Someone makes no difference. The Christian Cemetery at Dhaka

The Christian cemetery in Dhaka appears for the first time in documents from the 16th century and is now administered by St. Mary‘s Cathedral (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Dhaka / Kakrail). The cemetery can be traced back to early European Merchants and their relatives and was initially small, as you can see from the former main gate built in the Moorish style, which now stands deep inside the cemetery. Later, mostly members of the East India Company (EIC), indigo plantation owners and soldiers and employees of the British administrative authorities found their final resting place here. From the middle of the 19th century at the latest, the cemetery fell into disrepair and, due to lack of care, began to run wild. But that didn‘t bother anyone at first, he looked rather romantic in this early state of decay. Today the once imposing tombs, obelisks, and shrines offer a rather deplorable sight and are left to decay. Of course, all resting places deserve attention, but we would like to point out some special burial sites:

• The oldest preserved tomb belongs to the Reverend Joseph Paget, Minister of Calcutta, who was buried there in 1724,
• the grave of Major General Hamilton Vetch (Bengali Army of the EIC), participant in the jungle war in Assam, Deputy Commissioner of Assam, from 1856,
• the resting place of Jane from 1774. She was the daughter of Jane and James Rennell (1742-1830). The latter was a geographer, historian, and pioneer of oceanography. He made some of the first accurate maps of Bengal as well as India and served as the general surveyor of Bengal. Rennell was also called the Father of Oceanography. He was one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society in London.
• The grave of Wonsi Quan from 1796, a Chinese who converted to Christianity, the tablet is inscribed in Chinese and Latin characters.
• The double grave of Robert Crawford, the factor of the EIC and his wife from 1776 and some graves of soldiers of the EIC who died in a mutiny at Lalbagh Fort, during the Sepoy uprising (Indian uprising against the supremacy of the EIC, 1857/58). But the undisputed highlight is of course the
• Mausoleum of Columbo Sahib:

The mausoleum is actually a three-story building. The basic structure resembles a mosque from the Mughal period with four evenly spaced arched doors. The floor above has Gothic features, while the dome has a Baroque impact. The different styles fit together seamlessly, which seems to reinforce the overgrown vegetation, and it even seems to be an integral part of the structure. But despite all the romanticism, the mausoleum has become structurally unstable as a result.
The tomb contains three graves with no inscription. The panels or inscriptions on the walls were added later, they come from other graves, some of which no longer exist and were placed here to preserve. From the inside, the ceiling with the eight open arched windows is a spectacular sight. The beauty of this grave also delighted Johann Zoffany (1733-1810) a British painter of German origin (Frankfurt am Main) who with the painting Nagaphon Ghat created a snapshot of Dhaka in the 18th century and on which the tomb on the bank of a river is easy to see. Regardless, both the background of the mausoleum and that of the three tombs remain nebulous. When Reginald Heber (1783-1826, Anglican clergyman, Bishop of the Church of England, missionary and man of letters) visited the cemetery in 1824, a security guard told him that the picturesque building was the tomb of Columbo Sahib, an employee of the EIC . But that can rather be doubted because strangely enough this person never appears in any chronicles. Nevertheless, the name made the rounds, thanks to Bishop Reginald Heber.