Streetwise Kolkata: In Tanti Bagan Lane, the weavers are nowhere to be found
Weavers were the original inhabitants of Tanti Bagan Lane, a street that has been integral to the history of the Muslim community in Kolkata.
The ‘Tantipara’ mentioned in Chunder’s writings now exists in the form of Tanti Bagan Lane (Express photos by Neha Banka) Although the city of Kolkata and its neighbourhoods grew and evolved over the centuries, several of its streets and bylanes continue to retain their original names. Among those is the narrow Tanti Bagan Lane in the Beniapukur neighbourhood in the centre of the city.
In his book ‘A History of Calcutta’s Streets’, urban historian P Thankappan Nair writes that before the city of Calcutta began taking the form of an urban settlement, it was villages and areas like Tanti Bagan within these settlements that made it suitable for the plans that the British East India Company had for what would eventually become the capital of the Raj.
According to Banglapedia, a Bangladeshi encyclopaedia portal, the term ‘Tanti’ refers to weavers in the Bengal region (Express photo by Neha Banka)
Nair quotes the writings of Bholanath Chunder in the Calcutta University Magazine, Volume IV, of 1897, which says, “The Tantipara, now to the west of Mathur Sen’s Garden Lane, seems to be one of the old quarters occupied by the weavers of that day in Chuttanuty”.
The ‘Tantipara’ mentioned in Chunder’s writings now exists in the form of Tanti Bagan Lane, while ‘Chuttanuty’ is an anglicised version of ‘Sutanuti’, one of three villages that were merged to form the city of Calcutta in 1690.
According to Banglapedia, a Bangladeshi encyclopaedia portal, the term ‘Tanti’ refers to weavers in the Bengal region, and during the Mughal rule, the Tanti community comprised both Hindu and Muslim weavers. According to this portal, in villages, the Tanti community resided in a demarcated location that was called Tantipara.
In Nair’s writings, there is some suggestion that while the Tanti resided in Tanti Bagan Lane, they were also spread in other parts of Calcutta.
There is not much information available about the history of Tanti Bagan, but various texts that document the history of the city of Calcutta indicate that the neighbourhood grew and developed simultaneously with other neighbourhoods in the city that surround it, for instance, Rajabazar, Sealdah etc.
There is not much information available about the history of Tanti Bagan, but various texts that document the history of the city of Calcutta indicate that the neighbourhood grew and developed simultaneously with other neighbourhoods in the city that surround it (Express photo by Neha Banka)
In the 1840s, these parts of the city began witnessing the migration of Muslims from the United Provinces, modern-day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where some arrived to seek better employment opportunities, while others came to establish businesses in the capital of the British Raj.
Over the decades, these neighbourhoods became more densely populated with Muslims who had made the city their home and set up lives here. Hence, for a significant part of its documented history, Tanti Bagan Lane has been integral to the history of the Muslim community in the city, including Muslim politics.
In his book ‘Streets in Motion: The Making of Infrastructure, Property, and Political Culture in Twentieth-century Calcutta’, Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay writes, that on 5 April 1975, addressing a rally organised by the CCCH, prominent Muslim League leader and Member of Legislative Assembly Sikandar Ali Molla asked the hawkers to “start a crusade (jihad) against the government”. On April 9, the Calcutta District Committee of the Muslim League organised a meeting at the crossing of Tanti Bagan Lane and Cantopher Lane.
Several small-scale businesses and enterprises are thriving here (Express photo by Neha Banka)
So much so that in his book ‘Long-gone the wind: 1947-’71 in Bengal & Usha the Girl’, author Rameswar Dutta refers to how political upheaval, during the riots of 1947 during the Partition of India and the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1964 in Calcutta deeply impacted these neighbourhoods in the city, including Tanti Bagan Lane.
In her book ‘Partition’s Legacies’, Joya Chatterji delves deeper into the impact that these communal riots had on the city of Calcutta, including neighbourhoods that were dominated by Muslims and Hindus.
In their book, ‘People Without History: India’s Muslim Ghettos’, authors Jeremy Seabrook and Imran Ahmed Siddiqui have provided some insight into the lives of Muslims in Kolkata, especially those living in Muslim neighbourhoods. “Muslims are heavily concentrated in the basti areas, adjacent to the commercial and business center of Kolkata,” the authors write.
Writings by research scholars, urban historians and authors indicate that despite the decades that have passed and the changes that have come about to several of Kolkata’s neighbourhoods, Tanti Bagan has not been able to shrug off its identity closely linked with a basti or a slum. Parliamentary Papers in the British House of Commons dated 1850-1908 also refer to this neighbourhood as a ‘bustee’.
However, a walk down this lane today shows that Tanti Bagan Lane is anything but that. Several small-scale businesses and enterprises are thriving here; there are religious and community institutions like mosques, schools etc. Like other parts of Kolkata, high-rise apartments are coming up here as well. For now, however, most are only three to four storeys high.
But the weavers who were the original inhabitants of this lane and the wider neighbourhood are nowhere to be found now, even deep inside the bylanes that branch out of Tanti Bagan.
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