Reflections

Buxa Fort is now known as a tourist attraction and is in the dense forests of North Bengal. We spent some time there a couple of years ago and took some pictures of the fort and the post office which is one of the remotest in the country. There was a hue and cry sometime back as the Postal department wanted to close it down. However the move has been stalled for the moment. However the story starts long before the British period when the fort was used to incarcerate political prisoners, including, famously , Netaji Subhash Bose. The Buxa Dooar (Dooar meaning a door) was one of the several entry points into Bhutan from the plains of Bengal and Assam. This particular port was used in the medieval and early modern times as a conduit for trade between Bengal and Bhutan and via Bhutan with Tibet. This trade lasted till the early nineteenth century when the British took over the administration of Cooch Behar and a adversarial relationship developed between the two powers which culminated in...