Serampore finally flexes its heritage muscle, wants to draw tourists

Heritage and Tourism at St. Olav’s Church
| Photo Credit: Mohit Ranadip

The town of Serampore — which predates Kolkata by a few centuries and which was ruled by not one but two colonial powers, the Danes and the British — is finally flexing its heritage muscles by holding a festival that aims at promoting tourism by revealing the historical gems it is home to.

Organised by the Serampore municipality, the Heritage Utsav, inaugurated virtually by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on December 19, will go on till January 2, shining the spotlight on this town that sits by the Hooghly barely 30 km from Kolkata but about whose past very little is known to outsiders.

“Various European countries had established control in the towns by the river in the Hooghly district — the Portuguese in Bandel, the Dutch in Chinsurah, the French in Chandannagar, the Danes and then British in Serampore. The tourism department wants to promote these settlements as a tourism circuit called Little Europe. This festival is part of that larger plan,” Debasis Mallik, who teaches at Kolkata’s Maulana Azad College and who is secretary of the Serampore Heritage Restoration Initiative, said.

“Serampore’s heritage somehow remained suppressed all these years. It is a town that even has a rich pre-colonial history. This was a centre of Vaishnavism and holds a rath yatra that is over 600 years old and considered most important after the one at Puri. It is home to the oldest college of modern education in the whole of Asia — Denmark made it a university back in 1827; it had a printing press that published works in 46 languages; it has a church that is named after St. Olav, the ruler of Norway from 1015 to 1028,” Dr. Mallik said.

Serampore was under Danish control from 1755 to 1845, known during this period as Frederiknagore, before being handed over to the British. Apart from various talks on heritage, the municipality has also organised a river cruise with live music and food on board and is supporting 22 self-help groups who have set up stalls, selling handicrafts and food items at the venue, which happens to be the 1806-built St. Olav’s Church.

“Serampore is the oldest existing town in this part of the country and we want to create awareness regarding that. There are very old Hindu temples; there is also a Muslim population because Shah Jahan set up a camp here for two years to check the Portuguese; then came the Europeans. It has a college that is among the oldest in Asia, a girls’ school that is among the oldest in Asia. We want people to come here to experience the rich heritage,” Santosh Kumar Singh, chairman-in-council of Serampore Municipality and a key organiser of the event, told The Hindu.