Latest / Smithsonian Magazine / 10.16.25

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10.16.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebeccah Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated September October
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio E is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first part of the article.
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From flower markets and colonial forts to shrines and battle fields,
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take a journey into the heart of India. Traveling down
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a river in West Bengal reveals the enduring imprint of
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empire and the soul of a region shaped by centuries
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of change. By Joshua Hammer. The morning temperature was pushing
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ninety degrees as I made my way on foot past
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the Haurah railway station in Kolkata, the capital of the
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Indian state of West Bengal. Following a guide, I wove
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through a cross brush of traders, civil servants and other commuters.
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On the Hajab Bridge, a steel cantileave span over the
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Hugli River. Down below, on a concrete platform extending into
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the river, the Mullakgat flower market was in full swing.
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Trucks from the countryside disgorged huge piles of roses, sunflowers
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and gladioli, and garlands of yellow and orange marigolds. Couriers
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placed the bundles on their heads and darted through a
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maze of wooden stalls as hundreds of customers haggled with
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shopkeepers over the prices of floral displays for weddings, cremations
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and religious festivals. This relentless cycle of buying and selling
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has gone on seven days a week, every week of
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the year since the flower market, now one of the
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largest in Asia, was founded in eighteen fifty five. Above
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many stalls, I noticed alcoves into which shopkeepers crawled at night,
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clambering down at dawn to begin another day of frenzied commerce.
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Kolkata has always been a city that tends toward extremes.
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When I first visited in nineteen eighty one, I walked
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out of the railway station and found myself enveloped in
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a scene that could have come from the febrile imagination
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of Hieronymus Bosch. Refugee families from the impoverished countryside, cooking
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and sleeping on broken sidewalks, barefoot rickshaw wallahs pulling their
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two wheelers through diesel choked streets and alleys, volunteers from
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Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying Destitute, coaxing the desperately
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ill to the charity's shelter to die in relative comfort.
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Beyond this dystopian scene rose remnants of the British Empire,
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which ruled here for two centuries before India gained independence
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in nineteen forty seven, spired Anglican churches, marble memorials, neo
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classical buildings where the empire builders once worked. Returning four
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decades later, I found that while much had changed, some
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things had not. My guide brought me back to the
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Indian Coffee House, housed in an iconic nearly one hundred
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and fifty year old establishment, packed with students and writers,
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smoking and talking beneath lazily spinning sealing fans. We browsed
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overflowing bookstalls on College Street that testified to the city's
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vibrant intellectual life, exemplified by such locally bred Nobel Prize
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winners as the writer Rabindranath Tagore, once a regular at
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the Indian Coffee House, and the economist of Marchesen. But
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the city I encountered in the early nineteen eighties now
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a megalopolis of roughly twenty million people has become an
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increasingly globalized commercial center. Economic modernization was already under way
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when West Bengal's Marxist regional government was voted out of
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office in twenty eleven after thirty four years in power.
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Subsequent reforms and initiatives have continued to help launch the
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state into the twenty first century. First Coca Cola came
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to Kokota, and then mobile phones, then everything else. Manadipa Banerjee,
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of political journalists and broadcaster in Kolkata told me the
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barefoot rickshaw wallas are still there, but now they share
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the streets with B M w's Mercedes and other luxury vehicles.
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Glittering shopping malls and art galleries add to an increasingly
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international atmosphere. Last year, West Bengal's economy grew by nearly
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seven percent. With my guide, I made my way down
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to the bank of the Hugli River, lined with crematoriums, warehouses,
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Hindu temples and metal pipes gushing raw sewage into the water.
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The river's name probably comes from the town of Hugli,
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founded by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Traders from
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the Netherlands, France, Britain and Denmark soon followed, setting up
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rival posts aimed at grabbing a share of Bengal's riches.
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In August sixteen ninety, Job Charnock, an agent from the
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East India Company, the British trading firm, created a commercial
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post near this spot. A nearby village was called Calikata,
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possibly named after Cali, the fore armed, red eyed goddess
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of time, death and destruction. The British called the city Calcutta,
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but local officials changed the name in two thousand one
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to reflect Bengali pronunciation. Over the next century, as Calkata
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grew into a vibrant city, the company became something of
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a god itself. It raised an army, defeated local rulers,
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seized control of taxation, monopolized the global trade and cotton, indigo,
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and opium, and conquered most of modern day India, as
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well as what are now Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mayanmar before
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it was phased out of existence in the late eighteen hundreds.
