravages of time and the climate. Others, have had the marble surfaces, which usually carry inscriptions, removed. Now there are extensive areas of grass and weeds, where there are no tombstones and every year, more tombs virtually crumble away. Many however, still survive, needing only care and repair and maintenance, to give them another, long lease of life.
Today, the cemetery is situated in the centre of Calcutta’s commercial and residential district, surrounded by upper-middle-class apartment buildings and business establishments. The Sim Park, Eastern India’s first automated car park, which is hardly in use, encroaches on its western wall, on Rawdon Street. It has been vandalised many times by drug-addicts and thieves, who enter the premises by scaling the walls. The place is manned by limited staff. Several attempts, to restore the cemetery, have been made by the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, (BACSA), but the retirement and demise of committee members and lack of funds, hamper any progress.
The cemetery is thus a monument of double death – the decaying remains of its inhabitants, and its own death, as it lies forgotten by both, the present and the past.
The names of the descendants, of those who sleep in the cemetery, are familiar today. Some have hereditary titles, others have distinguished careers. Their only record is an epitaph, on a brick and plaster memorial, which today, after two hundred years, is threatened by complete ruin, for want of care. Many of the tombstones and graves, have disappeared altogether, disinte-grated by the ravages of time and the climate. Others, have had the marble surfaces, which usually carry inscriptions, removed. Now there are extensive areas of grass and weeds, where there are no tombstones and every year, more tombs virtually crumble away. Many however, still survive, needing only care and repair and maintenance, to give them another, long lease of life.
Today, the cemetery is situated in the centre of Calcutta’s commercial and residential district, surrounded by upper-middle-class apartment buildings and business establishments. The Sim Park, Eastern India’s first automated car park, which is hardly in use, encroaches on its western wall, on Rawdon Street. It has been vandalised many times by drug-addicts and thieves, who enter the premises by scaling the walls. The place is manned by limited staff. Several attempts, to restore the cemetery, have been made by the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, (BACSA), but the retirement and demise of committee members and lack of funds, hamper any progress.
The cemetery is thus a monument of double death – the decaying remains of its inhabitants, and its own death, as it lies forgotten by both, the present and the past.
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Episode 6 - "Freedom and Liberation"
This episode examines the British Raj and India’s struggle for freedom. Wood reveals how in South India a global corporation came to control much of the subcontinent, and explores the magical culture of Lucknow, discovering the enigmatic Briton who helped found the freedom movement. He traces the Amritsar massacre, the rise of Gandhi and Nehru, and the events that led to the Partition of India in 1947.
Additional information: http://governmentgirl1943lp.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/idea-log-19032011.html#tp
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