Remembering the Raj: Kolkata India's South Park Street Cemetery, Creating and Commemorating Anglo-Indian Society

Author(s): Richard Veit

Year: 2016

Summary

This paper examines the commemorative iconography of Kolkata India's South Park Street Cemetery.  Established in 1767, the South Park Street Cemetery is the resting place of the leadership of England's colonial efforts in Bengal.  It contains over 1600 monuments and likely many more burials.  These monuments range from enormous masonry pyramids to scaled down Greek and Roman temples, and Hindu and Mughal inspired tombs.  Drawing upon an international commemorative vocabulary combining classical and orientalizing motifs, Anglo-Indian artisans created monuments that reflect the ambitions, achievements, and reversals experienced by the Anglo-Indian community during a period when there was considerable cross-fertilization between colonial English and local Indian society.  Today the cemetery is well cared for and has seen considerable study by gnealogists; however, little attention has been paid to its iconography.  This paper is a first step towards interpeting the commemorative art present in the burial ground.

Cite this Record

Remembering the Raj: Kolkata India's South Park Street Cemetery, Creating and Commemorating Anglo-Indian Society. Richard Veit. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434240)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 173