While the skeleton of the original remains, the building’s external structures have been extended and remodelled with the changing intentions of the city’s rulers for more than 230 years

For decades, bright-eyed Indian schoolchildren leapt up to answer the question “Who is the founder of Calcutta?” with the name: Job Charnock. But this question is now more complex. For one, since 2001 the city has been officially called Kolkata, as it always has been in Bengali. And, in 2003, a panel of historians appointed by the high court averred that the city had no single founder, but instead named several Indians and Englishmen – including Charnock. Regardless of how they choose to reckon with colonial baggage, few would disagree that the urban history of Kolkata is inseparably linked with the activities of the British in the area. One structure in particular, right in the middle of the city, has stood witness to the growth of Kolkata since 1780: the Writers’ Building.

The Writers’ Building (or Writers’) has a deep connection with all three ruling entities the city has had. Early in its life, it housed clerks of the East India Company (EIC), which seeded the city with a trading post and later grew to rule large parts of India. Then, in the 19th century, Calcutta became the capital of British India, and Writers’ served as the secretariat of Bengal state. Later, the building experienced flashes of the Indian independence movement when a British official was assassinated under its roof in 1930. After independence, it continued to house the state government. For the administrative power it holds, the depth of history it has seen and the fact that it’s the usual end point of Kolkata’s many protest marches, Writers’ is the ideal building through which to look at the city. Through its change and growth over its 236 years standing, Writers’ also acts as a monumental barometer of sorts, reflecting the intentions and predicaments of its rulers. It’s structure went from plain and functional during the early years of the East India Company, to ornate and overbearing during the British Raj, to somewhat messy and overwhelmed as a newly independent India found its feet.





In 1690, before Writers’ or any other building of note existed, an administrator of the East India Company – Job Charnock – arrived at a village named Sutanuti, near the mouth of the Hooghly river, and decided the location was ideal for a trading post. In 1698, Sutanuti, along with two nearby villages, were bought by the EIC from a local landowner. The settlement’s factory was at first stealthily fortified – and then more overtly – until it became Fort William. Before it was shifted in 1758, the fort stood just across the road to the west from Writers’.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The veranda and Ionic columns of the Writers’ Building. Photograph: Alamy

By the middle of the 18th century, the city of Calcutta had begun to take shape, with an estimated population of 100,000 who were mostly Indians. By then, Fort William had warehouses, an armoury, and quarters for EIC officials, as well as a church, hospital and private homes of British landowners and merchants located just outside the fort, in an area known as “White Town”. To the north was “Black Town” where the Indian population lived, with Indo-Portugese and Armenian traders residing in the areas in between. When houses in White Town began to be bought by Indians, there were complaints, documented in the records of Fort William, of “black people having intermixed themselves among the English houses” leading to “nuisances and disturbances to several of the English inhabitants”. Maps show that for around 20 years from 1742 onwards, White Town was fenced off using palisades.

The EIC’s operations were also becoming increasingly militarised, ostensibly to protect mercantile interests, though this would also facilitate what William Dalrymple recently termed the “straightforward pillage of Bengal”. By 1777, the EIC’s large private army had marginalised other European players such as the French and the Dutch, and it was de facto ruler of millions of Indians, with Calcutta the centre of its Indian operations.

It was in 1777 that Thomas Lyon, a self-styled builder (who may have formerly been a carpenter in England), was asked to construct a building to house the clerks – or “writers” – of the EIC. At the time of its completion in 1780, the Writers’ Building is believed to have been the first three-storey construction in Calcutta. It occupied one side of what was then called Tank Square, had 19 residential quarters, each with three sets of windows, and was evidently a bit of an eyesore.

“It was a need-based, utilitarian structure. It did not reflect any aesthetic,” explains Dr Madhumita Roy, head of the architecture department at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, which is associated with the ongoing restoration of Writers’. John F Riddick in his History of British India summarises public opinion: “It was not viewed as a success.” It might have been the Writers’ Buildings, too, that Lord Valentia – a British peer who visited India in the early 19th century – had in mind when he wrote to the EIC’s directors, saying India should be ruled “from a palace, not from a counting-house; with the ideas of a prince, not with those of a retail dealer in muslins and indigo.”

Those palaces were eventually built in the 19th century in Calcutta, not far from Writers’. They were often inspired by European structures – the Government House was built along the lines of Kedlestone Hall in Derbyshire, and the gothic high court building was an imitation of the Cloth House in Ypres, Belgium. Later, a new style of building emerged in which gothic and Indian motifs were combined. Though it was not yet evident in this part of the city, Calcutta’s overcrowding had already begun as industry and growing trade from the opening of the Suez canal made migration to the city attractive. Calcutta’s population is estimated to have grown five-fold in the 19th century, with the number of houses increasing by only 14%.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Writers’ Building in BBD Bagh square today. Photograph: Alamy

Writers’ has worn different looks at different points. Roy says: “The skeleton of the original building is still there, but the external structures have changed with the intention of the rulers.” Thomas Lyon’s original was modified to house Fort William College and the government engineering college. The front was dressed up with a long veranda and Ionic columns. Meanwhile the EIC grew to govern all of India, often disastrously for the people. After a large-scale revolt by the EIC’s army in 1857, Queen Victoria replaced the EIC as ruler of India. A new secretariat was needed in Calcutta and Writers’ was picked for expansion.

“The British wanted to give a grand and powerful image to this public institution,” says Roy. So, Writers’ received a makeover in French Renaissance style with edifying statues depicting commerce, justice, science and agriculture, each with an Indian and European practitioner by her side. The statues were resolutely European, perhaps suggesting the direction in which civilisation flowed.

Writers’ retains its name, though the area around it has changed names throughout history. Originally called Tank Square, it was renamed to Dalhousie Square after the governor-general of India, and later renamed to BBD Bagh after the three revolutionaries who killed the British official in 1930.

Extensions to Thomas Lyon’s plain structure over the years ended up creating an unruly maze of 13 interconnected blocks. After several fires in recent years, the chief minister called Writers’ a tinderbox and temporarily moved 3,000 of 4,500 employees to another building across the river. As it happens, the present chief minister Mamata Banerjee came to political prominence in 1993 when police opened fire on a protest march she was leading to Writers’. Today, the building is undergoing restoration work under her watch. The plan is for several of the newer blocks to be demolished. When it was time to shift, Writers’ saw more protest – this time by those who worked there, complaining about the longer commute to the new office.

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