Kolkata’s historical journey started out as a unit of three small villages including Kalikata a small fishing village; near a temple to Kali, the fierce Hindu goddess who rules over time or Kaal, and the consort of Shiva. The earliest known mention of Kalikata is believed to be recorded in the 15th-century Bengali text ‘Manasa Vijay’ (1495) by Bipradas Pipilai, a poet. Pipilai describes the visit of a legendary merchant Chand Sadagar alighting here to worship at the Kalighat temple.

The other two villages were Sutanuti, a weaver’s village and Gobindapur, belonging to a merchant family who were devoted Vaishnavites.

Following the advent of Colonial rule, Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001), grew into a hub of Indian enlightenment and produced leading thinkers, writers and reformers. It produced a class of educated and westernised Indians who took up cudgels against centuries-old ignorance and made efforts to make the West’s knowledge of science accessible to the masses.

The British and beyond

To compete with the French and Portuguese, traders in the English East India Company decided on Kalikata as the site for their own headquarters or fort, in 1696. Land was acquired from a local landlord who himself had received it by the patronage of Raja Man Singh, during the reign of emperor Jahangir (1605-1627).

The young and defiant Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah routed British forces at Calcutta in 1756 and renamed Calcutta to Alinagar after his grandfather Alivardi Khan. During the siege, a group of European prisoners were locked up in a small barrack leading to their death, an incident which came to be known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was only a year later that Robert Clive recaptured the city, and after that, the British remained the rulers of the city for the next nearly three centuries, and Calcutta itself was the capital of British India till 1911.

The economic and social history of the city was marked by a critical period of growth, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, and an influx of persons from different castes, classes and occupations, responding to the growing urbanisation and availability of employment opportunities.

The fight for women’s rights

Simultaneously, the interaction of the city and its elites with colonial power and their exposure to ideas of enlightenment precipitated what has been termed as the ‘Bengal Renaissance that led to social and cultural reform, the emergence of the bhadralok who left an indelible mark on the politics and culture of the state, and also the birth of the some of the most radical thinkers in India in the last few centuries. The women’s question, for instance, becomes a crucial part of the discourse on modernity.

Some of the most radical reform movements to emerge from colonial Bengal were those that protested the committing of violence against women in various forms, ranging from Sati, or the killing of widows by forcing them to immolate themselves in the funeral pyre of their deceased husbands, to child marriage. Rammohan Roy (1772-1833), who is remembered as the Father of Indian renaissance was one of the first Indians to publicly advocate for remarriage of widows, and call for a complete prohibition on the practice of Sati.

It was due to his efforts that the British enacted the Bengal Sati Regulation or Regulation XVII of 1829 which banned Sati. Less than three decades later the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act 1856 was passed. The reform movements spread across India and eventually, the third major gender-based legislation was passed: prohibiting the custom of child marriage in 1929. While Sati has nearly disappeared for good the other two remain social malaises, where child marriage remains worryingly prevalent in pockets across the country, and widows remain ostracised and shunned by their families.

It wasn’t just men fighting for women’s rights.

For Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) a notable icon of feminist literature, a reformer of Bengali Muslim society and a pioneer of women’s empowerment, education was the best tool for empowerment. She started a school to educate girls in Calcutta in 1911 known as the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School, which is still in operation. In 1916, she also founded the Muslim Women’s Association or the Anjuman-e-Khwateen-e-Islam to provide financial and educational support to empower poor Bengali Muslim women.

These movements, naturally, had profound effects, which began to challenge the hegemonic beliefs that dichotomised men as naturally belonging to the public sphere and women to the domestic one.

The first shot of the 1857 Rebellion

A year later, at Barrackpore, just outside Calcutta, Mangal Pandey fired the first shot of the 1857 sepoy rebellion. Both Hindu and Muslim soldiers were incensed by the increasing British meddling in their religious, and therefore ‘internal’ affairs. The rebellion was put down brutally and the British crown took over the affairs of India by deposing the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. However, during these turbulent times reformers in Kolkata continued to crusade against religious obscurantism; condemning polygamy, denouncing casteism, and advocating for the right of Hindu widows to remarry. The city’s history, therefore, remains closely interwoven with its gender struggles, led by its reformers.

Radha Gobind Kar, the founder of the hospital, which has become the site of the latest upheaval in Bengal, was himself a social reformer, and part of that generation of Indians who adopted English education but ensured that the fruits of their own success reached the common masses. Kar, a medical doctor, founded the Calcutta School of Medicine in 1886, both as a nationalist act as well as an astute business venture. Here, classes were conducted in Bengali instead of English and top administrative posts were headed by Indians instead of Englishmen. He sought to make healthcare more accessible to the public and worked closely with figures like Sister Nivedita to ensure treatment for the poor during a plague outbreak.

Kolkata has been the nerve centre for cultural and social reform movements since the early modern period. The irony of this tragic incident, then, remains for all to see.

HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal