Bengal’s Serampore heritage festival |
The Serampore municipality in West Bengal state celebrated the Heritage Utsav, inaugurated virtually by State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on December 19 and concluded on January 2. Serampore town sits by the Hooghly barely 30 km from Kolkata. Serampore predates Kolkata by a few centuries and was ruled by not one but two colonial powers, the Danes and the British. The festival was aimed at promoting heritage tourism. Various European countries had established control in the towns by the river in the Hooghly district — the Portuguese in Bandel, the Dutch in Chinsurah, the French in Chandannagar, the Danes and then British in Serampore. The tourism department plans on a tourism circuit called Little Europe. This festival is part of that larger plan. Serampore’s heritage goes back to it being the centre of Vaishnavism with a rath yatra that is over 600 years old and considered most important after the one at Puri. It is home to the oldest college of modern education in the whole of Asia. Denmark made it a university back in 1827, it had a printing press that published works in 46 languages; it has a church that is named after St. Olav, the ruler of Norway from 1015 to 1028. Serampore is the oldest existing town in the eastern part of India and the locals wish to create awareness. There are very old Hindu temples; there is also a Muslim population because Shah Jahan set up a camp here for two years to check the Portuguese, and then came the Europeans. It also boasts of a girls’ school that is among the oldest in Asia. People should come to experience the rich heritage, said Santosh Kumar Singh, chairman-in-council of Serampore Municipality and a key organiser of the event.
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