This article by Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones first appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Chowkidar, Volume 17, Number 3. Citing recent research in the annals of Bengal Past and Present, Rosie attributes the appellation ‘Colombo Sahib’s tomb’ to oral/aural confusion with the Huguenot name ‘Clerembault’, – referring to the mid-18thc gravestone of Nicholas Clerembault, an HEIC employee buried several decades after the monument was built.
‘Last year BACSA made a grant of £10,000 towards the restoration of an old monumental tomb in the Narinda cemetery at Dacca (Dhaka). A substantial grant was also made by the Commonwealth Heritage Forum. In collaboration with the Christian Burials Board of Dhaka, BACSA’s area representative, Professor Dr Abu Syeed Ahmed of Asia-Pacific University, a noted conservation architect, produced a detailed specification for conserving the tomb. Work was quickly begun and by the end of December 2024 the tomb emerged, freed from its strangling vegetation and splendidly restored to its original form. A full account, with photographs, was published in a post on the BACSA website on 28 December 2024.
long referred to as ‘Colombo Sahib’s
tomb’ (Photo: Chowkidar, Vol 17 No. 3,
Spring 2025)
BACSA members might wonder what kind of tomb justifies this amount of money and expertise. Those with long memories may recall a Chowkidar article from Autumn 2012 in which BACSA member Charles Greig described the Dacca cemetery and the fine Mughal-style mausoleum of one ‘Colombo Sahib’. Mr Greig, an expert on Company art, had identified a painting by Johann Zoffany from about 1787 which shows the Narinda tomb in a romantic moon-lit setting with a Hindu cremation being carried out to one side. This painting had been mis-named and mis-attributed for years, so there was considerable excitement at its discovery.
But the mystery of the tomb’s name remained. It was thought that the only reference was a diary entry by Bishop Reginald Heber, who visited Dacca in the summer of 1824. On 9 July that year he had consecrated the old Christian Burial Ground at Narinda, and described it as ‘a wild and dismal place, surrounded by a high wall, with an old Moorish gate-way, at the distance of about a mile from the now inhabited part of the city, but surrounded with a wilderness of ruins and jungle’. Not the most promising sight, but the Bishop added that it was ‘large and well-adapted for its purpose, containing but few tombs, and those mostly of old dates, erected during the days of Dacca’s commercial prosperity….some of the tombs are very handsome, one more particularly, resembling the buildings raised over the graves of Mussulman saints, has a high octagon gothic tower, with a cupola in the same style, and eight windows with elaborate tracery. Within are three slabs over as many bodies and the old Durwan of the burial ground said it was the tomb of a certain “Columbo Sahib, Company ka nuokar” – Mr Columbo, servant to the Company…his name does not sound like an Englishman’s, but as there is no inscription, the beadle’s word is the only accessible authority.’
In 1917 Walter K. Firminger, an archdeacon of Calcutta and the first editor of Bengal Past and Present, the journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, visited the Narinda cemetery, and copied down 30 of the remaining inscriptions. The first, one of the slabs within the ‘gothic tower’ noted by Heber, reads: ‘Here lies buried the body of Nichols. Clerembault, Esqr., Chief of Ye English Factory at Dacca d. the 16th of November 1755. Aged about 46 years’.
William Foster, who wrote extensively about the first Company factories in Bengal, added a footnote: ‘Clerembault was of a Hugenot family settled in London. He did not enter the East India Company’s service until 1744, when, on 25 January he was appointed to proceed to Bengal as a Factor at £15 per annum, his securities being Benjamin Longuet, Esq. and Henry Guinaud, merchants. Arriving on 25 November 1744, he was posted to Dacca. On 1 September 1749, he took over charge from Thomas Feske, and became Chief of the Factory. Soon after his salary was raised from £15 to £30 per annum and in 1752, or 1753, it was raised to £40 – with batta and allowances he received nearly Rs 4,000 p.a. His death is recorded in the Dacca Consultations on 15 November 1753 “On the 15th Instant, Nicholas Clerembault, Esq. Chief of the Factory, departed this life of a violent fever.”
