“An Oddly Bookish City”: Neighborhood Libraries in Calcutta/Kolkata
Writing about his grandfather’s bookcase, novelist Amitav Ghosh noted that the rows of bookshelves that lined the hall of his grandfather’s house in Calcutta (Kolkata) were more than repositories of books. They were social props that “let the visitor know that this was a house in which books were valued.” He explained: “This is always important in Calcutta, because Calcutta is an oddly bookish city.”[1] He didn’t elaborate on what is “odd” about the city’s bookishness. If his discussion of the collection of books in his grandfather’s bookcase is any indication, it is about both the reverence for books and the motley nature of such a collection. Textbooks and schoolbooks and books of a professional nature were not allowed in those bookshelves. The books were mostly novels, some poetry, and works on anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. A quarter of the novels were in Bengali, with a “small portion” of books originally written in English and the rest “were translations from a number of other languages, most of them European: Russian had pride of place, followed by French, Italian, German, and Danish.”[2] This “oddly disparate” collection helped Ghosh launch his meditation on the cosmopolitanism of the bookshelf and the form of the novel.
What if we step beyond the bounds of the upper-class household in which such book collections had come to be expected by the early twentieth century, and look at the larger city?
Odd means peculiar, eccentric, unusual, unexpected, uneven. The literary milieux of the city was not just odd—in all of these senses—but extraordinary. In 1911, the print industry was the city’s second largest employment sector, next only to the jute industry.[3] Print culture and the city’s literary milieux expanded in every form between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Book publishing, printing presses and bookshops flourished, hundreds of literary magazines and scientific journals as well as libraries were founded. Literary gatherings—some more renowned than others—blossomed in a wide range of venues that included both residences and public spaces of educational institutions, mess-houses, bookshops, publishing houses, cafes, and even the zoological garden.
Figure 1. Entrance to Bagbazar Reading Library, founded 1883, originally at 22 Lakshmi Dutta Road, Kolkata. It was moved to its present location at 2 K.C. Bose Road. In 1942 the library had a collection of 12,554 volumes and 299 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
In early 2020, just before the pandemic made field research all but impossible, we launched a research project, titled Bookscapes, to investigate the spatial history of colonial Calcutta’s literary milieux. Interested in knowing where the work of literature—in its expanded sense of knowledge production in the arts, literature, sciences—took place, we started with archival sources to document the city’s publishing houses, printing presses, bookshops, libraries, locations from where journals and magazines were published, literary and scientific associations, places of literary gathering, as well as residences of notable literary figures and the institutions where they received education. Our goal is to discover the interrelations among these sites with the aid of interactive GIS maps in order to understand the impact of the city’s literary culture on its public sphere and public space. The chosen time span, between 1775 and 1945, is sufficiently capacious to track significant changes over time. From preliminary research we anticipated that the location of literary activities, some of which were short-lived, would demonstrate not only an expansive public sphere, but also a wide base of such activities, moving far beyond the scope of elite residences, institutional landmarks, and famous literary figures.
While much of the work until now has been archival, we were also able to conduct a substantial part of the field documentation of libraries during October-November 2021. The findings tell an important story about the growth of libraries and their relation to urban space. Between 1775 and 1890, only 21 libraries were established in the city. Some of the earliest ones were circulating libraries operated by bookshop owners and agency houses that were short-lived. The expansion of the literary sphere in the second half of the nineteenth century encouraged the establishment of neighborhood libraries by private individuals. The Calcutta Reading Rooms and Literary Institute (1872), Sabitri Free Circulating Library (1879), Taltola Public Library (1882), Baghbazar Reading Room (1883), Kumartuli Institute (1884), Suburban Reading Room (1888), Chaitanya Library and Beadon Square Literary Club (1889), Kalighat Library (1889), Albert Library (1890) were the forerunners of this type (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 2. Entrance to Chaitanya Library, founded 1889. Originally located at 83 Beadon Street, the library was moved to its own building in 1893 at 4/1 Beadon Street. In 1942 it had a stock of 10,106 volumes and 429 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
By 1925, the city had 163 libraries, and by 1942 the number rose to 295.[4] In addition, there were 21 college and 156 school libraries in 1942. This growth trajectory exceeded the population growth rate in the city, suggesting other factors at play (Figure 3). Of the 295 libraries in 1942, the vast majority—222—were neighborhood libraries founded by small groups of people to encourage a reading public (Figures 4, 5, and 6). This growth has been described as the effect of the “library movement” that commenced in 1925.
