The 'Baboo' behind the grandest Durga Pujo of Chinsurah
The mega-budget theme pujos of present-day Bengal are not a complete innovation, if you think about it. When it came to spending lakhs, and drawing crowds and attention, the Babu samaj of nineteenth-century Bengal weren't far behind. Europeans were astounded by the lavish expenditure of "Hindoo millionaires" behind the "Doorga Poojah Festival," a lot of which was aimed at impressing and gaining the recognition of the colonial 'masters' itself.
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Among them was Babu Prankrishna Haldar of Chinsurah, or as Europeans endearingly butchered his name as "Prankissen Holdar". A prominent zamindar and socialite, Haldar was known widely for his Anglophilia, wasteful extravagance and philanthropy. His fame and extravagance was reflected in the popular saying-
ধনীর মধ্যে অগ্রগন্য রামদুলাল সরকার
বাবুর মধ্যে অগ্রগন্য প্রাণকৃষ্ণ হালদার ।
(Foremost among the rich is Ramdulal Sarkar
Foremost among the Babus is Prankrishna Haldar)
In the pilgrimage center of Tribeni, he constructed a bridge on river Saraswati for the benefit of the pilgrims wishing to bathe in the river. In Chinsurah, he bought a mansion on the banks of Hooghly (the present-day Mohsin College building) and added a thakurdalan to it (now part of the Hooghly collegiate school). From holding splendid parties and “nautches” to entertain the English, to embracing European tastes, he was truly “a devout admirer of English people and habits”.
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| The Thakurdalan, now part of the Hooghly Collegiate School |
The highlight of his opulence was the grand Durga pujo hosted by him. Any person studying the history of Durga Puja in Bengal has inevitably come across descriptions of his spectacular puja. 19th-century society and the press knew of his knack for entertaining rich Bengalis and Europeans in his house furnished with imported furniture and distributing alms among the poor during Pujo.
Shib Chandra Bose gives us an approximate amount of money he spent on guests. This was a few decades before railways were established between Howrah and Hooghly. Thus guests thus arrived in hired boats that would cost around Rs 4000-5000. The invitation cards printed with gold letters and the design would cost Rs 8-10 each. Bose further states, "(f)or the entertainment of his English friends he used to give ten thousand Rupees to Messrs. Gunter and Hooper, the then public Purveyors of Calcutta". There were provisions for fine dining, wine, refreshments, lodging, and stewards for these esteemed guests. There was also the cost of holding grand "nautches," and advertising it in the Calcutta Gazette. Added to this was of course the cost of Puja and hiring a hundred priests. Haldar spent more than a sum of one lakh on festivities itself. Shib Chandra Bose described Halder’s household during Durga Puja as a cacophony of a hundred chanting priests, alongside constant clanking knives and wine glasses.
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The invitation advertisement published in the Calcutta Gazette |
What stands out as most interesting is that among the deluge of Babus in Kolkata looking for the approval of the English, a man 30 miles north of the city managed to grab the attention of so many Europeans.
But where did the opulence fade away?
The immense display of wealth probably drove Haldar to the verge of ruin, after which he resorted to malpractices. Alas, this path didn't favour him for long.
Shocking the Bengali elite, Prankrishna Halder was arrested in 1829 for forging currency notes. Apparently, Haldar had been printing fake notes in an underground room of his house. In his trial in the Calcutta Supreme Court, the judge declared that he acquired 60 lakh Rs. via forgery. Finally, he was sentenced to seven years of deportation Prince of Wales Island, and his numerous properties auctioned off. These included 8 in Calcutta, 6 in Chinsurah, and 1 in Chandannagar. In 1830, eight other estates/ taluqs of Haldar in Hooghly and 24 Parganas were auctioned off.
The resplendent story of a nouveau riche came crashing down, as all of the Bengali elite watched the highly publicized trial in astonishment. And of course they would, for after the trial of Nandakumar, Prankrishna Haldar was perhaps the first devout Hindu Brahmin of such prominence and such proximity with the English to have undergone such a publicly humiliating trial. The events were carefully covered in the the Calcutta Gazette, which stated in one instance, "the case is certainly a melancholy one, and to some will, we hope, prove warningly instructive." Sadly Bengalis haven't changed a lot in the field of financial scams.
The Pujo obviously came to a stop, and the thakurdalan eventually became a part of Hooghly Collegiate School. The halls which echoed with the sounds of Pujo clamour, drawing crowds from far and wide, today reverberate with the sounds of school students, ironically except during the Pujo. Though the thakurdalan is used for the annual Saraswati Puja, the story of the grand Puja largely remains forgotten among the people of Chinsurah.
Prankrishna Haldar meanwhile returned from his sentence and died an unhonoured poor man. However, his scandalous story wasn't completely forgotten over time. He went on to become the inspiration for an important character in Amitav Ghosh's novel "Sea of Poppies"- Neel Rattan Halder, the zamindar of Raskhali who too in this story gets deported to Mauritius on account of fraud.
References~
The Days of John Company-selections from Calcutta Gazette 1824-1832, edited by Anil Chandra Das Gupta. Calcutta: West Bengal Government Press: 1959.
Bose, Shib Chunder. The Hindoos As They Are. W. Newman & Co., Calcutta, 1881.
Sircar, Jawhar. "Durga- Through curious eyes." The Sunday Statesman, 22 September, 1984.
Adhya, Akshay Kumar. Hughli Chuchurar Nana Katha. Hooghly Sangbad, Hooghly 2005.
McDermott, Rachel F. Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal: the fortunes of Hindu festival. Columbia University Press, New York, 2011.
Banerjee, Sumanta, Crime and Urbanization: Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century. Kolkata: Tulika Books: 2006.
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