KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | RESTING IN PEACE
LiveMint, Wall Street Journal
Dec 13 2013
Recent turmoil in an otherwise quiet Armenian church puts the spotlight
back on the city’s first European inhabitants
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?”
The Armenian Church of the Holy Nazareth-an Armenian apostolic church
near Burrabazar.
Moorhouse’s book, along with other historical biographies of
the city, has given an affirmative reply to his first query: The
Armenians did indeed arrive in Bengal before the British, and were
the first Europeans to do so. They would be followed by the Dutch,
Danes, French, Portuguese, Greek and Germans. The community, which
mostly took the overland route from Armenia, was among the earliest
to pioneer international trade and European enterprise in India. In
Calcutta, as it was earlier known, they remained close consorts of
the British; a cosy relationship that allowed Armenians to set up
large business enterprises and time-attested institutions with the
city as the hub of their activities.
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
A few days later, during a visit to the Armenian church, one of the
security guards posted there recounted how the arrangements made by
the police and a private security agency prevented outsiders from
gatecrashing and disrupting the election. It was one of those rare
days of intense activity for him-on most days, the church sees but
a handful of visitors; weekly prayer services too are held elsewhere.
Some estimate the Armenian population in Kolkata at a mere 50, others
peg it at over 200, including visiting students at the city’s Armenian
College and Philanthropic Academy.
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.
A disputed church property on Robinson Street
An understated feeling of kinship within the population in Kolkata
makes the past seem current at the Armenian church, located at one end
of the narrow and bustling Armenian Street. One has to tread carefully,
for it’s nearly impossible to not step on gravestones, many of them
beautifully chiselled in floral patterns and biblical motifs.
Many epitaphs reflect the community’s tradition of charity and
commiseration for the “local Armenian poor”.
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.”
From: A. Papazian
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/763uE5bh6K9f4Vd0XDvAGI/Kolkata-Chromosome–Resting-in-peace.html