State upgrades 'Boat Museum' to showcase various ethnic groups

KOLKATA: The Backward Classes Welfare department has upgraded the boat museum, one-of-its kind in the state, to project the culture of various ethnic groups.

The models that are on display have been crafted by the members of the Rajbanshi community in South Dinajpur. Swarup Bhattacharya, a maritime ethnographer has supervised the upgradation of the museum.

The history of the people- built boats of Bengal, which is a part of the state's rich culture, will be projected at the Bengal Global Business Summit to inform the foreign delegates and their counterparts in the country about the rich maritime history of Bengal. A book on the museum has ben published by the department.

In 2014 the Backward Class Welfare department set up a gallery named Heritage Boats of Bengal and showcased forty six wooden models of different variety of boats.

In 1799 FB Solvyns did an extensive study on the boats of undivided Bengal and his findings have been referred to in all the subsequent studies.

In undivided Bengal it was said that you need a boat to go and come back from Barishal.

In Bengal boats were the main mode of transport in the rivers like Sankosh, Raidhak, Kalindi, Torsha, Jaldhaka, Tista, Mahananda, Mathabhanga, Bakreshwar, Kopai and Damodar among others which fell in West Bengal after 1947. There were areas like Guptipara in Hooghly where local boats were made and

the boatmen and boat builders were came from the backward classes.