Treasure trove wastes away.....

Treasure trove wastes away a floor beneath Mamata’s feet

A crumbling treasure of books, folios, files and maps chronicling Bengal’s history since the days of the East India Company lies sandwiched between a public toilet and a union office just below heritage-proud Mamata Banerjee’s floor at Writers’. Mamata inherited this monumental tale of neglect from the Left Front and now presides over it, literally and figuratively. Not only is her remodelled office just above where this dark dungeon of a library is, her land and land reforms department is in charge of it. It would take the chief minister less than a minute from her office to walk to this priceless repository of records whose importance she appears to be unaware of.

Mamata, who is keen to turn Calcutta into London but hasn’t been able to emulate her favourite foreign city’s preservation of history, will find documents and pictures at the library showing how this city has evolved through the decades. She will find land records of the entire Bengal province — including present-day Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — since the time it was ruled by the East India Company. If in the mood for trivial pursuit, the chief minister could hunt for — and find — details of opium cultivation in parts of Bengal in the heyday of the Raj.

According to an undated estimate, there are approximately 4,000 files, 1,76,000 folios and 34,500 rare books in the library, located on the ground floor of Block IV. The bad news is that many of these are in various stages of irreversible damage. “No stocktaking exercise has ever taken place here, and the library does not even have a catalogue of what we have, what is lost and what is slowly slipping away. This place needs preservation,” eminent economic historian Benoy Bhushan Choudhury, who had used the library for his research in the Seventies, told Metro.

The canopy of cobwebs in the sprawling library, originally used by the colonial rulers as a records room, tells the story of disuse. The 745sq ft office area, which doubles as a reading room, is illuminated but the rest of the 6,224.49sq ft library is poorly lit. The librarian couldn’t recall the last time a researcher had dropped by. The hall has 18 windows that are permanently shut. A cursory glance at one of the dusty shelves reveals an 1836 edition of the Journal of Indian Arts and some drawings on opium cultivation in Bengal. The pages of the volume and the prints have become so brittle that you dare not grip them with your fingers.

Editions of the Calcutta Gazette since 1790 and the district gazettes since 1800 lie tattered on the huge, dusty shelves.

“There is no budgetary allocation for the maintenance of the library. It has a lone librarian, an upper division assistant and a peon. Preservation of a library like this requires expertise, which these staff members do not have,” a senior government official said. Librarian Mita Rani Ghosh admitted that much needed to be done to save the library. “I have requested for more manpower and other resources. I hope the chief minister will look into it,” she said. Unlike the West Bengal State Archives, this library does not receive any financial assistance from the Centre. There is no special allocation for the library from the land and land reforms department budget either. According to librarian Ghosh, the library was set up “sometime between 1800 and 1830”, when the building used to house the Fort William College. The college, established by Lord Wellesley, would impart language training to the babus. Although the college was shifted out later, the library remained and its importance increased with Writers’ becoming the administrative headquarters of the Bengal province. “Important documents like district gazettes, files on revenue collection, proceedings of board of revenue meetings, maps on land use, irrigation, establishment of new townships and road construction, and attendance registers of government employees were kept here,” historian Choudhury said.

The treasures that remain but might not survive the ravages of neglect include detailed Assembly proceedings and census reports from 1937, maps, books and files on the Sunderbans, transfer or sale deeds of land acquisition for the first rail tracks, plans for townships such as Durgapur and detailed family trees. The original copies of maps detailing the flora and fauna of Bengal and tea distribution in Assam between 1779 and 1782 are by James Rennell, the father of modern geography.

Historian Rajat Kanta Roy thinks the only way to save the library is to integrate it with the state archives. “The British land settlements, specially permanent settlements, laid the foundation of Bengali society. The heavy reliance on land in the colonial period is evident from documents related to the zamindari system and board of revenue meetings, which laid the socio-economic foundation of Bengal,” Roy said. Maybe a walk-through by Mamata someday will lay the foundation for an effort to save what is left of this heritage.

How do you think the library can be saved? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com

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Written in The Telegraph (India) newspaper

Date: 27th August, 2012

By Sreecheta Das