Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny Swati
Chattopadhyay. Routledge, New York, 2005, pp. 314 (ISBN 0-415-34359-3) (hbk).
This book provides an original, groundbreaking approach to excavating dominant
modes of representation used by British colonialists and the indigenous Bengalis in their claims to the colonial city of Calcutta (spelt Kolkata since 2001) in eastern India. The division of chapters in the book, five in all respectively The colonial uncanny, The limits of white town, Locating mythic selves, Telling stories and Death in public is interesting and innovative and makes reading effortless and invigorating. The author deftly highlights the paradoxical indigenous Bengali claims to a vision of the city of Calcutta pitted against imperial claims. She asserts that the key problem of Calcuttas urban literature is the uncritical acceptance of British sources and the re-circulation of the colonizers ideas about the Indian landscape (p. 6). There is an admirable exposition of the elite landscape based on key novels of 1823, 1840 and 1930. A distinction is made between official/colonial urban discourses and the indigenous urban discourse. The rich intertextualities are extremely useful in presenting a varied image of the constructed discourse on Calcutta. Telling stories presents the intricacies of the mid-nineteenth century literary expos on the changing fabric of colonial Calcutta. Death in public brings to the fore the important dimension of how gender was negotiated in the urban spaces of Calcutta and reinforced the colonial uncanny in the moral topography of colonial Calcutta. The analysis provides a powerful departure from the British imaginations of the city. Some caveats, however, need addressing. While the author shows how different forms of urban space were produced out of the contradictions of colonialism and the deep ambivalence of being modern (p. 13), the evidence is not clear as to how urban spaces became sites of contestations between AngloIndians and the Bengali middle class. Was there any litigation in this respect? Are there Book reviews 241 2007 The Authors Journal compilation 2007 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd signs of gentrification of urban space in the white town area whereby acquisition of land and property there by the Bengali upper middle class had led to an exodus of AngloIndians? Is there evidence of clustering of settlements in this respect? Indeed, the idea of the separation of black spaces and the white town was more than a simple conceptual separation but also a physical one, demarcated by space, both notional and real. The everyday experience that the author purports reinforces this separation. The same principles continue, even in the postcolonial physical space among Muslims and Hindus in India and between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The explanation in the book merely attempts to simplify the historical and communal realities of nineteenthcentury Calcutta. Perhaps a sequestered approach to historiography of the city of Calcutta is problematic as there is little appreciation of the chronology in the making of the city. Can discourse claim ascendancy over the facts? A lack of clarity regarding the authorship of the city is also problematic for instance, whose city was Calcutta in the nineteenth century? Did the city belong to the Bengalis or the colonialists, to the traders or the bhadralok (an elitist social class of clerical and petty officials that emerged under the impact of colonial rule)? The book does not provide con- firmation of this slippage of ownership if any, despite efforts to decry the non- existence of black and white townships. While the innovative use in interpretations of Thomas Daniells depictions of Calcutta is welcome and refreshing, the idea that the focus was largely of the white township may seem partial; other depictions by him may not necessarily support the same conclusion. Indeed, the author herself uses the same narratives of missionaries and travellers as authentic representation of the ideational space. The author may have read more than necessary in the maps and texts, thereby conflating obliging native figures with infected bodies in the health maps (pp. 745). It is surprising not to see reference to classic works by Sir Herbert H. Risley or Christopher Pinney in the discussion on health maps. While the author does mention the efforts of the new rich in trying to become part of the colonial gentry, the related issue of the white town being an aloof minority is not adequately acknowledged. We would need to know what the social condition of the British community in Bengal was at this time in order to make parallel assertions about the native gentry in Calcutta. It would have made more sense to elaborate on the changes in property ownership from the British to wealthy natives in the nineteenth century. The analysis is silent on a crucial historical fact that (despite claims of a disproportionate part of the rates being spent in the white township) even white ratepayers seemed to get very little for their money, as J.H. Stocqueler had recorded in his Hand Book for India and Egypt (1841: pp. 212, 346; also cited in Marshall, 2000: 310). By what mechanism did the architectural styles move from the white towns to the black towns? Indeed the very binary that the author works hard to dismantle is drawn upon in her own arguments. Any discussion on the evolution of maps of Calcutta becomes disconcerting when the discourse jumps from 1887 to 1892 to 1791 (p. 82). Lack of rigour in maintaining the sanctity of the chronology in discussing historical maps raises questions. Who claims ownership of urban space of Calcutta? While the idea that Indians were shaping the landscape by a different agenda of power and social relations and would not be easily persuaded despite the financial benefit they could reap as landlords (p. 88) is easily asserted, it is more difficult to provide systematic evidence that pecuniary interest and the possibility of rent seeking were not a temptation for the majority of bhadraloks in this urban milieu. Further, the authors contention that Registrar- General of Census, Beverleys point of view turned census-taking into a mode of unchallenged authority (p. 137) is not
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