SECRETARIAT BUILDINGS AS A SYMBOL: Architecture and Political Intention — a timeline of state power in West Bengal A chronological research paper on the Writers' Building, the New Secretariat Building, and Nabanna

Madhumita Roy

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21723621

Abstract

The secretariat building is the administrative headquarters of a government which houses offices of officials and
departments coordinating the day-to-day work. In West Bengal, the Writers’ building, New Secretariat Building
and Nabanna were more than just administrative centres. Each of these structures represents the political will of
the regime that occupied it. From 1698 to 2026, this paper deals with the buildings and how every regime
showcased its power and vision through architecture. The timeline spans Fort William’s origins as a trading-post,
the Writers’ Building’s journey from a clerks’ office to a Neo-Classical symbol of imperial power, the
independence movement of the 1930s, the modernist New Secretariat Building of 1954, and the more recent shifts
involving Nabanna and the reclaimed Writers’ Building. Parsing through heritage reports, economic data, and
historical records, the paper finds that architectural choices constantly reflected political priorities. Public
investment in these buildings is more a question of political necessity than economic need. Each architectural shift
reveals how the leadership of West Bengal has utilized built form in the service of communicating legitimacy in
a changing social and political context.

Keywords

Writers' Building, Mahakaran, New Secretariat Building, Habibur Rahman, Nabanna, secretariat architecture, political symbolism, timeline, Indo-Saracenic architecture, colonial Calcutta, heritage conservation, West Bengal administration, B.B.D. Bagh.

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