Patna or Pataliputra, AKA Azimabad, often presents a puzzle to a visitor today. A city with a rich history and glorious past, resembles a ‘2nd-tier’ city in North India. During the Mughal period, from the sixteenth century onward, Patna regained some of its lost preeminence as a major centre of Islamicate learning, intellectual life, trade, and commerce. Even during the early years of colonial rule, it was considered the second-most important city in the Bengal province after Calcutta (now Kolkata). However, even after Bihar’s separation from Bengal in 1912 and Patna becoming the provincial capital, this city and its more than two million inhabitants continue to fight their ‘provincial’ or ‘backward’ image, and struggle to ‘catch up’ with megacities like Delhi or Mumbai. David Boyk presents a fascinating account of the city and its inhabitants from the turn of the nineteenth century to early twentieth century in this well-researched book.
India’s diverse and historically rich regions have faced major challenges over the last two centuries. A new politics of spatiality that emerged since colonial rule had produced a hierarchy between different kinds of spaces–rural/hinterland, urban/city, metropolitan, and 2nd- or 3rd-tier ‘mofussil’ towns and Bazars. These categories were produced not merely for administrative convenience but to exercise control/power, maintain hierarchies, manage social relations, and allocate resources. Boyk uses these colonial policies as an entry point to explore the ‘growth’ and ‘dynamism’ amidst ‘chaos’ or ‘stagnation’ in Patna.
Divided into five main chapters, the introduction discusses how power is reconfigured in Patna through shifts in trade and the transfer of power to the Imperial city, Calcutta. It led to its continuous neglect, decline, and impoverishment. And since then, the city’s elites, the newly emerging middle class, have been looking either towards Calcutta or, in later decades, towards Delhi for the revival of Patna’s preeminence. Chapters two and three discuss the emergence of Patna as a major centre for Islamicate networks and learning. The following two chapters examine the making of modern Bihari identity, the rivalry between Bengalis and Biharis, the separation of Bihar, and the making of Patna as the provincial capital of Bihar and Orissa. In the epilogue, Boyk returns to nostalgic reminiscences of aristocracy and their ambivalent relationship with both the colonial state and the newly emerging middle class in the city. He does so by closely examining the biographical compendium Yadgar-e Rozgar by Sayyid Badr al-Hasan, published in 1931.
The rise of Calcutta as an Imperial city had a deep impact on several cities in North India like Patna, Lucknow, Allahabad (Prayagraj), and Meerut. They increasingly became ‘provincial’ towns in the nineteenth century. During the decline of the Mughal Empire, these cities were bustling centres of trade, intellectual life, and aristocratic culture. The walled city in Patna, built by Sher Shah Suri in the sixteenth century and renamed Azimabad in the seventeenth century under the governorship of Aurangzeb’s grandson, Azim al-Shan (p. 40), emerged as a vibrant centre of Islamicate learning. It was here that wealthy traders and aristocrats lived. Later, they served as indispensable intermediaries between the colonial state and the broader population in Patna. However, the colonial state eventually developed the Danapur and Bankipur regions, away from the old town, also known as Patna city. Present-day Patna developed around Bankipur. It reconfigured the sense of spatiality and power relations within the city. The old city and its inhabitants, rooted in community ties and a nostalgic past, experienced continuous, irreversible decline, while Bankipur–home to new entrants and the emerging English-educated middle class–became the hub of activity. Boyk captures the intricacies of these shifts and examines their impact on its inhabitants in a compelling way.
Patna’s deindustrialization coincided with the scarcity and dysfunction of urban amenities–roads, transport, public space, and hospitals. Colonial policies did little to address them. Boyk shows how plagues and cholera regularly infested Patna. Filth, dirt, and disease brought havoc upon its inhabitants. It was the only major city in northern India to experience a continuous decline in population from 1881 to 1921 (p. 15). Amidst this chaos and calamity, its culturally rooted conscientious intelligentsia achieved remarkable feats. The establishment of Bihar’s first public library, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library by Khuda Bakhsh Khan (1842-1908), a native of Chhapra, in 1891, was one such accomplishment. It has the largest collection of manuscripts, particularly in Islamic tradition. The author describes the struggle, support, philanthropy, and public spirit of a conscientious individual in establishing this library, and how he received support from his community and the colonial state. This library sees a limited number of visitors today. However, it remains a major landmark and integral part of Patna’s identity.
Similarly, the rise of printing presses and modern organizations created a public and began to shape public opinion in the city. The author tells this story through Al-Punch (based on London’s famous comic weekly, Punch). There were several other papers, such as Bihar Bandhu, Desha, The Behar Times (later The Beharee, then Searchlight, until its merger with the Hindustan Times), and Behar Herald. But Al-Punch, an Urdu newspaper founded in 1885, is distinctive for its use of wit and humour. Although drawn from largely Islamic tradition, the paper focused on common issues and communal harmony. However, with the growth of Hindi newspapers and presses like Khadagvilas Press, Urdu increasingly began to be seen as a language of Muslims.
