Hugli, India

History

The Portuguese founded the town of Ugulim in 1579, but the district has thousands of years of heritage in the form of the great kingdom of Bhurshut. The city flourished as a trading port and some religious structures were built. One such structure is a Christian church dedicated to a statue of Mary, brought by the Portuguese.

In 1629, political disorder struck the city and the Mughal governor of Bengal expelled the Portuguese. The fleeing Portuguese lost the statue in the river, but local people later found it on the river bank. The arrested Portuguese were taken to Delhi, where a death sentence of trampling by elephants was decreed. When the emperor Shah Jahan heard this he ordered the priests released and granted a piece of land on the bank of the river Hooghly, where the statue of Mary was reestablished. There the Portuguese constructed a church to house the statue, which still receives pilgrims today. The church was renovated in the 1980s and has been declared as a basilica by the authority of Rome.

After the Portuguese expulsion, the town was made the royal port of Bengal, and all the public offices and records were established there. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal.

From the History section of Hugli-Chuchura on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.