From 1720 to 1766, the office of Bengal’s deputy zemindar was held by Gobindram Metre (Mitter or Mitra), known to contemporaries as the “Black Zemindar.” Through successive changes at the top, Gobindram’s deputyship “in perpetuity devolved on the standing deputy,” who exercised sweeping power over taxation, policing, and justice.
Gobindram Metre’s tenure as deputy zemindar (or tax collector) under the East India Company in Bengal was defined by the extraordinary amassing of personal wealth and influence—so much so that even his nominal superior, John Zephaniah Holwell, found himself unable to remove Metre from office. Metre translated this power into conspicuous consumption on a grand scale: he is credited with being the first Bengali to drive a coach, and his celebration of Durga Puja became legendary for its extravagance—image of goddess Durga was draped in gold and silver leaf, thirty to fifty maunds of rice were offered, and a thousand Brahmins were feasted and gifted in a single festival.
Yet beneath these gestures of ostentation lay a more troubling exercise of authority. Metre’s sprawling Kumortuli mansion, spread over fifty bighas, and his rural retreat at Nandan Bagan were financed not by commerce or benevolence but by leveraging his quasi‑judicial and revenue‑collecting powers. In championing lavish Hindu rites, he blurred the line between piety and self‑aggrandizement, turning communal worship into a theater of personal prestige. Ultimately, Metre’s legacy illustrates how colonial office could be appropriated for private enrichment, entrenching social hierarchies even as it fostered cultural spectacle.
Under Gobindram’s tenure, “tyranny” and “dread” spread through the settlement: “no one durst complain or give information” against him . He amassed vast wealth, exemplified by the 1731 construction of a “nine‑jewel” temple on Chitpore Road—the loftiest pinnacle reputedly higher than the Ochterlony Monument, and so richly sculpted that even its smallest cupola survives today .
This temple epitomized the fusion of religious patronage and personal aggrandizement in colonial Calcutta. Like Chola rulers centuries before, Gobindram used monumental architecture to project authority—and to immortalize his name. Yet, unlike royal temples in imperial South India, his structure stood at the fringe of a Company settlement, financed through revenue extorted from villagers and artisans under his dominion.
This temple fell victim to the 1737 cyclone and earthquake, a reminder that human ambition—even when writ in stone—remained vulnerable to natural forces . Gobindram’s rise and fall thus mirror Calcutta’s broader trajectory: from informal riverside factory to emergent metropolis, shaped by outsize personalities, environmental risk, and the interplay of local and imperial power.
Source
Cotton, H.E. (1907). Calcutta, Old and New: A Historical & Descriptive Handbook to the City. London: W. Newman.
Arup K. Chatterjee 