Dum Dum

Dum Dum is a city and a municipality in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area 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). The Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport locally known as Kolkata Airport, is situated at Dum Dum. Dum Dum area was divided into three parts governed by three separate municipalities named as South Dum Dum, Dum Dum and North Dum Dum.

During the 19th century the area was home to the Dum Dum Arsenal, a British Royal Artillery facility. It was here that, in the early 1890s, Captain Neville Bertie-Clay developed a bullet with the jacket cut away at the tip to reveal its soft lead core (see hollow-point bullet), known informally as a dum-dum or more correctly as an expanding bullet. The previous name of Dum Dum was "Domdoma".

Some resources claim that the Persian word damdama, which means "mound" or "elevated battery", is the source of the word Dum Dum.

In the history of Bengal, Dum Dum holds a very significant place. Dum Dum was sparsely populated before the British came there. The area was slightly elevated. On 6 February 1757, an accord was signed at Dum Dum by the Nawab of Bengal to allow the British to build forts at Calcutta, Dacca and Kashim Bazar. In 1783, a cantonment was established at Dum Dum. Military barracks were built and civilians started coming in to provide essential services to the military personnel. A Cantonment Board was formed to provide civic amenities. On 9 February 1822, the foundation stone was blessed and laid for Saint Patrick’s Chapel. On Good Friday in 1823, the chapel was dedicated and inaugurated with Irish priest M. Murphy as its chaplain. The ordnance factory was established at Dum Dum in 1846. The St. Stephens Church, a Roman Catholic Church Weslyan Chapel and a hospital for treatment of European were established in the central hub of Dum Dum Cantonment of old Dum Dum. It may be noted that both South Dum Dum Municipality and North Dum Dum Municipality were established in 1870 thereby somewhat defining administratively the different parts of an earlier undefined Dum Dum area. subsequently, Dum Dum was enlarged by the amalgamation of Kadihati municipality in 1883.

Dum Dum was once a separate subdivision from 1861 to 1896. During the early years of the cantonment the British waged several imperial wars, out of which the wars in Burma, Nepal, the Deccan and Afganisthan were costly in blood and lives. Two monuments were erected to commemorate their memory. The Afghan War Memorial was built in Dum Dum in 1841 after the British lost the first Anglo-Afghan war. During the 1857 disturbances the Indian sepoys posted at Dum Dum were affected and Mangal Pandey was hanged from a tree at Dum Dum (his dead body was probably hanged at both Barrackpore and Dum Dum Cantonment). Dum Dum Cantonment was closed down and the Cantonment Board was replaced by Dum Dum Municipality in 1929. The temporary set back to Dum Dum arising from abolition of the cantonment and departure of British troops, was partially made up with the shifting of Jessop & Co. from Howrah to Dum Dum in 1928 and establishment of the Gramophone Company at Dum Dum in 1929. Bengal Flying Club, established in 1920, had a small fleet of single engine moth planes. The independence movement led to the sudden development of the Central Jail, where many top leaders and more numerous unknown patriots were lodged. The old military barracks made way for multi-storied jail barracks. The environment quite often reverberated with the chanting of Vande Mataram.

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 (Bengali: jabardakhal) ranged from the forcible occupation of barracks to the collective take-over of private, government and waste land. "This happened as early as 1948 with middle class refugees in the Jadavpur area: first on government land and then on private property, leading to violent clashes. Having won the battle, the elated squatters named their colony 'Bijaygarh', the Fort of Victory."^{[attribution needed]} By 1949, there were 40 such colonies in Jadavpur, Kasba, Santoshpur, Garia and Behala, in the south-eastern part of the city, and 65 in the Dum Dum and Panihati zone in the north. Subsequently squatters colonies also came up along the west bank of the Hooghly and by 1950, there were 150 such colonies. It has to be borne in mind that the squatters were in a way "self-settlers" in the absence of adequate official arrangements for rehabilitation. Within a very short time the refugees (quite often with government or administrative support) not only found a place to stay but developed a society with markets, schools, temples and sometimes even colleges, hospitals and recreational centres. Efforts have been made in more recent years to regularise land/property rights in the refugee colonies.^{[self-published source?]}

Dum Dum is located at 22°37′N 88°25′E / 22.62°N 88.42°E / 22.62; 88.42. It has an average elevation of 11 metres (36 feet).

Dum Dum is bounded by North Dum Dum (municipality) on the north and partly on the west, Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation areas on the east and South Dum Dum (municipality) on the south and partly on the west.