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<p>"There was no electricity, in contrast with our brightly lit house in Dhaka, but I got used to living in the light of kerosene lamps—and doing my studies by it as well. If in my subsequent life I have shown a strong urban preference, this could be because I felt I had done my stint of rural living already." Thus, Harvard Professor Amartya Sen, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, recalls his childhood days in Santiniketan during the 1940s (Sen in Home in the world, Allen Lane, New Delhi, 2021). The statement emphasizes the connection between electricity, a modern technology, and urbanity in the early twentieth&#xa0;century. The article&#xa0;is an attempt to understand how electric light and power facilities were established in several municipalities in the Bengal Presidency and how they subsequently grew and changed. The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, popularly known as CESC, played a significant role in the electrification of Calcutta. Can one identify similar private power companies in other municipal towns—Darjeeling, Burdwan, Khulna, or Malda? Could the electrification of colonial Bengal create new conditions? What impact does it have on the socio-political condition of the region? How was the production and consumption of electric supply and technologies, and the social and cultural engagements with and responses to electrification developed at the interfaces of numerous transnational and local channels? In recent years, the Indian princely states have become a focus of attention among South Asian historians. For a quick example, Barbara Ramusack examines the evolution of public and private medical services for women in Mysore, a state that has commonly been seen as ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’ (Ramusack, in Ernst, Pati (eds) India’s princely states, Primus, New Delhi, 2010). The modernization of Cooch Behar, a princely state located in the northern part of British Bengal, started during the reign of Maharaja Nripendra Narayan (1862–1911). What was the policy of Cooch Behar State regarding electrification? How far was it going to be different from the electric power policy of colonial Bengal?</p>

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Electrification, urbanization, and politics: British Bengal to princely Cooch Behar

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年10月28日

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  • Suvobrata Sarkar

摘要

"There was no electricity, in contrast with our brightly lit house in Dhaka, but I got used to living in the light of kerosene lamps—and doing my studies by it as well. If in my subsequent life I have shown a strong urban preference, this could be because I felt I had done my stint of rural living already." Thus, Harvard Professor Amartya Sen, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, recalls his childhood days in Santiniketan during the 1940s (Sen in Home in the world, Allen Lane, New Delhi, 2021). The statement emphasizes the connection between electricity, a modern technology, and urbanity in the early twentieth century. The article is an attempt to understand how electric light and power facilities were established in several municipalities in the Bengal Presidency and how they subsequently grew and changed. The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, popularly known as CESC, played a significant role in the electrification of Calcutta. Can one identify similar private power companies in other municipal towns—Darjeeling, Burdwan, Khulna, or Malda? Could the electrification of colonial Bengal create new conditions? What impact does it have on the socio-political condition of the region? How was the production and consumption of electric supply and technologies, and the social and cultural engagements with and responses to electrification developed at the interfaces of numerous transnational and local channels? In recent years, the Indian princely states have become a focus of attention among South Asian historians. For a quick example, Barbara Ramusack examines the evolution of public and private medical services for women in Mysore, a state that has commonly been seen as ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’ (Ramusack, in Ernst, Pati (eds) India’s princely states, Primus, New Delhi, 2010). The modernization of Cooch Behar, a princely state located in the northern part of British Bengal, started during the reign of Maharaja Nripendra Narayan (1862–1911). What was the policy of Cooch Behar State regarding electrification? How far was it going to be different from the electric power policy of colonial Bengal?