Bengaluru has had a long history of renaming its roads and landmarks. This story is about a landmark which was completely destroyed because of its link to the city’s colonial history.It happened on October 28, 1964. A cenotaph dedicated to soldiers who died in the 1791 Siege of Bangalore was demolished.

“A group of Kannada activists led by Vatal Nagaraj wanted to demolish structures and statues that they considered as symbols of colonial victory over Indians,” said Mansoor Ali, founder, Bengaluru By Foot.

While statues of Queen Victoria, King Edward and Mark Cubbon were also on their radar, they zeroed in on the cenotaph as it was in the city centre (Hudson Circle).The call to pull down the cenotaph goes back to the late 1940s but it was in October 1964 that a resolution was passed by the city corporation under mounting pressure from Kannada activists. Today ,a statue of Kempe Gowda, the city’s founder, stands in its place.

The 35-feet-tall cenotaph pillar was constructed in the memory of the 50-odd soldiers and commanders who died in the 1791 Siege of Bangalore and other Anglo-Mysore wars. It had stone plaques and ceremonial urns on all four sides, similar to the one constructed in Tipu Sultan’s capital Srirangapatna.According to Ali, the cenotaph included names of not only British soldiers, but also of Indians who fought as part of the Madras Engineering Group (MEG).

During the siege, the British first captured the pete (which housed residential and commercial areas) on March 7, 1791, and then captured the stone military fort on March 21.The event put Bangalore on the British map. Subsequently , the British used the Bangalore fort as a base for the Siege of Seringapatam in 1792, which forced Tipu to concede defeat.

Initially, officers who died during the Siege of Bangalore were buried in the Fort’s Cemetery .Robert Home’s book `Select Views in Mysore, the country of Tipoo Sultan’ illustrates graves of soldiers and indicates that the land was filled with cypress trees, rose bushes and flowers. In the early 1910s, the records of these officers were transferred to the Cenotaph that was raised in the British cantonment.