Kyd, Robert

Kyd, Robert (1746-1793) founder of the Botanical Garden at Shibpur, Howrah in 1787. After the establishment of this landmark garden, the study of botany got a new impetus in the country under the British Raj. Born in 1746, Kyd was a military officer stationed in India. By all accounts, he was more of a gardener than a serious student of botany. A pragmatic as well as energetic person by nature, his main objective in founding the Botanical Garden near Calcutta had a clear commercial angle to it. Kyd was not too interested in collecting rare plants for study; he was more interested in growing those plants that could be of some commercial value.

Towards the last part of the eighteenth century, a large chunk of the profits made by the East India Company came from the export of a variety of spices and nutmegs from various British settlements. And its problem was that the teak with which its ships were built had to be procured from other sources by spending a lot of money. As a result, the then Governor General, Sir John macpherson (1785-86) was only too happy when Kyd submitted a proposal in June 1786 for founding a botanical garden. Kyd's plan suited the East India Company's plan to grow teak in India for building its ships. The proposed garden also held the prospect of making it a center for the distribution of economic plants within its own territorial domain. In addition, it appeared that the proposed garden would also allow the company to cultivate plants, which could be found only in lands beyond their direct control.'

For the garden, Kyd had chosen 300 acres of land contiguous to his own country house and garden at Shibpur, Howrah near Shalimar Point. The colonel enclosed the site with a fence and a ditch. He planned to grow there teak for shipbuilding, and cultivate various kinds of commercially useful spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom etc. for sale in Europe. The colonel turned botanist also intended to introduce tea, tobacco, coffee, cotton and other commercial items in his garden.'

The East India Company was particularly interested in cinnamon and other spices in Kyd's proposed garden as the Dutch cultivated these spices in Melaka (Moluccas) and enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the global market. At that time, the East India Company gave great importance to the advice of Joseph Banks on the introduction of plants. Banks had accompanied Captain Cook in the round the world voyage 'Endeavour. He was a highly influential figure in horticultural matters for the specialist knowledge he had acquired about tropical plants during the voyage. Bank's advice on plant introduction, coupled with the company's keenness on boosting trade and wealth had then created a favorable condition for the acceptance of Kyd's proposal.

And it came as no surprise when the Court of Directors approved Kyd's plan in a letter dated June 31, 1787. Unfortunately, the climate of Bengal was not conducive to the growth of many tropical spices, fruits and other plants identified for the garden. So, in spite of Kyd's sincere efforts, many of his plans met with failure. His lack of expertise in botany could also have been a cause of this failure, but he must be given credit for his experiments with such a wide variety of plants which heralded an important stage in the development of botanical studies in India. Later, after Kyd's death, when it was found that growing teak was not possible in the garden, its area was reduced to 270 acres in 1820 and the area earmarked for the purpose was given up for the establishment of Bishop's College.

Kyd breathed his last as the honorary superintendent of the Shibpur Botanical Garden on May 26, 1793 ' just six years after he founded the garden. He bequeathed most of his property to Major Alexander Kyd, who later became a Lt-General and died in 1826. In Robert Kyd's memory, a beautiful marble urn was erected on a site chosen by his successor Dr william roxburgh in the garden in 1795. Roxburgh was the first salaried superintendent of the Shibpur garden from 1793 to 1814.

Although not a botanist in the strict sense of the term, Robert Kyd did a tremendous job for the development of botanical study in India by founding the Calcutta Botanical Garden. Although it was his desire to be buried near a favorite avocado tree inside the garden, Kyd was eventually laid to rest in a cemetery on the southern end of Park Street in Calcutta. [Dilip Banerjee]