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The Botanic Garden
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Dr. Anis Mukhopadhyay
Honorary Associate, Centre for Urban Economic Studies, University of Calcutta; Former Associate Professor in Economics, Shibpur Dinobundhoo Institution (College), Howrah – 711 102; and Secretary, South Howrah Citizens’ Forum
January 2010
1 The Botanic Garden, Shibpur
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden (formerly known as Indian Botanic Garden and Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta), spread over 273 acres of land, is situated close to Bengal Engineering and Science University; and both the places are prides of Shibpur, Howrah. Botanical Survey of India (BSI) is in charge of the Garden and BSI is now under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. This Botanic Garden is the largest and the oldest of its kind in South-East Asia, catering to the needs of education, research and recreation.
The commercial and military importance of botanical investigations could be realized by the East India Company only after it secured a firm grip over Bengal and Madras. In 1778, James Anderson, a surgeon with the Madras Army, obtained a large piece of wasteland near Fort St George, and there he experimented with the cultivation of sugar cane, coffee, American cotton and European apples. In the second half of the eighteenth century, after the East India Company seized political power of Bengal and after the great famine of 1770, the company’s administration were in the look out for new varieties of food plants which can be grown on poorer soil and without much cultivating attention. Lt. Colonel Robert Kyd of the Bengal Army, Military Secretary to the then Governor of Bengal and a man distinguished for his own Research-Garden at Shalimar in the neighbourhood, submitted a scheme of ‘Garden of Acclimatization’ near Calcutta; he suggested to the Government in Calcutta in June 1776 for the establishment of a nursery for growing a number of food plants as well as a number of spice-plants in which the Company traded at that time with Java and adjoining archipelago. It was also suggested that the nursery would grow teak trees which would yield the necessary timber for the repair of Company’s ships. The proposal was approved in July 1787 and Col. Kyd was entrusted with the task of finding a suitable land on the western bank of the river. In addition to such a proposal, Colonel Kyd was really interested in encouragement of the study of Botany within a regular system sponsored by the company. The Royal Botanic Garden, Kew (at a small distance from London) is younger to the Royal Botanic Garden, Shibpur (at a small distance from Calcutta) by about fifty years; but the two gardens have
2 different origins. Later, both the gardens became a source of scientific information, research and recreation; but the Kew Garden has been developed as the largest botanic garden with the largest herbarium in the world.
After selection of the site, the government granted the land for the Botanic Garden, a deep trench around the land was dug and a fence was erected. Col. Kyd as the honorary Superintendent of this Botanic Garden took primary initiative to lay the garden and plant different species collected from various parts of the globe, many of which did not survive in the local climate and soil. Col. Kyd lived in his own garden house at Shalimar, worked for the Botanic Garden for about six years and died in 1793 (May 26). Col. Kyd was so attached to the Botanic Garden and his Shalimar garden that in his dying directives (last Will May 18, 1793) he mentioned about the upkeep of the Botanic Garden, care of his permanent attendants and also “last remains be committed to the ground, in my own garden … near an Alligator tree … and that my funeral expenses do not exceed rupees three hundred”. In disregard to his ‘Will’ he was buried in the Park Street Cemetery at a cost of over eight hundred rupees. However, in his memory, a beautiful marble urn was erected in the Botanic Garden on a site selected by William Roxburgh, his successor. During those days, it was known as Company Bagan (Garden of the East India Company). In 1796, the Directors of the East India Company sent several mahogany plants for the Garden. The teak and mahogany plants were first deposited in the Governor-General’s garden in Alipore till their implant in the Garden was sanctioned.
