Kolkata's history is intimately related to the British East India Company, which first arrived in 1690, and to British India, of which Calcutta became the capital in 1772. Job Charnock was widely known as the founder of Calcutta (There were 3 villages named Sutanuti, Govindapur & Kolkata.Later the village Kolkata became the city Kolkata.) but in recent years a number of Indian historians have disputed this claim, arguing that Kolkata occupies the site of an older Indian city, centered around the ancient Kali temple at Kalighat. This claim has been accepted by the Kolkata High Court. The Court has dismissed the name of Job Charnock as the founder of the city and 24 th August as its date of birth. The historic Judgement was based upon an high level Expert Commitee findings. It has been proved that Kolkata had an highly civilized society for centuries before the Europeans first came here.
Whatever its origins,Kolkata flowered as the capital of British India during the nineteenth century, the heyday of the Raj. Calcutta University, the first modern Indian university was founded here in 1857.Kolkata became the center of Indian arts and literature, and the national movement for independence got its start here. However, with the transfer of the capital to Delhi in 1911, the pains of the partition of Bengal in 1947,a violent and bloody Maoist movement (the Naxalite movement) in the 1970s and many political betrayals which no other city experienced,Kolkata had become synonymous with urban decay and poverty, but reversal changes can be already seen.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Kolkata
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Kolkata - updated May 2024
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Kolkata Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