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The East India Company laid the foundations for the Raj
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the British Empire in India, which would extend its reach
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around the globe. And come to shape the modern world.
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Many of the firm's earliest operations and conquests took place
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along the Hugli, the Gang's westernmost distributary, also known as
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the Bagharathi. The river flows south from near Mrshahabad, the
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capital of the old Bengali Kingdom, for one hundred and
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sixty miles through pasture, swamp land, rice paddies and jungle
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before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Until recently, most
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of the towns and villages, shrines and forts, battlefields, palaces,
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and other historically significant sites were little of the visited,
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even by Indians who lived nearby. But the globalization of
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Kolkata has opened the region and several river boat companies
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have begun to offer tourists, mostly Europeans and Americans, but
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increasingly Indians too, the chance to explore at an intimate
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distance a critical part of India's history. I too was
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curious to learn more of this history by following the
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trading firm's path, So one April, day before the pre
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monsoon heat ground river traffic to a halt, I joined
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a seven day cruise that would take me upstream from
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Kolkata to the Faraka Barrage, a dam that diverts water
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from the Ganges to maintain navigable water levels in the Hugli.
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Along the way, I observed not only the firm's residual
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imprint on the places it once ruled, but also West
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Bengal's modernizing ethos, its religious and cultural diversity, and a
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spirit of resistance and national pride shaped by two hundred
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years of foreign domination. Long ago, Bengal was part of
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Ashaka the Great's vast empire before emerging in the eighth
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century a d as a major Buddhist power ruled by
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the Pala dynasty. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Bengal
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was an independent sultanate whose territory comprised an area including
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modern day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Then,
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in the sixteenth century, the Mughals, a Muslim dynasty from
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Central Asia, began conquering territories across the Indian subcontinent, and
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in fifteen seventy six, the Mughal emperor Akbar defeated the
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Bengali sultan Daud Khan Karani and cemented the Mugals hold
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of the region. With its ample rainfall and rich soil.
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Mugal Bengal thrived as a producer and exporter of silk, cotton,
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and a bounty of other agricultural products. The Mughals ruled
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through a viceroy known as the Newab based in the
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palace at Mrishadabad. The position became hereditary, and as Mughal
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power waned in the seventeen hundreds, the Nawabs gained de
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facto and dependence and amassed tremendous riches. For centuries, Hindus
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and Muslims jockeyed for dominance while imprinting their faiths across
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the landscape. That changed in nineteen forty seven, when the
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departing British rulers, with the grudging assent of most Indian
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political leaders, partitioned India. Bengal was split into the Hindu
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dominated Indian state of West Bengal and Muslim East Pakistan,
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which later became Bangladesh, sending millions of Hindus and Muslims
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fleeing in opposite directions. Hundreds of thousands of people died
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in the chaos, and West bengals Uslim population fell below
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twenty percent. Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal called partition. The central
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historical event in twentieth century South Asia. At the route
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of that imperial legacy was the East India Company, which
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over a century seized control of Bengal and created a
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model for its conquest of the rest of India. The
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morning after my walking tour of Kolkata, I boarded a
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motorized launch from a riverside quai to the Rajmahal, the
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King's palace in Hindi. The three deck, one hundred and
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sixty four foot long ship is one of five luxury
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vessels operated by a joint British Indian company known as
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Assam Bengal Navigation, which runs river tours here as well
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as on the Brahmaputra River in northeast India and along
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the main stem of the Ganges. The deck was polished wood,
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the cabins appointed with large French windows offering panoramic river views.
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As the boat raised its anchor and sailed beneath the
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Hawra Bridge, we met Simbankar Sengupta, a balding, bespectacled and
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professorial guide, who strode the deck wearing a floppy safari hat.