“There were more libraries per capita in Calcutta in comparison to New York and London.”
Figure 3. The growth of libraries in Calcutta, 1774-1944. Aaheli Sen and Sounita Mukherjee.
Figure 4. The Boy’s Own Reading Room and Young Men’s Institute, founded 1909. Originally located in a residence at 12 Ram Narayan Bhattacharya Lane, it was moved to 7/3 Beadon Street in 1917, then to 71 Masjidbari Street, and then to this location at 76/2 Bidhan Sarani (Cornwallis Street) in 1936. Some of the library services are offered at this location, and the rest in its own building constructed in 1961 at CIT Road 1. The latter street is now named after the library. In 1942 the library had a stock of 7,057 volumes and 259 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 5. Bookshelf, 36/1A Bakulbagan Road, Kolkata, founded 1928, and later renamed Young Men’s Association. In 1942 the library had a stock of 2,115 volumes and 67 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 6. Syed Ameer Ali Library, 39 Mominpore Road, Kolkata. Founded 1929; the building is a recent construction. In 1942 the library had a stock of 2,913 volumes and 373 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
A quick comparison with two contemporary large cities and their libraries casts this phenomenon in relief. In 1927 the City of London and London County, that included the 28 boroughs covering an area of 117 sq. miles and a population of approx. 4.5 million, the total number of libraries was 543.[5] This included government libraries, libraries of ecclesiastical institutions, learned societies, borough libraries and their branches, commercial libraries, as well as college libraries. Of these, 138 were public libraries under the Public Libraries Act, 40 were college libraries, 5 were libraries for the sight-impaired, 6 commercial circulating libraries, 13 libraries of publishing houses, and 375 were specialized libraries. In New York City, there were 173 libraries in 1945, including the Carnegie libraries that were built after 1900, and in addition there were 30 college libraries.[6] New York City’s population in 1945 was about 7.5 million across an area of 299 sq. miles.[7]
In contrast to New York and London, Calcutta’s population in the 1940s was about 2 million over an area of 36 sq. miles, making it a denser city than either New York or London. The population distribution across the city, however, varied, with the density thinning out in the outer wards. Neither the population density, nor the city area were determinants of the phenomena of neighborhood libraries, however. There were more libraries per capita in Calcutta in comparison to New York and London, even though the majority of the libraries in London and New York were far better endowed in terms of resources and collections than the majority of libraries in Calcutta.
New York and London were the largest metropolitan centers of their respective nation-states. The library movements in these cities were explicitly intended to form a literate citizenry, beyond the limits of the salon-centric public sphere of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The situation in colonial Calcutta was different, politically and socially. The British colonial state was determined to limit the franchise, made limited efforts to extend mass education among the populace, and showed scant interest in extending the fruits of major collections such as that of the Imperial Library to branch libraries where it could reach a larger public. In fact, branch libraries did not exist. In this impoverished state of public education, amid continuing hostility between the colonial state and Indian nationalists about the state’s coercive control of educational institutions, these small libraries were a material expression of a grassroots movement by the city’s residents.
“The neighborhood library not only performed a much-needed social service to the immediate community; in providing an opportunity to browse and borrow books, to meet, gather, converse, and locate oneself in a network of support, learning, and sociality, it gave definition to the neighborhood itself.”
The number of libraries in Calcutta increased after independence from British rule. In 1963 the total number of libraries reported was 533, not including school libraries, trade union libraries and adult education center libraries. The city by that time had a population of approximately 2.9 million over a 40 sq. miles area. Of these, 348 were public and subscription libraries, 105 were specialized libraries, and 73 were college and university libraries.[8]
While some libraries were patronized and managed by well-known educationists, literary figures, and political personalities, the primary goal of the neighborhood library was to foster the immediate community of the locality. Such libraries enabled neighbors to gather around a common interest, to promote conviviality and participate in community work. As the Mirzapore Phoenix Union Library, a neighborhood library founded in 1892 put it, the goal was to cater to the “intellectual development of the locality.”[9] These modest neighborhood libraries—para’r library in Bengali—enabled the process of community formation and helped define the locality (para) in the first half of the twentieth century.
