Bihar's Heritage Building In Rail Town Razed In 100th Year Of Danapur Division

A nearly century-old building that was originally constructed as a prime recreational centre in the famed railway town of Khagaul in Patna district has been significantly demolished to make way for an elevated road project.

Set up as a 'railway institute' by the erstwhile East Indian Railway (EIR) near the landmark Danapur Station on the Delhi-Howrah line, and known for hosting a range of theatrical plays and fancy social gatherings till a few decades ago, it has now slipped into the pages of history.

Demolition teams on Thursday razed a very large portion of the red-coloured building -- N C Ghosh Institute -- as a bulldozer's claw tore down the structure that served as a landmark for close to a century.

Ironically, the demolition comes months after the centenary celebrations of the Indian Railway's Danapur Division -- the building's owner -- were held at a railway stadium nearby.

The iconic building housing the headquarters of the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), the centrepiece of the railway town, sits near the site of the demolition.

By Thursday evening, the two-storey building was reduced practically to a shadow of itself as its once-famed ballroom which hosted lavish Christmas parties in the British era and in the early decades after the Independence, and its middle structure, were pulverised to dust, exposing its old metal garters that held its roof till two days ago.

The building of N C Ghosh Institute, said to have been renamed after independence, had been "marked" for demolition several months ago. It was to make way for an elevated road that will come up between Danapur and Bihta, another old town in the Patna district, people familiar with the matter earlier said.

Near the Danapur Railway Station, another over a century-old railway institute (renamed V N Sharma Institute post independence), a red-coloured single-storey structure in Khagaul, is also coming in the road project alignment and will eventually make way for it, they had said.

Many old-timers and local residents who have grown up in the town lamented the fall of a heritage landmark and urged authorities to also sensitively factor in heritage preservation in the overall development plan, as the railway town is dotted with many British-era buildings, including the railway station.

Some of the other old structures are the official residence of the DRM - 'Rail Sadan', old railway school and hospital, and a few beautiful churches, besides humble railway colonies.

Ahead of the centenary celebrations of the Danapur (earlier Dinapore) Division -- set up in 1925 -- an in-house research team attempted to dig into the provenance of the two institutes in Khagaul and find archival references, but in vain, sources said.

Though the exact year of construction of the building that housed the old institute (N C Ghosh Institute) is not known yet, and attempts earlier to find any civil markers on the building came to nought, heritage experts have pegged it as a century-old structure.

Also, while no archival evidence has been found yet, the old institute is believed to have been renamed later after Rai Bahadur N C Ghosh, who in the 1930s held the office of Divisional Superintendent (later Divisional Railway Manager).

A succession board in the office of the DRM mentions that Ghosh held the top post in the division in 1934.

The institute building, shorn of its past glory, had begun to be used as a community hall in the last several years.

Indian Railways' historic Danapur Division manages some of the lines and stations originally set up nearly 160 years ago, and completed an eventful journey of 100 years on January 1 this year.

The division held a grand celebration on January 31 at the old Jagjivan Stadium, where it also hosted a projection mapping show and an exhibition showcasing its rich history through archival documents, photographs and railway artefacts.

The projection mapping was done on a replica of the iconic DRM Building.

Danapur Division was established on January 1, 1925. Its office is located in a majestic building erected in 1929.

The first divisional superintendent of Danapur was C Eyers, who took charge on January 1, 1925. The post was redesignated as divisional railway manager (DRM) from the 1980s onwards, according to information displayed on the succession board.

After Independence, various railway systems operating in India were reorganised into one centralised Indian Railways with a few region-specific zones for its management.

The Danapur division was put under the Kolkata-based Eastern Railway (ER) established in 1952. From 2002 onwards, it came under East Central Railway (ECR), carved out of ER, with headquarters at Hajipur in north Bihar. 

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