Citizens as Stakeholders: Lottery Committee’s Long Shadows on Modern Calcutta

Calcutta has been fortunate to have dozens of citizen-historians—from RP Gupta to PT Nair. Our author belongs to this brand of citizen-historians. His new magnum opus, The Shaping of Modern Calcutta: The Lottery Committee Years, 1817-1830 is an essential addition to the historiography of Calcutta. Although Benoy Ghose and Partho Datta had written extensively on the Lottery Committee, it was only after the publication of this book that the account got the necessary archival robustness with numerous illustrations, images, and maps. The book reflects diligence in gathering and compiling historical materials and interpreting them along the archival grain. Future Calcutta historians will find many materials to ponder in an easily available form.