KENRAPARA: The British Cemetery in Batighar island of the district lies neglected. The 200-year-old cemetery bears a testimony to the greatest sacrifices made by the officers as well as men of the British, who worked in a lighthouse in the dense mangrove forest and on the ships near a harbour at Hukitola. Some of the inscriptions on the tombs are very touching, specially the one about a young commissioner, who drowned after completing the inspection and a child, who died due to lack of medical aid.
The tomb of Captain H.A Harris, the conservator of Orissa port, who drowned on May 9, 1877, is one of the famous tombs in the cemetery. The Collector of Cuttack John Beames in his autobiography, "Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian" vividly describes the beautiful lighthouse on the Bay of Bengal coast and the numerous ships anchored at the port during the heydays.
For decades, some locals fought alone in vain to save the final resting place of the original settlers of the seaside villages. "The condition of the English Cemetery is shocking. Thieves, vandals and the weather have wreaked havoc here with nothing short of a major restoration plan could possibly save the old graveyard. The crypt lids on some graves have gone missing, even as the inscriptions on some are illegible," said Basudev Das, a researcher of Kendrapara.
The front part of the cemetery, with graves dating back to 1830, is the oldest. Originally, most of the grand and stately tombs and monuments here were surrounded by protective boundaries, but these are long gone. Some local people come here to enjoy the natural beauty of the place, but the cemetery has also become notorious with drug dealers and loiterers having a field day. This much can be said with certainty: The graveyard holds the remains of many, who originally settled in this area for the British East India Company, carving a British colony in lighthouse areas in 1830s. Overcoming tremendous obstacles, they cleared hundreds of acres of untamed jungle for one of India's oldest lighthouses in 1834, added Das.
It is ironic that the people who have been doing their best to care for these graves are not the British, but the locals and some employees of the lighthouse.
Kanhailal Manna, a retired teacher of Batighar School, said that there were around 100 to 120 graves in the cemetery. Over the years, repeated complaints to the police about vandalism have failed to improve the situation, he lamented.
District Collector Dhanjaya Kumar Das said a boundary plan will be built under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Programme (ICZM) to conserve the old British cemetery.