Old Zamindar Residence, North Calcutta, India. Large size view recommended to see the lone fairy at the right hand top of the building, who still looks out for the grand old days in the distant past.

nobody@flickr.com (Kanad Sanyal) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:08:21 -0700

Zami or Jami, in Bengali, means Land, and Zamindar means Landowner or Landed Gentry (for the benefit of English viewers!).

Traditionally, in India, just like in any other country, the people who tilled the land were not the owners. The Landowners were always a class apart from the people who tilled the land and produced crops. British traders transformed themselves as the rightful ruler of a vast portion of India as we know it now, in the year 1758. They subsequently streamlined the process of tax collection from land and all other rosources to run their administrative machinery. The British used to extract the taxes from the Landowner, who in turn, used to tax the people who were tilling the land, which he owned. Usually, the Landowner and the tillers used to live in the same village or locality, and hence the Landowner was aware of the problems or the opportunities facing the tillers.

All these changed when Lord Bentinck, Governor General of India, imposed a new system, ostensibly to save the tillers from rapacious Landowners. The Zamindaris or Landlordship was up for grabs for the highest bidder. Many trader families, who, by then had earned huge fortunes due to their proximity to the British traders in Calcutta, started buying up the Zamindaris from their countryside cousins. Many Zamindars from the countryside came down to Calcutta and settled down in the native part of the City (northern parts), in huge mansions, which were built along the lines of their English "superiors". The buildings could not be maintained properly since the early parts of twentieth century, due to division of the property, caused by increase in the number of inheritors of the Zamindari, and the photo above is just one of such many maginificient buildings, which are slowly but steadily (and silently) being engulfed by the jungle which now grows in the land which was earlier earmarked for the mandatory Rose Garden.

The building above is by the side of Natun Bazaar (New Market), off extreme northern parts of Chitpore Road. Natun Bazaar, contrary to its name, is one of the oldest bazaar in Calcutta, and is the only place where you can still get a few of the traditional requirements of bengali household, like khoa khir (milk solids), wooden utensils, sesame ropes, traditional foodstaff etc.

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Old Zamindar Residence, North Calcutta, India. Large size view recommended to see the lone fairy at the right hand top of the building, who still looks out for the grand old days in the distant past.