Chatra district is one of the twenty-four districts of

Jharkhand Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . I ...

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

, India. The district was formed after separation from

Hazaribagh district Hazaribagh district is one of the twenty-four districts of Jharkhand state, India and the district headquarter located in Hazaribagh town. It is currently a part of the Red Corridor. Etymology The district is named after its headquarters, the t ...

in 1991.

Chatra Chatra is the headquarters of Chatra district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. History Chatra was the “headquarters” of Ramgarh district in the 18th-19th century. The renowned reformer, Raja Rammohan Roy, was ''sheristadar'' in Ramgarh di ...

is the administrative headquarters of this district. The district covers an area of 3718 km².

History

Ancient period

In ancient period, the area covered by the present district and adjoining areas were ruled by a number of states, which were collectively known as the ''Atavika'' (forest) states. These states accepted the suzerainty of the Maurya empire during

Ashoka Ashoka (, ; also ''Asoka''; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, s ...

's reign ( BCE).

Samudragupta Samudragupta (Gupta script: ''Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta'', (c. 335–375 CE) was the second emperor of the Gupta Empire of ancient India, and is regarded among the greatest rulers of the dynasty. As a son of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta I and the ...

, while marching through the present-day Chotanagpur region, directed the first attack against the kingdom of Dakshina Kosala in the Mahanadi valley.

Medieval period

During

Muhammad bin Tughluq Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290 – 20 March 1351) was the eighteenth Sultan of Delhi. He reigned from February 1325 until his death in 1351. The sultan was the eldest son of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, founder of the Tughlaq dynasty. In 1321, the youn ...

's reign, the territory which comprises the present district came in contact with the Delhi sultanate. Later, it became a part of the Bihar Subah of the

Mughal empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

. Daud Khan, the Mughal Subahdar of Bihar, during the reign of Aurangzeb occupied Kothi near Pokhri Fort on 5 May 1660, without much opposition, and then he moved towards the fort of Kunda which had a very strong fortification as it was situated on a hilltop. This fort was finally occupied by him and was completely destroyed on the 2 June 1660. Later, Kunda Fort was under the possession of the Raja of Ramgarh. In 1734, Aliwardi Khan advanced towards Kunda after defeating the rebel Zamindars of Tikari (Gaya). He mounted an attack on Chatra Fort and demolished it.

British rule

The British East India Company came in contact with this region for the first time in 1769.

Raja Rammohan Roy Raja Ram Mohan Roy ( bn, রামমোহন রায়; 22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was an Indian reformer who was one of the founders of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the precursor of the Brahmo Samaj, a social-religious reform ...

, worked as a ''serestadar'' at Chatra from 1805–06 and stayed both at Chatra and Ramgarh while in office. The most important battle fought between the insurgents and the British in Chotanagpur during the rebellion of 1857 was the "Battle of Chatra". This decisive battle was fought on 2 October 1857, near ''Phansi Talab''. It lasted for an hour in which the mutineers were completely defeated. 56 European soldiers and officers were killed whereas 150 revolutionaries were killed and 77 were buried in a pit. Subedar

Mangal Pandey Mangal Pandey was an Indian soldier who played a key part in the events immediately preceding the outbreak of the Indian rebellion of 1857. He was a sepoy (infantryman) in the 34th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) regiment of the British East I ...

and Nadir Ali Khan were sentenced and hanged to death on the 4 October 1857 on this very spot. The European and Sikh soldiers were buried in a well along with their arms and ammunitions. An inscriptive plaque which is still extant states:

"56 men of Her Majesty's 53rd Regiment of foot and a party of Sikhs were killed at Chatra on October 2nd 1857 in action against mutineers of the Ramgarh Battalion. Lieutenant J. C. C. Daunt of the 70th Bengal Native Infantry and sergeant D. Dynon of the 53rd regiment were awarded
Victoria Cross The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previously ...
for conspicuous gallantry in the battle, in which the mutineers were completely defeated and lost all their four guns and ammunitions.

At the same time, another inscription on the bank of the Phansi Talab immortalises the two revolutionary subedars, namely, Mangal Pandey and Nadir Ali Khan.

Independence movement

The independence movement in this district gathered momentum in 1921. One of the most significant events of the Quit India Movement in 1942, was the escape of

Jai Prakash Narayan Jayaprakash Narayan (; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), popularly referred to as JP or ''Lok Nayak'' (Hindi for "People's leader"), was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for le ...

along with six other from The Hazaribagh Central Jail on 9 November 1942 (the night of festival of Diwali). Jai Prakash Narayan came to Tatra (a village in this district )where he was at the home of panchkodi dubey, and then proceeded towards

Sherghati Sherghati is a town in the Gaya district in Bihar (formally Magadha ), India. The Morhar River surrounds it. A meteorite that came from Mars fell here on 25 August 1865; it is now kept in a London museum and is known as the Shergotty meteorit ...

en route to

Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...

