इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Dooars & Terai · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
This belt has almost never been governed from inside itself. It is a frontier shelf, and its history is the history of whoever held the plain to the south or the hills to the north reaching across it: Kamarupa and then the Kamata kingdom from the plains, the Koch from Kamatapur, the Raikat house from Baikunthapur on its western edge, and from the seventeenth century the Kingdom of Bhutan, which held the eighteen duars as revenue tracts administered through appointed officers rather than through any local dynasty. Its medieval period therefore ends not with a conquest by a plains empire but in 1865, when the Duar War transferred the whole belt from Bhutan to British India. Its modern period begins there, and it is unusually short and unusually violent in its effect: within thirty years of annexation the forest had been cleared for tea, and within sixty the population had been remade by a labour migration a thousand kilometres long. Most people living here now descend from someone who arrived after 1865, which is why the region's culture is a made thing rather than an inherited one.
कालक्रम यहाँ क्षेत्रीय है, राष्ट्रीय नहीं — मध्यकाल हर क्षेत्र में एक ही सदी से शुरू नहीं होता।
For most of this period the shelf lay on the western marches of Kamarupa, the kingdom of the Brahmaputra valley, and was thinly held. The reason is physical: the rivers here shift their channels every few decades, the bhabar gravel swallows surface water, and the terai below it was malarial. That combination made the belt poor ground for a capital and good ground for a frontier. The communities of long standing - Mech and Bodo, Koch, Rabha, Toto and Rajbanshi cultivators - were established here well before any of the recorded kingdoms, but they left no inscriptions, and what survives from the period is a scatter of brick ruins in the forest whose builders are not identified.
| कब | क्या हुआ |
|---|---|
| c. 4th–12th centuries | The tract lies on the western edge of the Kamarupa kingdom, held loosely rather than settled. |
| undated | Brick ruins in the Chilapata forest, near Jaldapara, are attributed in local tradition to a ruler remembered as Nal Raja. The attribution is traditional and the site is not securely dated. |
| long-established | Mech and Bodo, Koch, Rabha, Toto and Rajbanshi communities occupy the shelf and the forest edge, farming the gravel fans and fishing the shifting channels. |
| throughout | The eighteen duars function as the passes through which the hill kingdoms and the plains traded, which is what the name means and why the belt was worth holding. |
Three overlapping authorities. The Kamata kingdom, ruled at the end by the Khen dynasty from Kamatapur - whose successive capitals lay at Chilapata, Mainaguri and Panchagarh, inside this belt - fell to Alauddin Husain Shah of Gaur in 1498. Out of the disorder that followed, Biswa Singha built the Koch kingdom from 1515, and under his son Nara Narayan and his brother Chilarai, the commander who did most of the actual campaigning, it became briefly the largest power in the eastern Himalayan foothills before splitting in 1581. On the western edge a cadet branch, the Raikats of Baikunthapur, held the Siliguri and Jalpaiguri tract as a semi-independent estate for four centuries. And from the seventeenth century Bhutan held the duars themselves, administering them through the Tongso Penlop and subordinate officers who came down to collect and went back up - which is why there is no local court, no local temple patronage on any scale, and very little medieval building in a belt that was politically contested for six hundred years.
| कब | क्या हुआ |
|---|---|
| 1498 | Alauddin Husain Shah of Gaur defeats Nilambar of the Khen dynasty and occupies Kamata; his son Danyal Husayn is installed there. |
| 1515 | Biswa Singha is crowned and founds the Koch kingdom; his brother Sisya Singha is granted the Baikunthapur tract with the title Raikat and settles first at Siliaguri, now Siliguri. |
| 1540–1586 | Nara Narayan's reign, the height of Koch power, with Chilarai as commander-in-chief; Chilarai takes the Barak valley from Tripura in 1562. |
| 1581 | The Koch kingdom divides into Koch Bihar and Koch Hajo after Nara Narayan's death. |
| 17th century onward | Bhutan takes possession of the duars and administers them as revenue tracts through the Tongso Penlop and appointed subordinate officers, holding them until 1865. |
| 1771–1773 | The Baikunthapur estate is assessed as a zamindari under East India Company revenue administration in 1771; Darpa Dev Raikat's rebellion of 1773 is put down and ends the house's independence. |
| 1793–1800 | The Raikat seat moves from Bodaganj out into the open plain at Jalpaiguri. |
The Duar War of 1864-65 ended Bhutanese authority on the shelf, and the Treaty of Sinchula of 11 November 1865 transferred the eighteen duars and the hill tract east of the Teesta to British India. What followed was one of the fastest landscape changes anywhere in colonial India. Jalpaiguri district was constituted in 1869; planting began in the Terai in the 1860s and in the Dooars in the 1870s; and because the resident population was small and unwilling to work the gardens, labour was recruited through sardars from the Oraon, Munda, Santhal and Kharia villages of the Chota Nagpur plateau, a thousand kilometres away. Out of a dozen mother tongues those families made Sadri the common speech of the gardens, and they brought Karam, Sarhul and jhumur with them. The older Rajbanshi countryside around the estates organised separately and later, through the Kshatriya Samiti from 1910 and, at the very end of the period, through the sharecroppers' movement of 1946. The last colonial use of the belt was as a place to put people: Buxa Fort, taken from Bhutan in 1865, became one of the country's most isolated detention camps for political prisoners.
