At Kodalia, a combo tourist circuit of Netaji home, ancient Buddhist sites

Kolkata: The Bengal government has decided to combine two sets of historical sites — one dating back 1,500 years and the other from the pages of modern Indian history — to create the state’s newest tourism district, comprising a 15-square-kilometre area on the southern fringes of Kolkata.
The state has six tourism circuits and is set to develop several more but the one earmarked for Kodalia in South 24-Parganas will be one of its kind: two different eras — the fifth-century Christian Era and the other from the nineteenth century — are being combined to form one single circuit to give tourists a taste of the country’s history and heritage.
The sites linked to ancient history, Tilpi and Dosa, are from the Buddhist era; the modern historical site is the ancestral house of one of India’s and Bengal’s most revered freedom fighters, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Together, officials hope, they will give visitors a deeper sense of the twists and turns of Indian history.
“We often tend to ignore our recent past when we talk about ancient Indian civilisations and vice-versa,” Dilip Datta of the state archaeology department said. “This will, hopefully, give visitors a much more comprehensive sense of our history,” he added.
The 258-year-old Haranath Lodge, Bose’s ancestral house in Kodalia’s Subhasgram, forms the pivot of the government’s plans. The patriot’s family moved from Mahinagar in Burdwan to this village in 1760. The house is known locally as “Subhaser Bari”.
Bose’s ancestral house is a matter of immense pride for villagers just as its fast-decaying state is a major concern. Netaji’s birthday, January 23, sees a long queue of visitors.
“Both domestic and international tourists come here,” Netaji’s grandnephew, Chittapriyo Bose, said. “We have a 250-year-old Durga Puja and Saraswati and Laxmi pujas that are celebrated to this day. These festivals are occasions when the Bose family, scattered all over the world, come together. All my grandfathers spent a large part of their childhood in this house,” he added.
The state archaeology and public works departments have already initiated restoration work worth Rs 77 lakh. The house on the 10-cottah plot and the adjacent pond will be restored to their former glory. The work will include landscaping and restoration of the main building, as well as the pathway leading to it and the thakurdalan from the outhouse.
The state government has already decided to confer heritage status on the house and plans to develop a small museum on Bose.
But what sets this apart from other heritage-restoration plans is the decision to integrate the site with much older historically important sites nearby.
“The restoration of Haranath Lodge has given us an opportunity to focus on some ancient sites that we have stumbled upon. Tilpi and Dhosa have two of the 22 Buddhist stupas believed to have been visited by Chinese explorer Fa Hien. There are remains of a furnace in which ancient smiths used to melt silver, copper and iron to cast them into coins,” a senior official said.
Excavation here began in February 2006 and a structure comprising concentric squares was unearthed at Dhosa. Historians are of the opinion that the structure was used for religious purposes and, though excavation was halted later for want of funds, historians feel that the sites might stretch even further back in time to second or first century BCE.