I am in India with a 1913 Bradshaw's Handbook to Indian Colonial and Foreign Travel.
Published at the height of the British Raj,
my 100-year-old guidebook will lead me on a spectacular railway adventure
through a land of majestic mountains and holy rivers where magnificent
beasts roam, and epic stories are told.
I'll encounter maharajahs, explore ornate palaces,
witness the technology of modern India,
and ride some of the most exhilarating trains in the world.
I'll discover how imperial railways and the English language inadvertently
spread ideas of independence among hundreds of millions of Indians
who today live in the largest democracy in the world.
The extensive empire, says Bradshaw's,
25 times the size of England and Wales,
situated between the mountains of Afghanistan,
Kashmir and Tibet to the north, the Bay of Bengal and Siam to the east,
the Indian Ocean on the south, and the Arabian Sea and Persia on the west.
Extraordinarily, this vast area, with its tens of millions of people,
was governed by a private enterprise
which also ran an opium monopoly,
the East India Company, until the bloodthirsty Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Then, at last, the British Government grew exasperated with the greed
and mismanagement of the company, and absorbed India into the British Empire.
My journey will take me past the poppy fields,
along the Ganges River,
towards the seeds of independence in Bengal.
I begin in the state of Uttar Pradesh at its historical capital Lucknow,
famously besieged during the rebellion against British rule.
From there, I will head east to Ghazipur,
once the centre of the opium industry, and through the flat,
fertile state of Bihar, to the great Buddhist temple at Bodh Gaya.
I'll cross into West Bengal,
and gain traction in a railway plant in Chittaranjan,
before finishing in Kolkata, former seat of the British Raj.
Along the way, I'll learn about 19th-century drug dealing...
The amount of opium almost made it impossible for people to not be addicts.
..explore an enormous locomotive factory...
You could run a perfectly decent horse race in here.
..discover how British cotton led to conflict...
They were flooding the markets and making us lose our hand loom industry...
..and get a lesson in meditation.
Focus all your mind...
..on the tip of your nose.
My first stop will be Lucknow which Bradshaw's tells me is the old capital of Awadh,
a picturesque collection of domes, pillars and spires.
Here, a succession of nawabs and kings reigned from 1716 until the deposition of the last king
in 1856, followed by the Sepoy Revolt.
A monarch deposed by a private company!
Little wonder that bloodshed followed.
Bradshaw travellers would have heard of Lucknow,
scene of exceptional British military valour.
But whether they understood the causes and the consequences of the
rebellion is more doubtful.
Lucknow is known to have one of India's loveliest stations
built just after my Bradshaw's Guide.
This is the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
The city's impressive monuments are unmistakably Islamic,
dating back to the Mughal rule of the nawabs and is now the centre of
India's Shia Muslim community.
Wide boulevards and manicured gardens sit alongside teeming narrow
backstreets.
The bazaar is one of the oldest and most popular places to shop.
The colours in India are beautiful.
Overwhelming, particularly in the markets.
The clothes, the shoes, the fruit, the spices,
it makes me feel really understated in my attire.
This city is famous for its cuisine, and kebabs are a speciality.
Hello.
Oh, it's hot.
Can I try it, please?
The story goes that an old nawab who'd lost his teeth,
set a competition to see who could make the softest kebabs,
and it was made by a man who had one hand,
and one-handed in the local language is tunday.
So a man who had lost a hand made a kebab for a man who'd lost his teeth.
Thank you very much.
Served on a leaf.
Wow.
Mm, it's good.
Thank you.
Spicy, too. Very spicy.
Today, Lucknow is a peaceful city of around three million people.
Hello. But in 1857, a full-scale uprising spread across northern India.
These streets fell into the hands of rebel sepoys,
Indian troops recruited by the East India Company,
angry at religious insensitivity displayed by British officers.
The city's residency was the headquarters of the British Commissioner for
the territory, Sir Henry Lawrence,
and became the site of a bloody five-month siege.
The noble defence of Lucknow, says Bradshaw's,
is one of the most glorious episodes.
The Lucknow residency will always remain a sacred memorial of English
valour and self-sacrifice.
These ruined walls speak of the horrors endured by and the heroism
displayed by the British.
It's as though the whiff of gun smoke was still in the air and,
not mentioned by Bradshaw, the stench of British atrocities too.
