Purulia Tour Album
Purulia and surroundings
Posted on 05/11/2014by Anil
INTRODUCTION : There was a District called MANBHUM District in the
Eastern Part of India during British Raj. To know the history of erstwhile
MANBHUM district we have to go back to the Mughal era. During the regime of
Akbar, Raja Man Singh was gifted a territory by emperor Akbar following his
victory in a battle. The territory being extremely vast and far flung, got it
divided into three Districts as Birbhum, Manbhum and Singhbhum for
administrative purposes. Manbhum had its Headquarters in Purulia (now in West
Bengal).
In
1765 A.D. Mughal Emperor Shah-Alam granted “Diwani” (Right to collect taxes) to
East India Company for the subahs (Province/Sub-Division) of Bengal, Bihar,
Orissa. During this period of time Manbhum was one of the districts of
the Eastern India (Bengal-Bihar-Orissa) during the British Raj.
CREATION
OF DISTRICTs : To Have a greater control over
the Jungle-Mahal area, East India Company began to split it into several
smaller districts like Panchet (1773), Jungle-Mahal (1805) and Manbhum (1833).
The district of Manbhum was formed with 7896 sq. mile area in
the year 1833.,
By
Regulation XVIIII of 1805, a Jungle Mahals district
composed of 23 parganas and mahals including the present Purulia (known as
‘Purulia’ in those days) was formed.
By
Regulation XIII of 1833 the JUNGLE MAHALS district was broken up and a new
district called MANBHUM was constituted with headquarters at Manbazar. The
district was very large in size and included parts of BANKURA and BARDHAMAN
districts of present West Bengal state and Dhanbad,Dhalbhum and Seraikela-Kharswan districts of
present Jharkhand states.
In 1838 the district headquarters was shifted from Manbazar to Purulia.
Manbhum
District after creation in the year of 1833, the district of Manbhum was split
in the following years-1845, 1846, 1871 and finally in 1879, as a result of
which the area of Manbhum was reduced to 4112 sq. miles from
the original area of 7896 Square Miles,
The movement against the split of
Bengal (Banga-Bhanga) started in 1905. Due to strong agitation the division of
Bengal was stopped and both the Bengals united again in 1911.
However,
in the following year in 1912, a new partition took place which divided the
Bengal province on linguistic, with the Hindi, Oriya and Assamese areas
separated to form separate administrative units : Bihar -Orissa Provincewas formed to the west (of Bengal) and Assam Province to
the east. Manbhum was a Bengali dominated District but unfortunately it
was included to Bihar-Orissa province detaching from Bengal. The protest
against the inclusion of Manbhum in Bihar-Orissa spread out in the whole
district. The “Language Movement” (Bhasa Andolon ) for inclusion back to Bengal
slowly gathered storm at Manbhum district. However the popularity of the
freedom struggle sidelined the Language movement and lost its importance and
intensity.
In
1947, After India’s independence,
the MANBHUM district became part ofBihar state. People
of Manbhum were unhappy and they started prolonged movement against the
decision. The Govt. to make the movement to die, re-organized the Indian
states in the 1956, when a small part of Manbhum District was given to West Bengal by
curving out of the Manbhum District, which is known as Purulia District. The
Remaining part which is reach in minerals and coal was kept with Bihar
and that part was named as Dhanbad District (now in Jharkhand state).
This is how the Manbhum District of
erstwhile Bangla (United Bengal) province was disappeared from the Indian map.
This post is the result of my compilation from various sources
from Internet, Wikipedia and http://www.purulia.gov.in. Any suggestion for addition, deletion,
alteration for improvement of the article will be welcomed and acknowledged
with thanks.
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