Dutch Cemetery, Chinsurah () is a historic Christian cemetery in Chinsurah, West Bengal, India. It contains the graves and funerary monuments of members of the Dutch community established at Chinsurah under the Dutch East India Company (VOC), together with later British and Indian Christian burials. The protected portion of the cemetery is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a Monument of National Importance.
History Chinsurah developed into the principal Dutch trading settlement in Dutch Bengal, where the VOC dealt in textiles, saltpetre and other commodities along the Hooghly River. The cemetery replaced an earlier Dutch burial ground near Fort Gustavus, which VOC director Louis Taillefert moved to the present site.
The oldest recorded burial associated with the cemetery is that of Cornelius Jonge, who died in 1743, although the earliest surviving monument identified by the ASI is the 1766 obelisk of Captain Lucas Jurriaanz Zuydland. Dutch heritage research records about 45 graves of Dutch residents who died between 1743 and 1846. The ASI presently records 116 extant graves within the cemetery.
The Dutch presence ended in 1825, when Chinsurah passed permanently to the British. Burials nevertheless continued, leaving Dutch monuments alongside later British and local Christian graves.
Monuments and burials The walled cemetery contains mausoleums, obelisks, box tombs and plain gravestones. Twenty-four surviving Dutch monuments in its southern part include pyramid-shaped tombs and forms also found in Dutch cemeteries elsewhere in India.
Among those buried here is Daniel Anthony Overbeek (1765–1840), the last Dutch resident of Bengal, who remained at Chinsurah after its transfer to British rule. Other VOC figures include Gregorius Herklots and director George Vernet. Charles Cameron, a Scottish army officer who died at Chinsurah in 1827, is also buried in the cemetery.
Conservation The cemetery was declared a protected monument in 1915. Its monuments have undergone conservation by the ASI, including work on tombs that had suffered from weathering and structural deterioration.
Gallery
See also Dutch Cemetery – other cemeteries associated with Dutch settlements Dutch Bengal Dutch Cemetery, Murshidabad Dutch Cemetery, Surat Dutch Cemetery, Kochi Dutch India Dutch Memorial, Chinsurah Danish Cemetery, Serampore
References
External links
Dutch Cemetery – Archaeological Survey of India, Kolkata Circle