In the preserved ruins of the residency,
I have arranged to meet history professor Saleem Kidwai.
Professor, why is there a rebellion in the kingdom of Awadh in 1857?
Um, because there was a rebellion all over north India.
Sepoys had already mutinied in Meerut, they had taken Delhi.
In Awadh, there was particularly good reason because Awadh had a very
harsh history at the hands of the East India Company.
When the kingdom was annexed in 1856, without any legitimate cause,
they decided to remove the king in conditions that were extremely
humiliating. The city's pride was hurt.
And it led to violence.
It led to violence.
When this famous siege of Lucknow begins, who is in the residency?
It is the British residents of Lucknow.
It's people from close by who've come here for refuge or safety.
Their sons, loyal Indian soldiers, there are schoolboys and missionaries,
and of course their families.
And what sort of defence can they mount from these buildings?
It was all makeshift defence because this wasn't meant to be a defensive
structure. What was it like in here on a daily basis during those five
months? It was constant bombardment, constant skirmishes.
There was no full-scale assault.
The rebels weren't prepared for it, they did not have a commander,
they did not have a plan.
What they did was to constantly fire from every direction into the
residency. And the signs of this are on the walls all around us.
Absolutely, yes.
Three months into the siege,
the first attempt by British forces under General Sir Henry Havelock
to free their fellow countrymen inside, failed.
The siege continued for another two months before a much larger force
under Sir Colin Campbell managed to evacuate the survivors.
This was an action of great heroism.
And was recognised as such by the awarding of Victoria Crosses,
the record for the largest number of Victoria Crosses, 18 in one day,
28 in one action, um,
just shows you how seriously the British Government took the defence
of the siege of Lucknow and how heroic they considered it.
What were the casualties? Large, unfortunately very large.
Of the 3,000 people in here, 900 men, women,
children and schoolboys survived.
And many of them were in very poor shape.
With survivors rescued from the residency,
the British left Lucknow in rebel hands.
But Campbell and his forces returned in March 1858 to take back the city
and to punish the rebels.
When the British retook Lucknow, what are the consequences for the city?
Horrendous. Um, the British were outraged.
There were extremely exaggerated stories about the rape and molestation of British women.
So, the British tied rebels to cannons and blew them up.
They identified as many as they could find, and hung them publicly.
They identified not just the rebels but anyone who had helped the rebels,
confiscated their lands, they mistreated places of religion.
So, at all levels, there was vengeance.
What were the consequences for India, of the rebellion of 1857?
India became a full-scale colony.
1857 clearly showed that the Indian possessions were too valuable to be
left to the East India Company,
to the misrule of the board of directors who were not controlled by politicians.
So Queen Victoria had to step in.
Vestiges of the rich culture and traditions of this part of India
are in evidence all around me.
The ornate Qaisar Bagh Palace was built in 1850 by Wajid Ali Shah,
the last nawab of Awadh.
A much-loved ruler, he was a poet and a great patron of the arts.
I'd like to know more about the cultural legacy of these royal nawabs
whose deposition caused such a furore.
In the palace grounds at the prestigious Bhatkhande Music Institute,
they teach an ancient form of dance that was popular at royal occasions.
Hello, Dr Khare.
Dr Ruchi Khare is an assistant professor here.
Dr Khare, what is the dance that you perform and teach here?
I perform kathak dance.
Kathak dance is a very popular classical dance style of northern India.
Kathak is all about storytelling.
What is the connection between kathak and the royal nawabs?
The nawabs of the 19th century were very culture-loving people.
They sat on the throne of Lucknow.
They promoted this art in their regime,
and they invited all the talented kathak artists from nearby towns and
places, and they kept them in their court.
Did the nawabs participate in the dance?
Yes. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, he was himself a kathak artist.
He had trained under a dancer in this court.
Was kathak for the aristocracy, or was it a popular thing?
It started from the elite because the king himself promoted it.
But then, since it was very, very entertaining,
it became very popular among the masses.
And the people you teach now, the students,
will they go on to be kathak performers?
They want to pursue it as a career.
There are different avenues.
It can be teaching choreography, stage performer,
but the important thing is that they are very passionate about dancing.
I am not known for my sense of rhythm but Dr Khare has bravely offered to teach me a few steps.
This side, this side. This side.
Turn from the side. Ah, this side.
