The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
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Helen Thomas
but it is described variously as being like a small city, much too large for defense
requirements, and the finest fortress outside Europe. 23 Completed in
1773, it was intended to house the entire British community, but by 1780
only members of the military were allowed to live within its walls. It was
surrounded by the vast defended space of the Maidan plain, which covered
a ground surface of two square miles.
The Maidan became a military territory, and its roads still remain
the property of the Ministry of Defense. From its center, its physical boundaries
were delineated by the reaches of the outer limits of gunfire; its edges
became determined by both natural and constructed means. In 1772, one
year before the completion of the new fort, Warren Hastings was appointed
the first governor of Calcutta, an office he held office until 1785. This signified
an important change in governance of the city, which moved from the
East India Company to the British government, and it marked the beginning
of a new attitude toward the land and people of India. During his stay
in Calcutta, Hastings was instrumental in constructing an identity for the
Maidan. The river lay to its west, and along its banks lined with ghats, he
constructed a promenade for ladies, called the Strand. To the north was the
site of the old fort, which became the customs house and remained an administrative
center of the White Town. The Chowringhee jungle bounded
the south and east sides, until the City of Palaces started to replace it.
The encroaching villas slowly moved toward the outer boundary of
the lines of defense that contained the city proper, known as the Maratha
Ditch; begun in 1743, it was never completed. The Maratha Ditch was built
to defend the town from the threat of the tribe of the Marathas who were terrorizing
north and west India during the early eighteenth century, threatening
the Moghul Empire and political stability. The threat never became
substantial in Bengal, and the ditch was subsequently left unfinished. It
served to mark the outer limits of Calcutta during the nineteenth century
and was partly paved in 1799 for the Circular Road skirting the city. In
1893 it was completely filled in for the laying of the Harrison/Mahatma
Ghandi Road.
The Maidan plays a fundamental role in Calcutta’s history of ownership,
maintained through separation. Its existence was essential in creating
and sustaining the spatial and cultural distances initiated in the old
layout of the city. The new Fort William shifted the focus of the White
Town to the plain, with its cantonment at the center. The principal public
buildings stood along the Esplanade facing the Maidan. They were turning
their backs on the Black Town that stretched from the bazaar to the north,
itself symbolic of unnatural chaos and the danger of infection and disease
contained in the unknown world of the native. Hygiene and discipline be-