Consider one small library, Entally Bani Institute, located at the time of its founding in one of the outer wards of the city. In 1925 a group of residents in this neighborhood of Hazra Bagan founded this library by donating a few hundred books. It was located in the baithakhana (salon, typically located in the outer compartments of a residence) of one of the founders’ houses. By 1931 that library had moved to 48 Pottery Road in a temporary accommodation.[10] In 1942 it had 85 subscribers and 4,289 volumes. Primarily supported by membership dues, augmented by modest grants from the Calcutta Corporation, the library drew readers from about a distance of two miles.
In the 1920s the neighborhood of Hazra Bagan and Pottery Road was a heterogenous multiethnic and multireligious community of middle- and low-income residents interspersed with religious institutions, factories, rice and timber mills, godowns, slaughterhouses, tanneries, coolie barracks and bustees.[11] Living amid the eastern lowlands, increasingly occupied by manufacturing industries, the inhabitants formed small neighborhood clusters that were more loosely aggregated than those in the city center. The road and utilities infrastructure was uneven and inadequate. In 1911, two decades after being incorporated within the Calcutta municipality, the population density in this area remained among the lowest in the city, despite a large number of working-class people moving to this area in search of cheaper accommodation, having been displaced by the bustee-removal projects in the older parts of the city (Figure 7).[12] The neighborhood library in this context formed the nucleus of a new wished-for community. Even in this unevenly and sparsely populated part of the city, besides Entally Bani Institute, 19 libraries were established between 1882 and 1938 (Figures 8, 9, and 10).
Figure 7. Population density of Calcutta, 1911. By Thomas Crimmel, based on the Census Report on Calcutta, 1911.
Figure 8. Location of the libraries in the erstwhile Wards 18, 19, and 20. Click on the location symbols for the library name and address.
Figure 9. Entry to Kamala Library, 6 Palmer Bazar Road, founded 1911. The single story building dedicated to the library has a yard in front that accommodates various community activities. When this photograph was taken, the front yard was occupied by a Durga Puja pandal. In 1942, the library had a stock of 9,225 books and 95 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 10. Bookcase in the Beniapukur (Baneapuker) Library and Reading Room donated by a local family, with the family’s name inscribed on the top of the bookcase. In 1942 the library had a stock of 4,236 volumes and 101 members. The library building on 36/B Beniapukur Road was burned down in the 1946 communal riots, and was rebuilt at 3 Beniapukur Road. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Some of these neighborhood libraries did not survive into the present millennium. Those that survived either received strong institutional support and/or reshaped their role as a community-serving institution by adopting other functions that seemed urgent to the residents of the locality. In 1967 Entally Bani Institute moved to its own single-story building constructed on land donated by the municipality (Figure 11). Upon receiving formal state sponsorship in 1981, it was conferred the title of “town library.” The book collection in the 1990s reached about 10,000. In 1999 the building was further expanded to provide space for vocational training and community cultural programs.
At present, a small entryway leads to the library on the ground floor—a dimly lit rectangular room with bookshelves lining the walls. Tables occupy much of the space in the middle of the room, leaving narrow passages for movement. A smaller squarish room at the back extends the library space. The mix of new and old furniture, piled up books, and computer monitors covered with cloth suggest infrequent maintenance and modest resources (Figure 12). But there is more to this library: in the hall-like spaces on the two upper stories small children sit on mats on the floor learning their lessons in front of a tutor (Figure 13). They are part of an NGO-run coaching center that offers free tuition to children. These rooms do double duty as gathering and performance spaces as the Institute celebrates a number of cultural, civic, and commemorative events throughout the year. A small common room on the first floor is used for rehearsals for cultural programs held on such occasions. There is a designated computer room where computer training is offered and where members can access the internet. The Institute runs an adult literacy program. An optometric clinic on the second floor run by another NGO is busy. In contrast to these spaces, the library itself, though functioning, looks forlorn.