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Sengupta would lead us a dozen travelers from England, Australia
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and France through riverine villages, and most evenings he held
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lectures in the saloon on the main deck, conversing authoritatively
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on everything from French colonial forts, to local bird life
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to the Hindu gods and their avatars. Twenty four hours
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and twenty five miles later, we docked at Chandanagar. Founded
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as a trading post by the French East India Company,
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the British firm's main rival, in the late seventeenth century.
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The city remained a pocket of French colonial rule until
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shortly after India independence. Macaques with pigtails frolicked along the
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strand the town's riverfront promenade, lined with traces of that era.
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We passed a nineteenth century ecole or grammar school for girls,
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a Roman Catholic church that reminded me of a scale
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down Notre Dame, and a neglected museum filled with crockery,
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military uniforms and portraits of bygone French commanders. A diirama
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displayed a miniature Fort dour Lean, a mud walled fortress
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erected in sixteen ninety six that stood for decades as
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a symbol of French power. In March seventeen fifty seven,
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shortly after the outbreak of the Seven Years War that
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involved many European nations, two British warships sailed up the
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Hugli from Kolkata and attacked Fort Dourleon. The French were
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not ready for any war, Sengupta explained, they were not
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ext an attack. Even so, the fort's guns damaged the
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British fleet, killing thirty seven sailors on the British HMS Tiger.
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A British East India Company infantry brigade led by Robert Clive,
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a pugnacious thirty one year old from Shropshire and the
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West Midlands, England, aided the naval assault. After a fierce bombardment,
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the French finally abandoned the fort. Clive, who had been
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sent to India by his landowner father fourteen years earlier
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to wean him from a life of petty crime, would
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soon transform himself into the most consequential British military leader
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in eighteenth century India. Three months after the French defeat
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at Chandanagar, Clive and a British East India Company force,
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accompanied by boats carrying additional soldiers and supplies, marched eighty
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five miles along the river to Plasey, an Anglicized name
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for the Bengali village of Palachi. This time they were
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out for revenge against a different foe, Bengal's young French
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backed Newab, Sir Rajudula. The previous year, worried about the
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East India Company's growing power, the Nawab had sent his
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troops to Kolkata, where they captured a British fort and
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imprisoned many dozens of British soldiers in a dungeon that
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became known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. In one night,
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all but twenty one of the men suffocated or died
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of heat stroke. Now at Plasi, as Clive remembered it,
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the Nawab commanded a force of thirty five thousand sepoys
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were Indian infantrymen, fifteen thousand cavalry, fifty cannons and numerous
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battle elephants, as well as a few French army officers
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working alongside him against their English rivals. Clive arrived with
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just eight hundred European soldiers, twenty two hundred se poise
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and eight cannons. The most singular sight presented to the
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British was the Nawab's artillery, wrote one nineteenth century historian.
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They were all drawn by beautiful white oxen behind every
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gun and elephant, pushing with his great strength. But unknown
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to the Nawab, a duplicitous Bengali general mir Jafar had
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made a secret deal with Clive. He would march his
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troops to Plassey, but keep them on the sidelines when
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the fighting started. In return, Clive would help to make
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him the new Niwab if Seraj were defeated. Mer Jafar's
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betrayal caused the Mughal forces to flee in panic. Then,
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after a rainstorm damaged the Bengali's gunpowder, further neutralizing their advantage.
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Seraj's army quickly fell apart. The Niwab himself escaped on
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a camel. A motorized launch took us from the Rajmah
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to see the battle site, docking on the east bank
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of the Hugli. From there, a fleet of electric three
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wheelers or tuptooks bore us past groves of banyan trees, bananas, bamboo,
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and coconut palms. The road dead ended at an asphalt
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plaza carved out of the bush that was dominated by
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a stone obelisk erected by the British in the early
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nineteen hundreds. It was marked simply Battlefield of Plase June
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twenty third, seventeen fifty seven. The battlefield lay to our left,
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now a sweep of farmland that extended to the river.
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We continued down a path. Plots of green chilis, beans
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and corn, divided by earthen dykes, covered the terrain where
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tens of thousands of troops and their elephants had faced
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each other in combat. Amid the plots, I spotted a
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brick platform mounted by three obelisks, each marking the remains
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of a Bengali general killed by artillery or sniper fire.
