Crime and Urbanization

A logn and twisting alley with sharp bends from where emerge curious figures who alternately attract and repel us-the crafty old black zamindar of Caclutta Gobindaram Mitra hatching his abysmal plots while praying in the citys tallest temple that he built in baghbazar; his namesake the notorious housebreaker Gobindaram Chakravarty who delights in digging holes into the houses of the opulent; the headless voluptuous body of the murdered prostitute Golap greeting us from the back lanes of Sonagaji;a nd the cunning counterfeiter Shyamcharan Mukhopadhyay winking at us with malicious glee from behind his makeshift mint from where he manufactures forged coins. About Author : Born and educated in Calcutta Sumanta Banerjee specializes in research on popular culture and the social history of nineteenth-century Bengal. His published works include The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineeth-Century Calcutta Dangerous Outcast: The Prostitutie in Nineteenth-Century Bengal and Logic in a Popular Form: Essays on Popular Religion in Bengal. He lives in Dehradun. Contents : Acknowledgements Introduction Early Days of Crime in Colonial Calcutta Multinational Criminals Topography of the Calcutta Underworld Violent and Non-Violent Crimes Swindlers Forgers and White-Collar Criminals Structural Criminalization of the Public Sphere Conclusion Works Cited Index