The Ganges River, India (3)

Early mornings on the river are indescribably peaceful and serene. The feathery silvery heads of the elephant grass blend into the mist and the borders between sky and water are indistinct.

The colours are simply sublime.

We’re in the town that was once the centre of the Asian universe – seriously. Murshidabad was the old capital of Bengal, the largest and richest state of India, and the wealthiest town in Asia.

Murshidabad's peak was from 1725 to 1765. But the British East India Company was lurking in the wings. The Battle of Plassey in 1757 – well, that was the final nail in the coffin. The BEIC won the battle and Bengal lost the war.

In 1765, the capital shifted to Kolkata. Britain, in the form of the trading company, started imposing taxes on the local populace. The Nawabs of Bengal, the royal rulers, might still have been the heads of state but without money, their power was worthless. Gradually the BEIC grew stronger and stronger. In 1770 the Bengal famine arrived, when over 3 years, anything between 2 million and 10 million people died. (Record-keeping wasn't very accurate.) Food was locked in BEIC storerooms, to be shipped out of India.

But that was all still to come when Murshidabad was at its peak. The elites spoke Farsi, the Persian language, and the Persian influence was enormous. The rulers were Sunni Muslims, but they worked closely with Hindu advisors and senior officials, and there was little conflict between the groups.

Katra Mosque was built in 1723 by the first nawab, Murshid Quli Khan, who gave his name to the town. The mosque had five domes and a few nifty features like iron hooks to attach fabric covers to shade the faithful when they prayed in the courtyard. You can see them in the photos. This was also one of the few mosques where women could pray with men, albeit in an adjacent shaded section.

In 1897 an earthquake shattered 3 of the 5 domes on the mosque. Islam says that temples should be abandoned when an Act of God damages them, so the mosque is no longer used for prayer. The complex is now under management by the Archaeological Society of India.

The most notable thing about the Nawab who built the mosque was that he was a humble man, who wanted only a mud grave under the stairs. It makes a change from the grand tombs that we have seen. Also noteworthy is the small Hindu temple in the mosque grounds, demonstrating the religious collegiality of the time. (Until 1947 anyway, and Partition.)

The Hazarduari Palace is a different kettle of fish altogether. Designed by the British, built for British officials in the early 1800s, it looks like a yellow Greek temple, has 114 rooms and 1000 doors. Of those, 900 are real doors and 100 are false doors. Why? To bamboozle intruders, naturally.

Hazarduari is now a museum of treasures from British colonial time. From the late 1700s, the Nawabs of Bengal were educated in Britain, and became more British than the British. We weren’t allowed to take photos in the museum, but I felt quite depressed, actually, by the way it was all so British. The art is British, the décor is British, the architecture is Western. The most eastern thing I saw was a silver howdah – the seat that goes onto the elephant.

To be fair, one of the British governors from this time banned suttee, so I suppose that’s a good thing. Suttee is where Indian widows were thrown onto their dead husbands’ funeral pyres and burned alive. And to be even more fair, our guides were scrupulously even-handed about the good and the bad things inherited from colonial rule.

The large white building is the imambara, a Muslim mosque/congregational hall. It was built later than Hazarduari, and sort of faces off the British building.

Murshidabad has lots of horse-drawn carriages, but we chose to have a pleasant walk back to the ship through one of the markets. Our guide and two of the ship's crew accompanied us – they're not allowed to leave guests alone.

We avoided the self-proclaimed 'selfie zone'.

Back onboard: yesterday was saris, today is mehndi. We could have henna patterns drawn onto our skin. Did I? No. Cultural appropriation? Maybe. I had other things to do – books to read, blogs to write, desserts to eat.

Murshidabad was the furthest point on our journey upstream. From there, we turned around and went downstream, back in the direction of Kolkata.

We arrive in Mayapur. Mayapur is where the headquarters of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), aka Hare Krishna movement, is located. (I have an immediate recollection of that Hare Krishna ballet/dance scene in the movie Hair. Anyone else remember it?)

Hare Krishna derives from Hinduism, but is quite different in that it’s based around one central divine figure, Krishna. It came from India, went to the US where it bloomed in the troubled 1960s, and came back to India in an altered form. The Indian government was deeply suspicious of this foreign-influenced movement, and thought it was a CIA plot. After much investigation, they accepted that it’s white- and saffron-robed adherents were harmless.

Devotees live in Mayapur. There are 48 nationalities living here: 2500 foreigners. and 5000 Indians. Americans used to be in the (foreign) majority; now it is the Russians. The centre has 3 schools and a megakitchen serving 1000 meals every day.

These are the living quarters for foreigners, all very salubrious, and our lovely local guide from the temple. The last photo, the yellow house, is an example of where locals live.

There are four rules for adherents: no gambling, no eating meat, no sex outside marriage, no intoxicants. It’s a very wealthy sect. It operates in 200 countries. Some Americans in our group recalled how saffron-robed young people used to congregate in US airports, chant and seek donations. Apparently that’s no longer allowed. But donations flow (fly?) in from all over the world. The great-grandson of Henry Ford donated millions for the building of the new Temple of the Vedic Planetarium to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding in 2016; the construction is running late (!) and it’s now scheduled for completion in 2026. So they'll celebrate the 60th anniversary instead. When it's finished, it’ll be bigger than St Paul's Cathedral in London.

The construction site is hidden behind hoardings, but I peeped through the fence to take this photo.

