Sitakunda ( Shitakunḍo, ) is an upazila in Chattogram District of Chattogram Division, Bangladesh. It includes one urban settlement, the Sitakunda Town, and 10 unions. Sitakunda is the home of the country's first eco-park, as well as alternative energy projects, specifically wind energy and geothermal power.
Sitakunda is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in Bangladesh. During much of its history, it was ruled alternatively by various Buddhist rulers of Myanmar in the east and Muslims rulers of Bengal in the west. For a brief period in the 8th century, it was ruled by the Buddhist Pala Empire of India. The eastern rulers originated from the Kingdom of Arakan, the Mrauk U dynasty, Arakanese pirates and the Pagan Kingdom. The western rulers came from the Sultanate of Bengal and the Mughal Bengal Subah (province). European rule of Sitakunda was heralded by Portuguese privateers in the 16th and 17th centuries, who ruled together with the pirates; and the British Raj in the 18th and 19th centuries, who unified Sitakunda into the rest of the Chittagong District.
Economic development in Sitakunda is largely driven by the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway and Bangladesh Railway. Though Sitakunda is predominantly an agricultural area, it also has the largest ship breaking industry in the world. The industry has been accused of neglecting workers' rights, especially concerning work safety practices and child labor. It has also been accused of harming the environment, particularly by causing soil contamination. Sitakunda's ecosystems are further threatened by deforestation, over-fishing, and groundwater contamination. The upazila is also susceptible to natural hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, and storm surges. It lies on one of the most active seismic faults in Bangladesh, the Sitakunda–Teknaf fault.
Sitakunda is renowned for its numerous Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist shrines. It has 280 mosques, 8 mazars, 49 Hindu temples, 4 ashrams, and 3 Buddhist temples. Among its notable religious sites are the Chandranath Temple (a Shakta pitha or holy pilgrimage site), Vidarshanaram Vihara (founded by the scholar Prajnalok Mahasthavir), and the Hammadyar Mosque (founded by Sultan Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah). The attraction of Sitakunda as a tourist destination is elevated by these pilgrimage sites along with the hill range and the eco-park. Despite its diverse population, the area has gone through episodes of communal strife, including attacks on places of worship. There have been reports of activity by the Islamic militant group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh since the early 2000s.
History
The legends of the area state the sage Bhargava created a pond (kunda) for Sita to bathe in when her husband Lord Ramchandra visited during his exile in the forests. Sitakunda derived its name from this incident.
Sitakunda has been occupied by humans since the Neolithic era; tools associated with the prehistoric Assam group have been found throughout the area. In 1886, shouldered celts manufactured from petrified wood were discovered, as reported by Indian archaeologist Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay in his book Banglar Itihas, or History of Bengal, (volume I, 1914). In 1917, British mineralogist Dr. J. Coggin Brown uncovered more prehistoric celts. Large quantities of pebbles have also been found, but archaeologists have not determined whether they were used in the construction of prehistoric tools.
During the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the Chittagong region was ruled by the Kingdom of Arakan. In the next century, it was briefly ruled by Dharmapala (reign: 770–810) of the Pala Empire. The area was conquered in 1340 by Sultan Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah (reign: 1338–1349) of Sonargaon, who founded the first dynasty of the Sultanate of Bengal. When Sultan Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah (reign: 1533–1538) of the last dynasty of the Sultanate of Bengal was defeated in 1538 by Sher Shah Suri of the Sur Dynasty, the Arakanese captured the region again. Batsauphyu (reign: 1459–1482) of the Mrauk U dynasty took advantage of the weakness of Sultan Barbak Shah of Bengal to lead the invasion. In this period, Keyakchu (or Chandrajyoti), a prince of Arakan, established a monastery in Sitakunda. Between 1538 and 1666, Portuguese privateers (known as Firinghis or Harmads) made inroads into Chittagong and ruled the region in alliance with Arakanese pirates. During those 128 years, the eastern coast of Bengal became a home to pirates of Portuguese and Arakanese origins. For a brief period in 1550, it was taken over by Pagan invaders. In 1666, Mughal commander Buzurg Umed Khan conquered the area.
Along with the rest of Bengal, Sitakunda came under the rule of the British East India Company after the company's defeat of the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Rapid growth in the Bengali population since then resulted in an exodus of non-Bengali people from Sitakunda and its vicinity to the Chittagong Hill Tracts. (Master's thesis). During the Ardhodaya Yog movement, a part of the Swadeshi Indian independence movement, the governance of Sitakunda was briefly in the hands of Indian nationalists when, in February 1908, they took over the central government in Kolkata. In 1910, Indian Petroleum Prospecting Company drilled here for hydrocarbon exploration, the first such activity in East Bengal. In 1914, the first onshore wildcat well in Bangladesh was drilled at Sitakunda anticline to a depth of . By 1914, however, all four of the wells drilled had proven to be failures.
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British colonial government (British Raj) replaced the governance of the East India Company. When the British withdrew in 1947, after creating the independent states of India and Pakistan, Sitakunda became a part of East Pakistan. The potential for a ship breaking industry first appeared in 1964 when Chittagong Steel House started scrapping MD Alpince, a Greek ship that had been accidentally beached near Fouzdarhat by a tidal bore four years earlier. On 15 February 1950, Hindu pilgrims form all over East Bengal, Tripura and Assam arriving for Maha Shivaratri were attacked by the Ansars and armed Muslim mobs and were massacred at Sitakunda railway station.