I could see why professionals train for years.
I am bidding farewell to Lucknow and continuing my journey east to Ghazipur.
PA: For the kind information of passengers, train number...
Bradshaw's says that night travelling saves time,
and is to be recommended especially during the summer months.
With the mercury bursting the thermometer,
I'm guessing that sleeper travel is the better option.
In truth, most people on these sleepers go to bed in their day clothes,
but I believe in maintaining standards.
Good evening. Good evening. Do you speak English?
Yes. I'm going to Ghazipur.
Where are you going? I'm going to Varanasi.
Varanasi, famous city on the Ganges.
Very lovely. Well, I've got the top bunk, I hope I don't disturb you.
Have a nice sleep. Thank you. Goodnight to you.
Ever helpfully, my Bradshaw's tells me first and second class passengers
will not be disturbed for tickets at night.
Small packages and valuables should be carefully disposed of at night out of reach of an open window.
Bradshaw's is my one valuable item,
that can go under my pillow and no-one will find it.
The train swayed quite a lot so I was not so much rocked to sleep as
shaken awake. But it was air-conditioned and I do start a bright new day
where I want to be.
As I slept, we travelled around 200 miles across the plains of
Uttar Pradesh to the state's far eastern border.
My next stop will be Ghazipur which the guidebook tells me lies in a
picturesque tract in the valley of the Ganges.
Opium, sugar, indigo and tobacco are raised.
In that little word, opium, casually tossed into the sentence,
lies unimaginable wealth,
indescribable human degradation, and not one,
but two wars between Britain and China.
When you first arrive in Ghazipur,
there really is only one place to head.
First glimpse of the famous Ganges River, as Bradshaw's says,
the sacred Ganga, 1,500 miles long,
which rises in two heads on the south side of the Himalayas.
I am moved to see it so tranquil and majestic.
And by the fact that, for Hindus, it is a goddess,
the embodiment of all holy waters.
And all along its banks,
the devout enter the river to cup the deified liquid in their hands,
and to give thanks to their ancestors and to the gods.
But this river also played an essential role in a business that was anything but holy.
Hi. How lovely to see you.
Utacha Chatterpajaya is an expert on the opium trade.
How does it come to be that opium production becomes so prolific
along the banks of the Ganges?
You need the heat for the opium to dry,
and soil fertility along the banks of the Ganges is great for growing opium.
How does the opium trade from India to China get going under the
East India Company? Opium was being farmed in India before the British get here, under the Mughal state.
But, at that time, it's a smaller amount of produce.
But what the East India Company really does is concentrate the market.
They join all the dots along the river,
get people to grow opium next to each other,
and they connect the production side of the market all the way to private
traders who are buying opium in the docks in Calcutta,
who then go on to sell it in ports in China.
It's the application of the Industrial Revolution or of capitalism,
to opium, really. It's exactly what it is, yes.
And so the opium left the fields around here,
left the factories around here,
and the Ganges River was the conduit by which the opium left for China.
The Ganges is exactly the reason why the East India Company is able to
connect all the little markets along the way.
And they really became very wealthy on this, didn't they?
Absolutely. The opium trade expands through the 19th century into the
early 20th, and in terms of revenue,
if you add all the opium markets that were existent in India,
that's about 17% of the total money being made in India at the time.
What do you think was the impact on the Chinese people of all this opium?
Politically, I think it was a huge problem for the Chinese.
Addiction was badly affecting workers.
The amount of opium that was pumped into China almost made it impossible
for people to not be addicts.
China tried to exclude opium,
but Britain was willing to go to war to keep open its lucrative trade.
Why did Britain and China fight two so-called Opium Wars?
For the control in the Chinese market.
China was producing goods which the British wanted to buy.
Primarily tea. Opium became one way of crashing into the Chinese economy.
They used gunboats in Hong Kong to humiliate the Chinese army in the first
Opium War, and then the second.
And the treaties that were signed following the ceasefires almost gave
the British complete control on ports in the interior trade in China.
So, the trade was that British people drank tea out of porcelain,
while the Chinese smoked opium.
Absolutely, yes, I wouldn't have said it better.
Just a few minutes walk from the Ganges in Ghazipur,
this opium factory was opened by the East India Company in 1820.
Dry opium was brought here from the surrounding fields,
and to another factory in Patna about 100 miles east.
