Parbatipur Upazila

Parbatipur ( bn, পার্বতীপুর, Parbatīpur) is an upazila (sub-district) of the Dinajpur District in northern Bangladesh, part of the Rangpur Division. It is home to the only mine in Bangladesh, the Barapukuria coal mine.

History

The present-day area of Kholahati was the site of a small kingdom ruled by a local Raja called ''Kichak Rājā''. Kichak's fort remains a place of interest in Parvatipur. Kichak had a daughter called Payravati (পায়রাবতী) or Parvati. Parvati was a child widow, and was once kidnapped by miscreants and taken to the nearby dighi (reservoir) of Dimali where she was assaulted in a dishonorary manner. She later committed suicide by drowning herself in the lake, and in her honour, the area was named by others as Parbatipur. Another theory suggests that the area was named after a Hindu deity known as Parvati, as the area was formerly home to a large Hindu population.

In 1800, the British colonials established a thana in Parbatipur. The settlement of large numbers of Santals was promoted during this period. Following the Partition of India in 1947, a large number of Indian Muslims (mainly Bihari Muslims) migrated to East Bengal and settled in Parbatipur where they gained prominence as an influential community. During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, 300 locals were mass murdered by the Pakistan Army and its collaborators in the areas of Peyadapara, Ramkrishnapur and Baghbari on the south of the Badarganj and Kholahati railway lines on 8 April. One of those murdered was Mohammad Shamshad Ali, a Bihari pharmacist who had supported the 1969 uprising. One of Parbatipur's martyred freedom fighters was Captain Mahbubur Rahman, and the Kholahati Cantonment was later renamed to his name following the war.

As part of the President of Bangladesh Hussain Muhammad Ershad's decentralisation programme, Parbatipur Thana was upgraded to an upazila in 1983. On 13 January 1985, a fire broke out on the ''Samanta Express'' train from Khulna to Parbatipur, and passengers pulled out the communication cord but the driver did not stop, apparently because robbers operate in the area. 27 people were killed with at least 58 injured, but news reports stated that 150 or more were killed.

Geography

Parbatipur is located at . It has 53,146 households and a total area 395.1 km².

Demographics

As of the 1991 Bangladesh census, Parbatipur had a population of 270,904. Males constitute 51.46% of the population, and females 48.54%. Upazila's population of people eighteen years old or older is 139,294. Parbatipur has an average literacy rate of 29.7% (7+ years), compared to the national average of 32.4%.

The majority-Bengali Muslim people of Parbatipur speak the Dinajpuri dialect with the official language being Standard Bengali. There are also speakers of English, Urdu