The colonial state’s inclusion of Bihar in the Bengal Presidency deeply affected its separate political identity. For the colonial administrators, Patna served as a helpful bridge between Bengal and the Hindi-speaking region of North India. As a result, initially, Biharis’ identity was subsumed under the larger Bengali identity, and subsequently, with the rise of Hindi, within the Hindi-speaking region. This confusion regarding Bihari identity was keenly felt by Bihari students from elite backgrounds who went abroad or to Calcutta for their studies. Prominent among them was Sachchidananda Sinha. Other leaders, such as Mahesh Narayan, Nand Kishore Lal, Krishna Sahay (p. 157), and later Rajendra Prasad, also played an important role in the Bihar Movement. From the 1870s and 80s through the publications of Bihar Bandhu, and Behar Times, these leaders began to mobilize public opinion and petitioned the government for the separation of Bihar from Bengal. Boyk’s focus in this book is on Bihari resistance to Bengali domination in the colonial administration, and he critically examines the inner dynamics of this resistance, its articulations and expressions through the press, the public, and state authorities in Bihar, Calcutta, and also in Allahabad.
In 1905, the ill-conceived partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi movement provided an opportune moment for Bihari leaders to press for the separation of Bihar. Sinha wrote two newspaper articles in 1904 and 1905 for Hindustan Review, which were later published as a pamphlet titled, The Partition of Bengal or the Separation of Bihar? An Ideally Perfect Alternative Scheme in 1906. Sinha, together with Ali Imam, also formed the Bihar Provincial Conference for this purpose. It later merged with the Indian National Congress and played a critical role in retaining composite and syncretic traditions in Bihar politics. The colonial government, increasingly suspicious of Bengal’s nationalist politics and sustained agitations, began to present Biharis as ‘a sturdy loyal people’. Sinha and the other leaders did little to disturb this impression. They also deployed the nascent nationalist movement’s logic in support of their demand for the separation of Bihar. Finally, on December 12, 1911, George V made the historic announcement of the creation of Bihar, the reunification of Bengal, and the shifting of the Capital from Calcutta to Delhi. In the following year, on March 22, 1912, a united Bihar and Orissa (now Odisha) was officially separated from Bengal. The author aptly captures the inbuilt tensions and contradictions in the making of modern Bihar. The roots of the late separations of Orissa in 1936 and Jharkhand in 2000 can be traced back to the inherent tensions and contradictions in the Bihar Movement.
Patna became the capital city. It was no longer Calcutta’s satellite town. There was a growing number of official buildings, parks, clubs, associations, and the rise of the English-educated, ‘career-oriented, disciplined middle class’. They also learnt to reconcile with the continued Bengali dominance in state institutions and administration. However, these developments permanently reshaped the city’s character. Patna witnessed the growth of English and, eventually, Sanskritized Hindi in the later decades. It emerged as a preeminent Hindi-speaking region in North India. Such developments had their internal frictions; however, Patna’s legacy as a major centre for Urdu and Islamicate learning took a permanent backseat and saw irreversible decline. Boyk beautifully captures this decline and shows the captivating nostalgia and ambivalence of a public-spirited fading elite–devoted to scholarship, philanthropy, and community ties.
This book essentially tells the story of Patna–both spatially and temporally. It is surprising, however, that Patna is not included in the book’s title. Secondly, to many readers, the narratives may appear disproportionately based on colonial and Islamic sources. It refers to Patna’s syncretic tradition but does very little to foreground that narrative. Its ancient Hindu or Buddhist heritage is, by and large, missing. Aryabhatta is believed to have used an ancient observatory in Khagaul, under Patna municipality, to study the movement of celestial bodies. Chanakya came to Patna and played an instrumental role in establishing the Mauryan Empire; Emperor Ashoka resurrected Buddhist philosophy and heritage. Similarly, the city is also known for being the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh (in the late seventeenth century). A revered Sikh pilgrimage site and major landmark in the city, Gurudwara Patna Sahib, was built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the eighteenth century. Adequate engagement with these traditions and heritage would have made the narrative even more enriching. Similarly, a more critical engagement with Bihar Bandhu and Khagagvilas Press (established in 1892 by Babu Ramdin Singh), as in his studies on Al-Punch, would have been helpful for understanding the shifts and transitions taking place in the city in the late nineteenth century.
Mithilesh Kumar Jha is Assistant Professor (Political Science), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati.