In 1690, Job Charnock, an agent of the East India Company, selected this location for a British trading settlement. The site was chosen carefully, protected by the Hooghly River to the west, a creek to the north, and by salt lakes approximately two and a half miles to the east.
The location also would have helped the British set up base easily and make inroads into Northern India without having to bother Portuguese interests in Mumbai, Goa, Cochin and Pondicherry. Moreover, Bengal also gave them a good potential for business. The state had significant geographical advantages.
Before the advent of the British, present-day Kolkata was part of three villages - Sutanuti, Kalikata and Gobindapur. Job Charnock, often referred to as the Founder of Calcutta, saw the potential of the three villages.
Later, Madras (the capital of Tamil Nadu) was officially renamed Chennai in 1996. The name of Calcutta, which was amongst the first cities to be settled by the British, was changed to Kolkata (reflecting the local Bengali pronunciation) in 2001.
1690 August, Job Charnok, an agent of East India Company (established 1600) settles in Calcutta. 1698 East India Co. bought three villages (Sutanuti, Kolkata, Gobindapur ) from local landlord Sabarna Chowdhury. 1699 East India Company started developing Calcutta as a Presidency city.
After independence, civil strife and communist rule saw Kolkata lose pace to other Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. In 1985 the prime minister Rajiv Ghandhi described Kolkata as a “dying” city.
Discover the list of cities that served as India's capital. This has evolved the Indian capitals often: Pataliputra during the Maurya and Gupta eras, Delhi under the Sultanate, and Agra. New Delhi became the capital in 1911, as declared by King George V. Calcutta as British India's capital.
This came at the insistence of the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena party, which had just won the Maharashtra state elections, and mirrored similar name changes across India. Shiv Sena argued that the name 'Bombay' echoed British colonial rule.
Calcutta's decline started in February 1968, with the Ashok Kumar Nite at Rabindra Sarobar Stadium. The gathering was attacked by goons, women pulled out and their naked bodies found on and around the lake next morning. The Communist leaders called it the inevitable rise of the proletariat against the rotten bourgeois.
Kolkata and Kunming have some similarities, and not just the first alphabets of their nomenclatures. While Kolkata is the commercial, education and cultural hub of eastern India, Kunming enjoys the same position in South-West China. Kunming, like Kolkata, is an important trade centre.
Why did Britishers shift their capital from Kolkata to Delhi?
The British wanted a place where the Government could spend all the seasons of the year. After examining various sites, Delhi was finalised as it was easily accessible and closer to the summer capital, Simla. The association of Delhi with the Mahabharata and the Mughal Empire symbolized both Hindu and Muslim pride.
Bengalis (Bengali: বাঙ্গালী, বাঙালি [baŋgali, baŋali]), also rendered as endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia.
The immigrant community of workers started during British Colonial rule and became more prominent in the late 19th century with a small number of arrivals working at the ports in Calcutta and Madras and has gone on to contribute to the social and economic life of Kolkata through manufacturing and trade of leather ...
Scientists predict that Kolkata and eight other cities face flooding risks in the next 75 years as greenhouse gas emissions rise. Scientists predict that Kolkata and eight other cities will be flooded by 2100 as global warming is expected to increase sea levels and lead to more intense rainfall.
but every Indian speaker (without exception) called it Bombay! Incidentally why does the BBC dutifully use these 'new' names for Indian cities, whilst continuing to refer to Venice (not Venezia) and Florence (not Firenze) etc.
In 1996, in keeping with the recent nationwide practice of Indianizing city names, the Government of Tamil Nadu, then represented by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, renamed the city to Chennai.
"Venkatanarasimharaju's city". Note: The longest one-word placename in India. "Upper end of throat-cut valley" ("hollow" may be more accurate than "valley").
Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. Kashi, its ancient name, was associated with a kingdom of the same name in the first millennium BCE.
Ambedkar, then chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, proposed designating the city of Hyderabad as the second capital of India because of its amenities and strategic central location. On 1 November 1956 the states of India were reorganised by language.
In 1911, the British Government decided to shift their capital from Calcutta to New Delhi, and accordingly in 1912, Calcutta ceased to be the capital of British India.
