History

When the British grew tired of the charms of the trading town of Hooghly in 1686, they moved downstream to three villages - Kolikata, Sutanuti and Gobindapur. Led by Job Charnock, an English merchant, the established a factory at Sutanuti on August 24, 1690, the date accepted as the foundation day of modern Calcutta. The British then went on to build a single post out of the three villages. Ten years later, a fort was built near what is today known as BBD Bag and the consolidated city of Calcutta was set up.

In 1707, Calcutta became a separate presidency under the control of the directors of The East India Company. In 1717, Mughal emperor Aurangazeb's grandson Farrukh Siyar gave the Company duty-free trading rights in Bengal for a yearly payment of Rs 3,000. Calcutta became an important port and trading centre.

The rapid growth of Kolkata attracted the attention of the nawab of Murshidabad, Siraj-ufd-Daulah, who attacked it in 1756 and won the city from the British. Most of the British inhabitants escaped, but nearly 146 of them were captured and imprisoned in a narrow cell. Only 26 survived the incident which went down in history as the Black Hole tragedy. A year later, in 1757, Calcutta was recaptured by Robert Clive, who also captured the French settlement of Chandernagore. He tempted Siraj's uncle Mir Jafar to ally with him. Betrayed by his own men in the Battle of Plassey, Siraj-ud-Daulah was assassinated in Murshidabad.

In the late 18th century, Calcutta turned into a prime trading centre and opened up to better infrastructure and advanced education. Calcutta became the centre of what would develop into the Bengal Renaissance, spawning many of India's reform movements. With resentment towards the East India Company growing, it was only a matter of time before the first strains of rebellion broke out. In 1857, Mangal Pandey, a sepoy with the Indian troops, shot his senior officer at Barrackpore near Calcutta, in an event that was to soon develop into the Sepoy Mutiny. The revolt spread through the country, but was quelled by the British who then assumed complete control of India and declared Calcutta the Imperial Capital.

A strong national awakening now took shape in Calcutta. On October 16, 1905, Lord Curzon, the then Governor General of Bengal, partitioned Bengal. This move was intended to stamp out growing nationalist sentiment, but it had the opposite effect. Calcutta became the hub of the Indian independence movement. The Partition was revoked in 1911, and the capital of India shifted to New Delhi.

However, with the Partition of the country in 1947, Calcutta became home to thousands of refugees fleeing their former homes in East Pakistan. More refugees poured into the city with the Bangladesh independence movement in 1971. Kolkata was now a city almost bursting at its seams.
In 2001, Calcutta was officially renamed Kolkata.


Culture

It's the most laid-back city in the world. Yet, if you start your trip to Calcutta with a walk down the "lungs of the city" - the sprawling Maidan - as early as 5 in the morning, you'll find people walking, jogging, stretching, and catching up with one another.

It's the home of a mind-boggling array of sweets and dishes. Yet, it isn't out of place to find a Bengali enjoying his morning cuppa with a handful of humble puffed rice.

It's difficult to define the culturescape of Calcutta to a tourist, because it begins with the first sip of early-morning tea, poured out into a saucer and sipped noisily, with raucous exclamations of delight. Kolkata is a wonderful mirror of the Bengalis who call it home - volatile poets, sensitive artists and romantic men and women. It's the city of the artsy, the quaint, the intellectual - indeed, of anyone with an enormous zest for life.

For the traveler in Calcutta, the best way to enjoy the culture of the city is to find a friend there and sit down for an adda - local parlance for a chat session. This chat is conducted, not on dinky online messengers, but in the comfort of someone's living room, in the smoky confines of a coffee house, on the steps of a college, at the bus stop, at the corner of the daily market… just about anywhere two or more people can get together. And what do they talk about? Politics, sports, religion, books, art, films, music, the news, food… just about everything under the sun is worth talking about for the Calcuttan. Don't be stunned by arguments - though Calcuttans are passionate about most things, addas never end on an ugly note.

If you're traveling to Calcutta for the first time and want to experience the music here, you might find an aspiring singer in every home. A good evening of culture should see you soak in the spirit of Rabindranath Tagore, Uday Shankar, Jamini Roy and Satyajit Ray.

Food is Calcutta's greatest indulgence. Bengalis love to eat, and their great hosts. Every meal ends with the choicest of dessert, and Calcutta's range of sweets can leave you quite winded! Every district in the state has a sweet that is unique to it! Calcutta is also great for junk-food lovers, though a tourist in Calcutta would do well to avoid these.

Festivals are an intrinsic part of the city - more a socio-cultural phenomenon than a religious one. Besides these, Calcutta is also home to a variety of fairs, film fests, music conferences and folk fairs. It's also home to a cosmopolitan crowd - Marwaris, Parsis, Anglo Indians, Jews, a smattering of Armenians and the merry people of China Town all call Kolkata their city of joy.

For the tourist, Kolkata holds a plethora of places to see. Museums, galleries, heritage buildings, amusement parks, temples, churches, synagogues - there's something for every kind of tourist in Calcutta.