Chaka Ghorar Aage by Maitry Roy Moulik [Hardcover]

Mid-19th century. The Indian subcontinent had not yet come under the direct rule of Queen Victoria. The newly appointed Governor of the East India Company, Lord Dalhousie, was systematically bringing independent and tributary states under Company rule—whether through war or legal pretense. Apart from a few scattered peasant uprisings, no significant resistance had yet taken shape.

To establish complete control over the subcontinent, a faster communication network was essential. The Company decided to introduce a railway system for administrative and commercial interests. Running railways required coal, leading the British Parliament to form the Coal Committee. Thus began the search for coal across the Damodar Valley.

In March 1851, an Irish professor arrived in India from Dublin on a mission to find coal. He proposed to Lord Dalhousie that a geological survey could reveal not just coal but also copper, iron, gold, zinc, and even petroleum. The need for a geological map became evident. Consequently, mapping the Indian subcontinent began.

Nearly thirty years later, in 1880, the first native officer, Pramatha Nath Bose, joined the geological survey team. One of the two major iron ore deposits he discovered led to the establishment of India’s first indigenous iron and steel factory in the Sakchi region in 1911.

By the standards of modern civilization, a nation’s progress depends on its iron production capacity. In a colonized land, a handful of extraordinary individuals—without relying on foreign aid—channeled their unparalleled passion into setting the wheels of India’s first industrial factory in motion.

1851 to 1911—this sixty-year journey was anything but easy. This novel vividly brings to life the forgotten decades leading up to that historic moment when the first wheels began to turn.