| कब | क्या हुआ |
|---|---|
| 1864–1865 | The Duar War; British forces take the duars from Bhutan, with Captain Hedayat Ali among the commanders in the campaign. |
| 11 November 1865 | The Treaty of Sinchula transfers the eighteen duars and the hill tract east of the Teesta to British India; Bhutan loses roughly a fifth of its territory and receives an annual allowance. |
| 1869 | Jalpaiguri district is constituted out of the annexed Western Dooars and the older plains tract. |
| 1860s–1870s | Tea planting begins in the Terai in the 1860s and in the Dooars in the 1870s; forest is cleared for estates faster than anywhere else in the eastern Himalayan foothills. |
| 1870s onward | Oraon, Munda, Santhal and Kharia families are recruited from the Chota Nagpur plateau to clear forest and pick tea. Sadri becomes the common language of the gardens. |
| 1885 | Jalpaiguri municipality is constituted, the tenth oldest in Bengal. |
| 1 May 1910 | The Kshatriya Samiti is founded at Rangpur at a conference of Rajbanshi leaders, becoming the main organised body of the older cultivating population. |
| 1930–1947 | Buxa Fort, in the Eastern Dooars, is used as a detention camp for political prisoners - from 1930 under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act and again as a special jail from 1942 to 1947. |
| September 1946 | The Tebhaga movement of sharecroppers begins and spreads through north Bengal, including the Jalpaiguri countryside. |
शासक और सेनापति
The last Khen ruler of Kamata, defeated in 1498 by Alauddin Husain Shah of Gaur. His kingdom's successive capitals - Chilapata, Mainaguri, Panchagarh - lay inside this belt, which is the one period in which the shelf held a court rather than a frontier.
राजवंश: Khen. राजधानी: Kamatapur
Installed by his father Alauddin Husain Shah after the defeat of Nilambar; the Gaur administration of the tract was brief and left the countryside to reorganise itself.
राजवंश: Husain Shahi of Gaur. राजधानी: Kamata
Founder of the Koch kingdom out of the disorder that followed 1498, having first brought the Baro-Bhuyan chiefships under one authority. The Koch state he built is the political ancestor of Cooch Behar and of the Rajbanshi identity of this countryside.
राजवंश: Koch. राजधानी: Hingulabas, then Kamatapur
Brother of Biswa Singha, granted the Baikunthapur tract with the title Raikat. The house he founded held the Terai's western end as a distinct estate for four centuries and is the closest thing this belt has to a resident dynasty.
राजवंश: Raikat (Koch cadet branch). राजधानी: Siliaguri (Siliguri), later Bodaganj
Under him the Koch kingdom reached its widest extent across the eastern Himalayan foothills, drawing on militia from the region's own communities rather than on a professional plains army.
राजवंश: Koch. राजधानी: Kochbihar
Nara Narayan's brother and commander-in-chief, who did most of the campaigning that made the kingdom - the Barak valley taken from Tripura in 1562 among it. His son Raghudev broke away in 1581 to found Koch Hajo, which split the kingdom in two.
राजवंश: Koch. राजधानी: Kochbihar
Not a local dynasty but an administrative reach from the hills. Bhutan held the eighteen duars as revenue tracts and worked them through appointed officers who came down to collect. This is why the shelf has no medieval court architecture and no local ruling house through its longest period of continuous government.
राजवंश: Kingdom of Bhutan. राजधानी: Trongsa, administering the duars from above
Rebelled in 1773 against the East India Company's revenue settlement of the Baikunthapur estate, which had been assessed as a zamindari two years earlier. The rebellion was put down and ended the house's independence; the estate remained under Company and then British authority thereafter.
राजवंश: Raikat. राजधानी: Baikunthapur
Dooars & Terai का इतिहास — प्राचीन से मध्यकाल होते हुए आधुनिक काल तक, और वे शासक, सेनापति और प्रशासक जिन्होंने इसे गढ़ा। (8)