Kamarhati

About Kamarhati

Kamarhati is a city and a municipality of North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA).

Kamarhati was earlier a part of North Suburban Municipality. In 1881-82 it was renamed Baranagar Municipality and Kamarhati became a part of it. In 1899, Kamarhati was separated from Baranagar Municipality and Kamarhati Municipality came into existence.

During the British Raj it was a place for bungalows and gardens where the rich 'Babu' of Kolkata used to come.

With the partition of Bengal in 1947, "millions of refugees poured in from erstwhile East Pakistan." In the initial stages bulk of the refugees were non-agriculturists. A few of them made their own arrangements, but "it was squatters who made the East Bengali refugees famous or infamous." Squatting (jabardakhal in Bengali) ranged from the forcible occupation of barracks to the collective take-over of private, government and waste land. By 1949, there were 65 refugee colonies in the Dum Dum and Panihati zone. The squatters were in a way "self-settlers" in the absence of adequate official arrangements for rehabilitation. Within...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.