The British left India a long time ago, but the indelible mark they left behind of their over 200-year rule offers plenty of fodder for debate and conjecture for the curious traveller journeying through India.
Here’s a quick walk through of four cities that are deeply connected to the Raj saga in their own special way.
Calcutta: Born to rule
The legendary boast ‘I’m English and I’m born to rule’ appears to carry vestiges of Queen Elizabeth I’s orders to her boys (think Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh) to go and conquer the world. Having learnt of how the Portuguese and the Spanish made successful forays in exploring the globe she sought to find new trade routes and discover new materials for England to import from other countries. She wanted Tudor explorers to sail around the world and enjoy the kind of success achieved by the Portuguese and Spanish explorers. Little wonder the English navy was considered one of the finest in the world from those halcyon days!
Reveling in her own carefully curated legend, Elizabeth ruled an England which grew in confidence and saw the exploration of the New World. 'Sea dogs' like Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596) were known to have plundered Spanish galleons abrim with gold and silver wrested from the New World. There appears to be little shadow of doubt that Elizabeth even funded some of these shady exploits herself.
Elizabeth gave out charters to firms which granted them exclusive trade rights in a given area, in return for a cut of the profits to the Crown. One such was the East India Company, which received a charter to trade in India and the Indian Ocean in 1600.
An interesting scene was playing out in the Indian subcontinent— Exit the East India Company...Enter the Crown! On the Indian subcontinent the rule of the British Crown, under Queen Victoria, lasted from 1858 to 1947. This system of governance was kicked in on 28 June 1858, when the Indian Rebellion of 1957 resulted in the rule of the British East India Company being transferred to the Crown—read Queen Victoria, who was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876.
India was the most glorious jewel in the British Crown— and having reluctantly let it go is something they have never recovered from.
It was the rise and rise of the East India Company, which first came to trade in Madras (Chennai) and the shifted to the Calcutta (Kolkata) straddling the Hoogly River, which brought in a game-changing perspective of its affairs in India. In time what quietly snuck in were dreams of ‘Empire’ as the Company continued to get more and more involved with local politics.
The little fishing village of Kalikata was located some distance from the river port of Hugli from where the British East India Company agent Job Charnock was kicked out by the Mughul officers. He eventually managed to get a foothold by the river by establishing a trading post in Kalikata in 1690.
Over time the British were to transform it into a bustling port city, trouncing rival Dutch and French and other European traders at every turn. The villages of Sutanati, Kalikata, and Gobindapore (later to become part of Calcutta) is where the Indian merchants had set up base for their trading activities.
Fort William, a defensive structure of brick and mud, was built by the British (with a nod from the now more friendly Mughal officers) to protect themselves from the rebellion of 1696, in the nearby district of Burdwan. The area around the Fort became the seat of the British province or the Bengal Presidency.
Nawab Siraj al-Dawlah in 1756, captured the fort and sacked the town. It was the scene of the infamous ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ where many Europeans were incarcerated in a small room in which many of them died. In January 1757 Robert Clive, a Company man, who would rise to one of the founders of British power in India, recaptured Calcutta. With the defeat of the Nawab in the battle of Plassey in the June of 1757 British rule in Bengal became a living reality.
If you can wangle permission for a guided tour of the new Fort William, overlooking the Hugli, it offers a window to the tumultuous events that led to Calcutta becoming the capital of British India by 1772, under the aegis of the first governor-general, Warren Hastings.
That said, you can still enjoy viewings of the historic fort from the outside while exploring its nearby attractions such as the Victoria Memorial, which serves as museum dedicated to Queen Victoria; the Maidan is Kolkata's largest urban green lung; Princep Ghat, was the principle waterway jetty area with many comings and goings in the Raj era; you can enjoy a scenic boat ride on the Hooghly and explore the atmospheric riverside settlements; there’s also the Indian Museum, one of the oldest and largest museums in India. Founded in 1814 in the cradle of the Asiatic Society of Bengal it is stuffed with all manner of memorabilia, artefacts, rare collections of antiques, armour and ornaments, fossils, skeletons, mummies and Mughal paintings— including exhibits from the early days of the Raj. Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 in Calcutta. The endeavour of the Society was to serve as a learning centre for the development of art and culture pertaining to the socio-cultural activities, entertaining people, disseminating knowledge and preserving the cultural as well as natural heritage of mankind for posterity within the geographical limits of Asia.
Delhi: Imperial Posturing
The Civil Lines located around the northern ridge was the nucleus of local British residential life after 1857. Only the Brits could own property in this exclusive area located close to the cantonment. The Victory Memorial that you see here was set up in 1863 as a homage to the officers and administrators who died in the conflict with the Indian rebels in the 1857 mutiny.
At the Durbar of 1911, attended by King George V it was announced that the British had decided upon the transfer of the seat of the government of India from Calcutta to the ancient capital of Delhi.
There was much debate about how it would be presented to the world at large. After all India was the Crown jewel of the British in its colonizing imperatives.
Veering away from the congestion and chaos of the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad, in the wake of the killing and looting during the Uprising, they wanted to create an elegant new imperial capital, envisaged as New Delhi. The colonnaded residential and commercial hub of Connaught Places was projected to serve as a buffer between the two worlds. The onerous task of transforming this grand imperialistic vision into brick and mortar was given to the young architect Edward Lutyens. He roped in architect Herbert Baker as a collaborator in this prestigious project.
