Active Stocks
Thu Mar 28 2024 15:59:33
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 155.90 2.00%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,095.75 1.08%
  1. HDFC Bank share price
  2. 1,448.20 0.52%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 428.55 0.13%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 277.05 2.21%
Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Kolkata Chromosome | Resting in peace
BackBack

Kolkata Chromosome | Resting in peace

Recent turmoil in an otherwise quiet Armenian church puts the spotlight back on the city's first European inhabitants

Priests at the Armenian graveyard at Park Circus after Sunday mass. Photographs by Indranil Bhoumik/MintPremium
Priests at the Armenian graveyard at Park Circus after Sunday mass. Photographs by Indranil Bhoumik/Mint

The tombstone of Rezabeebeh—wife of the late Charitable Sookias, who lies buried in the Armenian church compound—has perplexed many entrenched chroniclers of Kolkata. With the English inscription marking the year of Rezabeebeh’s passing to “Life Eternal" as 11 July 1630, researchers have pondered over the tomb’s vintage.

“If the date given is true, this would make it by far the oldest Christian grave in Calcutta," writes Prosenjit Das Gupta in his Ten Walks in Calcutta. The writer wonders if Rezabeebeh died somewhere else and was interred at the church, particularly because the inscription is in English, while most of the older graves bear Cyrillic inscriptions.

The British author, Geoffrey Moorhouse, raises other questions in his book Calcutta. In the context of the year of Rezabeebeh’s death, he writes: “Does it mean that there were Armenians already trading…when Charnock (Job Charnock, widely acknowledged as the founder of Calcutta) finally dropped anchor and that his log forgot to mention them? Or is it just the slip of a mason’s chisel?"

View Full Image
The Armenian Church of the Holy Nazareth—an Armenian apostolic church near Burrabazar.

The Armenian Church of the Holy Nazareth on Armenian Street off Burrabazar—locally referred to as the Armenian church and by the community as its Mother Church in India—has traditionally been the centre of their religious and social world. Built in 1707, the wooden church was destroyed in a fireand was rebuilt in 1724 with the aid of Agha Nazar—who, as recently as early November this year, had a requiem service held in his honour (at another Armenian church in the city’s Park Circus area) as the “founder and benefactor" of the Armenian church in north Kolkata’s Armenian Street.

Around the same time as the requiem, the Armenian church—Kolkata’s oldest church otherwise being a serene setting—was also the venue of a turf war. On 10 November, Armenians voted to elect a panel that will control assets estimated to be worth thousands of crores of rupees. As an 8 November report in Mint noted, “The assets are mostly in the form of prime real estate and some five million shares of HSBC that are held by one of the richest religious institutions in India: the Armenian Holy Church of Nazareth in Kolkata."

With so much at stake, competing factions and fault lines emerged within the closely-huddled and reticent community.

A Sunday mass in progress at a church
View Full Image
A Sunday mass in progress at a church

The guard insists I visit again on 6 January, the day when Armenians celebrate Christmas, in keeping with the traditions in their native country. That is the day when the church fills up with the sound of hymns and the birds in the garden are outnumbered by visitors.

The church and its yard are crammed with graves and commemorative marble tablets grace its walls, but the guard has no recollection of any recent burial there. Inarguably , however, it is the final resting place and storehouse of Armenian history in Kolkata.

The church structure itself is less impressive than many of the other Armenian constructions in the city. Over the centuries, Armenian businessmen have contributed immensely to the city’s built heritage. Testament to this is 103-year-old Park Mansions—a building on Park Street built by Armenian jute trader T.M. Thaddeus. In November, it bagged the top prize for the best maintained and restored heritage building, instituted by the Kolkata municipal corporation and Intach (the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage).

Other buildings survive too, like the Nizam Palace—earlier Galstaun Park, where Armenian horse racer, J.C. Galstaun lived; Galstaun made and lost his millions at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club (RCTC) and the property was acquired by the nizam of Hyderabad before the government of India took over. Or the Edwardian-styled apartments, Queen’s Mansion, also built by Galstaun and renamed to mark the visit of Britain’s queen Elizabeth II to the city in 1961.

The relationship between the Armenians and the British has always been symbiotic. It is well illustrated in the example of two Armenian traders secretly supplying victuals to Britishers seeking refuge from the attacks of Bengal’s last independent nawab, Siraj-ud-Daulah, in mid-18th century. “Little wonder they were so beholden to each other," writes Soumitra Das in White & Black: Journey to the Centre of Imperial Calcutta.

But the story of Armenians in the city is also one of struggle and tragedy—many of them fled to escape the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century and found in this city a welcoming, cosmopolitan haven and fellow-feeling. Many went on to achieve great entrepreneurial success. The rags-to-riches story of Arathoon Stephen, who established the imposing Grand Hotel on Chowringhee Road, later bought by the Oberois, and the once-stately Stephen Court on Park Street, which is yet to recover from a 2010 fire, is part of community lore.

View Full Image
A disputed church property on Robinson Street

Marble tablets within the church remember the big donors and achievers—Malcolm Peter Gasper, the first Armenian to crack the Indian Civil Service in 1869; Joseph Eminiantz, a fighter for Armenia’s freedom; Shiraz-born Rev. Shemavonian, the father of Armenian journalism; the children of the Balthazar family, who presented the altar piece’s three biblical paintings; David Aviet David, born in 1858 in Isfahan, Iran, who founded the Davidian Girls’ School in Calcutta; two others who volunteered as legal advisers to the church for as many as 18 and 26 years; and others, like Sir Catchick Paul Chater, among the chief architects of modern Hong Kong, who contributed a chunk of his life savings to the church and the Armenian underprivileged in Kolkata.

Outside, in the yard, gravestones lie interspersed between guava and mango trees. They speak of goodness, benevolence and laments at death. On the hour, every hour, from atop the rounded spire, an antique clock, wound up every Wednesday, commits itself to the passage of time. Near the area where small tombstones remember Armenian children like Vahan (aged 6 days, died 1897, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven"), the epitaph of C.J. Malchus, Esq., (died in 1876) reads: “To live in hearts we leave behind, is not to die."

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 14 Dec 2013, 12:10 AM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App