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Besides the stone obelisk in the plaza, it was the
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only evidence that a battle had taken place here. Just
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five hundred soldiers died at Plasi, Segupta told us as
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we walked the path, but it was a war that
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changed the history of India forever. Sarraj was captured soon
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afterward while hiding along the river. According to one story,
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a Hindu ascetic recognized him by the regal shoes he
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was wearing. He was soon stabbed to death by an
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assassin acting under orders from Mir Jafar's son. Mir Jafar
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became the new NEWAB, and Clive pledged him East India
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Company's support in exchange for control over much of the
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trade in Bengal. With this victory, the whole balance of
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power in India had now shifted. The historian William Dalrymple
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wrote in The Anarchy, his twenty nineteen history of the Firm,
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the British had become the dominant military and political force
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in Bengal. In seventeen sixty four, at the Battle of Buksar,
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East India Company soldiers defeated a unified army of the
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Megal Emperor and two newabs, including Mir Kassim, mir Jafar's
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successor as Bengal's ruler, who had turned against the British.
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The Emperor now granted the East India Company the right
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to tax Bengalis in return for an annual tribute. It
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was a windfall worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
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Clive's victory made him the de facto ruler of Bengal
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and one of the richest men in England. Over the
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next five decades, the company continued its expansion through outright
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territorial conquest and treaties with Indian rulers, eliminating virtually all
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resistance by the early eighteen hundreds. One sultry morning, we
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embarked at Baranagar, a sleepy village of tin roofed bungalows
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on the river's west bank. Singupta led us down dirt
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alleys to a clearing where we gazed on a red
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terra cotta Hindu temple complex called char Bangla, one of
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several commissions here by Rani Babani, an eighteenth century zamindar
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or feudal landlord. In the seventeen fifties, she went on
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a pilgrimage and stopped in this village on her way
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there and liked it. Singgupta told us Murushabad had the Newabs,
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and she probably decided to create a rival Hindu center.
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Richly detailed carvings depicted scenes from the Mahabarata and Rambayana,
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the two sacred epochs of Hinduism. A frieze at the
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bottom of shar Bangla showed an East India Company cavalry
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officer leading a column of rifle bearing sepoys, a startling
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snapshot of the ara that had worked its way into
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fanciful tableaus of dragons, cobras and ancient warriors. A few
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hundred yards away, down a path lined with palm, mango
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and banana trees, stood a pastel blue painted schoolhouse where
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a dozen teenage boys and girls were poised over composition books.
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A few years ago, Saind Gupta explained, a young man
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from the village began practicing his English with the western
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tourists who would descend on Baranagar from the Rajmahal every
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few weeks. As his English improved, he came up with
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an idea. With modest financing from a San Bengal navigation,
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he launched the Baranagar English Tuition Center, in which village kids,
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for a small fee, come to learn the language for
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two hours a day, three mornings a week, before or
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after attending regular classes at their government school. Today, the
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tour company subsidizes students who need financial assistance and is
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building two new class rooms to meet growing demand. A
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sixteen year old girl showed me her application to an
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international learning program in South Korea, where English was the
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language of instruction. There are students from all over the
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world there, she told me excitedly. It was a vivid
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reminder of one outcome of British imperialism, the importance of
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English as a ticket to a better future. Bengal became
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the first region of India in which English language education
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took hold. The British founded India's first newspaper in Kolkata
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in seventeen eighty, opened its first English language medical college
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in eighteen thirty five, and founded the University of Calcutta
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in the eighteen fifties. The spread of literacy and the
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English language was one of the positives of colonialism, Banerjee,
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the Bengali political journalist, told me, though she hastened to add,
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nearly every Indian would say that we are better off
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in charge of our own destiny. For both the upper
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castes attending boarding schools in India and Britain and village
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kids scrambling to escape from poverty and isolation, the language
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opened a world of possibility. Not far from Baranagar lies Mrshidabad,
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the former capital of the Bengali Nawabs. Disembarking from the Rajmahal,
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I walked along another river front promenade lined with tin
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roofed market stalls no different from those of the half
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dozen towns I'd visited in the past few days, But
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turning a corner, I was confronted with a remarkable sight.
