Kolkata: Following a legal dispute over the heritage status of Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s residence in Kidderpore, KMC is going slow on conferring the same tag on the “first widow-remarriage building” in north Kolkata.The civic body has paused its move to declare the building at 48A, Kailash Bose Street a heritage structure, where the first widow remarriage in the country was said to have taken place about 168 years ago. The civic body is now looking for evidence to ascertain the fact.Kalimati Devi, daughter of Brahmananda Mukhopadhyay from Palasdanga village in Bankura, became a widow at the age of 10. She was remarried to Srishchandra Vidyaratna, a scholar and a former pupil of Sanskrit College, at this house in the presence of Vidyasagar, who spent Rs 10,000 from his own funds for the wedding.The halt comes in the wake of a legal setback suffered by KMC regarding Dutt’s house at 20B, Karl Marx Sarani. Now, the civic body is planning to move court to save the structure from being razed. “The HC asked us to delist Dutt’s house from the heritage register as documentary evidence could not be produced. After this, we are putting on hold our initiative to turn the building at Kailash Bose Street into a heritage structure now. Once we get some concrete evidence, we will resume the move,” said an official from the KMC’s heritage department.In the 19th century, the address of the building was 12 Sukia Street when it belonged to Rajkrishna Bandyopadhyay. Later, the address was changed to 48A Kailash Bose Street, according to KMC sources. As per the KMC’s IB register, the name of Soumendranath Bandyopadhyay was updated as the present owner of the building in 2024, but the family, according to local sources, is settled outside the city.In his biography on Akhay Kumar Dutta, a noted figure of the Bengali Renaissance invited to the wedding, writer Mahendranath Roy mentioned in Bengali in 1885 that on Dec 7, 1856, the first widow remarriage in the country happened at Rajkrishna Bandyopadhyay’s house at Sukia Street.Swapan Samaddar, Mayor-in-Council member (heritage) at KMC, stated: “A couple of years ago, I proposed to make it a heritage building at Kailash Bose Street. Following the legal dispute over Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s building as a heritage structure, we are finding concrete evidence supporting the event of the country’s first widow remarriage at the Kailash Bose Street house, also a private property.” As for Michael’s residence, Samaddar stated: “We will make a fresh appeal in the HC to save it from demolition.“
