Today, Chittagong is one of the
fastest growing cities in the world. A major commercial and industrial center,
the city also has a globally competitive special economic zone. With the Port Of Chittagong
being expanded and developed, regional neighbors of Bangladesh have eyed
Chittagong as a future regional transit hub. The port city is seen as crucial
to the economic development of landlocked southern Asia including Northeast India, Bhutan, Nepal and parts of Southern China and Burma.
History
Chittagong has been a seaport since ancient times. Arabs traded with the port from the 9th Century AD. The Chittagong region was under the Vesali kingdom of Arakan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries and under the Mrauk U kingdom of Arakan in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Chittagong had been under the control of the Arakanese or kings of Arakan
for hundreds of years. An account by historian Lama Taranath has
revealed a Buddhist king Gopichandra had his capital at Chittagong in
the Tenth Century, and according to Tibetan tradition, Chittagong was
the birthplace of the Buddhist Tantric Tilayogi, who lived and worked in
the Tenth Century.
In the Fourteenth Century, explorer Ibn Battuta passed through Chittagong during his travels.
Sultan Fakruddin Mubarak Shah of Sonargaon conquered Chittagong in 1340. Sultan Giasuddin Mubarak Shah constructed a highway from Chittagong to Chandpur
and ordered the construction of many lavish mosques and tombs. After
the defeat of Mahmud Shah in the hands of Sher Shah in 1538, the Arakanese
regained Chittagong. From this time onward, until its conquest by the
Mughals, this region was under the control of the Portuguese and the Magh pirates (a notorious name for Arakanese) for 128 years.
The Mughal Commandar Shayesta Khan and his son
Buzurg Umed Khan expelled the Arakanese from the area in 1666 and established Mughal rule there. They renamed Chittagong as Islamabad. The city was occupied by Burmese troops shortly in First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824 and the British increasingly grew active in the region and it fell under the British Empire.
The people of Chittagong made several attempts to gain independence
from the British, notably on November 18, 1857 when the 2nd, 3rd, and
4th companies of the 34th Bengal Infantry Regiment stationed at
Chittagong rose in rebellion and released all the prisoners from jail
but were suppressed by the Kuki scouts and the Sylhet Light Infantry
(10th Gurkha Rifles).
US Navy sailors in Chittagong, 1944
Chittagong grew at the beginning of the twentieth century after the partition of Bengal and the creation of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The construction of the Assam Bengal Railway
to Chittagong facilitated further development of economic growth in the
city. However, revolutionaries and opposition movements grew during
this time. Many people in Chittagong supported Khilafat and
Non-Cooperation movements.
The Great Chittagong Uprising of 1930 and the Aftermath
Revolution was never far from the surface and one group of Bengali youths under the leadership of
Masterda Surya Sen
formed the secret Republican Army. He set up camps for revolutionary
youths to train in guerilla tactics against the British occupation of
India. The members of the revolutionary groups believed in armed
uprisings for Indian independence to liberate India from the oppressive
and exploitative British colonial rule. The leader was Masterda Surya Sen. Apart from Surya Sen, the group included Ganesh Ghosh, Lokenath Bal,
Nirmal Sen, Ambika Chakrobarty, Naresh Roy, Sasanka Datta, Ardhendu
Guha, Harigopal Baul, Tarakeswar Dastidar, Ananta Singh, Jiban Ghoshal,
Anand Gupta, Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Dutta and Suresh Dey.
Also among them was 14-year-old Subodh Roy (d. August 27, 2006). He too
was jailed in the Andaman Islands but released in 1940.
Surya Sen
devised the strategy of capturing the two main armouries in Chittagong
and then destroying the telegraph and telephone office, followed by
capital punishment of the notorious members of the "European Club", the
majority of whom were government or military officials involved in
maintaining British Raj in India. Firearms retailers were also to be
raided; and rail and communication lines were scheduled to be disrupted.
The plan was put into action at 10 o'clock on April 18, 1930. As per
plan, the armoury of the police was captured by a group of
revolutionaries led by Ganesh Ghosh
and another group of ten, led by Lokenath Baul took over the Auxiliary
Force armoury. Unfortunately they could not locate the ammunition. The
revolutionaries also succeeded in dislocating telephone and telegraph
communications and disrupting the movement of the trains. Total
sixtyfive revolutionaries took part in the raid, which was undertaken in
the name of the
Indian Republican Army, Chittagong branch.
After the successful raids, all the revolutionary groups gathered
outside the police armoury where Surya Sen took a military salute,
hoisted the National Flag and proclaimed a Provisional Revolutionary
Government. The revolutionaries left Chittagong town before dawn and
marched towards the Chittagong hill ranges, looking for a safe place
After
a few days, the police traced some of the revolutionaries. They were
surrounded by several thousand troops while taking shelter in the Jalalabad hills on the outskirts of Chittagong on the afternoon of April 22, 1930.
Over
80 British troops and 12 of the revolutionaries were killed in the
ensuing gunfight. Surya Sen decided to disperse into neighbouring
villages in small groups and the revolutionaries escaped accordingly.
Very few revolutionaries fled to Calcutta (present Kolkata), while some revolutionaries were arrested in Chittagong.
Many
of the revolutionaries managed to reorganize the broken group. On 24
September 1932, 8 young rebels led by Pritilata Waddedar attacked the
European Club. During 1930-32 , 22 officials and 220 non- officials were
killed by the revolutionarists in separate incidents.
The
so-called "first armoury raid case" (i.e. The Great Chittagong Uprising)
concluded in January 1932 and the judgement was delivered on March 1,
1932. The sentences were deportation for life for 12, three years'
imprisonment for 2 and the rest of a total of 32 persons on trial were
acquitted. The Chittagong revolutionaries suffered a fatal blow when
Masterda Surya Sen was arrested on February 16, 1933 from Gairala
village, because of a tip-off from a traitor in the group. He was tried
and was hanged on January 12, 1934.
World War II
During World War II, the British used Chittagong as an important military base. Frequent bombardment by the Japanese Air Force, notably in April 1942 and again on 20 and 24 December 1942, resulted in military relocation to Comilla.
Neverless the war had a major negative impact on the city, with the
growth of refugees and uneveness in fortune, reflected in the Great
Famine of 1943.
The port was blocked during the liberation war
Post World War and Liberation of Bangladesh
After
the war, rapid industrialisation and development saw the city grow
beyond its previous municipal area, particularly in the southwest up to
Patenga, where Chittagong International Airport is now located
.
The former villages of Halishahar, Askarabad and Agrabad became
integrated into the city. The Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) was
established by the government of East Pakistan in 1959 to manage this
growth and drew up a master plan to be reviewed every five years to plan
its urban development. By 1961 the CDA had drawn up a regional plan
covering an area of 212 square miles (550 km
2) and a master plan covering an area of 100 square miles (260 km
2).
Over the decades, especially after the losses of 1971, the master plan
developed into several specific areas of management, including the
Multi-Sectoral Investment Plan for drainage and flood-protection of
Chittagong City and a plan for easing the traffic congestion and making
the system more efficient.
In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War,
Chittagong suffered massive losses in people and buildings given that
they denied the occupation army access to the port. The first public
announcement ever made over the radio declaring Independence and the
start of the War of Liberation was also made in the city, from the
Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra located at Kalurghat,
Chittagong. Following the independence of Bangladesh, the city
underwent a major rehabilitation and reconstruction programme and
regained its status as an important port within a few years.