It was turned into cakes, and packed into crates,
to be transported upriver.
Following pressure from a Quaker led movement in Britain, in 1906,
Parliament declared the trade morally indefensible,
and around ten years later, it ended.
From then, opium was processed only for medicinal and scientific purposes.
Today, the opium and alkaloid works covering 43 acres,
is a vast enterprise employing 900 people.
Hi. What a pleasure to meet you.
You are welcome to Ghazipur factory, opium factory.
Mr K Valson is the works manager.
It feels like we're surrounded by historic buildings.
These are the components of an opium factory, are they?
Yeah. You can see we have a very nice water tank.
This was built in 1906.
And then the one that you see on this side is the well.
Still if you go near it, you'll find a lot of water gushing in.
It is basically Ganga water.
From the Ganges. From the Ganges.
We need water for the process, for cleaning, washing, mixing,
modulating. Now, I saw on your sign, Government opium factory.
So, it's owned by the Government, is it? Opium is a restricted item.
Only the Government of India, through our Ministry of Finance,
can operate.
It can buy, it can sell, it can manufacture, it can import, it can export.
When I arrived, I came through very solid gates, there were armed guards.
Yes. You have to be very careful of this stuff.
It would have a huge value on the illicit market.
Yes, very valuable.
We ensure that nothing goes out of this place.
Now, I don't think you're going to let me inside the manufacturing
process. Obviously not, for security reasons,
I'm not permitted to allow you to go inside.
But tell me what goes on in there.
Earlier, it was fully manual, but it is highly mechanised now.
We have legally licensed farmers.
They will cultivate opium. They hand it over to us.
We seal it in the presence of representatives, and we bring it here.
We wash it with water, we dry it,
then concentrate it for the manufacturing of opium alkaloids.
And what is the opium used for these days?
Basically, we prepare only codeine phosphate which is used as a cough
syrup. In 1943, they started an alkaloid plant also.
They are manufacturing now morphine, codeine is there.
So, you're making an important contribution to modern medicine here.
Yes, obviously, because there is no alternate to this.
An alternative, even if it is there, it is very highly costly also.
I didn't think I'd be saying this, but congratulations to you, sir,
on managing an opium factory. Yeah, thank you, sir.
Today, I am picking up my journey at Mughal Sarai Junction
but there's a snag.
One of the hazards of travelling by train in India, let it be said,
is that they do run late, and I mean very late.
The column on the right-hand side shows you the delays that are
anticipated. There's one delayed by six hours and 30 minutes.
And by the way, these tend to be optimistic estimates.
I mean, it is perfectly understandable.
The trains wend thousands of kilometres across the subcontinent.
But it does make planning very difficult.
At least there are useful ways to pass the time while you wait.
The competition between open-air barbers is fierce.
It's a cut-throat business!
In my experience, mobile phone coverage in India is pretty good,
and Wi-Fi is readily available.
And here at stations they have sockets so that you can charge up your equipment.
Plug in with a round two-pin adapter,
connect, switch on...
PING!
Ah, the ping.
With my train showing no signs of arriving,
I'll seek out some extra reading material.
AH Wheeler, book stall and newsagent,
a feature of most Indian railway stations, founded in 1877.
In the 1880s,
a young Rudyard Kipling who needed to pay his passage back to England
approached Wheeler's proposing that they publish cheap throwaway reading
material for railway passengers.
Published as the Indian Railway Library,
it featured Kipling's short stories.
It made him his money, and more importantly, it made his name.
A beautiful display of books and magazines.
Hello, sir.
What's that thing there?
The Indian Railway Timetable.
The Indian timetable. Wow.
How much is that? 60 rupees.
60 rupees, I'll take that.
Thank you.
That's very kind of you, thank you, have a good day.
Beautifully illustrated.
The Indian Railway Timetable.
Like a Kipling short story, it should be taken with a pinch of salt!
Finally, four hours after it was due, my train arrives.
This is the Grand Chord line,
one of two parts of the main Delhi to Kolkata route.
Trains on the first line opened by the East Indian Railway in 1866,
stopped more frequently, in order to maximise revenue.
As that line became busier, a faster route was needed,
and this one cut the journey by 50 miles.
Rama Rao Annavarapu worked on the Grand Chord line for 34 years.
