Mokama Ghat is a village about four kilometres east of

Mokama Mokama is a town and a municipal council in barh of Patna district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is located east of Patna on the southern banks of the river Ganges. Mokama is the connecting town of north and south Bihar and has 2nd highest am ...

on the bank of the river

Ganga The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Be ...

, India.

Importance

The Hindi word "Ghat" means "bank of a river which is used by people for bathing or transportation of passengers and goods".

Ghat was used for ferrying cargo and passengers by ships across the river to the north eastern parts of India. It was linked by rail to Mokama, and was once an important railway station under the Danapur division of the

East Central Railway Zone The East Central Railway (abbreviated ECR) is one of the 19 railway zones in India. It is headquartered at Hajipur and comprises Sonpur, Samastipur, Danapur, Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, and Dhanbad divisions. History First set up on 8 S ...

. It was also linked by road. The passengers and goods would be carried by either road or rail to Mokama Ghat, where they would be transported by ship across the river to Simaria Ghat.

History

Until the first half of 20th century, Mokama Ghat was an important trade and transport link in eastern India. Malabika Chakrabarti mentions the congestion at Mokama railway Ghat in May 1897 as one of the reasons for the failure of the supply of grains during the Bengal famine of 1896–97 in her book on the said famine. After the construction of

Rajendra Setu Rajendra Setu, or Simaria Bridge, is a bridge across the Ganges that was the first to link the northern and southern portions of the state of Bihar. The location of the bridge was based on the work of M. Visvesvaraya, who was more than 90 year ...

, which was both a road and rail bridge, that importance was lost. Naturalist and writer

Jim Corbett Edward James Corbett (25 July 1875 – 19 April 1955) was a British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author who hunted a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in the Indian subcontinent. He held the rank of colonel in the British Indian ...

worked at Mokama Ghat railway station in the early part of 20th century. When he was eighteen he joined the railways at Mokama Ghat, working as fuel inspector and assistant station master. Later he became a labour contractor there. Jim Corbett established a school for the children of the staff of the Railways at Mokama Ghat with the help of an 'educationist' named Mr. Ram Saran. Mokama Ghat was brought to the map of the struggle for Indian independence in 1908 when

Prafulla Chaki Prafulla Chandra Chaki ( bn, প্রফুল্ল চাকী, ''Prafulla Chaki'' alias Dinesh Chandra Roy) (10 December 1888 – 1 May 1908) was an Indian revolutionary associated with the Jugantar group of revolutionaries who carried o ...

was spotted at Mokama Ghat railway station while he was trying to escape after throwing a bomb at a carriage at Muzaffarpur on 30 April 1908 in which a European lady, Mrs. Kennedy and her daughter were killed. After a standoff with police, Chaki shot himself.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{coord missing, Bihar Villages in Patna district