ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the changing conceptions of Calcutta, the capital city of British India, in a range of literary and non-literary texts from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These depictions show the urban landscape and its residents inscribed with widely differing meanings at different moments of its colonial history. Reading Calcutta as a scaled-down version of the colony (and postcolony), it illustrates the contested ways of perceiving, conceiving, and being in the colonial city. The chapter also underlines how Indians go beyond the colonial provenance of the city to claim it as their own. The chapter works with a literary archive that includes poems, travelogues, histories, and memoirs by writers such as James Atkinson, Mirza Ghalib, Bholanath Chunder, Rudyard Kipling, Binay Krishna Deb, and Rabindranath Tagore. It also queries references to Calcutta in government reports of the Sanitary Commission, the Drainage and Conservancy Department, and the Calcutta Gardens besides tourist guidebooks, popular geography texts, and newspaper reports from The Statesman, Englishman, and The Pioneer.
