Some 20-plus years ago, I spotted an equestrian statue I had never seen before in Kolkata. It stood at the corner of a garden in the PWD office in Hastings, near the “Well” where Maharaja Nanda Kumar is said to have been hanged.
On closer inspection, while it was “undated and unidentified”, it was very much a uniformed horseman. While the horse and uniform and posture of the rider were certainly very regal, his face appeared nondescript — thin and scrawny.
Curiosity led me to investigate further. I wrote to my friends all over the world, especially experts in the history and heritage of Kolkata as it was called then.
Unfortunately, I could not get any leads to identify this statue. Many suggestions were put forward but nothing that could positively do so. I remember having seen a fragmented statue of a horse and rider lying in the well mentioned earlier. It was quite likely that this statue had been re-assembled and re-erected at the spot in the garden of the PWD office. But its identity continued to be a mystery.
It remained such till I heard from Lukas Prommer, a research scholar from Munich, Germany, who, much to my amazement, had done considerable study on the subject of this statue and managed to reach me because of an article I had written sometime back on Hastings where I had mentioned this statue. He has come up with a rather interesting theory which after considerable thought, I tend to agree with.
According to his rather detailed research on the statues of the Raj period in Kolkata, he comes to the conclusion that this is a restored version of a statue of Lord Kitchener. This appears astounding as there doesn’t seem to be any resemblance with the face of this rider and the Field Marshal. It may not be out of place to mention something about the making of the statue. Sydney March was the sculptor. He is said to have been unhappy with the statue’s aesthetics mainly because of Kitchener’s interference in the design — such as the posture of the horse which the “Big K” insisted on determining.
The statue was made from old cannons provided by the British Indian Government by Messrs Elkington and Co, in Farnborough. In fact, it was reported that Lord Kitchener was sitting on his favourite warhorse Democrat which is one of the means by which this statue could be identified.
Kitchener’s statue was unveiled in the Maidan in Kolkata on the afternoon of Saturday March 21, 1914, as reported in the Gloucestshire Echo of March 23, 1914. The unveiling was done by Lord Carmichael, then governor of Bengal. A newspaper correspondent reported that “it was a very fine unveiling, very ceremonious, very appreciative and very sparsely attended, if truth be told”. This was probably already a harbinger of the coming decades, in which he Indian population tried to distance itself more and more from the British colonial rulers.
A veritable symbol of British pomp and pageantry, which increasingly met with a disillusioned audience overseas, who were not prepared to accept such a spectacle would probably have preferred to exchange it for self-government.
Some years later, the British did depart leaving behind scores of statues in this city. These statues were removed from their pedestals over a period of time. In Kolkata, many were removed and relocated in 1921 when the Victoria Memorial was inaugurated. But most of them were removed from the city streets and moved to Flagstaff House in Barrackpore and Victoria Memorial in 1967-69.
In 1931, ten equestrian statues were recorded on the Maidan. Of these, the statues of Minto, Mayo, Napier, Canning and Lansdowne were relocated to Barrackpore. Lord Robert’s statue was shifted to a military compound in Deolali and Lord Hardinge’s is in the garden of his descendant’s home in the town of Over. Kitchener’s equestrian statue, however, is missing from this listing. It was no longer displayed and may be said to have disappeared. It is likely that this was the fragmented statue which I saw in the well opposite the PWD office in Hastings. The bronze statue weighing several tonnes could have been brought there because of proximity to the Maidan.
At first glance, however, it does not appear to be Kitchener, as the facial features of the unknown horseman do not resemble him at all. The bushy moustache is missing and he wears a pith helmet instead of the tricorn hat decorated with feathers that belonged to the uniform of a field marshal in Kitchener’s time.
In addition, unlike Kitchener’s equestrian statues, the rider holds a sword in his right hand. However, a closer look at the photo reveals astonishing similarities. The horse, whose likeness Kitchener had placed so much emphasis on when designing his statue, looks close to the original. The forward-pointing ears, the slightly raised front right hoof, the decorations on the saddle blanket and the exact same saddle. The left front leg is straight through, while the left hind leg takes a step forward. The right hind leg is also stretched through.
None of the horses in Kolkata’s other nine equestrian statues resemble Kitchener’s “Democrat” or have the same pose. The rider’s clothing also resembles Kitchener’s field marshal uniform, including the high riding boots and the armpit cord. The O.B.I. medal could be the Order of the Indian Empire.
In both statues, the right arm hangs down equally and the right hand rests loosely on the right leg of the rider. However, in the unidentified statue, this hand is holding a sword instead of the Field Marshal’s staff. The left arm also hangs down. Another difference from the original.
It is likely that access to the original image was not available when the statue was being restored and a different head, probably recovered from another vandalised work was installed on this to create a depersonalized decoration in an anonymous location — a forgotten, unidentified, uniformed British horseman. It is difficult to definitively determine the intention behind the re-installation of the statue. It may have been an attempt to use the artwork as such to enhance the cityscape rather than honouring the rider.
In fact, this question can be answered by senior retired PWD engineers who worked on the project. Their contribution and inputs can probably solve the mystery. I do hope and look forward to feedback from them. I have quoted extensively from Lukas Prommer’s research paper with his permission with the hope that with wider dissemination, some information may be available to confirm the theory.
GM Kapur is convener, Calcutta Regional Chapter, and Chairman, Chapters Advisory Committee, INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage)