Rama Rao, I'm Michael. Oh, nice meeting you.
How do you do?
My Bradshaw's tells me that the Grand Chord line was constructed in
1907. Why was it so important to construct a more direct line between
Kolkata and Delhi? As the traffic went up,
they found it was becoming more and more expensive to pass this traffic
over the longer route.
And, more importantly, they discovered coal.
And all this coal had to be transported to Delhi.
So, the stimulus for the Grand Chord line was actually freight rather than passenger. Very, very much.
Freight was given much more importance in the Grand Chord.
It's only later that we started running more and more passenger trains.
Were you from a railway family?
My father, he was station master.
And how did you find your career in the railways?
Wonderful. Yes.
I would say. The work is very satisfying.
I was in operations, and operations always give you challenges.
And living conditions are good. We have lived in various places.
I had occasion to see the whole country,
even my children have grown up and seen down my seen so many places.
And you railway men and women, are you a family, a brotherhood?
I don't think there's any brotherhood that is closer than the railways.
Really? Yes. We find wherever you are,
the railway men always come to your help.
My next stop will be Bodh Gaya.
The book tells me the town is celebrated as the cradle of Buddhism
of which religion the great temple at Bodh Gaya,
seven miles from the railway station, is now one of the chief remnants.
By the side of the Mahabodhi, grew the Bodhi tree under which Gautama,
Prince Siddhartha attained the title of the Buddha.
I confess I don't understand every word of that but I shall go to the
temple to seek enlightenment.
Bodh Gaya is the holiest pilgrimage site for the world's half a billion Buddhists.
A temple was first built here in the third century BC by the Indian
emperor Asoka.
This stunning Mahabodhi Temple is around 1,500 years old.
I'm greeted by the chief monk.
Welcome to Mahabodhi temple. Thank you so much.
And my guide will be the Venerable Deepam Chartree who looks after visitors from all over theworld.
The temple is absolutely wonderful.
Who was the Buddha? Buddha was a prince who was born in Nepal.
He travelled across from Nepal to Bodh Gaya and he spent almost six years in
this very place crossing his legs in a meditation posture.
To find out the ultimate truth of suffering or the ultimate...
..things of human life.
How did he do that, what was his method?
Meditation was the first and very important method and meanwhile,
he sacrificed so many things.
Self-denial? Yes.
Fasting was the biggest sacrifice.
And what is the importance of the Bodhi tree?
The Bodhi tree that you can see here is almost fourth-generation Bodhi tree.
The Buddha seated beneath the tree and achieved enlightenment,
the ultimate happiness that every people deserve.
How long have you been a monk?
13 years. What is your daily life as a monk?
I have one routine that I have to follow from morning four o'clock until
ten o'clock evening, just to take care of the temple, the people,
those who come here to worship.
I have morning meditation where I can concentrate my mind.
Each day, one hour a day.
But whatever I do,
I am very much a peaceful minded person.
Beside the sacred Bodhi tree Venerable Deepam has agreed to teach me the basics
of meditation.
One more.
I find it very hard to sit cross-legged.
I used to do it as a child, I've lost the ability.
All Buddhists have to be able to do it, don't they? Yeah.
If you are sitting in this posture you can focus the feeling between
your land and body.
How do you begin to concentrate, to meditate?
What do you do? A good teacher from Myanmar, from Burma,
taught me a very simplest process of concentrating mind.
And I really practice every day.
When I shut my eyes I firstly, I find, I try to relax my whole body.
I try to stop thinking.
If you focus all your mind on tip of your nose
and observe the flow of air inside and outside,
breathing in and out very slowly,
full concentration.
That is called Vipassana meditation.
I enjoyed that. And actually, it's quite noisy here but even so,
I found I was going inside myself, concentrating on the tip of my nose,
even though I couldn't see it.
CHANTING
Venerable Deepam, is this the most special place there is for a Buddhist?
Yes, there is, this is the holiest place for all Buddhists.
It is considered that every Buddhist should visit once in a lifetime.
Hello. Hi.
May I ask where you are visiting from?
I'm from Singapore. What is the significance to you as a Buddhist of this place?
This is considered the epicentre of Buddhism.
It's where Lord Buddha achieved enlightenment.
How would you describe enlightenment to me?
It just means that you have awakened, gone beyond the material world.
