RainbowBlogs

In the Heart of the Jungle, Behind the Walls of Silence—A Prison Without the Bars of Justice Buxa Fort, perched at an altitude of 867 meters (2,844 ft) in the heart of the Buxa Tiger Reserve, lies 30 km from Alipurduar town in West Bengal. Originally built by the Bhutanese King to guard a vital stretch of the ancient Silk Route connecting Tibet with India via Bhutan, the fort holds deep historical and strategic importance. In the late 18th century, during the Second Dooars War, the British army—supported by the King of Cooch Behar—seized control of the fort from the Bhutanese. By the 1930s, the British had transformed this remote and rugged outpost into a high-security prison and detention camp. Isolated and nearly unreachable, Buxa Fort earned a grim reputation as one of the most feared prisons in colonial India—second only to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands. It became a crucible of psychological endurance, spiritual introspection, and nationalist determination. The fort ...

Hijli Detention Camp   To curb the Non-Cooperation Movement and other revolutionary activities, the British government established a detention facility at Hijli near Kharagpur. The Hijli Detention Camp holds a powerful place in India’s colonial history. During British rule, jails began overflowing as more and more young Indians joined the freedom movement. To manage this growing number of political prisoners, the British government started setting up special detention camps. The first of these was at Buxa Fort in the Dooars region of West Bengal. Soon after, in 1930, the Hijli Detention Camp was established as one of the major centers to imprison freedom fighters by the British Raj to manage the overflow of political prisoner from Bengal and beyond. Hijli was meant to quietly crush the rising revolutionary spirit among Bengal’s youth. Unlike conventional jails, it was a ‘open detention camp’—detainees had no charges, no trials, and no justice. Today, the site is home to IIT Khara...