In 1934, on the marshy banks of the Hooghly River near Kolkata, a Czechoslovak shoemaking company planted two flags in the earth and began building a city from an idea — that workers deserved not merely employment, but dignity, nature, and a well-ordered life. Batanagar was the unlikely offspring of a Moravian garden city and the Gangetic delta, conceived by European modernists and signed into existence by nineteen men of many nations and faiths. It stands as one of colonial India's most quietly radical experiments: the belief that the design of a place could shape the humanity of those who li