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Kharagpur

City in West Bengal, India

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History

Kharagpur (transliterated from Khargapur) received its name from the twelfth king of the Mallabhum dynasty, Kharga Malla, when he conquered it in 832 AD (Bengali: 147 BS). It was a part of the Hijli Kingdom, and was ruled by Hindu Odia rulers of the Mallabhum dynasty.

According to some historians, in the 16th century, Kharagpur was a small village which was surrounded by dense forests. The village was located on barren terrain, such as a rocky plateau. According to Ain-i-Akbari, it also had a strong fort in the middle of its wooded hills.

Hijli (part of the Hijli Kingdom) developed into a port town in 1687. On 9 February 1687, Job Charnock with English soldiers and warships captured Hijli on the east coast of the Medinipur district and thereby defeated the Mughals ruling there. In mid-May 1687, Abdus Samad, a lieutenant serving under Shaista Khan, arrived to recapture Hijli from the English forces, with 12,000 men. The Mughal forces' heavy batteries, then located on the mainland west of Hijli, fired across the English positions, which drove the latter's ships from their anchorage. On 28 May an army of 700 cavalry and 200 gunners recaptured Hijli from the English, and set it ablaze. Adding to their misfortunes, malaria had spread to the English forces killing more than 200 soldiers; only 100 men, including five officers, survived. Following these events, a peace treaty was signed between the English and Samad. Subsequently, the English left Hijli on 11 June 1687, and later on 9 November 1688, they also left Calcutta and evacuated all their businesses and troops stationed in Bengal. The British came back to Bengal in 1690, and established the city of Calcutta, after an invitation by the new Viceroy of Bengal, Ibrahim Khan. After Battle of Plassey, the East India Company took control of the Bengal Presidency including Kharagpur, as its puppet state.

Hijli port was destroyed by the Calcutta cyclone in October 1864. The area was then rebuilt in the months following the natural calamity.

Hijli existed as a province until 1886, covering parts of both Bengal and Odisha. The province had important towns like Tamluk, Panskura, and Debra. At the time, Hijli was ruled by Taj Khan. Many centuries before Khan, it was also ruled by the Kushan, Gupta, and Pal dynasties, and by the Mughals. Further, it is claimed that Hijli had excellent business and trade centres, along with judiciary, prison, and administrative offices.

The entire Kharagpur division of today has identical boundaries to the 17th-century Hijli province.

Hijli detention camp

In 1930, the Hijli Detention Camp was opened by the British authorities to house "security prisoners" or unarmed political prisoners who included revolutionaries from organisations such as Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar. The "Hijli firing" took place on 16 September 1931, in which two prisoners, Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta, were shot dead inside the camp. The incident also injured multiple others. It led to widespread protests in Bengal, including a condemnation by Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore. Bose went in person to collect the two prisoners' dead bodies while there was an ongoing protest against the incident in Calcutta.

The camp was later closed in 1937, and reopened in 1940 to detain political activists and freedom fighters who participated in anti-colonial movements. It closed in 1942 when the British needed to reorganise their administration for war efforts in World War II. After India's independence, the jail was converted to Hijli Shaheed Bhavan (later Nehru Museum of Science and Technology) after the establishment of IIT Kharagpur in 1951.

Role in World War II

On the Japanese front of World War II in 1944, the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) required airbases to send B-29s to mainland Japan for its aerial bombardment. Bases were set up to be used across locations in China, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), in an operation known as Operation Matterhorn. On the Indian airfields, Kharagpur played an important role by becoming the key airfield to serve as the centre of operations. It was chosen as the airfield headquarters by Ken Wolfe, who headed the XX Bomber Command.

Initially, in December 1943, the plan was to expand the airfield runways chosen in India to make it operational for B-29 bombers. General Harrison and Colonel Wilson put forward the plan to Mountbatten, then the Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia, and the proposal was accepted by the latter. The field airmen were requested by the SOS engineers for making the runways 7,500 ft (2.3 kilometres) long and 150 ft (46 metres) wide. In January 1944, Lewis Pick released the 382nd Construction Battalion to speed up work on the Kharagpur airfield until the aviation engineers arrived. The work on the airfield, now Kalaikunda Air Force Station, was completed by June 1944. Apart from the 7,500 ft (2.3 kilometres) long runway, it had 50 hardstands, hangars from the European theatre, operational buildings, and housing. The first B-29s left from the Kharagpur airfield to bomb Bangkok's railway shops in May 1944. In total, the construction forces used in building the five airfields, which included Kharagpur, numbered some 6,000 U.S. troops, and 27,000 Indian civilians who worked on a contractual basis for the Central Public Works Department (CPWD).

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