A prison of the Nawab of Murshidabad. Outside, all Bengal is getting ready for Durga Puja. Inside sits the Raja of Nadia, held until he pays the tribute he owes.
By the time he is released and his boat is on the river home, the puja is over. He has missed it, and that night, so the legend goes, the goddess comes to him in a dream.
That raja was Krishnachandra Roy (c. 1710–1783), ruler of Nadia from his capital at Krishnanagar for more than fifty years. Most Bengalis know him without knowing it: he is the king in every Gopal Bhar story, and the legend of that dream is how Krishnanagar explains its Jagaddhatri Puja. But the real man was more interesting, and more complicated, than either.
c. 1710
Born into the Nadia Raj family, son of Raja Raghuram Ray.
1728
Becomes raja of Nadia, still a young man, and goes on to expand the estate and fill his court with scholars and poets.
1752
His court poet Bharatchandra Ray completes Annadamangal, one of the great works of eighteenth-century Bengali poetry.
1757
Joins the conspiracy of Bengal’s bankers and generals against Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah that ends at Plassey.
1760s
Falls foul of Nawab Mir Qasim, who is said to have ordered his death. He survives, and keeps his lands.
c. 1782–83
Dies at Krishnanagar after more than half a century as raja.
The patron: two poets and a court of pandits
Krishnachandra’s court was one of the liveliest in Bengal, and two of its poets are still read and sung today.
- Bharatchandra Ray (1712–1760) became his court poet. Krishnachandra gave him the title Raygunakar and land at Mulajore, and Bharatchandra repaid him with Annadamangal, completed in 1752.
- Ramprasad Sen, the poet-saint of the songs to Kali still sung across Bengal, received a hundred acres of tax-free land from Krishnachandra and the title Kaviranjan.
The historian Atul Chandra Roy called Krishnachandra “the most important man of the period in the Hindu society of Bengal”. Pandits, poets and musicians came to Krishnanagar because he paid them and protected them.
The dream and the goddess
The legend in the opening scene is how Krishnanagar tells the origin of its Jagaddhatri Puja. Having missed Durga Puja in the Nawab’s prison, Krishnachandra dreamt that the goddess appeared to him as Jagaddhatri, riding a lion, and told him to worship her in that form a month later. He did, and the festival he made famous is still Krishnanagar’s biggest night of the year.
The conspirator: Plassey, 1757
This is the part of the story that tends to be left out of the legends. In 1757 the young Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah had made enemies of the most powerful men in Bengal: the banker Jagat Seth, his own commander Mir Jafar, the merchant Omichund, the general Rai Durlabh. Krishnachandra was among the zamindars who sided with them, and the plotters came to an understanding with Robert Clive of the East India Company.
At Plassey, Mir Jafar’s troops held back, Siraj lost, and within a few years the Company was the real power in Bengal. Historians still argue over what men like Krishnachandra intended. Most likely they were protecting their own position against an unpredictable Nawab, not setting out to hand Bengal to a trading company. But that is what they helped to do.
And Gopal Bhar?
Whether Krishnachandra really kept a jester called Gopal is unknown: neither of his court poets mentions one. But the choice of king is telling. In the stories, Krishnachandra is proud, quick to anger and easily fooled, and the joke is nearly always on him. Read five classic Gopal Bhar stories and the question of whether Gopal was real.
Krishnanagar today
- The Rajbari, the palace of the Nadia Raj family, is still standing. Its biggest day is Jagaddhatri Puja, when the town fills with visitors; check opening arrangements before you go, as it is a private residence.
- Ghurni, on the edge of town, is home to the clay modellers whose figures of gods, people and Gopal Bhar himself are sold all over Bengal.
- The sweets: sarpuria and sarbhaja, made from layers of cream, are Krishnanagar’s own.