Soon the records of Tollygunge cemetery, South Park Street cemetery, Kidderpore cemetery and Bhowanipore cemetery will be available online through a site created by a Kolkata-based company, Computax Consultants.
“A lot of Europeans are increasingly trying to trace their great grandparents who had spent a considerable part of their lives here. In fact, the earliest records in Bhowanipore cemetery date back to 1807 and they also have a record of the East India Company soldiers,” said Simon Wilson, Deputy High Commissioner, UK, at a press meet on Friday.
British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BASCA), a non-profit organisation based in the UK that helps British residents trace their ancestors’ graves, will be donating nearly Rs 1 lakh towards the digitisation of records at Bhowanipore cemetery.
“We get a lot of queries from British people about these graves not only in India but also across South Asia. We do not take any grant from the government and manage to work with whatever people donate us. The donations help us to repair walls of cemeteries to keep out animals and encroachers, set tube wells and pay for trimming trees and shrubs,” said Rosy Jones, spokesperson of BASCA.
Her interest in Bhowanipore cemetery deepened during a visit to the city last November when she happened to chance upon the old records stored in the doorman’s room.
“We realised that it was a miracle that a record from 1807 had survived the neglect of all these centuries. These records are important as the ravages of weather may destroy the graves but these digitised records will survive,” said Jones.
There would be a number of options available on the websites through which people would be able to find the places of burial of their ancestors.
“These days an increasing number of people are searching for their past. While earlier they would come to the city and search aimlessly from one cemetery to another, now they will be able to locate the exact cemetery and the grave as well,” said Arijit Mitra, spokesperson of Computax Consultants.