IAgainst the backdrop of the ongoing mainstream nationalist craze of finding traces of ancient temples in medieval Mughal structures, such a monument was discovered in Kolkata. Not under a mosque, but in the fictional adventures of Tintin.

On May 22, fans of the iconic fictional character celebrated its creator, Belgian cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi or Hergé’s 115th birthday on social media. As an avid Tintin fan, I too joined the bandwagon digging up more interesting information and fascinating facts about the series starring the intrepid young journalist. During this trip, I discovered the association of Tintin – and Hergé – with the Parasnath Jain temple in Kolkata.

Incidentally, it all started by revisiting the photographs I had clicked on of Hergé’s personal effects at the eponymous Hergé museum in the obscure and small Belgian town, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, on the outskirts of the capital Brussels there three years old.

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Tintin’s rendezvous with India

I came across a black and white photograph of an ornate building that I remember seeing in one of Tintin’s stories that saw him visit India. As a Tintinophile, I knew very well that only three stories in the series – Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet – brought the precocious presser with his trademark banana to India.

Incidentally, The Blue Lotus, which saw Tintin and his canine companion Wire Fox Terrier, Milou (Milou in French by origin), stop an international gang of opium smugglers in Japanese-invaded China, began with the journalist’s extended stay in India. . This visit comes after the dramatic arrival of Tintin in our country at the end of his extraordinary adventures in Cigars of the Pharaoh.

I flipped through the pages of these books and found a similar illustration of an ornamented structure on the first page of The Blue Lotus.

The first panel of the first page with illustrations of The Blue Lotus features a building similar to a photograph I had come across as part of Hergé’s personal collection. The illustration came after a short introduction in the opening panel. “Tintin and Milou are in India, guests of the Maharaja of Gaipajama, enjoying a well-deserved rest.” It was followed by a panel of an image of India with the grand edifice comprising archetypal arches and conical towers of an Indian architectural marvel. The structure resembled a temple with a water reservoir or fountain in its forecourt.

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Giving meaning to the Blue Lotus building

After some basic research and reading the book in French by the eminent researcher and writer Tintin Patrick Mérand, The Arts and Sciences in the Work of Hergé (The arts and sciences in the work of Hergé), I spotted a reference to the Parasnath Jain temple in Calcutta (now Kolkata). I dimly remembered that as a schoolboy, I had visited a Jain temple in the Gouribari locality of Kolkata in Maniktala several decades ago. A quick Google search brought me the photo of Parasnath Jain Temple. When I tried to match an old photo of the Jain temple in Kolkata with the photo of the temple built in 1867 in the Hergé museum, it was indeed a eureka moment for me.

Connecting Tintin and Calcutta

The royal building shown at the palace grounds of the Maharaja of Gaipajama in The Blue Lotus is indeed a Jain temple illustration of a town that embraced Tintin in its cultural sphere after the poet Nirendranath Chakraborty “Bengalized” the entire series with his pristine and vivid translation in the 1970s.

Hergé’s personal collections at the Hergé Museum, ranging from cult records by Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Beatles and Pink Floyd to old photographs of imperialist China, magazine articles on African tribes and animals, books on the Tibet and objects from Latin America, highlighted how the world-famous cartoonist used many of these elements as reference for his illustrations of Tintin stories.

The Parasnath Temple in Kolkata, funded by the then influential Jain jeweler Rai Badridas Bahadoor Mookim in 1867, was no exception as it found its way into a Tintin adventure to establish a fictional palace. A Kolkata connection to Tintin was thus established with the uncaptioned photograph in the museum of 26 Labrador Street (rue du Labrador), commemorating Tintin’s fictional home.

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An unparalleled Tintin-mania through the ages

This was significant considering the huge popularity of Hergé’s main protagonist across generations in Kolkata and the rest of Bengal. Bengali was also the first Indian and South Asian language into which the famous French-language series was translated, starting in the 1970s. Since then, Tintin has remained one of the most beloved fictional characters in the world. State.

Hergé, in an interview with Chez Anand Bazar Patrika The leader of the group, Aveek Sarkar, had mentioned that although he once stopped over in Delhi while en route to Australia, he never set foot on Kolkata soil. This enviable encounter between the creator of Tintin and Sarkar in Brussels in the 1970s paved the way for Tintin’s entry into the modern Bengali imagination.

In another quote I saw at the Hergé Museum, the Belgian cartoonist mentioned: “I get a lot of mail from India. Here in the office, two letters from Calcutta. Now, what do a boy from Calcutta and me have in common?”

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Kolkata memes and tributes

Lately, thanks to a few tintin-loving Bengali artists, several eye-catching illustrations of Tintin dressed in dhoti and his various imaginary adventures set in Kolkata and other parts of Bengal such as Darjeeling have gone viral on social media. But the fact that Hergé featured a Jain temple from their beloved city, once described by the moniker “City of Palaces” by the British, in one of his most popular Tintin adventures has remained rather low-key in Kolkata. and in the rest of Bengal even four decades after the creator’s death in 1983.

Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Hergé knew the location or identity of the temple he designed The Blue Lotus since it was part of a set of random photographs that he collected from different sources. But now, at least, tintinophiles in Bengal can reclaim the Parasnath Jain Temple in their own metaverse without digging deeper or taking it to court.

Suvam Pal is a freelance media professional, author and documentary filmmaker. He tweets @suvvz. Views are personal.

(Editing by Zoya Bhatti)