GUWAHATI: The Panbazar Water Treatment Plant, although wears a desolate look with its rusted reservoir and treatment facilities, had a beautiful history of its own. During the British era the place was known as Jubilee Garden.
Jubilee Garden was the first public park of Guwahati that was established around 1887 to commemorate the completion of 50 years of rule of Queen Victoria in the Indian subcontinent. As the occasion was celebrated country-wide, in Guwahati the park marked the occasion.
Reportedly, the park had a glorious history of 75 years, boosting of lush green areas and a beautiful fountain.
During the freedom movement the Jubilee Garden hosted meetings of great visionary luminaries like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore , Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Subhash Chandra Bose, Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi, Tarunram Phukan and other.
In 1901, Guwahatians were privileged enough to listen to Swami Vivekananda in the garden when he visited Assam.
The land was donated for the establishment of the park by Babu Nabagopal Banerjee, a contractor from West Bengal who was employed in the construction of the Guwahati-Shillong Road. The garden had a ‘tamor pholi’ (bell-metal plate) with the name of the garden, its established year and the land donor’s name engraved on it.
Unfortunately, during the construction of the water treatment plant the plate and the fountain disappeared, taking away with it the glorious history of the land, that could only be recollected from the stories of the few elders who saw the garden’s presence and remains to narrate its tale.