. The notable participants in the independence movement from this district include Chotanagpur Kesri, Babu Ram Narayan Singh, and Babu Shaligram Singh.

Post-independence

The district is currently a part of the

Red Corridor The red corridor, also called the red zone, is the region in the eastern, central and the southern parts of India where the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency has the strongest presence. It has been steadily diminishing in terms of geographical cove ...

Administration

The territory covered by the present district was earlier known as Chatra sub-division of

Politics

Blocks/Mandals

Chatra district consists of 10 Blocks. The following are the list of the Blocks in Chatra district:

Demographics

According to the 2011 census Chatra district has a

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

of 1,042,886, roughly equal to the nation of

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

or the US state of

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

. This gives it a ranking of 434rd in India (out of a total of 640). The district has a population density of . Its

population growth rate Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to ...

over the decade 2001-2011 was 28.98%. Chatra has a

sex ratio The sex ratio (or gender ratio) is usually defined as the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. Many species d ...

of 951

females Female (symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females ...

for every 1000 males, and a

literacy rate Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...

of 60.18%. Scheduled Castes (SC) constitutes 32.7% while Schedule Tribes (ST) were 4.4% of total population. Hindus make up 86.6% of the population while Muslims make up 11.19%. Christianity makes up 0.63%, while other religions make up 1.58% of the population. At the time of the

2011 Census of India The 2011 Census of India or the 15th Indian Census was conducted in two phases, house listing and population enumeration. The House listing phase began on 1 April 2010 and involved the collection of information about all buildings. Information ...

, 39.71% of the population in the district spoke Khortha, 39.21%

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

, 12.47%

Magahi The Magahi language (), also known as Magadhi (), is a language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India, and in the Terai of Nepal. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter's name derives. ...

, 5.47%

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Kurukh.2011 Census of India, Population By Mother Tongue
/ref>

Economy

In 2006, the Indian government named Chatra one of the country's 250 most backward districts (out of a total of 640). It is one of the 21 districts in Jharkhand currently receiving funds from the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF).

Politics

Chatra has two assembly constituencies:

and

Simaria Simaria is a village in India, along the Ganges river. It is in Begusarai District, Mithila region of Bihar, and near Barauni. Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' was born on 23 September 1908 in Simaria village, then part of Bengal Presidency ...

. Both are part of Chatra Lok Sabha Constituency The MP from Chatra is Sunil Kumar Singh from the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mod ...

. The MLA for Chatra is Shatya nand Bhogta (RJD), while the MLA of Simaria is

Ganesh Ganjhu Ganesh Ganjhu was the member of Jharkhand Legislative Assembly from Simaria. In the 2014 general election, he was elected as MLA of Simaria as Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) candidate. In February 2015, he switched sides and joined the ...

(BJP).

Tourism

The district of Chatra, gateway of

has a number of picnic spots and fountains, waterfalls and flora and fauna. Some of the tourist spots of Chatra include: * Bhadrakali temple:- It is at

Itkhori Itkhori is a village and gram panchayat in the Itkhori CD block in the Chatra subdivision of the Chatra district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Geography Location Itkhori is located at . It is 35 km from ...

, 35 km on the East of Chatra and 16 km west of

Chauparan Chauparan is a census town in the Chauparan CD block in the Barhi subdivision of the Hazaribagh district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Geography Location Chauparan is located at . It has an average elevation of . Area overview Hazar ...

connected with

Grand Trunk Road The Grand Trunk Road (formerly known as Uttarapath, Sarak-e-Azam, Shah Rah-e-Azam, Badshahi Sarak, and Long Walk) is one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For at least 2,500 years it has linked Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. ...

. Along with the temple situated on the bank of river Mahanad (Mahane) surrounded by hill and forest, there is a water reservoir. * Kunda Cave:- The ruins of old Kunda palace are still found at a distance of about three-four miles from the present Kunda Village. The place might have been created either towards the end of 17th or beginning of the 18th century AD. * Tamasin:- Word tamasin is a

sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...

of 'tam+asin' which means 'darkness prevails '. This area has mixed forest having high trees making the area dark even in the daylight. Tamasin has a waterfall. Besides these there are a number of waterfalls in Chatra. Maa Kauleswary Temple: - Maa Kauleswary Mandir is situated near Hunterganj block in Kedli kalan village. It is approx 10 km from Hunterganj and the temple is situated on the hill which has 650 feet height. A Budha temple is also situated on Kuleswary hill and every year thousands of visitor are coming to visit the temples and natural environment of this area also.

References

External links

Official district website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chatra District Districts of Jharkhand 1991 establishments in Bihar