Have you been able to achieve that yourself?
Of course not!
So the average Buddhist doesn't attain it?
We are all striving to reach that point.
How long will you spend here?
A month. You come every day to the temple?
I do. I've actually made friends with the various wandering monks.
In fact, we became friends on Facebook.
When you go back to Singapore, what effect will it have had on you to come here?
Well, I think I'll be a much nicer person than I was.
So nice to talk to you. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
The next part of my journey will take me 200 miles,
south-east from Bodh Gaya into West Bengal.
I'll stop at the railway town of Chittaranjan before finishing in Kolkata,
India's oldest port on the banks of the Hooghly River.
Bradshaw's written in 1913 remarks that the Indian railway system is just
under 32,000 miles in extent, growing by about 1,000 miles every year,
390 million passengers and 71 million tonnes of goods.
It represented the most enormous captive export market for British
manufacturers of locomotives.
Since independence, the railways have gone on modernising.
I wonder how that great demand has been met since the tie with Britain was broken?
I'm getting off at Chittaranjan to find out.
First impressions, Chittaranjan has a much bigger station than I would have expected for somewhere
I regard as pretty remote.
It is one of those cities that exists only because of the railways.
One of the largest locomotive works in India is situated here.
I'm surprised to find it green and peaceful with fresh smelling air.
Chittaranjan, like a number of railway locomotive works,
decided to build its own village,
well, town and very beautiful it is too.
Set amongst woods with its own lakes,
so the main works are over there in the distance and then all around here is the accommodation.
People came from neighbouring Bangladesh and all over India to be employed
here and then each of those probably has four members of the family,
so it turns out to be a really sizeable community.
The vast site covers 4,500 acres and includes schools,
leisure facilities and even a children's train ride.
The factory began production in 1950 on the day that India became a
republic. And now employs a workforce of 11,000 people.
This workshop is enormous.
It is the largest at Chittaranjan.
980 metres long. That is very nearly a kilometre.
You could run a perfectly decent horse race in here.
When imperial engineers developed India's rail network from the mid-19th
century onwards, the locomotives had to be imported from Britain.
Workshops were established in India to maintain them.
But Indian initiatives to build engines at home were stifled
so as to protect British industry.
One of the things that India resented about the British Raj was our insistence
on exporting goods from the United Kingdom to India,
denying India the opportunity to develop its own industrial base.
That was particularly true perhaps of railways.
So on independence,
India decided that it really needed to put that situation right.
These works began in the 1950s, making steam engines,
before moving to diesel and electric models in the 1960s.
Hello. How are you?
The mainstay of this factory for quite a long time has been
6,000 horsepower locomotives and this is the starting point.
This is 6,000 horsepower, yeah? This is a chassis.
This is the chassis.
This is where it all begins. Yes, yes.
Which is what you've done over there already.
Then the cab and the roof.
The chassis doesn't look like much, really.
But once you put the sides on and when you put the cab on,
you begin to get something that looks like a loco.
And this is the finished product.
300 locomotives roll out of this factory every year.
Mr VP Patak is the general manager.
It is a matter of pride for us that our locomotives are hauling the
fastest trains which are running in India and the heaviest freight
traffic.
They are producing their own goods here for their own market.
This is part of modern India and has been a long-running theme in Indian
politics. Mahatma Gandhi urged Indians to reject foreign textiles
and live in homespun cloth.
The present-day Prime Minister Mr Modi campaigns on the slogan,
Make In India.
As night falls,
I'm embarking on the final leg of my journey which will take me around 120 miles to Kolkata.
Known as Calcutta under colonial rule,
it reverted to its original Bengali name in 2001.
This is the late evening premium express service.
It is air-conditioned, it's comfortable, of course.
It's running reasonably on time.
Hurray! And what's more, in my ticket price they include dinner.
No great surprises, if you've been in India for awhile.
Rice and daal and vegetable and bread and yoghurt.
But, hey, it hits the spot.
How do you like the food?
I've been enjoying the food very much.
I've been eating vegetarian while in India and there's masses of lovely flavours.
India is all about flavours and colours and the spice level also varies along with that.
And which part of India are you from?
I'm a Bengali but currently I'm staying in Jharkand in Ranchi.
I'm heading for Calcutta now.
Kolkata.
Are you not eating your food, sir?
