Bengal District Gazetteers: Balasore

This gazetteer, published in 1907, describes various aspects of Odisha’s Baleswar (or Orissa’s Balasore in British times) district. It surveys the district’s economy, society, politics and administrative setup, as well as its history, geography, climate, biodiversity and natural resources. It says that the name Baleswar is derived from a temple dedicated to “Mahadeo Baneswar, i.e. Siva, the Lord of the Forest.”   By the time of the 1901 census, the district had an average population density of about 200 persons per square kilometre. This was a mobile population with a high rate of migration – large numbers of people moved to the Sunderbans to work as cultivators and field labourers and to Kolkata to work as porters and manual labourers. The caste system, the gazetteer says, was deeply ingrained in the region. The lower castes preferred to work in the mills, where people of different castes worked alongside each other. The Bengal District Gazetteers were prepared by British colonial administrators for the districts of Angul, Balasore, Cuttack, Koraput and Puri, and the ‘Feudatory States of Orissa’...