Know Your City | The lake that preceded Bengaluru’s Sree Kanteerava Stadium

One of the clearest maps of British-era Bengaluru, the 1854 map by Pharaoh & Co, makes this quite clear—the waterbody appears here as the "Sumpengy Tank". (Express photo)

A common refrain in conversations about how Bengaluru has changed is the contrast between the old pensioners’ paradise and the new metropolis. However, the city was evolving long before this shift—exemplified by one of its oldest sports venues, the Sree Kanteerava Stadium, a fixture of the city since 1946. But just a century earlier, it was the lake bed of Sampangi Kere, of which only a small tank remains today.

One of the clearest maps of British-era Bengaluru, the 1854 map by Pharaoh & Co, makes this quite clear—the waterbody appears here as the “Sumpengy Tank”. Hita Unnikrishnan, an assistant professor at the University of Warwick, UK, and a visiting faculty member at Bengaluru’s Azim Premji University, said, “The lake was originally seasonal and rain-fed, as were most lakes in Bengaluru, which would dry up in the summer, which is why there was a system of open wells, which supplemented water requirements at the time. With the advent of colonialism and long-distance water supply, people were no longer as dependent on waterbodies. The lakes also became open to sewage, and they became perennial. They were not meant to carry the sewage of the city at all.”

Unnikrishnan also noted that as per oral histories, locals would grow crops on the dried lake bed before colonial times, with the lake returning to its normal bounds in the monsoon. Several temple tanks also supplemented the water supply before the modern era, with only one surviving today.

In the research paper Contested Urban Commons: Mapping the Transition of a Lake to a Sports Stadium in Bangalore, authored by Unnikrishnan, Harini Nagendra, and B Manjunatha, oral traditions of the Vannikula Kshatriya community of the area are recorded. According to the recollections of older members of the community, the lake area was once surrounded by fertile farmlands, with fish being so common that the excess catch was used to fertilise crops. The community’s historical proximity to the lake is also reflected in the fact that the last remaining portion of the waterbody is one of the stops of the Karaga festival. This festival is traditionally initiated by the Vannikula Kashatriyas.

The lake also sat near the border of the British-ruled cantonment and the walled pete, the latter being nominally ruled by the princely state of Mysore. Unnikrishnan noted, “Local horticulturists wanted more water to be in the lake to help their crops.” But by 1884, the British administration had started clamping down on uses of the lake area by natives, passing an order against brickmaking near the lake. By 1895, the administration decided against the storage of more water in the tank as the main feeders had been cut off. Residents of nearby bungalows and users of the polo ground in the area also raised their voices against more water being introduced, in fear of flooding.

Later, the lake met the fate of many of the smaller waterbodies in the city, degenerating into a swampy area ridden with mosquitoes. By 1937, a large proportion of it seems to have been drained away, with the lake being replaced with a carnival ground—shortly followed by the construction of the Sree Kanteerava Stadium.

Aside from the tank that even today forms part of the Karaga procession, a memory of the lake still returns during heavy rain—in the form of the many instances of past waterlogging in the stadium.