Col. Kyd was succeeded by Dr. William Roxburgh (of Ayrshire in North Britain) in 1793, the first salaried Superintendent of the Garden who took charge on an invitation from the Bengal Government. He was a Botanist who made immense contribution to the study of Indian Botany and is regarded by many as the father of Indian Botany. He was also interested in meteorological impact on droughts and famine, and therefore, recommended food tree plantation like coconut, date, jackfruit etc in the countryside and in public land, which would furnish sustenance to the poor in times of scarcity. Earlier, at Samalcotta near Madras, he had experimented with pepper and indigo. The Court
3 approved of such efforts but appreciated more that part of his activity which had a commercial bearing, and for this chose him for Calcutta. Under the leadership of the enthusiastic Botanist Dr. Roxburgh and with the assistance from his fellow scientists in India and in Europe, the original commercial objective of the Garden was gradually pushed to the background and the Royal Botanic Garden was planned and landscaped entirely for scientific studies. He added to the Calcutta botanic garden largest ever species of plants and trees; his work on economic botany also earned him gold medals from the Society of Arts. The Garden in his time flourished both as a scene of useful botanical experiments and as a pleasant lounge for visitors to enjoy a holiday. Residential quarter for the Superintendent Dr. Roxburgh was constructed within the garden in 1795 and he retired from service in 1813 to go back to his native Scotland where he died in 1815. The most notable find of Roxburgh was Nathaniel Wallich, a surgeon attached to the Danish settlement at Serampore, who was taken a prisoner of war in early 1809 when several French, Dutch and Danish settlements in and around India were attacked by the British at the time of Napoleonic wars. Wallich had been earning handsome amount in private practice; but he agreed to serve as a botanist on ‘whatever allowance’ the government would grant and declared that his object was to gain knowledge and not to make money. But, when the question of finding a successor to Roxburgh arose, Wallich did not find a favour from the administration; finally, he got charge of the Shibpur botanic garden on a later date through interference and lobbying by William Carey. Wallich soon earned reputation of being an avid plant collector for the purpose of which he widely surveyed Bengal, Bihar, Nepal, Penang, Singapur, Burma and China. He also distributed the specimens as widely as possible among science institutions. Still the Calcutta Botanic Garden, the biggest in the country, remained only a mixed collection of several thousand species; and T. Thompson, the Superintendent reported in 1856 that the scientific character of the garden suffered, because the library, the herbarium and the museum starved from want of fund. But botanical investigations did not stop mainly due to the dedication of botanists and the relationship between science and working of colonial commercial and military objectives dubbed by some social historians as ‘colonial science’ which is, in fact, a paradigm of scientific development in a colonial situation.
4 After Dr. Roxburgh, for four years, the Garden was in charge of Dr. Francis Buchanan who became well known later as Sir Francis Buchanan Hamilton, the naturalist and field survey worker and also as the compiler of the first series of Bengal District Gazetteers. Wallich entered the garden administration and research after Dr. Francis Buchanan. Dr. Nathaniel Wallich not only played a great role in the Shibpur Botanic Garden by his enormous collections, cataloguing and extension of research work, but he was also one of the founders of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Originally, the Garden was on 300 acres; in 1819 about 31 acres was detached from it to the Lord Bishop of Calcutta for founding Bishop’s College; and another portion of the garden land was detached in 1864 for construction of a road to Howrah along the north of Bishop’s College. A plot of land, about 2 acres, in the Garden was given conditionally to Agricultural and Horticultural Society for a nursery garden; the area under the Society expanded in size up to 1835, but was also ultimately resumed in 1872 when it was transferred to Society’s own Garden in Alipore. This Society was founded in September 1820 by the eminent Baptist Missionary Dr. William Carey; and it had an office, meeting room, library and museum in the Metcalfe Hall, Calcutta. William Carey was the Society’s first President; and Dwarakanath Tagore and Dr. Nathaniel Wallich were also involved in the Agricultural and Horticultural Society.
From the very beginning, the Garden was supported solely by the Government. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it contained 17 tanks and diverse sectors containing diverse plants and trees, one Herbarium and a few buildings, namely, a residence for the Curator of the Garden, one for the Curator of the Herbarium, one for the Seed Collector and one for the Overseer. Only the Overseer was a native official and the higher ranks were filled in by Europeans. The Overseer managed the Garden with about 140 coolies and malees . There was also a library of scientific books to which the books of Dr. Thomson, a Professor of Botany in the Medical College were added (by purchase) on his retirement in 1862. In the winter of 1860s, the students of Medical College used to visit and explore the Garden every Saturday; and on an average 25 other visitors per day
5 came here for recreation and picnic. Till the present day, students visit this Garden for educational excursions.
