• The Indian Army has renamed Eastern Command headquarters Fort William in Kolkata as ‘Vijay Durg’.

• Fort William became the Eastern Army Command’s headquarters  in 1963 following the Sino-India war of 1962.

• Prior to that, the Eastern Army was headquartered at Lucknow. 

Key points:

• Fort William was an important historical landmark in the Kolkata district of West Bengal named after King William III, situated on the banks of the river Hooghly. 

• The original fort was built by the English East India Company in 1696. In 1756, Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal attacked the fort and captured Calcutta. 

• After the fall of Siraj-ud-Daulah in the Battle of Plassey, the fort was demolished after which, Robert Clive began constructing a new fort near Maidan. The fort was completed in 1773 and stands as present-day Fort William.

• The fort is infamous for the Black Hole Tragedy.

What is the Black Hole Tragedy?

• In 1756, when the Seven Years War was in full swing in Europe, the British and the French increased their fortifications in Bengal. Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah was angered by this and ordered them to halt construction. • When the British refused to heed, the young Nawab marched on to Calcutta with a huge army and captured the surrounding areas. The forces of the Nawab took prisoners and locked them in a small room. 

• John Zephaniah Holland, who was leading the British forces, records that around 146 prisoners were thrown into a tiny dungeon out of which only 23 emerged alive the next day. However, Indian historians argued that the number of prisoners had been exaggerated. 

• The British sent a force under Colonel Rober Clive and Admiral Charles Watson to avenge this atrocity. They defeated the Nawab in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. 

• The present-day fort complex covers an area of more than 170 acres and houses many colonial and modern-day structures together.

• The former seat and symbol of authority of the British Empire, has an unparalleled aura with its historic structures and edifices in and around the fort.

• The fort has six gates — Chowringhee, Plassey, Calcutta, Water Gate, St George’s and Treasury.

Renaming of other buildings

• The Army has also renamed some landmark buildings inside the sprawling campus situated in the heart of Kolkata.

• The St George’s Gate has been renamed as the Shivaji Gate.

• Kitchener House has been renamed as Manekshaw House.

• Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was the chief of Army Staff during the India-Pakistan war of 1971 that led to the birth of Bangladesh.

• Kitchener House had been named after H.H. Kitchener, the First Earl Of Khartoum.

• The Army has also renamed Russell Block inside the fort as Bagha Jatin Block after freedom fighter Jatindranath Mukherjee better known as Bagha Jatin, who fell to the bullets of the British police following a gunfight in Odisha’s Balasore in 1915.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)