Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya organised the next chapter of its popular series, Museum Popular Lecture today on August 04, 2015. Dr Swaroop Bhattacharya, the Curator of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Museum spoke on ‘Typological Variation and Technological Excellence in Bengal boat design’.  Dr Bhattacharya commenced his lecture with the historical significance of boats and its presence which dates back up to 40 thousand years.
He said “From time immemorial people have taken to water for a number of reasons like – to survive, to explore, to travel, to trade, to fish, to fight and for fun. For thousands of years, they have been developing new ways to make their acquaintance with water easier, safer and quicker. The earliest crafts used by ancient man were simple rafts and floats. Then the hollow shell, which sat on the water, was invented and initially it was probably a simple hollowed log. This was the boat in ancestral form, which is an invention as important as the wheel”. Rivers, canals, streams, lakes, bills and other water bodies form an important source of cheap transportation. This is specially so in West Bengal, where there are numerous water bodies. There are about 3000 km of navigable waterways in the state, of which 300 kms are canals.
Shri Swarup Bhattacharyya acquired master’s degree in Anthropology from University of Calcutta in the year 1995. In 1997 as an ethnographer on Bengal boat he has started work with Dr. Lotika Varadarajan. On that time he was Research Associate of National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS), New Delhi. He was Senior Research Fellow of Anthropological Survey of India and did research on man-boat relationship. As a guest research scholar he was invited to Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2006. During that period he has extensively explored materials related to boats of Bengal in Haddon Library, University of Cambridge; British Museum; Southampton University. He has also takes part in excavation at Mamallapuram by the Underwater Archaeology wing of Archaeological Survey of India.  He was closely associated with the establishment of museums on heritage boats of Bengal, Kolkata; water transport gallery of Nahru Museum of Science and Technology, IIT-Kharapur; and Odisha State Maritime Museum, Cuttack. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) has exhibited his photographs and to the scale models of boats in 2006. 115 photographs and 5 sets of boat models are now in the archives of IGNCA, New Delhi.

Date: August 5, 2015