Plans are afoot to turn the Scottish cemetery on Karaya Road into an active burial ground.
In the past two years, three new burials have taken place. The cemetery, established in 1820, has 1,809 graves with around 4,000 burials, many of them Scotsmen. There are many unidentified graves, and vacant land which could be used to bury people, said an official closely associated with the upkeep of the cemetery.
The cemetery was rescued from ruins and has been restored and beautified under the initiative of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust.
The cemetery was established to cater to the needs of the large Scottish population in the city and that is how it gets its name. It was in use till the 1940s after which it fell into disuse. By the 1970s the three-acre plot had degenerated into a garbage dump. The Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust, a private trust in Scotland, restored the cemetery in 2008.
On Saturday, after 16 years, the first phase of the project was completed. To mark the completion, a fete and a puppet show were organised on the burial ground. The British Deputy High Commissioner, Andrew Fleming, attended the event.
As part of the first phase of the project, about a hundred tombs have been restored and most of them have been identified and graded.
Neeta Das, the project director, took an active role in not just rejuvenating the space and restoring the tombs but also letting the open space be conserved naturally, turning it into a micro bio-diverse hotspot in a congested urban sprawl with over 100 species of flora and fauna.
Participation of the local community has largely been responsible for the turnaround.
The central pathway or the Via Appia with significant tombs and gravestones on either side dominates the scape. The gate and the gatehouse have been restored and repaired. Spread over a 3-acre plot are graves of Scotsmen and local people. Buried here is Reverend Lal Behari Dey, the first Indian priest of Scotland (Duff) Church, whose grave has only recently been restored. Major Macpherson, who helped Raja Rammohun Roy in stopping human sacrifice, is also buried here as is Reverend Thomas Jones, who recorded the Khasi language in Roman script.
Some of the tombs, particularly the vertical ones, are also architecturally significant, like the Roman sarcophagus tomb of Macpherson.
Trust chairperson Lord Charles Bruce visited the cemetery on Saturday and said: “The trust, run by ordinary people in Scotland, without any government support, restores tombs whenever funds are available. Today, the first phase of the restoration project has been completed and a review process is on to find how the next phase will be done.”
The cemetery owned by St Andrew’s Church had stopped being an active cemetery.
“The Scottish Cemetery today is largely renovated and repaired and is being maintained with the help of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust. The way forward to keep this cemetery preserved and maintained we are thinking of turning it into an active burial ground. That will increase footfalls to the cemetery and funds will be available from family members wishing to maintain the graves of their loved ones,” said Swarup Bar, Presbyter-in-Charge of St. Andrews Church, Diocese of Kolkata, Church of North India.
There is a constant threat to spaces like this with an intangible heritage from land sharks and the pressure of development.
“What has been achieved here can be replicated elsewhere as this is a model for how urban spaces can be restored most organically with community participation and local initiative,” said Bruce who is a descendant of James Bruce, who served as Viceroy of India (1862-63) and his son Victor Bruce, who also served as Viceroy of India (1894-99).
“We are discussing how a portion of the cemetery can be turned into a space for story-telling to bring out the history of the Indo-Scottish connections,” said Dilip Dutta Gupta, a former state archaeology officer who has joined in efforts to conserve the Scottish cemetery.
