page_title: Samta, India
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Samta, India / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This photograph has been taken at the ‘House of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay ‘ or ‘Sarat Chandra Kuthi’ or ‘Sarat-Smriti-Mandir’ is located at Samtaber (Samta) , Bagnan, Howrah in the Indian state of West Bengal. The two storied Burmese style house was also home to Sarat Chandra's brother, Swami Vedananda, who was a disciple of Belur Math. This museum building was declared as a ‘Heritage Building’ by the ‘West Bengal Heritage Commission’ in 2007.
context_page_description: Samta is a village and a gram panchayat in the Howrah district of West Bengal, India, on the banks of the Rupnarayan river. Samta is noted for being the home of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay for twelve years, starting from the year 1923. The terracotta temple of Madangopal jiu is located in the neighbouring village of Mellak. Samta is connected to the state capital, Kolkata, through the National Highway 6, that also connects it to the nearby towns of Bagnan and Kolaghat. Samta hosts few educational facilities including the Samta Sarat Chandra Girls High School, among others.
context_section_description: During the British Raj, Samta was the power-hold of the local Roy zamindars, subordinate to the Burdwan Raj Estate, who was in turn subordinate to the British  empire. Following  Indian independence, the village came to be governed by the government of India.
  Festivals including Dol purnima, Durga puja, Shivaratri, Shitala puja, Itu puja, and Janmashtami, among others, are celebrated in the village. Gajan sessions are also held during festivals. The terracotta temple of Madangopal jiu, built in the 17th-century CE, is located in  the neighbouring village of Mellak, south of Samta. It is locally known as Gopaler Mondir (literally, "the temple of Gopala"). The temple was commissioned by Mukundaprasad Roychowdhury, a member of Mellak's then Roychowdhury zamindars.
  Samta was home to Bengali novelist, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, for twelve years, until he moved to Kolkata. His house in Samta, constructed in 1923 by local worker Gopal Das, is known as Sarat Chandra Kuthi (or alternatively as, Sarat Smriti Mandir). He had fenced his house and the adjacent area, renaming it as Samtaber. His novels such as Devdas were serialised during his stay in Samta, while he wrote stories including Ramesh and Ramer Sumati, among others, during the years he lived in the village. Sarat Chandra Kuthi is a heritage-historical site under the West Bengal Heritage Commission Act (IX) of 2001. In 2009, the structure underwent renovation. An annual fair, by the name of Sarat Mela, is held in late January in Samta's neighbouring village Panitras, located north of Samta, in remembrance of the novelist.
caption: Sarat Chandra's house in Samta
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