Abstract
The legacy of colonial spatial hegemony in Kolkata is investigated here
with focus on the idea of public space particularly, the open
maidan, defined by predominantly colonial buildings. This former
centrepiece of British spatial expression of authority and pomp is
appropriated by diverse uses but the edges can be read as a built record
of the city’s tryst with colonial rule for 200 years. Evolving from a
strictly Palladian palette to a more accommodating Imperial
Indo-Saracenic, the continuity of colonial vocabulary is only rarely
broken by modern buildings. Parallel situations in other British
colonies e.g. the padang in Singapore, have undergone
considerable redefinition and re-articulation, often consciously
undermining the erstwhile hegemonic position. The paper would trace the
ambivalent image of the maidan over the years, to uncover, albeit
partially, the patterns to which the colonial, post-colonial and even
the neo-liberal State limits itself in imagining this heterogeneous
space.
The evolving socio-political imagination of the maidan and in
that the cityscape would be traced on the basis of how media has
captured it at critical historical junctures, the samples varying across
time and across media. Maidan as a backdrop of riots, rallies and
atrocious human sufferings in the wake of the Partition of India would
be captured from newspaper clippings and narratives. Post-independence
nation coming to terms with modernization and subsequent
characterization of the maidan as a site for civic unrest, a
first of a kind public space for sports clubs, picnics, fairs- an
embodiment of personal freedom- the urban other- would be understood
from stills from Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy and the Calcutta Trilogy.
The attempt here would be to look for broader patterns of postcolonial
urbanism by specific focus on evolving socio-political re-imaginings of
colonial urban public spaces.