We went into the (current) main temple, which was packed with adherents chanting the mantra. We were encouraged to do so too. It's a simple mantra! Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama ... and so on. Perhaps it was the sense of unity, or the simplicity, but the sense of devotion was almost tangible. If you’re interested in Hare Krishna, and it appeals to many people, this is ISKCON's site: www.mayapur.com. It's worth a look, actually.

We weren’t allowed to take photos in the main temple, but here are some photos of the subsidiary temple dedicated to the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, the Indian man born in Mayapur who went to the US. We were fortunate to catch a glimpse of Krishna, the idol, because Indian gods are treated like humans and they have time off for breakfast, lunch, etc. when the curtains are drawn and they are no longer publicly available. (They also have their clothes changed throughout the day.)

On more worldly matters. After Partition, the state of West Bengal was governed by the Communist Party for 30 years. They focused on land redistribution and free education. All went well until they started negotiating with big US companies to build car manufacturing plants. The locals objected to this and after supporting the Communists for seven terms, voted in a far-right party. Now, according to our guide Partha (a very loyal Bengali, who doesn't criticise his home state lightly), there’s no industry in West Bengal and education costs are very high. Time to reinstate the Communists?

Once again, I was not allowed by our strict guides to sample the street food. Humph.

We leave Mayapur and carry on downstream to our last stop before sailing back to Kolkata.

Chandannagar was the base for the French East India Company from 1688; the French EIC was a fierce rival to the British East India Company. A short distance away from the FEIC, three other colonial HQs were located: the Portuguese East India Company, the Dutch East India Company and the Danish East India Company. Yes, Bengal was a hive of foreign activity, where trade companies plundered in the name of commerce.

From 1730, Chandannagar was the centre of trade with Europe. Opium, silk, rice, sugar, indigo –all left from this city. French Governor Joseph Dupleix built houses and created a city modelled on those in France. Indians use ghats (steps down the river), and they're still there, but Europeans wanted to stroll along the river, not down to it, to take the evening air. We walked along the broad, tree-lined riverfront promenade known as the Strand, past the old French hotel that is now the city law court. The town's old name was Chandernagore; names throughout India were updated fairly recently to better reflect the local pronunciation.

The house of French Governor Dupleix, built in 1740 complete with statue of Marianne, is kept as a museum, but it’s a little shabby. Again, no photos allowed inside.

La vie est belle for a while, it seems, but Britain and France were old enemies, and that hostility continued in Bengal. In 1757, the BEIC (Robert Clive again, aided by the British navy) attacked the French EIC, put them under siege, and conquered Chandannagar. The city bounced between Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars but finally ended up back with France in the early 1800s. A gate on the city still shows the revolutionary slogan Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité, which seems a little ironic under the circumstances. Chandannagar was governed as part of French India until 1952 – yes, after independence from Britain. There is still a French school in the town, unusual for India.

Bengal was, and is, a very cosmopolitan region – the cities are, anyway. Our guides in this part of the tour are all Bengali, and we’re picking up a distinct sense of superiority to the rest of the country. The famous poet, musician and artist Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, was (you guessed it) Bengali. He wrote the Indian national anthem, amongst other things. A national treasure, one might say.

These gentlemen were effecting some road repairs nearby, working with hot tar. A fairly lax approach to WH&S, n'est-ce pas?

The 19th century Church of the Sacred Heart in Chandannagar is regularly attended by 400 families, and being a Sunday, they were preparing for evening mass when we were there.

I walked with sorrow past these pani puri street carts, which I was not allowed to sample. Note the street dog looking very comfortable next to the tree, and all the clay tea cups. Chai is sold by street vendors in small clay cups, which biodegrade naturally. Much better than plastic.

The building that houses the Chandernagore College was a centre for revolution during India's fight for freedom. One section is now a museum dedicated to the revolution and Chandannagar’s history and culture. The young woman who was our local guide was a student at the college, specialising in tourism. In the second photo, the map shows how the river winds its way through the town. Chandannagar got its name from the crescent shape of the river, as the Hindi word 'chand' means 'moon'.

The museum commemorating the revolutionaries/freedom fighters reminded me of Robben Island in Cape Town and Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi. Under French influence, I was surprised to see the gallows rather than the guillotine ... but perhaps it's a case of when in India, do as the British do. I would have liked to have spent more time here – I'm interested in how colonisers were challenged in modern history – but I will have to come back another day.

Chandannagar is the location, once a year, of the second biggest parade/procession after Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. We saw many brightly coloured icons that are part of the parade. The parade honours Jagganath, an avatar of Vishnu (I think: it all gets very complicated), and these statuettes are displayed on carts that get pulled to the temple.

Back along the Strand to the dock. As we were waiting for the sampan on the local jetty, the ferry docked from across the river. Five life rings?

Back on the ship we had a local dance performance ...

... and some delicious food, including dahi vada (I had three, which was some comfort after being denied street puri and no, it is not a dessert) ...

... before the wonderful crew members released one hundred floating candles on the Ganga upstream of the ship to mark our last night on board. Impossible to photograph, or describe, the effect. You will just have to imagine a hot summer night, on the water, as these small flames travelled past us, flowing on the current towards the ocean. I took the first two photos as the candles were coming towards us, and the last two as they passed us.

Next: Kolkata

This really looks better on a bigger screen. www.julie-anne.online