During the Bangladesh War of 1971, Sitakunda was part of Sector 1, led by Ziaur Rahman and Major Rafiqul Islam of the Mukti Bahini, the militant group fighting for the independence of Bangladesh. The ship breaking industry began in earnest in 1974 when Karnafully Metal Works started scrapping Al Abbas, a Pakistani ship damaged in 1971, and flourished in the 1980s. As of 2007, Sitakunda had overtaken the ship breaking industries of India and Pakistan to become the largest in the world.
In the early 2000s, Islamic militant organization Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) leader Siddikul Islam (also known as Bangla Bhai) ran militant training centers in the upazila at which participants learned to make bombs and handle firearms. One of his followers, Mahfuzul Huq, was captured on 21 February 2006.
Geography and climate
Sitakunda Upazila occupies an area of , which includes of forest. It is bordered by Mirsharai Upazila to the north, Pahartali Thana to the south, Fatikchhari North Upazila, Hathazari Upazila and Panchlaish Thana to the east, and the Sandwip Channel in the Bay of Bengal to the west. The Sitakunda range is a long ridge in the center of the upazila, which reaches an altitude of above sea level at Chandranath or Sitakunda peak, the highest peak in Chittagong District. Part of Sitakunda is covered by the low hill ranges, while the rest is in the Bengal flood plain. To the north, Rajbari Tila at and Sajidhala at are the highest peaks in this range, which drops abruptly to a height of less than in the vicinity of Chittagong City to the south. About north of Sitakunda Town is the Labanakhya saltwater hot spring, which has been proposed as a source of geothermal energy. There are two waterfalls in the hills: Sahasradhara (thousand streams) and Suptadhara (hidden stream). Both have been identified as sites requiring special attention for protection and preservation by the National Heritage Foundation of Bangladesh.
An area prone to cyclones and storm surges, Sitakunda was affected by cyclones in 1960, 1963, 1970, 1988, 1991, 1994 and 1997; the cyclones of 29 May 1963, 12 November 1970, 29 April 1991 made landfall. The intra-deltaic coastline is very close to the tectonic interface of the Indian and Burmese plates, as well as the active Andaman–Nicobar fault system, and is often capable of generating tsunamis. Cyclone preparedness measures are inadequate for the 200,000 residents of Sitakunda who were estimated to be living in high risk areas after the 1991 cyclone. For every 5,000 people, Sitakunda has only one cyclone shelter, each of which is capable of holding 50 to 60 people. Syedpur Union has eleven, Muradpur eight, Baraiyadhala seven, and Kumira five. Sitakunda municipality, Barabkunda, Bhatiary and Bansbaria have four shelters each. Salimpur has three and Sonaichhari Union has two shelters.
The Chittagong Coastal Forest Department developed the river bars (char in Bengali) on the bank of the Sonaichhari channel adjacent to the Sitakunda coast into a kilometer-wide coastal mangrove plantation during 1989–90, to reduce the impact of cyclones. Although the site was initially unstable, rapid sediment accretion stabilised the soil, providing the coast with some protection. The cyclone of 1990 smashed about 25% of a sea-wall built using two-ton steel-reinforced concrete blocks, some of which were carried up to inland. In contrast, a mangrove plantation just south of the sea-wall sustained damage to less than 1% of its trees, most of which recovered within six months. The planted mangrove forest that helped Sitakunda to escape as one of the least damaged areas during the devastating 1991 Bangladesh cyclone is under threat from illegal tree-cutting by ship-breakers in the area.
Annual average temperature is between and , with an annual rainfall of . Along with Chittagong and Hathazari, in June 2007 Sitakunda was badly affected by mudslides caused by heavy rainfall combined with the recent practice of hill-cutting. The mean annual wind speed recorded in Sitakunda between 1991 and 2001 was , as measured by the wind monitoring station built as part of a wind energy exploration project jointly run by the Local Government Engineering Department and the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. A small 300-watt wind turbine, built by the government, provides electricity to fish farms.
Geology
The geological structure of Sitakunda, long and wide, is one of the westernmost structures of Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts, delimited by the Feni River in the north, the Karnaphuli River in the south, the Halda River in the east and the Sandwip Channel in the west. The Sitakunda Range acts as a water divide between the Halda Valley and the Sandwip Channel. The -long Halda flows from Khagrachari to the Bay of Bangal, and is one of the six tributaries of Karnafuli, the major river in the area. Sandwip Channel represents the northern end of the western part of the Chittagong-Tripura Folded Belt.
The structure contains a thick sedimentary sequence of sandstone, shale and siltstone. The exposed sedimentary rock sequences except limestone, thick in an average, provide no difference in overall lithology of Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Sitakunda fold is an elongated, asymmetrical, box-type double plunging anticline. Both the gently dipping eastern and steeper western flanks of the anticline are truncated abruptly by the alluvial plain of the Feni River. For a lack of infrastructure in Bangladesh, this anticline is one of the few regularly surveyed structures in the country. The syncline from Sitakunda separates the eastern end of the Feni Structure located in the folded flank of the Bengal Foredeep.