He was invited to play Whist – the card game, at the Buckingham Palace, and dined with the Queen Mother. He was on first name terms with most of the English nobles and, especially, to their wives. He was Dwarky to them.
Imperial Kolkata’s British population was never very large. The number of British residents fluctuated between 3,500 and 4,000 in the decades between 1820s and 1840s. However, they desired to have in Kolkata of all amenities available back home – newspapers, banks, taverns, hotels, theatres, good road, river infrastructures, police and justice systems.
The private British traders wanted to have independent banks as the EIC would not lend them capital. They wanted newspapers to update their knowledge on the happening back home as well as in Hindoostan and to give vent to their grievances to their rulers. And of course, they aspired for their own kind of theatre, as in London’s Covent Garden and Drury Lane.
Dwarkanath, who could have remained a native baboo like…
