Bhopal- the City of Lakes

Bhopal City

 Bhopal- the City of Lakes Bhopal is situated at the central India. It’s famous for its lakes. All these lakes are combination of natural and artificial. This is also known as fine green cities of India. Bhopal is the 16th largest city in India. This is also 134th largest cities within the world .Bhopal is generally divided in much parts one is old Bhopal and second one is new Bhopal.

 Bhopal disaster by the leakage of gasses from the factory of Union Carbide India Limited was taken place in the month of December of the year 1984. That was the biggest industrial disaster of the world history. It was taken place at the mid night 2nd or 3rd December. Generally during this time are the weather of Bhopal is very coolest .Everybody was sleeping peacefully under the Razai (one kind of local blanket that keeps human body very hot) and most of them did not wake-up in next morning ; they were lost their life during their sleeping . Huge street dwellers were died on the road. Huge dwellers of both parts of the Bhopal city were died on the incident. On that occasion, people of every corner of the world were shown their protest by various ways.

 I went to Bhopal in the year 1991, just after six years of the incident. But the effect of the gas leak was still carrying by air after six years to. I was attacked there by a peculiar eye disease after few days of my reaching at Bhopal .According to the specialist doctor, this is May the effect of post gas leak .I was there nearly three years and during this period, I had been suffered from that eye disease. There after I came back to Kolkata and continued my treatment for a long time. Now I am OK, but my eyes were something damaged.

 Earlier Bhopal was the capital of the Madhya Pradesh one of the province of India. According to the myth of the people, this place was first found by Bhoja, the king of Parama dynasty within 1000-1055 AD.

 Sometime it was the myth that the Bhopal was a small village under the kingdom, Gond. After that, during the Mughal period, one of the Afghan soldiers of Mughal army, namely Dost Mohammad Khan was rearrange this city. Thereafter, the Mughal Emperor, Aurungzeb was died and trendiest Mohammad Khan had taken the entire charge of Bhopal and further reorganized it as a city. Thereafter he added some more places like Berasia estate from the queen of Gond of the Parama dynasty. Thus he had set-up a largest city of Bhopal and took the title of Nawab.

Bhopal is a city of combination of natural beauty, past history, arts and crafts, everything. There are so many places are to visit at Bhopal and its surroundings likes / liked Birla Temple from where the city is looking very colorful at the night.

Bhopal Lake

In the next episode, I will explain briefly to those visible places with their history.

Burdwan District…. A Rice Land

Gate Way of Burdwan

Several times I visited Burdwan. This is well known district in West Bengal of India. This district is the large producer of rice in Bengal.  Rice is the main food of Bengalis.  Most of the Bengalis like rice for three time as their food.  Asansol, Durgapur, Burnpur, Kulti, Katwa are the subdivisions under this district. Burdwan is situated on the bank of the river Damodar.

Burdwan district is an advance district in Bengal in both ways agriculturally & industrially. Asansol is famous for coal mine, Durgapur is also known as industrial place; here has various important industries and in Burdwan has many rice mills which produce huge quantity of rice for the country.

Before Mughal age, Burdwan was under the ruling of Khetri Kings. They were commanding this large district.  After independence of India, Burdwan was become as an important economic zone by agriculturally and natural resources especially coal.

The history of Burdwan is very old from 5000 BC and belonging to late Stone Age. There is different opinion about the name of this district. One of them is; there was a colony called Bardhamana at the time of the progress of Aryans. Thus the name of this district Bardhaman or Burdwan. It means, growth & prosperity.
At the close of 3rd century AD, first Varman dynasty and thereafter Gupta dynasty came to power one after another and took the charge of this area. There after Pala dynasty & Sena dynasty were took the charge of the Bengal at about AD 1130.

The year 1606 was the important year of that time. That year Qutubuddin Khan Koka who was the brother of Jahangir, the Mughal Emperor, was appointed as the Governor of Bengal. At that time Sher Afghan was the jaigirdar of Burdwan.  The wife of Sher Afgan, Meherunessa was very beautiful woman. A big battle was taken place in Burdwan between Qutubuddin & Sher Afgan and both of them were killed in that battle. Thereafter, Jahangir associated to Meherunessa.

In 1622, Shah Jahan agitated against his father Jahangir. Thereafter he captured Bengal through Orissa. Thereafter he appointed Bairam Beg as Jaigirdar of Bengal.  And in 1628 he appointed Quasim Khan as the Subedar of Bengal after his throne to Delhi’s chair of Mughal Emperor.

In 1740, Maratha army was entered into Bengal through Nagpur under the leadership of  Bhaskar Pandit and captured Bengal temporarily. In 1746, subedar Alivardi defeated  Maratha army again captured Bengal.
In 1740, Chitra Sen was awarded as Raja by Mughal Emperor and there after his cousin’s son Tilakchand was also awarded as Raja by the Mughal Emperor. During his time so many temples were built.

In 1857, the British Raj was established in Bengal. Since then they tried to concurred all the province of India and bring to them under one umbrella i.e. Queen Victoria rules. In this program, they first defeated to Bahadur Sha Jafar, the last Emperor of Mughal dynasty.

In Bengal, they first of gave the pressure to all Rajas, Zamindars by demanding huge revenues for British Government.

In 1905, the British Government was declared the division of Bengal. Like other Bengali people, the people of Burdwan were also protested against this decision of British Government. The people of Bardwan were also participated in India’s freedom movements.

There are so many visible places at Burdwan district like Bijoy Toron, Protestant Church, Hawa Mahal, RajBadi, etc.There are so many train facilities from Howrah Station via cord and main line. Approximate two and half hours will take to reach at Burdwan.  By bus also we can go there. There are some beautiful hotels to stay; centering Burdwan, we can visit all visible places.