Bowbazar is a busy and congested part in central Kolkata. Bowbazar came from the word Baithakkhanna, the entertainment place for the babus of Kolkata and the officers of British East India Company.
Location of Bowbazar
Bowbazar is the place located under the jurisdiction of Central Kolkata Police Station in Kolkata in West Bengal.
Geography of Bowbazar
Bowbazar is located in the eastward road from Lal Bazar to what was known for a long time as Circular Road - which ran along the filled-in Mahratta Ditch and is now Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, shown as Boytaconnah Street, which received its name from the Baithakkana.
History of Bowbazar
When Kolkata was the village, Bowbazar was the entertaining areas of the babus of Kolkata. From that time Bowbazar was named as Baithakkhanna. The merchants formed and dispersed their caravans, sheltered by an old banyan tree (called a peepul tree in Cotton), at the road`s eastern extremity, beyond which, to the northeast, were salt lakes and marshes. Job Charnock is said to have chosen the site of Kolkata for a city, in consequence of the pleasure he found in sitting and smoking under the shade of a large tree. The posterity loved to connect his name with the Baithakkhana tree, which is shown in map of 1794, on land subsequently appropriated by Sealdah station.
Naming of Bowbazar
Bow Bazar Street has been renamed Bepin Behari Ganguly Street named for Bipin Behari Ganguli, revolutionary leader, who spent about 24 years in British Indian jails, later joining the Congress movement. However, the locality continues to be called Bow Bazar.
Modern Bowbazar
In the 18th and 19th centuries when Kolkata was growing and was the capital of the British Empire in India, a large number of Chinese came and settled in the Bowbazar to the Tiretta Bazar area. Later, a large portion moved to Tangra on the eastern fringe of Kolkata and set up tanneries there. Thereafter, although some Chinese continued to live in Bowbazar, it was Tangra that became Kolkata"s China town. Now Bowbazar is the hub of jewellery shops and markets.
