History
Swami Vivekananda landed at Budge Budge ferry ghat when he returned from his Chicago visit. The anniversary is still celebrated today with great zeal.
A curious feature of this small and old town is the large number of Sikhs who live here. Budge Budge was the site where the ship Komagata Maru was allowed to land following its return from Vancouver. The ship was chartered by a group of Sikhs to challenge the exclusion laws enacted by Canada to restrict Indian immigration.
Budge Budge municipality and Bdge Budge Poblic Libray are more than a century old establishment.
Historically the oldest people of this place were the 'Haldars' who came here to guard a fort near the bank of the River Ganges. A British writer who had come with Clive around 1740-50 chronicled this event. Maniklal was the main person at the fort and his soldiers lost to Clive's troops. This may have been the start of the series of Indian defeats to the expanding British colonial forces in the 18th century.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under mens reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (18961970)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“We may pretend that were basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)