Figure 11. Entry to the library of Entally Bani Institute, 51M Pottery Road, Kolkata, founded 1925. In 1942 it had a stock of 4,289 books and 85 members. A secondary entrance on the left that leads to the entry hall and staircase is now used as the primary entry. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 12. Interior of library, Entally Bani Institute. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 13. Children in a tutorial session in the multipurpose upper-floor hall, Entally Bani Institute. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
This is not an isolated instance. In the Islamia Library and Free Reading Room on Raja Dinendra Street, founded in 1922, we find two spacious rooms on the lower floor given over to the library. The collection of new books is thin, and the older books are locked away in opaque steel and wood cabinets (Figures 14 and 15). The two large spaces of the library are used for a coaching center, computer training and for tailoring lessons. The building also houses The Calcutta Workingman’s Institution established in 1909, and a municipal school for boys. Located on the upper floor is a homeless shelter (Figures 16 and 17).
Figure 14. Islamia Library and Free Reading Room, 1/5 Raja Dinendra Street, Kolkata, founded 1925. In 1942 the library had a stock of 1,689 volumes and 157 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 15. Located in an early twentieth-century building in a working-class neighborhood, the library is freely accessible to locals. The keys to the library are kept by a storeowner on the opposite side of the street. The iron grill at the building’s entry serves as an anchor for a clothesline used by locals who wash their clothes at the roadside water tap. Signboards next to the entry gate inform that the coaching center, computer training center and tailoring center are under the management of Islamic Library. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 16. Main reading room, Islamia Library and Free Reading Room. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 17. Staircase with sign pointing to the location of “urban homeless shelter,” Islamia Library building. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Figure 18. Demolished premises of Ananth Library and Sabikash Free Reading Room, 47 Haldarpara Road, Kolkata. Founded in 1920, it was part of the premises of a residence of the Haldar family. In 1942, the library had a stock of 3,516 books and 58 members. Photograph by Swati Chattopadhyay, 2021.
Many of the old neighborhood libraries are ill-funded and in poor physical condition, with the number of subscribers dwindling. Others have been demolished to make way for profitable real estate development (Figure 18). From a booklover’s perspective this is a loss to the city’s literary sphere. The small libraries such as Entally Bani Institute and Islamia Library that have survived convey a different message. In their ability to morph to meet new needs, they indeed tell us about the function of neighborhood libraries when they were founded and the role they continued to play through much of the twentieth century. The neighborhood library not only performed a much-needed social service to the immediate community; in providing an opportunity to browse and borrow books, to meet, gather, converse, and locate oneself in a network of support, learning, and sociality, it gave definition to the neighborhood itself. The deep stratum of heavily used and much-appreciated neighborhood libraries is also a salutary reminder of the larger bibliophilic context within which elite libraries in private homes and the rarefied enclaves of specialized collections gained their significance.
Notes
[1] Amitav Ghosh, “The March of the Novel through History: The Testimony of My Grandfather’s Bookcase,” Kenyon Review 20, no. 2 (Spring 1998), 13.
[2] Ghosh, “The March of the Novel,” 15-16.
[3] Tapti Roy, “Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance of Bengali Literature,” In Partha Chatterjee, ed. Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 30.
[4] The data is obtained from the Bengal Library Association’s survey completed in 1942, The Bengal Library Directory (Calcutta: Bengal Library Association, 1942), and augmented with information from street directories, fieldwork, and local histories. The introduction to The Bengal Library Directory noted that not all libraries responded to the survey request, so the number is conservative.
[5] Reginald Arthur Rye, The Libraries of London: A Guide for Students (London: University of London, 1928). Since Rye’s survey did not include “every small collection,” nor those maintained by newspapers and corporations, the actual number of libraries was likely higher.
[6] The American Library Directory, 1945, compiled by Karl Brown (New York: R.R. Bowker Co, 1945), 362-377.
[7] The 1940 census recorded a population of 7,454,995.
[8] West Bengal Library Directory (Calcutta: West Bengal Library Association, 1963).
[9] Thacker’s India Directory, 1915 (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1915), 33.
[10] Thacker’s India Directory, 1931 (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1931), 176. Mihir Dutta, the secretary of the library, mentioned that it was located next to a timber-yard. Conversation with Swati Chattopadhyay, Oct 2021.
[11] In 1911 wards 19 and 20 had large numbers of Muslims and Christians with the percentage of Hindus being between 50-60% in Ward 19 and between 37-40% in Ward 20 [L. S.S. O’Malley, “Report on the Census of Calcutta,” Census of India, Part VI. City of Calcutta, Part I (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1913, p. 20)]. The ward numbers and boundaries in this area changed in 1914.
[12] O’Malley, “Report on the Census of Calcutta,” 10.