There is a discrepancy in the dates of the Chief’s death between these two historians. Foster, working from written records is more likely to be correct than Firminger, who was transcribing a battered inscription then over 160 years old. But it seems fairly clear that the Company servant ‘Columbo Sahib’ was in fact Clerembault, particularly if the French pronunciation of his name is used – i.e. Cler-am-bo, which, uttered by an illiterate Bengali who had only ever heard the name spoken, sounds very like Columbo. And this was a good 70 years after Clerembault’s death; plenty of time for the name to have become further distorted.
But having solved one mystery, we are left with a further two:
•How did Clerembault’s inscription end up inside the large Mughal-style mausoleum? and
•Who was the original tomb built for?
The first is probably easiest to solve. Tombstones do get moved, often to make room for new burials. It is not uncommon to find older inscriptions cemented into cemetery walls, both in Britain and India (as, for example, in St John’s Churchyard, Calcutta).
But who was the original Dacca memorial built for?
Stylistically it dates from the second half of the 17th century, the period when three foreign factories were established in Dacca. The English factory was built at Sadar Ghat on the bank of the Buri Ganga river, so goods could be easily shipped back and forth. In 1668 the East India Company Court of Directors wrote to its Council, then at Hughli, permitting it to set up a factory at Dacca, a place that will ‘vend much Europe goods, and that Cossaes, Mullmuls [muslins] etc. may be there procured’. (‘Factories’ at this period were trading posts where Factors, or clerks, worked.) Dacca, the capital of Bengal, was an important administrative centre. The Court of Directors agreed that two or three ‘fit persons’ could be sent there to build and run the English Company’s factory.
Both the French Compagnie des Indes and the Dutch Company (the VOC) had factories in Dacca too. All were set up with the agreement of the powerful nawab of Bengal, Shaista Khan, who wanted to encourage foreign trade, but was restricted by the Mughal emperor. A fine painting of 1665 by the Dutch artist Hendrik van Schuylenburgh shows the nawab holding a durbar (reception) in a tented enclosure just outside the walled Dutch factory at Chinsurah, although he was ambivalent towards the foreign newcomers.
(Hendrik van Schuylenburgh, 1665, Rijksmuseum)
Rosie points out: ‘The Nawab’s durbar is on the right-hand side, and there is a
glimpse of the old cemetery below that – those three tombs surrounded by
palm trees’
Inevitably there were deaths among staff at the three Dacca factories, and this led to the need for a Christian burial ground. An area a mile north of Sadar Ghat, then well away from the city was allocated by the Bengal nawab as an act of charity. The Narinda cemetery has always been associated with the Protestant faith, so it is likely to be linked with the English and Dutch factories, while the Roman Catholic French factory had its own burial ground.
It is possible that one of the more successful English or Dutch traders made enough money to erect the handsome mausoleum, anticipating their death in India. But wages were not excessive for Company staff and very few foreigners planned their tombs in India, because they naturally hoped to return home. Occasionally friends or relatives of a deceased European would erect a splendid tomb to honour him.
My guess is that the tomb, formerly, but erroneously, known as that of ‘Colombo Sahib’, was erected at the command of one of the Bengal nawabs, possibly Shaista Khan himself, to commemorate an English or Dutch man who had been particularly useful – not necessarily as a trader, but perhaps as a military advisor during the capture of Chittagong.
Further work in the English and Dutch archives is needed, but we are now edging nearer to solving the mystery of who else is buried in the Narinda tomb’.
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
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Rosie adds: ‘I hope in future people will refer to the tomb as the ‘Narinda tomb’, and not the ‘Columbo Sahib tomb’. This misidentification sent us all on a wild-goose chase for years’.
(Suggestions for BACSA website news items are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)