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District History

Named after Bicon Lal Pandey, a Hindu religious leader who was also known as Benur Thakur or Lakhsmi Narayan Thakur.[clarification needed] Pandey acquired ownership of the region from the British East India Company in 1766 after the Battle of Plassey. He declared the marketplaces on the banks of the Shitalakshya river as endowed property to pay for expenses for the worship of the God Narayan. Subsequently, the region was named Narayanganj.[1][not in citation given]

Important developments

  • The post office was established in 1866.
  • The Narayanganj municipality was officially founded on 8 September 1876.
  • Dhaka–Narayanganj telegraph service was set up in 1877.
  • Telephony was introduced by the Bank of Bengal in 1882.

Narayanganj became a district (Bengali: জেলা pronounced: Jela) on 15 February 1984. Formerly, it was a subdistrict (Bengali: উপজেলা pronounced: upojela) of the Dhaka district. It grew in importance in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, due to the influx of the Portuguese and the English. The first to develop was the west bank of Shitalakshya. Narayanganj only became important in the nineteenth century, when the Rally Brothers started a company exporting jute to the west in 1830, aided by a company from Assam. By 1908, 18 European companies, and two Indian companies were trading in jute from Calcutta.[1]

From 1947, with the formation of Pakistan, the economy transformed from being mainly a jute production to include jute milling.[2] This followed the establishment of a number of mills in and around Narayanganj that gave the local economy a great boost.