Rise and Fall

At the city’s 18th-century peak, Murshidabad sat startlingly close to the nerve-centre of global commerce, with banking, bullion, silk and textiles moving through a river capital where European companies, Mughal-era grandees, and Indian merchant dynasties all kept one eye on the same ledger. Many families stayed on well into the late 1960s and 1970s, before unrest, targeted crime, and the long aftershock of Bengal’s radical politics pushed a fresh wave of departures to Kolkata and western India.

Today, restoration efforts by families like the Dugars and Nowlakhas through the Murshidabad Heritage Development Society aim to preserve this unique cultural legacy.