When Calcutta became Alinagar

It was June 1756 and Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula, the Emperor of Bengal, was furious with the East India Company for constructing a fort in present day Kolkata without his permission.

Kolkata then was not the City of today. It was just a cluster of villages- Gobindapur, Kalikata, Sutanuti and Chitpur. However, it an was important trading centre for the British and slowly it also gained currency as a military post.

The British wanted to secure their trade and after obtaining permission from the Mughals went ahead with the construction of a fort.

Siraj-ud-Daula did not take kindly to this action and he asked the British to demolish the structure called Fort William. When the British demurred, he marched at the head of a vast army and defeated the British.

On June 15, the Bengal army crossed the Hoogly and the next day it stood outside the ramparts of Fort William. Captain Minchin was the British commandant of Calcutta.

On June 18, Siraj-ud- Daula launched an attack on the British outposts. The British losses were very heavy. The British then decided to send women and children to a safer place. The asked two of their supposedly bravest officers-Manningham and Frankland -to escort women and children on board the company's ship Dodaly.

Manningham and Frankland, who were also members of the council of the fort,, did escort the women and children to the ship but they refused to come back to land. They then held talks with the ship captain, Young, and moved away.

The next morning, the remaining British troops found that several other ships had followed the example of  Dodaly and vanished in the night. The panic-stricken Brotosh troops led by their Governor Drake, captain-commandant Minchin, captain Grant and a large number of soldiers deserted their post and fled in the remaining vessels. Thus, the defenders were left to the fate of the vast Bengal army.

It is here that Holwell comes in. Since he was senior, he was appointed acting governor and entrusted with the command. He redistributed the force . This was not of any consequence as the British were easily overcome.

Holwell and others decided to escape and sent for the ship St George. Unfortunately, the nervous ship captain drove the vessel into the shallow waters and the ship became struck.   By 5 p.m., everything bar the victory celebrations was over.

Siraj-ud-Daula entered the fort with his soldiers. The British, many of them badly wounded, were bound with ropes and brought before the Nawab. Holwell surrendered and this perhaps rankled him and led him to fabricate the large number of deaths at the Black Hole.

Meanwhile, Siraj-ud-Daula had ordered his soldiers to untie the British prisoners. Since many buildings in the fort were on fire due to the heavy bombardment,  the prisoners were shifted to safety of a small cell built by the British. This structure was near the Maidan (in Kolkata) but it has been demolished in later decades.

A few British soldiers and even Indians prisoners of war died of suffocation. A British soldier, J. Z. Holwell, who survived, spread a blatant lie that 146 people had suffocated. Anyway, since this article will not deal with this issue, I will stop here and get back to the story about the last independent ruler of Bengal-Siraj-ud-Daula.

By then, the British had renamed their settlement as Calcutta. When the British were thrown out of their settlement and many British buildings, including the Governor’s mansion (this was built on the place where the Raj Bhavan stands today), St Annes and other buildings were razed to the ground.

The first task of the new ruler of Calcutta was to rename it as Alinagar. Siraj-ud-Daula chose this name as Ali Vardi Khan was his grandfather. Ali Vardi Khan (1671 – 1756) was the Nawab of Bengal from 1740–1756. He toppled the Nasiri Dynasty of the Nawabs and then took over Bengal. A Shia Muslim, he made Mushirabad his capital. He died of  dropsy in 1756 and he was succeeded by his grandson, Siraj-ud-Daula.

Siraj-ud-Daula had great respect for his grandfather. Since Ali Vardi Khan was already buried in Khushbagh, he decided to rename Calcutta in his grandfather’s honor.

Thus, Caclutta got a new name and soon it came to be known as Alinagar. The maximum damage that Siraj-ud-Din inflicted on his new city was in the locality of Kalikata. The only Indian building or locality to suffer some damage was Burrabazar.

By then, the British evacuees and soldiers had set up camp 64 kms downstream of the Hoogly at a place called Falta. They remained there until British troops led by Robert Clive arrived in Bengal in January 1757.

What followed was a series of skirmishes between the troops of Siraj-ud-Daula and the British before it escalated into the Battle of Plassey. The battle saw the defeat of Siraj-ud-Daula and the rise of the British Empire.

On their part, the British built a stronger and much safer Fort William (the present structure) and renamed Alinagar as Calcutta after they overcame a small garrison of the Bengal Kingdom. This name stood for several centuries before the name was again changed to Kolkata.

Unfortunately, only a handful of people are aware that Calcutta was once Alinagar.

The British fort from where not even a single shot was fired

This is one of the major forts built by the British in India more than two hundred and fifty years ago. It quickly became the centre of trade and commerce and of course the military. In a few years time, it also became part of the City  that was the first capital of India.

The fort stands even today, a tribute to the British engineers and planners. Yet, this fort has a dubious distinction. It is perhaps the only fort in India and one of a handful in the world that never saw even a single shot fired.

This is the Fort William in Kolkata which is built on the banks of the Hoogly, a major distributary of the River Ganges. The fort took shape during the early years of the Bengal Presidency of  British India.

Kolkata then was the major military, trade and commerce centre of the British and the Governor-Generals of India were based from here.

The fort was named after  King William the third of England and Ireland. Even today, most of the fort is visible from the Maidan which is a vast open space in front of the walled structure. Once upon a time, the Maidan used to be a part of the Fort and it is now the largest urban park in Kolkata.

By the way, there are actually tow For Williams. The old one was built in 1696 by the British East India Company under the supervision of John Goldsborough.

This was the fort where the infamous Blackhole incident occurred.

In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, attacked the fort and conquered Kolkata. He then changed its name to Alinagar.

The British then began fearing another attack by the Indians and this led them to build a new and stronger fort in the Maidan. It was started by Robert Clive in 1758 and  completed in 1781 at a cost of two million pounds.

The Fort William we see today is one of  the biggest forts built by the British and it covers  70.9 hectares. It is this structure that has the distinction of being the only fort in the world from which not a single shot was fired.

Today this fort is managed by the Indian Army and civilians are generally not allowed inside. This is also the headquarters of Eastern Command and it has provisions for accommodating 10,000 army personnel.

Much of  the Fort and its buildings are unchanged except for the  St. Peter's Church which used to serve as a chaplaincy center for the British no longer exists.

The Old fort was repaired and was used as a customs house from 1766 onwards. The New Fort is still in use as described above.

The new fort is built of brick and mortar in the shape of an irregular octagon with five of its sides facing the land and three towards the Hoogly. The design is in the shape of a star, which is believed to be best suited defence against cannon fire.

The fort was  surrounded by a dry moat 9 metres deep and 15 meters broad. It has six main gates- Chowringhee, Plassey Calcutta, Water Gate, St Georges and the Treasury Gate.

If you want to visit the fort, you have to obtain permission from the Army. Well, what do I have to say about connectivity of Kolkata. There are any number of trains and flights from all parts of India.

There are a lot of see in Koltata. I will cover them in another article.