From 1817 to 1935, the garden was looked after by eminent European Botanists as Superintendents, like Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, F.R.S, Dr. Hugh Falconer, Dr. Thomas Thomson, Dr. Thomas Anderson, C. B. Clarke, Dr. George King (later Sir George King), Sir David Prain, Col. A. T. Gage and C. C. Calder; and in 1935 Dr. Kalipada Biswas became the first Indian Superintendent of the Garden. In the mean time in 1890, the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) was established and it took over the charge of the Royal Botanic Garden at Shibpur along with the Botanic Gardens of Poona, Saharanpur and Madras; Sir George King was the first Director of BSI, although Dr. King had been in charge of the Garden since 1871. Since 1890, Superintendent of the Shibpur Botanic Garden has been the ex-officio Director of the BSI. David Prain took the initiatives, in the dawn of the twentieth century, to reprint and publish in volumes description of plant species in the Garden (in packs of hundred) prepared by Sir George King, J. F. Duthie, Director, Botanical Department, Northern India and David Prain himself. Excellent drawings for these species came from the pencil of experts like Mr. J. S. Gamble. These are invaluable documents for the purpose of many botanical studies even today. Earlier, the botanical portion of Ainslie’s Materia Medica (1813) was written by Roxburgh and that of O’Shaughnessy’s Bengal Pharmacopaedia (1844) by Wallich; similarly George King also contributed to other books on Pharmacopaedia and Materia Medica . On the other hand, from organizational point of view, BSI failed to achieve a structural cohesiveness which characterized The Survey of India or Geological Survey of India. The colonizers felt the need for BSI, but they preferred to keep it administratively flexible and the botanists could not get an imperial cadre while the Agriculture Department always loomed large in the background; on the other hand, the Government of India was reluctant to sanction sufficient grants even after the disastrous cyclones of 1864 and 1867. In 1875-76 a plan was put forward to provincialize the gardens. The Calcutta garden did benefit from the shift to the Bengal Government; funds were increased, its functions were not curtailed and its all-India character was retained; but the fiscal and administrative autonomy of Roxburgh or Wallich could not be brought back. A
6 strange arrangement crept into the garden administration: the gardens were to remain provincial but botanic investigations were made imperial.
Between 1842 and 1867 a few natural calamities became disastrous to the Garden. In 1860s the Garden suffered great losses from both two destructive cyclones and a huge tidal wave; and it is reported that two ships from the river were carried into the garden by the tides. There are also evidences of attacks within the Garden by tigers which swam across the river and one such tiger was shot by Dr. King. The tiger was later identified as one which had escaped from the private menagerie of former Nawab of Oudh in his Calcutta palace.
This Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Shibpur) has introduced a large number of plants for the first time in India. Tea, cinchona and some best varieties of sugarcane from the West Indies were first introduced in India in this Garden; now the Botanic Garden has approximately twelve thousand plants and one sector of the Garden is maintained particularly for students and researchers. There is another special sector comprised of medicinal plants, known as the Charak Udyan . The Garden is well laid out with many artificial lakes and avenues named after distinguished Botanists and prominent trees. The giant water-lily from the Amazon has been grown in the lakes here since 1887 and has become a specialty of the Garden. The lakes and moats in the Garden are interconnected with underground pipes receiving water from the river Hoogly. In fact, the present lay out of the Garden was finally landscaped by Sir George King. A plan was also mooted, at one point of time, to develop one Zoological Garden here.
The Garden accommodates many rare species of plants and trees from the entire British India and also from other continents and also a very rich collection of orchids; but, the prime attraction of the Garden to its visitors is the Great Banyan tree (Ficus Bengalensis ) near its western boundary. It is not known exactly how old the tree is; there are evidences that the tree was in existence before the establishment of the Botanic Garden in 1787; and it is conjectured that the tree is no less than 250 years old. Banyan tree is the Indian National Tree and this particular tree in the Botanic Garden of Shibpur,
7 Howrah, is spread over more than 1.5 hectares of land and with about 2880 prop-roots. European artists’ impressions of this Banyan tree on canvas adorn the walls of many art galleries in other countries. This Banyan tree has been placed in the logo of the South Howrah Citizens’ Forum signifying the location of this Forum as well as a rich cultural heritage of the area.
Sources: 1. West Bengal District Gazetteers, Howrah; by Amiya Kumar Banerjee, IAS, Calcutta, 1972 2. Banerji, Chunder Nath – An Account of Howrah Past and Present; Published by Daniel Ghose, Calcutta 1872 3. King, Sir George et al – Annals of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, Vol. IX, Part I: A Second Century of New and Rare Indian Plants; Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta 1901 4. Kumar, Deepak – Science & the Raj: a study of British India; New Delhi, OUP, 2006 5. Publications and website of Botanical Survey of India : www.bsi.gov.in
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