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Sundarbans settlements
The Sundarbans settlements refer to the areas of the Sundarbans that were cleared of forests for human habitation in the present North 24 Paganas and the South 24 Parganas districts in the Indian state of West Bengal.
As per the District Human Development Report for the South 24 Parganas, the Sundarbans area, in the southern part of the erstwhile 24 Parganas district, includes 102 deltaic islands, out of which 54 are inhabited and the rest is reserved forest. The area spread over 25,500 km2 having around 3.9 million people or about 40% of the total population of the area. According to the December 2001 census there were 271 Royal Bengal Tigers and other animals in the Indian portion of the Sundarban forest, spread across 9.630 km2. The floor of the Sundarbans varies from 0.9 m to 2.11 m above sea level. Tidal saline water from the Bay of Bengal alternatively drowns and exposes the islands twice a day throughout the year. Around 3,500 km of earthen embankments, protecting the inhabited islands, have been facing the daily onslaught in a cyclone-prone area for more than a century.
Amitav Ghosh writes that, Sir Daniel Mackinnon Hamilton, a Scotsman, had travelled to Kolkata to work for the MacKinnon & McKenzie, a company with which he had family connections. The company sold tickets for P&O shipping line, then one of the largest in the world. Hamilton became head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in British India. Another man may have taken his money and gone away but Hamilton set his eyes on the deltaic islands in south Bengal. In 1903, he bought 40 square kilometres (10,000 acres) of the tide country from the government – it included such islands as Gosaba, Rangabelia, and Satjelia. His efforts at developing these places brought in other people into these islands. They were people who dared not only to struggle against nature but also the predators that lived there – tigers, crocodiles, sharks and lizards. They killed so many people that Hamilton gave rewards to people who killed them.
In December 1932, Rabindranath Tagore visited and stayed at Gosaba in the house of Sir Daniel Hamilton.
Note: The map alongside presents some of the notable administrative locations in the Sundarbans settlements. All places marked in the map are linked in the larger full screen map.
Our knowledge of the past of the Sundarbans area is patchy. However, various tracts of what is now the South 24 Parganas have recognisable historical antecedents. Scholars accept that the more accessible and less hostile areas of the Indian portion of the Sundarbans had human habitation till the 15-16th century. From that time, geological and tectonic movements resulted in the main course of the Ganges shifting eastward and the Padma becoming the main distributary of the Ganges. Consequently, there was a marked decline in the supply of fresh water to what is now the Indian Sundarbans. Long before the British came, there were people like Mubarra Ghazi, a fakir, who converted the forested western (left) bank of the Hooghly into paddy lands. The forests were the Sundarbans fresh water swamp forests, now virtually extinct. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese arrived on the scene. The estuarine southern parts of Bengal remained under effective control of the Portuguese pirates and free-booters. The Arakanese pirates were also there. The area got depopulated and the forests extended.
With the treaty of 1757 between Mir Jafar and the East India Company, the British acquired the zamindari rights of the 24 Parganas. The area around Kolkata was uncultivated waste land and the western limit of the Sundarbans was just about 7 miles away. The British were keen to bring the Sundarbans under cultivation and convert them into revenue paying assets. The forest was not given a thought. Reclamation of the Sundarbans meant surveying and mapping the area. It started in 1810. Lieutenant W.E.Morrieson and his brother Captain Hugh Morrieson, worked for about a decade, and produced the base materials on which later maps of the area were developed. Subsequently, Ensign Prinsep worked on mapping the area. Since places did not have names, he termed the geographical areas as “lots”. In the 1830s, William Dampire and Lieutenant Hodges mapped the entire area, renumbering the lots from 1-236. “Prinseps Line” and “Dampire-Hodges Line” mark the furthest limits of the Sundarbans.
Ideas about conservation of forests started seeping in from the 1830s but the Sundarbans have shrunk dramatically. From a reasonable estimate of the forested area, at the beginning of the 19th century, at 6,550 sq miles or almost 17,000 sq km down to 10,217 sq km (5.955 sq km in Bangladesh and 4,262 sq km in India).