I had some evening snacks on the way, so I'm really full,
but my wife she is having some dinner. Yes.
As we're getting in quite late I thought I'd have dinner on the train.
Thank you very much. Enjoy your journey. Bon appetit.
Kolkata, capital of West Bengal.
And Howrah station is heaving.
Designed in the middle of the 19th century remodelled at the beginning of the 20th,
with its 23 platforms it is India's busiest station and only one of four
main termini in Kolkata.
Great Eastern Hotel, please. Thank you.
Three things only are necessary to drive in India.
A horn, good breaks and nerves of steel.
Most taxi drivers in Kolkata, it seems, favour the brand-name Ambassador.
But British people would recognise this as an old Morris Oxford.
What a throwback.
Kolkata is clearly a 24-hour city
but I'm ready for bed.
Hello. Good evening.
The Great Eastern Hotel is the oldest existing hotel in India.
Mentioned, of course, in my Bradshaw's guide.
In corners like this it still has that colonial feel.
By 1913 the newspapers carried snippets of revolutionary groups.
Why pay that any mind?
Better to focus on the creature comforts that reminded you of home.
Like porridge and scrambled egg.
Reminders of Kolkata's colonial past are everywhere.
Ceded to the East India Company in the 17th century, the port boomed.
And today it's the commercial hub of East India.
And one of the country's fastest-growing cities.
It has a population of four and a half million,
and the streets are some of the most congested in India.
I think the tram might be my best bet.
It is almost 40 degrees today, with humidity climbing to over 70%.
Thank goodness this has no windows.
It also makes it perfect for sightseeing.
Everywhere in India you see poverty and beggars.
And the tram takes you from the city splendours to its slums.
Kolkata was the imperial capital for almost 140 years until the British
moved their seat of Government to Delhi in 1911.
But having lost that honour,
Kolkata achieved a different status according to acclaimed novelist and
architectural heritage campaigner, Amit Choudhury.
Tell me about Calcutta at the moment the city ceases to be the capital of
India. Well, it continues to be the most interesting city in terms of all aspects of
culture, including architecture.
The houses are different from the colonial houses or the grand mansions of
the North, a mix of Bengali and European features which are different in terms of design.
The slatted windows, the red oxide stone floors,
these open porches, a sense of space, open rooftops,
ventilators on the sides of the houses.
But no two houses are identical and this is a reminder of the fact that
there was an energy and creative energy in the city in terms of buildings
and its writing and music,
which made it still creatively speaking the most important Indian city
long after it had stopped being the capital.
Kolkata's best-known creative spirit was the poet
Rabindranath Tagore.
The first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature,
he was born in his splendid family mansion in 1861.
Amit, I've heard Tagore described as the bard of Bengal and a polymath.
How would you describe him?
I describe him as an innovator, as an experimenter, great philosopher.
He is not like the old poets.
He's not a devotional poet.
He is not writing about the gods and goddesses.
He is a modern artist and a great craftsman of the Bengali language.
What forms does his writing take?
Poems, songs, plays, of course, novels.
For those who can read him in Bengali, the hundreds and millions who can,
what does Tagore mean to them?
Tagore reaches and has reached a lot of people through his songs,
which are often rendered quite sentimentally.
But you contrast that with his own very irreverent and playful use of the past.
He is using all kinds of material from Irish drinking songs to
Indian classical forms.
Indian classical music can be sung for hours.
Tagore compresses songs into three minutes.
Tagore travelled to Britain in 1912 to promote Gitanjali,
an English translation of a collection of his poems.
The Irish poet WB Yeats was so taken with them that he agreed to write an
introduction and in 1913,
Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Then he becomes, I think,
the first worldwide celebrity in the domain of literature.
Everybody knows him.
The Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians, the English,
of course, the Americans. Although not an active political campaigner,
Tagore was fiercely anti-British and experimented with redefining what it
meant to be Indian.
He tried to distance himself from colonial rule by wearing clothes made
from traditionally spun Indian fabric.
And here on the streets of Kolkata,
buying local soon became the battle cry.
The cottage textile industry had been ruined by the mighty mills of
Lancashire and by unfair trade practices.
Here at the town hall in August 1905,
a boycott of British cloth was announced and so was launched the Swadeshi movement,
meaning reliance on one's own cloth.
