Foreword

In August 2012, Presidency University, Kolkata hosted what is perhaps the country's first conference on (the) Digital Humanities. With collaborative international projects and an undergrduate Gen-Ed course, the DH initiative at Presidency has made significant leaps. The pinnacle of our achievement as teachers is, of course, the success of our students. In that spirit of pride, I congratulate the undergraduate final-year students from the English and other Humanities departments for having completed the first student-led DH project at Presidency. Like much of our built environment that we take for granted in our quotidian lives, the many plaques, paintings and statues in Presidency have rich stories to tell us, whether of our university or of the history of Bengal. Using digital tools to recover such lost histories, the Presidency Plaques Project (PPP) takes you on a journey back in time but one that is, nevertheless, very important for appreciating our present. Once again, it is with much pride that I announce the Presidency Plaques Project. I hope you enjoy looking through it and learning from it as much as I have.

– Dr. Souvik Mukherjee

Preface

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a scholar extraordinary, had once debunked the typical Calcutta adda as useless. However, one such adda may be credited for the genesis of the Presidency Plaques Project. At a time which suspects the Humanities departments to be musty and outmoded, Presidency University, ever a site of the lively teacher-student adda, continues to cultivate regular interdepartmental exchanges. The Digital Humanities (DH) programme, offered by the Department of English has played a crucial role to bring the students of the other Humanities departments close to each other. The idea of a student-led DH project was suggested by Shruti Roy Choudhury, a student of the Bengali department, pursuing the GenEd course at the English department, which, under the guidance of Dr Souvik Mukherjee, Assistant Professor at the Department and the DH course instructor, bloomed to become the Presidency Plaques Project (PPP) – a digital archive of the monuments within the Presidency University campus, College Street.

Monuments have immense historical significance as embodiments of collective memory. The narrative potential of monuments, however, has often been ignored by traditional history writings, one of the reasons being a lack of proper documentation. The few existing records too, hardly manage to explore the rich narratives encased within. The stories which the statues and plaques of Presidency hold, thus face a dual silence – through the lack of proper archiving as well as the limitations of traditional records.

Our project becomes one of a kind as an effort at digital storytelling, mapping and archiving of the monuments within the university. It would nevertheless be bragging to deny that this project is a revisionary endeavour in ways: a meticulous record of the mementos in the college (now Arts) library by Mr Gokulnath Dhar, ex-librarian at the Presidency College, may be found in the Presidency College Magazine (1921-22). Further, catalogues of monuments in Calcutta for the years 1902 and 1910, by the Public Works Department of colonial Bengal are still available.

Our biggest inspirations for this project have been ‘The Scottish Cemetery in Bengal’ Digital Archive and 'The Dutch Cemetery in Chinsurah' Digital Archive, both supervised by Dr Souvik Mukherjee. We are extremely grateful to Dr Mukherjee for his supervision and active interest at every step of our project, and of course for showing us the ropes in the fascinating world of Digital Humanities. We would also like to take this space to thank our fellow team members – Shruti Roy Choudhuri (who deserves a special mention here, being the one to essential initiate the project), Sriza Ray, Rumi Das, Aritro Bhattacharya and Debanjan Mahapatra for their tireless work in the initial collection of data. Thank you all.

– Sohini Sengupta and Sourav Chattopadhyay