Raisina Hill was chosen as the spot to establish the Viceroy’s Residence, the Government House along with the Secretariat buildings, as the seat of power. The new capital, spread across 6000 acres and using marble and red sandstone from Rajasthan for the new buildings, was envisaged to ensure that the imperial authority of British rule was rammed down the throats of the native populace— and the message was clear— that they were here to stay!
As described by David Johnson in A British Empire for the twentieth century: the inauguration of New Delhi, 1931 “… its structures, its design, its rigorously controlled road grid, its monuments commemorating important imperial persons and events were artfully combined to make the capital a new temple of empire, the quintessential statement of what British imperial rule had meant and continued to mean for Britain and for India.”
New Delhi was meant to be a crowning glory of colonial architecture and colonial town planning, a capital that would do justice to the image of the British Empire. Lord Irwin was the first Viceroy to take up residence in the Viceregal Lodge (now Rashtrapati Bhawan) which was inaugurated in 1931. Other Iconic spots were India Gate’s memorial arch, the pedestal and canopy for a royal statue, the fountains along Rajpath, and Edward Vll’s memorial.
Sign up for a guided tour of Delhi from its Raj days to dig deeper into the significance of this imposing imperial posturing as you explore the Church of Redemption, the Parliament House, India Gate, Connaught Place and the elegant tree-lined avenues of Lutyens Delhi with its spacious bungalows and scattering of gardens, parks and fountains.
Shimla: The Raj at Play
The punishing heat of a Delhi summer each year witnessed the Raj administration's escape to the verdant surrounds of the hill station of Shimla (or Simla as it was then known) in the Himalayan foothills.
The trend went back to the 1820s when the officers of the East India Company would hotfoot it to the cool environs of the hamlet of Shayamala, which had less than 50 houses at the time.
With the power changing hands to the Crown the industrious British officialdom went about transforming it a permanent fixture as the Summer Capital of the Raj by 1864. From the Viceroy to the military attachés to countless minions serving the corridors of power— the Raj took over the hill town (now Simla) and made it their own…a little England in the sylvan expanses of the Indian Himalaya.
Shimla as a summer retreat was a hotbed of political machinations, spicy gossip and romantic intrigue, watched and carefully noted by the town’s hard-nosed matrons. Rudyard Kipling, author of Kim, was one such observer of the social foibles of his countrymen —and women, in this secured world which he called a “centre of power as well as pleasure”.
The welter of steamy parties, garden fetes, balls, plays, hunts, lavish picnics at The Glen — as also races, polo games and cricket tournaments at Annandale, the playground of the British, provided plenty of fodder to the hawk-eyed gossips to mull over tea and cucumber sandwiches.
Recapture the rich nuances of the Raj at play as you wander around Scandal Point (commonly associated with the Maharaja of Patiala Bhupinder Singh eloping with the daughter of the British Viceroy in 1892). Little wonder he was banished from Simla, and subsequently, in defiance, established a new summer capital - now famously known as Chail, less than an hour away. However, deeper research into the incident suggests the Maharajah in question was probably his father Rajindra Singh, as Bhupinder himself was about a year old!!! Conjecture, however, is still rife about this intriguing mystery. The Gaiety Theatre, a buzzing hub for amateur theatrics, still holds plays. You can attend mass at Christ Church built by Colonel J. T. Boileau along neo-Gothic lines and consecrated in 1857 to serve Simla’s Anglican British community. On Observatory Hill at Viceregal Lodge (now Rashtrapati Niwas, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study), rewind to the time when hectic parleys by Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian freedom fighters took place about India’s independence in 1947.
Lucknow: A Mutiny That Started to Unravel Everything
Do pencil in a visit to The Residency in Lucknow which witnessed the 87-day siege that shook the very foundations of the British Empire in India. The whiplash against the rebels is something both the British, nor the Indian citizenry, will ever forget. The complex of buildings (now largely in ruins) which served as the residence of British Resident General who was a representative in the court of the Nawab of Awadh, holds two nightly Sound and Light Shows which recapture the horrors and the poignancy of that shattering event.
You can still see the bullet marks and mortar shell shots peppered across the buildings from the exchange of fire between the Indian sepoy rebels and the English officers protecting over 3000 besieged British inhabitants of Lucknow who sought refuge here.
A guided tour of the complex, largely in ruins but well maintained, will also provide a more immersive understanding of the ripples of the Mutiny of 1857 against British rule, in the sunset years of the rule of the Nawabs of Awadh, as Lucknow witnessed it.
Begum Kothi palace complex witnessed severe hand-to-hand fighting with over 700 rebel deaths. Lt. General Colin Campbell, who was dispatched to quell the Indian rebellion with a relief force, arrived too late and found the Residency a ghostly ruin.
Campbell’s men had to first break through Secundra Bagh, a walled enclosure, before they could cut through the rebel lines to reach the Residency. In the fierce fighting that ensued they killed around 2,500 rebels.
The terrified British men, women and children besieged at the Residency were evacuated to Kanpur by Campbell. Having captured the Nawab’s Palace, he set about securing the Residency and repelling counter-attacks on the Alumbagh and his positions north of the Gomti River.
Your travels across India will open up many opportunities to explore the world of the British Raj from many perspectives. If you are a history and culture buff you are bound to come away with many interesting insights on the India-British connect in those tumultuous times.