Foreign textiles were mounted into bonfires and with that the Swadeshi cause
that would later be embraced by MK Gandhi caught fire.
ARCHIVE: Gandhi works at a spinning wheel as he talks to his followers.
He tells them that by making their own cloth,
they will create work and an industry for themselves.
But more important, they can boycott English textiles sold in India.
Recently there has been a resurgence of the handloom,
with demand from fashion designers for traditionally made fabrics such as handspun khadi.
Dashan Shah runs the weavers studio,
making handcrafted clothes and textiles.
Hello, nice to meet you. Lovely to see you.
I feel as if I've stepped back in time.
Yes. Now, people here today are clearly working in the traditional way.
Why? Our mission statement of our company when we started 23 years ago was
to use as many hands as possible and keep the cottage industry going and
the traditional techniques and our history and heritage,
what has been there for the last 2,000 plus years.
And these looms, would they be recognisable from decades ago?
Yes. There is no machinery. We have not even added a motor.
And who are the people who are working here?
They are all master weavers who have come from the villages and who also have
their own units, so they may be doing some bits of work on the side
but they get the kind of respect and they get the kind of opportunity
over here which they could reproduce in the villages.
So you are transferring skills?
Yes. To the villages.
Now, from your perspective,
why, in 1905, is there this boycott in Calcutta of British cloth?
This cloth that came into India were much cheaper and so they were
flooding the market and making us lose the handloom industry.
So our handloom goods were being put on the side and the British goods
were taking over. Was that leading to unemployment?
It led to a lot of unemployment as well as no longer feeling the pride of wearing the cloth
that you weave, which was a tradition in India, always.
Now, when people start to make bonfires of foreign clothes and foreign cloth,
presumably there is a lot of self-sacrifice involved in that.
They had paid for those things.
Yes, but then what Gandhi and the other political leaders ignited within
them is this pride for ourselves and the pride for freedom.
Realising they are being suppressed at every level.
So the freedom movement is what ignited all the people to come out on the streets,
to give up their foreign clothes,
to burn it and to say that here we will start a new beginning and we will go back
to making our own cloth.
Now, MK Gandhi famously goes and starts a village life and sits with his spinning wheel.
Is it one like this?
Yes, very similar to this, but a little bit smaller.
He also had a machine that you can put into a small wooden box and take it around with him.
Whenever he travelled he would carry it.
Weaving for him every morning was his way of saying that I believe in what I'm propagating.
Surrounded by men spinning thread, I'm intrigued to have a go myself.
I think I'm going to kneel rather than attempt cross-legged.
Yes. Now, finger and thumb on the thread like that.
Yes. Control the movement.
Moving it from one end to the other, yes?
Yes. There should be an equal distribution of the yarn.
Moving it backwards and forwards across the bobbin so that it forms a
little bump in the middle.
Tell me whether the master weaver is looking horrified.
You are doing very well. Are you finding that simple?
I'm finding it simple and quite restful, actually.
Yes. It does require some concentration. Yes.
Gandhi urged Indians to make their own cloth.
For a politician, it was a good spin.
Handcrafted traditional fabrics are now a favourite with India's fashion houses.
These models are sporting some of this season's looks.
Ladies, hello.
Today is very, very humid and very, very hot.
How does it feel to be wearing these kinds of garments?
These are very comfortable to wear. And it's very skin friendly.
That's very important in this weather.
Indian weather is so humid and so hot and these are so thin and they are
so nice so you don't really feel that much of heat with this.
And does it make you feel proud? Does it matter to you to wear something that's Indian?
Nowadays everyone is more prone towards the international fashion brands
but I think wearing khadi in this form is not only giving us the Indian background that we have,
it is also promoting the modern wear so it is a combination of both.
I am feeling patriotic and good wearing this.
Here in the Maidan City Centre Park,
the Victoria Memorial was built to commemorate an empress and an Empire
at its height.
When the British government pushed aside the East India Company,
it may have governed India efficiently,
trained up an able class of Indian civil servant,
built railways that tied the country together.
But it ruled without consideration,
not understanding Indian religions,
trampling on Indian traditions and Indian pride.
Tagore once wrote to an imaginary reader in a future age,
"May you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning,
"sending its glad voice across 100 years."
Within a century the insensitivities that caused the Indian Rebellion of
1857 had led the sun to set upon the British Raj.