Damodar River - River of Sorrows

River of Sorrows

The Chota Nagpur Plateau receives an average annual rainfall of around 1400 mm, almost all of it in the monsoon months between June and August. The huge volume of water that flows down the Damodar and its tributaries during the monsoons used to be a fury in the upper reaches of the valley. In the lower valley it used to overflow its banks and flood large areas.

Damodar River was earlier known as the "River of Sorrows" as it used to flood many areas of Bardhaman, Hughli, Howrah and Medinipur districts. Even now the floods sometimes affect the lower Damodar Valley, but the havoc it wreaked in earlier years is now a matter of history.

The floods were virtually an annual ritual. In some years the damage was probably more. Many of the great floods of the Damodar are recorded in history — 1770, 1855, 1866, 1873–74, 1875–76, 1884–85, 1891–92, 1897, 1900, 1907, 1913, 1927, 1930, 1935 and 1943. In four of these floods (1770, 1855, 1913 and 1943) most of Bardhaman town was flooded.

In 1789 an agreement was signed between Maharaja Kirti Chand of Burdwan and the East India Company wherein the Maharaja was asked to pay an additional amount of Rs. 193,721 for the construction and maintenance of embankment to prevent floods. However, these ran into dispute and in 1866 and 1873, The Bengal Embankment Act was passed, transferring the powers to build and maintain embankment to the government.

So great was the deavstation every year that the floods passed into folklore, as the following Bhadu song testifies:

We have sown the crops in Asar

We will bring Bhadu in Bhadra.

Floods have swollen the Damodar

The sailing boats cannot sail.

O Damodar! We fall at your feet

Reduce the floods a little.

Bhadu will come a year later

Let the boats sail on your surface.