Colonialism and South Asia: Cuttack, 1803-1947

Cuttack is a premier city of Orissa. It has shaped the contour and texture of the regional tradition of Orissa along with Puri, the seat of Lord Jagannath. From an uncertain and humble beginning, it has come to occupy the centre stage in the political, economic and the socio cultural life of Orissa as its capital city for almost a millennium. The trajectory of its history constitutes an eventful and complex story of continuity and change. The city's political fortune had been in a state of flux and had undergone cataclysmic changes, albeit not fundamentally in its physiognomy and in its socio-cultural forms. Its social milieu became more heterogeneous with racial, ethical, religious and sectional admixtures: with the emergence of new groups and classes, with conflicts and concur eds among them: which ultimately found a modus operendi in a syncretic way of life. In cultural and literary field, it explored new vistas and realms of experience. Cuttack, true to its capital city stature, had been performing its role as the crucible of new ideas, thereby exerting a determining influence on the habits, choice and the aesthetic senses of the people of Orissa in the same mode as do the present metropolis of contemporary India.

The Importance or urban study, particularly the historical-study of colonial urbanization, can hardly be overemphasized. The common historical experience of colonialism and imperialism has left profound Impact on the polity, society, economy and culture of the third world countries such as India. The Impact was particularly striking in respect of urban India which underwent radical structure-functional transformation under the Pax Britannica. Thus, the pattern and the process of urbanization in modern India have been strongly stamped by its colonial history. The contemporaly realities, the urban reality in particular, cannot, therefore, be properly understood unless it is analysed within the framework of the speciflcitles of the circumstances generated by its recent histoly.

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