Fort William rarely figures in everyday conversations about Kolkata. It dominates the city’s geography yet remains largely unseen, inaccessible, and absent from public memory. That absence was the central thread of By the Bastions, a river-based history walk that examined how the construction of the New Fort William quietly reconfigured Calcutta’s riverfront, its power structures, and its relationship with labour and migration.
Kaustubh Mani Sengupta
Speaking aboard a steamer on the Hooghly, historian Kaustubh Mani Sengupta explained that the New Fort William marked a radical departure from earlier fort traditions in the subcontinent. Unlike Mughal or regional forts built to be seen from afar, this structure was deliberately low and concealed. Designed on European principles suited to the age of gunpowder and cannons, the fort could not be spotted from a distance. Invisibility, Sengupta noted, was not accidental but strategic—an architectural response to modern warfare.
Built over nearly two decades under figures such as Robert Clive, the fort was completed at a moment when the East India Company no longer needed to hide. Power had consolidated. The confidence of rule soon found expression in grand, visible structures like the Governor’s House, signalling a shift from defensive secrecy to imperial display. Fort William, paradoxically, faded from view even as it shaped the city’s future.
Sengupta pointed out that because the fort remains a secured zone, its history often slips out of popular narratives of Kolkata. “These spaces exist, but they are absent,” he observed, arguing that such architectures demand archival attention precisely because the public cannot encounter them directly. Yet they were central to the making of early Calcutta and to the spatial logic that governed the city in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
The historical discussion was followed by a musical performance by Arko and Friends, drawing on traditions shaped by labour, migration and displacement, echoing the same colonial networks that made Fort William possible. Artist Rajeev Dutta, who documented the event, described it as “reminiscing forgotten cartographies and narratives along the riverfront.”
For attendees, the setting sharpened the argument. “By the Bastion was truly mesmerising,” said teacher Devina Gupta. “The talk revealed how Fort William shaped Calcutta’s ideologies, architecture and power structures, followed by music that carried those histories forward.” Entrepreneur Kunal Mandal reflected, “Learning Kolkata’s history on a sunset boat ride revealed the city’s beauty through its stories.” Seen from the river, Fort William emerged not as a monument but as an idea—one that reshaped visibility, authority and memory in the city, while remaining persistently out of sight.
