Walking back on the tram track

Calcutta grew faster than the East India Company ever imagined it would. By the mid 19thcentury, the posh parts of the city were dotted with ornate mansions and palaces. However, there were no cars. The affluent chose horse drawn carriages, buggies and palanquins for their commute; the rest walked.

In February of 1873, tramcars were introduced to the city. Drawn by horses, they covered a distance of 3.9 kilometres between present day Armenian Ghat Street and Sealdah. The service flopped as it wasn’t patronised well and was discontinued on November 20th of the same year.

Seven years later, tram cars returned to the city with a metre gauge track being laid on the same route running through Dalhousie Square, Bow Bazaar Street and Strand Road. Inaugurated by Viceroy George Fredrick Samuel Robinson, commonly known as Lord Ripon, the tram services started afresh on November 1, 1880 with the first tram depot opening in Kalighat in 1881. Starting a tram service was a part of the British government’s expanding industrialization of their colonies. To formalise the initiative, a company called Calcutta Tram Company Limited (CTC) was registered in London on December 22, 1880. More routes were added and by 1882, steam locomotives were used to haul the tramcars. Trams was gaining ground.

By the end of the nineteenth century, CTC emerged as a profit-making company and owned 166 tramcars, 1000 horses and seven steam locomotives. However, the Afghan horses, which pulled these heavy tramcars could not bear the heat and humidity of Calcutta, and therefore quickly died. This was a hazard for the growing tram company and might have been one of reasons that led to the electrification of the commuting system. Consequently, Asia’s first electric tram car went on the road on 27 March, 1902 from Esplanade to Kidderpore in the west. It’s the only route that the government of West Bengal, which discontinued the service in September this year, has promised to retain.

Tramcars were once integral to the city and one of its most identifiable icons. They witnessed major historic events from Bengal’s proposed partition in 1905 to the Brahmo Samaj Movement, India’s independence, Partition riots, insurrections, and political changes until, in 1971, the first tram route closed down.

All along, tramcars have been like a welcoming friend, a safe haven for aspiring novelists, lovers seeking privacy, fatigued elderly people, and spritely school kids. Bengali cinema designated trams their preferred ‘love at first sight’ spot with a charming Uttam Kumar and doe-eyed Suchitra Sen often first catching each other’s eye in a tramcar. Ray too seemed to have a soft corner for them. In Parash Pathar (1958, The Philosopher’s Stone), he uses tram grids and tracks in the opening credit sequence to depict a post-colonial city, the trapeze of human life, while in Apur Sansar (1959, The World of Apu), Apu is smitten by tram rides. For Apu, the tram stood for all that was new and wondrous.

Beyond daydreaming and cinema

Offscreen, Calcutta’s tramcars were at the heart of Bengal’s trade unionism, sometimes “ready victims” of frenzied mob violence. The earliest reports of trams being targeted was in October 1907 during a Swadeshi rally. When police repressed the rally, the crowd attacked trams damaging 29 of them.

In June 1920, tramway men who were demanding a pay hike had their first spontaneous strike. It paralysed the city. The CTC came down on the workers and two drivers were sacked. The strike, however, continued until 1 October with 2500 drivers and conductors staying off work. Finally, on 3rd October, the management agreed to a hike pay form Rs19 to ₹24, supply free uniforms and reinstate the dismissed drivers. The victory, led by Congress activists, led to the founding of the workers union called Calcutta Tramways Employees Union (CTEU).

Trade unionism continued well into the post-Independence years. By the 1950s, the tram workers union had become robust. So, when the CTC, supported by the West Bengal government, announced a fare hike for its second class on June 25, 1953, the biggest protests in Calcutta’s tram history broke out. While the opposition parties including the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Forward Bloc were quick to form a Resistance or Pratirodh (Bangla) Committee, the CTEU lodged protests. Several rallies took place. Swadhinata (Freedom), the CPI organ, called the decision “anti poor” and most “uncalled” for. Police repression, and the arrests of leaders and the general public continued throughout. One of the leaders who was arrested was Jyoti Basu. Seeing the deterioration of the situation and the relentless police atrocities, some parliamentarians who lived in Calcutta telegrammed Nehru seeking his personal intervention.

What began as a trade union strike, soon transformed into a people’s movement with the calls to shun tramcars. On July 15, 1953 one of the biggest strikes in West Bengal’s history took place with 10 lakh people participating against the fare hike. Police open fired on the protestors.

Fast forward to 1977 and the erstwhile opposition party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), came to power with Jyoti Basu as the newly elected chief minister. The very next year, the Left government closed the popular Esplanade-Planetarium-Hazra Park service as the first Metro Rail line was along that same route. Though the tram route reopened a year later, several others closed down in the coming years. Each time, the stated reason was that the city needed better infrastructure including flyovers or bus terminals. By then, citizens mostly chose to travel by bus or on the metro with only those with ample time at their disposal boarding trams. Of course, the loyal working class still used trams to carry goods, especially for short distances.

Surprisingly, unlike when they were in the opposition, the Left government did not care much for Calcutta’s trams. While some amendments were made with one or two routes opening up, including a new terminus at Ultodanga (a neighbourhood in present day north-east Kolkata), the tram system was generally considered a great burden, much like the upkeep of a retired working elephant.

By the time Mamata Banerjee’s government came to power in 2011, several tram routes had already been closed down, with terminus/ depots abandoned or turned into bus terminals. The Kolkata Metro ruled the roost. Banerjee followed her predecessor’s at least when it came to tramcars. So when the official announcement about discontinuing trams came, it wasn’t really a shocker.

Epilogue

Kolkata trams have been doomed for a while now. They were sidelined by systematic displacement and by land grabbers. The end for the service came because of the tunnel vision of the political parties that have ruled West Bengal, citizens’ ignorance of their public space rights, and a lack of sensitization about the environmental crisis, including sound pollution. Additionally, stakeholders did not highlight the value of a slower commute even as other cities across the world continue to retain tram systems.

Paris, Melbourne, Vienna, Zurich, Istanbul and Hong Kong, which could have easily discarded trams have chosen to keep them in operation. In fact, in these cities, trams are actually favoured over other modes of commute.

Zurich began operating trams in 1882 while Vienna’s service started three years later. Vienna’s tramway is a part of Austria’s national network, one of the largest in the world covering 178 kilometres across 1000 plus stations. Meanwhile, trams in Paris ferry 83 million passengers annually making the city the runner-up awardee for large city tram networks. Needless to say, authorities in these cities invested in modernizing their historic tram network.

In Kolkata, a citizen’s group called Calcutta Tram Users Association is protesting against the government’s decision to wind up the few tram routes that still ply across city. The million-dollar question: will they get unconditional public support as pro-tram protestors did in 1920 or in 1953?

Nilosree Biswas is an author, filmmaker, columnist who writes about history, culture, food and cinema of South Asia, Asia and its diaspora.