Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...

William Tolly (1715–1784) was an officer of the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

, who later settled down in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, noted for creating Tolly's Nullah.

Life-sketch

He served as officer of British East India Company and retired as a colonel. He settled down near

and decided to dig out an old channel of

Adi Ganga ''Adi Ganga'' (also known as the ''Gobindapur Creek'' and ''Tolly's Canal''), is a stream that was part of the Hooghly River in the Kolkata area of India. It was the main flow of the Hooghly River between the 15th and 17th centuries, but it eve ...

(a branch of

Hooghly River The Bhagirathi Hooghly River (Anglicized alternatively spelled ''Hoogli'' or ''Hugli'') or the 'Bhāgirathi-Hooghly', called the Ganga or the Kati-Ganga in mythological texts, is the eastern distributary of the Ganges River in West Bengal, Indi ...

) at his own cost to make it navigable for ships. This canal ''(

nullah A nullah or nala ( Hindustani or "nallah" in Punjabi) is an 'arm of the sea', stream, or watercourse, a steep narrow valley. Like the wadi of the Arabs, the nullah is characteristic of mountainous or hilly country where there is little rainfall ...

)'' was dug out by him in years 1775-76 became operational in 1777 and came to be known as Tolly's Nullah. He de-silted, deepened and opened this old channel as a water way connecting the Calcutta Port to the rivers of the eastern Bengal such as Bidyadhari and

Matla The Matla (Persian/Arabic/Urdu:) is the first ''sher'', or couplet, of a ''ghazal'', a collection of poems in Urdu or Persian poetry. It is possible, although extremely rare, for there to be more than one ''matla'' in a ''ghazal''; in this case the ...

making it a part of Calcutta and Eastern Canals, extending over a length of 1,127 miles, of which 47 miles was length of Tolly's Nullah. Thus making the hinterland of Districts of

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

and

Eastern Bengal Eastern Bengal may refer to: * East Bengal ur, , common_name = East Bengal , status = Province of the Dominion of Pakistan , p1 = Bengal Presidency , flag_p1 = Flag of British ...

and

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

connect with

Port of Calcutta Port of Kolkata or Kolkata Port, officially known as Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Trust (formerly Kolkata Port Trust), is the only riverine major port of India, located in the city of Kolkata, West Bengal, around from the sea. It is the olde ...

. He was given the lease of the canal and some adjacent lands along with the right to collect the toll from the ships using this canal by the Company. He also built a market (''Ganj''), which came to be known as

Tollygunj Tollygunge (Bengali: টালিগঞ্জ; nicknamed 'Mini Mumbai' or 'Mini Bombay') is a locality of South Kolkata, in West Bengal, India. It is famed as the centre of the Indian film industry, known as Tollywood, Marathi Cinema, South Indi ...

.Settlements along Tolly's Nullah
/ref> He also purchased

Belvedere Belvedere (from Italian, meaning "beautiful sight") may refer to: Places Australia *Belvedere, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region Africa * Belvedere (Casablanca), a neighborhood in Casablanca, Morocco *Belvedere, Harare, Zi ...

area of Calcutta from

Warren Hastings Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-Genera ...

, the first

Governor-General of Bengal The Governor-General of India (1773–1950, from 1858 to 1947 the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, commonly shortened to Viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom and after Indian independence in 1 ...

in 1780 and built his mansion there. He is sometimes referred to as the

Ferdinand de Lesseps Ferdinand Marie, Comte de Lesseps (; 19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was a French diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal, which in 1869 joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distances and times ...

of Calcutta. He died in 1784.

Memorials

At present Tolly's Nullah and Tollygunj area of

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

bear his name as a memorial to him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolly, William 1715 births 1784 deaths British East India Company Army officers