The Second Capital of the British Empire

Calcutta is one of the most suprising cities to visit in India. The city was under East India Company rule long before Britain’s Act of Union with Ireland.

It's no surprise that the word Brits used to refer to their homeland - Blighty - has Bengali origins: the word ‘Bilayati’ means ‘foreign’ or ‘far away’.

By the late 19th century, Calcutta was also the second city of the British Empire - a city which on any given day was thronged by Bengali, Armenian, Tamil, Odia, Chinese, Arab, Scottish, Spanish, Malay and Japanese migrants and traders.

Its not hard to find this diversity in Calcutta today. A small walk can take you past Muslim mosques, Buddhist pagodas, Confucian temples, Jewish synagogues, and Hindu and Jain mandirs.

Other parts of Calcutta feel identical to London. High Society still attend old colonial clubs in Sunday best (no Indian dress allowed) to be served fruit salad and custard.

And of course, all the churches of the city feel straight out of the British countryside.

The great contradiction at the heart of Calcutta, of course, is that whilst being the most British city in India, it is also the most revolutionary, the heart of the nationalist movement and the naxal movement and everything in between. The home of the longest democratically elected Communist government in the world, and the hammer and sickle is still ubiquitous in many neighbourhoods.