Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny Swati

Chattopadhyay. Routledge, New York, 2005, pp. 314 (ISBN 0-415-34359-3) (hbk).

This book provides an original, groundbreaking approach to excavating dominant

modes of representation used by British colonialists and the indigenous Bengalis in
their claims to the colonial city of Calcutta (spelt Kolkata since 2001) in eastern
India. The division of chapters in the book, five in all respectively The colonial
uncanny, The limits of white town, Locating mythic selves, Telling stories and
Death in public is interesting and innovative and makes reading effortless and
invigorating. The author deftly highlights the paradoxical indigenous Bengali claims
to a vision of the city of Calcutta pitted against imperial claims. She asserts that the
key problem of Calcuttas urban literature is the uncritical acceptance of British
sources and the re-circulation of the colonizers ideas about the Indian landscape
(p. 6). There is an admirable exposition of the elite landscape based on key novels
of 1823, 1840 and 1930. A distinction is made between official/colonial urban
discourses and the indigenous urban discourse. The rich intertextualities are
extremely useful in presenting a varied image of the constructed discourse on
Calcutta. Telling stories presents the intricacies of the mid-nineteenth century
literary expos on the changing fabric of colonial Calcutta. Death in public brings
to the fore the important dimension of how gender was negotiated in the urban
spaces of Calcutta and reinforced the colonial uncanny in the moral topography of
colonial Calcutta. The analysis provides a powerful departure from the British
imaginations of the city. Some caveats, however, need addressing. While the
author shows how different forms of urban space were produced out of the
contradictions of colonialism and the deep ambivalence of being modern (p. 13), the
evidence is not clear as to how urban spaces became sites of contestations
between AngloIndians and the Bengali middle class. Was there any litigation in this
respect? Are there Book reviews 241 2007 The Authors Journal compilation
2007 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell
Publishing Asia Pty Ltd signs of gentrification of urban space in the white town area
whereby acquisition of land and property there by the Bengali upper middle class
had led to an exodus of AngloIndians? Is there evidence of clustering of settlements
in this respect? Indeed, the idea of the separation of black spaces and the white
town was more than a simple conceptual separation but also a physical one,
demarcated by space, both notional and real. The everyday experience that the
author purports reinforces this separation. The same principles continue, even in
the postcolonial physical space among Muslims and Hindus in India and between
Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The explanation in the book merely
attempts to simplify the historical and communal realities of nineteenthcentury
Calcutta. Perhaps a sequestered approach to historiography of the city of Calcutta is
problematic as there is little appreciation of the chronology in the making of the city.
Can discourse claim ascendancy over the facts? A lack of clarity regarding the
authorship of the city is also problematic for instance, whose city was Calcutta in
the nineteenth century? Did the city belong to the Bengalis or the colonialists, to
the traders or the bhadralok (an elitist social class of clerical and petty officials that
emerged under the impact of colonial rule)? The book does not provide con-
firmation of this slippage of ownership if any, despite efforts to decry the non-
existence of black and white townships. While the innovative use in interpretations
of Thomas Daniells depictions of Calcutta is welcome and refreshing, the idea that
the focus was largely of the white township may seem partial; other depictions by
him may not necessarily support the same conclusion. Indeed, the author herself
uses the same narratives of missionaries and travellers as authentic representation
of the ideational space. The author may have read more than necessary in the maps
and texts, thereby conflating obliging native figures with infected bodies in the
health maps (pp. 745). It is surprising not to see reference to classic works by Sir
Herbert H. Risley or Christopher Pinney in the discussion on health maps. While the
author does mention the efforts of the new rich in trying to become part of the
colonial gentry, the related issue of the white town being an aloof minority is not
adequately acknowledged. We would need to know what the social condition of the
British community in Bengal was at this time in order to make parallel assertions
about the native gentry in Calcutta. It would have made more sense to elaborate on
the changes in property ownership from the British to wealthy natives in the
nineteenth century. The analysis is silent on a crucial historical fact that (despite
claims of a disproportionate part of the rates being spent in the white township)
even white ratepayers seemed to get very little for their money, as J.H. Stocqueler
had recorded in his Hand Book for India and Egypt (1841: pp. 212, 346; also cited in
Marshall, 2000: 310). By what mechanism did the architectural styles move from
the white towns to the black towns? Indeed the very binary that the author works
hard to dismantle is drawn upon in her own arguments. Any discussion on the
evolution of maps of Calcutta becomes disconcerting when the discourse jumps
from 1887 to 1892 to 1791 (p. 82). Lack of rigour in maintaining the sanctity of the
chronology in discussing historical maps raises questions. Who claims ownership of
urban space of Calcutta? While the idea that Indians were shaping the landscape
by a different agenda of power and social relations and would not be easily
persuaded despite the financial benefit they could reap as landlords (p. 88) is easily
asserted, it is more difficult to provide systematic evidence that pecuniary interest
and the possibility of rent seeking were not a temptation for the majority of
bhadraloks in this urban milieu. Further, the authors contention that Registrar-
General of Census, Beverleys point of view turned census-taking into a mode of
unchallenged authority (p. 137) is not