A campaign to save Kolkata’s architectural legacy, reflected in the city’s unique and colourful neighbourhoods or ‘paras,’ has gone international with the launch of a website dedicated to the cause.
The plea to retain the distinctive middle class abodes that are seen as crucibles of cosmopolitan modernity began with a series of articles in 2012, and came centre stage when author Amit Chaudhuri wrote to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in mid-2015. The website, cal-legacies.com, was unveiled earlier this week at Jadunath Bhavan Museum & Resource Centre, once the house of historian Jadunath Sarkar.
The website is seen as a window to timeless residential neighbourhoods and an opportunity for renewal and reuse of such properties, which would otherwise be brought down. There is a picture gallery presenting the old. Articles on the initiative along with letters written by Amit Chaudhuri and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, and the genesis of the Calcutta Architectural Legacies with its CAL Mentor Group are also featured.
Threat from the new
At the heart of the campaign is the phenomenon of heritage houses being replaced by apartments. It was witnessed on Elgin Road (Lala Lajpat Rai Sarani) and Shakespeare Sarani. Hindustan Park and Sarat Bose Road also found their old world charm giving way to the new. Lake Terrace and Old Ballygunge are other examples.
“I can’t think of any such website for any other city, anywhere in the world, leave alone India. This is a first website of its kind,” Mr. Chaudhuri told The Hindu .
OLD GOLD: A typical residence from another era that Calcutta Architectural Legacies wants to conserve.
The author said the aim is to create the right conditions for conservation and for introduction of legislation to protect old houses.
Tapati Guha Thakurta, Director, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, who joined others backing the initiative, describes Kolkata as the “epitome of colonial and nationalist modernity of the 19th and 20th centuries.”
“One of the quintessential and unique features of Calcutta as a modern city is reflected through its paras or neighbourhood,” she said, adding that ‘paras’ in Kolkata were “most understudied”.
Explaining how houses are inseparable from the city’s history, Mr. Chaudhuri says Kolkata is a “city born in the era of the modern and it is in these houses that modernity lived.”
OLD GOLD: A typical residence from another era that Calcutta Architectural Legacies wants to conserve.
“When we look at Calcutta’s history we are not looking at kings, queens or religious symbols, forts or palaces: everything that marks the pre-modern. We are looking at modern houses that often go beyond landmarks to ordinary residences,” he said.
Modernity is seen as the period in which ordinary and middle class houses were marked by a particular idea of space, and they introduced a mix of European and Bengali architectural characteristics and art décor.
The website, which invites citizens to join the cause, also raises the larger issues of how to engage with urban spaces. Even though the initiative lays stress on “renewal and reuse over destruction”, it also raises concerns about gentrification - when wealthy people buy these houses and opt for “boutiquefication,” when such houses turn boutique.
“Calcutta is very far away from those dangers but it is important for us to think what the most innovative or creative way is, to use these spaces,” Mr Chaudhuri said.
OLD GOLD: A typical residence from another era that Calcutta Architectural Legacies wants to conserve.
