CALCUTTA: Over 200,000 people jammed central Calcutta on August 16 as the former capital of the British Raj began its 300th birthday party.
Leaders of the Communist government of West Bengal state of which India’s second biggest city is the capital shed ideology for the day and clambered aboard Rajera horse drawn streetcars.
Office workers jammed arched windows and balconies to listen to Speeches and watch the spectacle. Thousands stood on building ledges and rooftops in the squalid sprawling city of 12 million.
Calcutta has had a bad name almost from the time Job Chamock pitched his tent at a place
called Kalikata on a fork of the Ganges River. It soon became the headquarters of the East India Company which laid the foundations of British rule.
Rudyard Kipling loathed the city during the days as. reporter in India. He wrote a series of essays about Calcutta called, “The City of Dreadful Night.” CALCUTTA: Over 200,000 people jammed central Calcutta on August 16 as the former capital of the British Raj began its 300th birthday party.
Leaders of the Communist government of West Bengal state of which India’s second biggest city is the capital shed ideology for the day and clambered aboard Rajera horse drawn streetcars.
Office workers jammed arched windows and balconies to listen to Speeches and watch the spectacle. Thousands stood on building ledges and rooftops in the squalid sprawling city of 12 million.
Calcutta has had a bad name almost from the time Job Chamock pitched his tent at a place
called Kalikata on a fork of the Ganges River. It soon became the headquarters of the East India Company which laid the foundations of British rule.
Rudyard Kipling loathed the city during the days as. reporter in India. He wrote a series of essays about Calcutta called, “The City of Dreadful Night.”
Article extracted from this publication >> August 25, 1989