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The neo classical Italianate Palace, apparently inspired by Buckingham Palace,
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complete with the colonnaded central portico and two vast wings
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painted yellow, sprawling across a manicured lawn, designed by Duncan McLoyd,
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a Scottish architect with the Bengal Corps of Engineers, and
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constructed between eighteen twenty nine and eighteen thirty seven. The
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Hasiduari Palace, the palace of one thousand doors, was the
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symbolic seat of the Niwabs for more than a century
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until the Indian government stripped them of their properties after
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the nineteen forty seven Independents. Yet by the time the
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Niwabs moved in, their power had already dissipated. It was
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the East India Company's governors who called the shots, relegating
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the Nawabs to ritualistic displays of pomp in their palace
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and gardens. Along with hundreds of Indian tourists, I walked
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through two floors of galleries filled with treasures, carved Chinese ivory, armour,
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swords and scabbards, palanquins and carriages, ceramic faces, and oil
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portraits of the Nawabs. One large painting depicted the signing
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of the seventeen sixty five Treaty of Allahabad, which followed
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the Battle of Busar. The crowded tableau showed the defeated
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Magal Emperor, draped in sumptuous robes, reclining beneath the parasol
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and surrounded by courtiers mounted on elephants. He was conferring
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upon Clive Pudgy, clad in a red rock coat, the Dewani,
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the right to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.
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I gazed upon a portrait of Lord Charles Cornwallis, who
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was appointed Governor General of Bengal in seventeen eighty six,
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five years after surrendering to George Washington New Yorktown, Virginia.
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Cornwallis cut down on corruption and nepotism within the East
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India Company, codified laws and consolidated control over much of India,
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setting the stage for the ascendants of the That evening,
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I stood on the top deck of the raj Mahal,
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sipping a gin and tonic as streaks of pink and
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scarlet softly illuminated banana groves, meadows and rice fields. We
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sailed past a party for the Solar New Year, when
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Hindus gathered to celebrate in exuberant style. Temples were strung
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up with lights, loud speakers blared tiny religious music, and
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hundreds of people clustered along the ghat the stairs leading
25:29
to the water, to bathe and to pray. It was
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a reminder that Bengali life, religion, and culture had remained resilient,
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surviving centuries of mismanagement and theft by the regions Magal
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and later British rulers. After the Magal Emperor granted Clive
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the Dewani, British tax collectors extorted the Bengali peasantry to
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raise funds and enrich themselves, precipitating widespread poverty. KLi I
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have returned permanently to England in seventeen sixty seven and
26:03
one election to Parliament. Meanwhile, in the late seventeen sixties,
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a devastating drought caused the local rice grout to fail,
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with grain stores empty. After the East India Company's short
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sighted managers had stopped maintaining them. A famine took cold
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in seventeen sixty nine and seventeen seventy, in which one
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third of Bengal's population died. Whistleblowers from the company went
26:31
public in England with stories of mismanagement and mass death,
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and a furior erupted in Parliament and the press. We
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have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped, thundered the historian Horace Walpole.
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As the extent of the devastation became clear, Clive in
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England was publicly mocked. One satire called him Lord Vulture,
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deaf to every sentiment of justice and humanity, whose avarice
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knows no bounds. In Parliament, Clive passionately defended himself to
27:05
general ridicule. Given the riches available to him to plunder,
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He proclaimed, I stand astonished by my own moderation. But
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on November twenty second, seventeen seventy four, Clive, depressed, ailing
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and facing withering criticism in the House of Commons, cut
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his throat with a penknife at his home in London's
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Berkeley Square. He was forty nine years old. Several years ago,
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British protesters launched a drive to remove Clive's statues at
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Whitehall in central London and in his birthplace in Shropshire,
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with one petition decrying what it called an outdated monument.
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Shropshire's local council rejected a proposal to remove its statue,
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but it agreed to add a free standing plaque that
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addresses the pernicious effects of Clive's rule. In Whitehall, the
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statue remained standing unadorned. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian
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magazine for to day day. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
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Thank you for listening, and have a great day.