The encounter with western enlightenment engendered a literacy transformation, which made Calcutta the cultural capital of India. New forms of literacy creation based on the western model, including the prose novel from, were written in Bengali, in poetry, epics in the Miltonic style were composed; journals and newspapers were edited and produced. The Bengali language was standardized and given the form in which it is read and spoken to this day. A flourishing Bengali theater was born which adapted some of the modern forms of drama and stage technique. The elite, which masterminded this efflorescence, was cosmopolitan in character, imbedded with the confidence that it would be able to meet the west on its own terms and even superced it. This elite was entirely cut off from the means of production; industrial investment being held exclusively in the hands of the British. In the first half of the 19^th century Bengali entrepreneurs like Dwarakanath Tagore, the grand father of poet Rabindranath, ventured into a wide range of business activities, which culminated with his career in ruins. Capital in hands of Bengali entrepreneurs was mostly invested in landed property, which had been made secure by the permanent settlement of 1793. The wealthy bought themselves landed estates and lived opulent lives as absentee landlords.

These changes transformed the population of Calcutta into a unique amalgam. On one side was the white population, viewing themselves as racially superior and living a sequestered life. The native population was partitioned into indolent landlords with their mistresses and ostentatious lifestyle and the literati alive and vibrant, absorbed in the pursuit of excellence in the diverse field of art and science. The city also had its growing number of professionals, specially lawyers and doctors; and at the bottom of social ladder, Calcutta’s man of laboring poor with their own culture, tradition and way of life. The numbers were swollen in the second half of the 19^th centaury by the surge of migrant from rural Bihar in search of jobs in a burgeoning of Calcutta.

The cultural pre-eminence of Calcutta stemmed primarily from it’s having served as the Indian cradle of western enlightenment. The University of Calcutta and Presidency College were the premier institution of higher education. For a long time the Medical College in Calcutta was the only place of its kind in the country. The city was the home not only of Rabindranath Tagore, the country’s leading writer, who was awarded the nobel prize in 1911, but also to Dr. C.V.Raman nobel laureate in Physics in 1930. Men like Raman and Tagore represented the high watermarks of an extra ordinary cultural and creative milieu. Their achievements were surrounded and supported by the work of a host of the individuals.