Entally

Entally is a neighbourhood in central Kolkata, earlier known as Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal. It has a police station and is an assembly constituency. Once it was considered close to the area which was home to the poor and the depressed castes.Mother Teresa started her activities in Entally.HistoryEntally was one of the thirty-eight villages bought by the British East India Company in 1717 and reconstituted as Pancahannagram (fifty-five villages or mouzas). Entally, Pagladanga, Nimakposta, Kamardanga, Gobra and Tangra constituted Dihi Entally. Oriya palanquin-bearers, poor Christians, Muslims, Chinese and other depressed communities such as Dalits, lived in the area. Upper caste Hindus avoided living in the area because of the municipal slaughter house, and Chinese-owned tanneries and piggeries(near Tangra which is close to Entally). However upper-class European resided in the Entally post office (originally known as Intally Post Office) neighbourhood. Rich Hindu milk businessmen occupied an area near the Entally market and forbade low caste to come near their locality (Gopelane, Panbagan Lane).H. E. A. Cotton describes Entally in the twentieth century as “an area extensively intersected with numerous roads and lanes. It contains a large number of European residences, some of them fine buildings in extensive grounds.” In those days, the Municipal Railway ran along the side of Lower Circular Road (renamed Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road) and the Lakes by way of Sealdah and conveyed several hundred tonnes of sweepings daily which were employed to raise a square mile of land, which had been bunded off from the lanes for the purpose. South of Entally was the Volunteer Rifle Range constructed in 1877.