History
North Bengal until recently constituted to be a part often of the history of Kamrupa and thereby of Assam and often of Bengal. It is only in the recent years some scholars have come forward to compose the history of North Bengal exclusively. In this group of historians, the pioneering works have been done by Sailen Debnath. He has written several path-breaking books on North Bengal. His important books on North Bengal are:- (a) Essays on Cultural History of North Bengal (b) Social and Political Tensions in North Bengal Since 1947 and (c) The Dooars in Historical Transition. His book 'West Bengal in Doldrums' as well has covered some important facets of North Bengal. Apart from the books, he has written many original articles on different aspects of North Bengal; plus, he has supervised some Ph.D. scholars on the socio-economic and political history of North Bengal. Preceding Sailen Debnath, Dr. Charu Chandra Sanyal had been a beginner of the history of North Bengal and his books are (a) the Meches and the Totos, Two Sub-Himalayan Tribes of North Bengal; and (b) The Rajbanshis of North Bengal .
According to Sailen Debnath, Sangaldip, in the seventh century was the founder of the kingdom of Kamatapur; and Kamatapur had five capitals one after another in sequence; and the capitals were at Chialapata, Mainaguri, Panchagarh, Singijani and Gosanimari. He has further made it clear that after the death of Bhaskar Varman in 650 A.D., Kamrup virtually ceased to exist as a political unit; and what remained by the name of Kamrup came to its extinction with the fall of the Kamrupa-Palas; and Kamatpur sprang up as a powerful kingdom comprising the tract of land bounded by the Himalayas in the north, the confluence of the Padma and the Brahmaputra in the south, the River Karatoya in the west and the River Sankosh in the east, though often it extended up to the Brahmaputra. Kamatpur, according to Sailen, as a Hindu kingdom played a role as important as Vijaynagar in medieval India.
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