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Sundarbans settlements
The Sundarbans settlements refer to the areas of the Sundarbans that were cleared of forests for human habitation in the present North 24 Paganas and the South 24 Parganas districts in the Indian state of West Bengal.
As per the District Human Development Report for the South 24 Parganas, the Sundarbans area, in the southern part of the erstwhile 24 Parganas district, includes 102 deltaic islands, out of which 54 are inhabited and the rest is reserved forest. The area spread over 25,500 km2 having around 3.9 million people or about 40% of the total population of the area. According to the December 2001 census there were 271 Royal Bengal Tigers and other animals in the Indian portion of the Sundarban forest, spread across 9.630 km2. The floor of the Sundarbans varies from 0.9 m to 2.11 m above sea level. Tidal saline water from the Bay of Bengal alternatively drowns and exposes the islands twice a day throughout the year. Around 3,500 km of earthen embankments, protecting the inhabited islands, have been facing the daily onslaught in a cyclone-prone area for more than a century.
Amitav Ghosh writes that, Sir Daniel Mackinnon Hamilton, a Scotsman, had travelled to Kolkata to work for the MacKinnon & McKenzie, a company with which he had family connections. The company sold tickets for P&O shipping line, then one of the largest in the world. Hamilton became head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in British India. Another man may have taken his money and gone away but Hamilton set his eyes on the deltaic islands in south Bengal. In 1903, he bought 40 square kilometres (10,000 acres) of the tide country from the government – it included such islands as Gosaba, Rangabelia, and Satjelia. His efforts at developing these places brought in other people into these islands. They were people who dared not only to struggle against nature but also the predators that lived there – tigers, crocodiles, sharks and lizards. They killed so many people that Hamilton gave rewards to people who killed them.
In December 1932, Rabindranath Tagore visited and stayed at Gosaba in the house of Sir Daniel Hamilton.
Note: The map alongside presents some of the notable administrative locations in the Sundarbans settlements. All places marked in the map are linked in the larger full screen map.
Our knowledge of the past of the Sundarbans area is patchy. However, various tracts of what is now the South 24 Parganas have recognisable historical antecedents. Scholars accept that the more accessible and less hostile areas of the Indian portion of the Sundarbans had human habitation till the 15-16th century. From that time, geological and tectonic movements resulted in the main course of the Ganges shifting eastward and the Padma becoming the main distributary of the Ganges. Consequently, there was a marked decline in the supply of fresh water to what is now the Indian Sundarbans. Long before the British came, there were people like Mubarra Ghazi, a fakir, who converted the forested western (left) bank of the Hooghly into paddy lands. The forests were the Sundarbans fresh water swamp forests, now virtually extinct. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese arrived on the scene. The estuarine southern parts of Bengal remained under effective control of the Portuguese pirates and free-booters. The Arakanese pirates were also there. The area got depopulated and the forests extended.
With the treaty of 1757 between Mir Jafar and the East India Company, the British acquired the zamindari rights of the 24 Parganas. The area around Kolkata was uncultivated waste land and the western limit of the Sundarbans was just about 7 miles away. The British were keen to bring the Sundarbans under cultivation and convert them into revenue paying assets. The forest was not given a thought. Reclamation of the Sundarbans meant surveying and mapping the area. It started in 1810. Lieutenant W.E.Morrieson and his brother Captain Hugh Morrieson, worked for about a decade, and produced the base materials on which later maps of the area were developed. Subsequently, Ensign Prinsep worked on mapping the area. Since places did not have names, he termed the geographical areas as “lots”. In the 1830s, William Dampire and Lieutenant Hodges mapped the entire area, renumbering the lots from 1-236. “Prinseps Line” and “Dampire-Hodges Line” mark the furthest limits of the Sundarbans.
Ideas about conservation of forests started seeping in from the 1830s but the Sundarbans have shrunk dramatically. From a reasonable estimate of the forested area, at the beginning of the 19th century, at 6,550 sq miles or almost 17,000 sq km down to 10,217 sq km (5.955 sq km in Bangladesh and 4,262 sq km in India).