Dihi Panchannagram was a group of 55 villages which the East India Company purchased in 1758 from Mir Jafar, after the fall of Siraj-ud-daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, in what is now the city of Kolkata, earlier known as Calcutta, in Kolkata district, in the Indian state of West Bengal.
In the early years of the 18th century, Calcutta was a small settlement spread across a narrow stretch on the east bank of the Hooghly.
In 1742, the Marathas burst into Bengal, and Nawab Alivardy Khan required all his energy and skills to keep them at bay.
The project was abandoned but the ditch remained a sort of a boundary for the English settlement.
P. Thankappan Nair says that the English obtained from the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar, in 1717, the right to rent from 38 villages surrounding their settlement.
The remaining 33 villages on the Calcutta side were (spellings have been modernised): Dakshin Paikpara, Belgachia, Dakshin Dari, Bahir Dakshin Dari, Chitprur, Hoglakundi (or Hoglakuria), Ultadanga, Shimulia (or Shimla), Macond, Kamarpara, Kankurgachi, Bagmari, Shura, Bahir Shura, Dolland, Shrirampur, Chaubaga, Tapsia, Shiltala, Sangassey, Gobra, Kulia, Tangra, Hintalee (or Entali), Colimba, Jal Colimba, Shealdah, Mirzapur, Arcooley, Birjee, Chourangi, Shehparra and Garedalparra.
Cotton says that in addition to the comparatively small British settlement, which was defined in a proclamation dated 10 September 1794, primarily as the area within the Maratha Ditch, the 55 villages of Panchannagram formed the suburbs beyond the ditch.
They were spread over an area of 23 square miles and even in the early 20th century were under the magisterial and revenue jurisdiction of 24 Parganas.
[4] Along with the dihis and mouzas, noted above, another administrative division for the development of an integrated colonial settlement was the thana or police station.
In the earlier days, the police stations also looked after the civic needs of the people.
The earliest list of thanas was prepared in 1785 (names modernised): Armenian Church, Old Fort, Chandpal Ghat, ‘South of the Great Tank’ (Lal Dighi or B.B.D.
The 25 wards created under the Calcutta Municipal Act of 1889, precisely matched these divisions.
Bartala, the area where the Rajas of Shobhabazar, the most orthodox Hindus of Calcutta, lived.
Kalutola, the home of the oil pressers, harks back to the beginning of the 18th century.
Bamun Bustee, a slum area occupied by the servants of the Park Street sahibs, later converted to a European neighbourhood.
Hastings, initially a Muslim burial ground, then ‘Coolie Bazar’ for workmen who built Fort William, and then a township for Ordnance and Commissariat department people.
Entali, once part of salt lakes beyond the Maratha Ditch, later a marshy area for economically distressed sections of society.
Baliganj emerged as a citadel of the educated Bengali middle class after the suburban railway opened up the area.
Tollyganj was earlier called Rasa Pagla, and in the 18th century, it had European garden-houses in a predominantly jungle area.
Tipu Sultan’s sons settled down in the area after the Vellore Mutiny in 1806.
It is said the original shrine of Kali, stood here on the bank of the Adi Ganga, a ‘small brook’ and was shifted to the present site at Kalighat, about a mile away, in 1809.
Alipur, initially a Muslim locality, was taken over by the British elite, late in the 18th century.
Alipur became the headquarters of 24 Parganas district and acquired military installations.
The Belvedere Estate, once the Lieutenant Governor’s palace, now houses the National Library of India.
Ekbalpore developed as a Muslim neighbourhood with the settlement of those displaced for the construction of the zoo at Zirat in Alipur police station, and King George’s Docks (now Netaji Subhas Docks) at Garden Reach, as well as migration of Momins or weavers from Bihar and UP.
Watganj is named after Colonel Henry Watson, who set the first dockyards in Bengal.
Outside the area of the 25 Police Section Houses, mention may be made of Garden Reach, which became a Muslim area when Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, with a large entourage settled in Metiabruz.
P. Thankappan Nair writes: The six square miles within the Maratha Ditch thus came to have the world’s highest density of population in that age.
It was a heterogeneous population, sinking differences of caste, creed and colour under the sheer compulsion to interact and survive together.
It has kept growing and living by the ever-renewed confidence and vitality of its inherent human forces.