TEFL International - About Kolkata

Brief History of India

The name “India" is derived from the river Indus, along whose banks the Aryans from Central Asia came down over the Himalayas and into the Indo-Gangetic plain around 1500 BC.

The social, economic and political change involved is depicted in the two great epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The old Vedic religion, naturalistic and sacrificial, gave way to the pragmatism of the Upanishads, and this in turn stimulated the rise of reformers like Vardhaman Mahavira and Gautama Buddha around the 5th century BC. Both Mahavira and Buddha sought only to reform Hinduism, but two religious faiths emerged known today as Jainism and Buddhism respectively.

The political history of India is the history of the rise and fall of many empires contributing to the diversity of Indian culture today.

With Vasco de Gama's arrival at Calicut on India's western coast in 1498, the latter half of India's medieval era saw the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British entering India from the sea, initially as traders and later as colonisers.

The British overcame indigenous resistance (beginning with the Battle of Plassey in 1757) and French competition (the first Anglo-French war was fought in 1748), turning the Mughal Emperor into a puppet controlled by the East India Company. After the end of the First War of Independence in 1857, also termed the Great Indian Mutiny as many of the Company's indigenous troops supported the attempt to restore the ower of the Mughal Emperor, the British Crown took over the government of British India from the East India Company and ruled till 1947.

The freedom fighter’s fought bravely against the British and India attained independence on 15th August, 1947.

Brief History of Kolkata

Job Charnock, agent of East India Company anchored on the east bank of the Ganga in August 1690 to found the kolkata

city. Kolkata is situated in eastern India on the east bank of the River Hooghly. Three large villages Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata along the east bank of the river Ganges were bought by the British and the Mughal emperor permitted the East India Company to trade in return for an annual payment of Rs. 3,000/-.

Until 1912, Calcutta was the capital of India, later the capital city was moved to Delhi by the British.

Kolkata is the “City Of Palaces” as it has been known since the 18th century. The city is a standing museum of 3000 years of architecture, with a great variety of styles: Bengali Ek bangla and Ratna, Palladian, neo- Gothic, Serascenic, neo-Moghul, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Borocco, neo- Renaissance, Romantic, Medieval, even Bauhaus. The buildings have been well preserved.

After London, Kolkata was British Empire’s second city of pride. India’s quest for freedom started here.

It has been home to luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore, Ronald Ross, Subhas Chandra Bose, Swami Vivekananda, Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray, Satyendranath Bose and many others.

On August 24, 2001, the 309th anniversary of the founding of the Indian city of Calcutta, the city changed its name to Kolkata.

Kolkata, the “City of Joy" remains the intellectual and cultural capital of India. The city has shown enough resilience in the past to prove that it can continue as it is, stabilized at its level of decay while other cities of India are now experiencing.