For a country that annually seems to add to its land mass through the deposit of river alluvium from annual Himalayan melted waters, and flooding monsoon rains, loss of large areas of land may be considered unusual. Or, as Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell might have put it, “To lose one square mile might be considered unfortunate, to lose more might be taken as carelessness.”
What is known, geologically, as the Indo-Australia Plate, the land mass which comprises the area south of the Himalayas, is continuing its advance into Asia, experts reckon, at the rate of about 47mm a year. Such advance is bound of course, to create mostly small, regular readjustments, that we know as earthquakes.
However, at about 5pm on April 2, 1762, an earthquake measuring up to 8.8 on an international scale of measurements, by which this would be rated catastrophic, took place, with its epicentre believed to have been just off the coast of the lands that are now Bangladesh, close to Chakoria, south of Chittagong.
As a result of that earthquake, an area of about 60 square miles of land in the vicinity of Chakoria disappeared beneath the sea. The village of Bar Chara, close to where, some 36 years later, Cox’s Bazar would be founded, was amongst the places where the land sank, and 200 people are believed to have lost their lives.
Since the tectonic plate of which the subcontinent is formed is continuing its advance into Asia, earthquakes will also, inevitably, continue to take place in the region.
The original collision of the land masses, that took place about 50 million years ago, threw up the Himalayan range of mountains, the dramatic backdrop to the whole of the Indian subcontinent.
The hundred or so towering peaks, amongst which are the highest in the world, are the most commonly identified result of the collision. The enduring ripples of those mountains, however, are also a substantial backdrop to the alluvial plains of Bangladesh, and the lands of the Delta of those three great Asian rivers, all of which originate in the mountains, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna. Dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller rivers, also wend their way across these coastal plains, annually depositing their outwash, flooding the lands, enriching the soil, and lengthening the considerable coastline.
In 1897, the zaminder palace at Rangpur, in North Bengal, was probably amongst the first to experience the dramatic effects of another force 8 earthquake originating in the Shillong Plateau in Assam, just north of today’s border with India.
The palace, today, known as Tajhat palace, which remains one of the most impressive and best preserved in Bangladesh, was built in the early years of the twentieth century, to replace that which took so much of the force in 1897, an earthquake, which is now referred to as, “The Great Indian Earthquake,” that it collapsed.
In the ruins died one of the most conspicuous casualties amongst the 1,500 known casualties, Maharajah Bahadur, a zaminder with family origins in the Punjab, and a family, like so many of those who bought the Zamindari in the lands of Bangladesh, jewellers by profession.
He was reputed to be a public spirited man, who had inherited the estates in 1879, and was awarded the honorific title of Raja in 1892, and Maharajah in 1896.
Across the primary area of damage from that earthquake, in the north of Bangladesh, further significant damage occurred, such as the loss of the towering spires on the magnificent, terracotta Kanthiji Temple just north of Dinajpur, one of the most magnificent, early 18th century Hindu Temples in the country. Indeed, it is fair to say, that almost all Heritage sites, north of the Ganges/Padma, suffered some structural damage.
Few of the zamindar palaces, and great religious buildings of the region, were spared. Such palaces as Muktagacha palace near Mymensingh, still bear conspicuous traces of damage in the ruins. And it was probably in this earthquake that the original Mughal palaces of the Zamindari of Natore, collapsed. Both of the palaces, at Natore itself, and Babhanipur, closer to Bogra, seem to have been extensively damaged, with only the Rajbari in Natore being replaced by the fine array of late nineteenth and early twentieth century “pavillions” that we can see today. These, too, are slowly decaying, though the source of that is neglect more than any natural force.
A glance at the published records of earthquakes in the country reveals, it seems, a growing frequency of episodes. However, it is possible that appearance is due, in part at least, to better recording.
Although, in 1737, a 7.6 quake appears to have been centred on what was then known as Calcutta, the relatively newly established base of operations in the region for the East India Company, little written, or recorded evidence of its effects can be found.
Records of earthquakes in Bangladesh are somewhat sparse, and it is, inevitably, only the most catastrophic that are recorded. Exploring, as I have extensively, over the past decade or so, much of the very rich heritage of Bangladesh, evident earthquake damage is far from rare. It is not always easy to distinguish from the ravages of time and neglect, nor the depredations of the Pakistan Army, and the Liberation War.
All we can say, for sure, is that earthquakes have left their lasting mark on the lands, and on the visible heritage of the lands, and since there are those experts who predict that Dhaka itself is overdue on the effects of another earthquake such as that of 1897, since the Shillong Plateau continues to rise in the same manner that caused the Great Indian Earthquake.
1548 provides the earliest known record of such a catastrophic tremor; “Sylhet and Chittagong were violently shaken, the earth opened in many places and threw up water and mud in many places.”
Since then, such severe quakes seem to run on something of a hundred year pattern. Under such circumstances, conservation of heritage becomes an even more intractable problem than usual, and whilst the repair of cracked walls and collapsed buildings may present something of a challenge, it is impossible not to aim to meet the challenge; especially where such a magnificent religious, civil and social heritage is concerned.
Having, in my lifetime, experienced a few severe earthquakes in Tokyo that is regularly hit with tremors, I find the rare quakes that shake the earth here in Bangladesh, modest by comparison. I am not, however, unaware of the capacity of the earth to deliver severe shocks in the region, and living as I do in the new, superbly engineered, earthquake and tsunami resistant Surf Club on a beach front, I find myself occasionally reflecting on the almost unimaginable forces at play. Here, the Indo-Australian plate continues to force its way into Asia, and their potential to permanently change, not only my life, but those of many others too; a force of nature, beyond the control of mankind, that can leave its traces for centuries, especially in a nation as vulnerable, yet as rich in heritage as Bangladesh.
