The Rishi Diaspora

At the beginning of the century, Khulna was a small agricultural town. The missionaries would visit the Christians resident there from Jessore, the real administrative and military centre of the region. The first missionaries to reside in Khulna were the Salesians who opened a house there on November 14, 1937. ¹ Later, Khulna became a missionary station and a parish caring also for the communities of Faridpur in the West and Malgaji in the South. Furthermore, the Salesians opened a High School for Boys which was destined to become one of the best institutions of its kind in the whole region. The Xaverians were entrusted with the Diocese of Jessore in 1952, and they kept their centre there until 1956, when Mgr. Battaglierin was granted the transfer of the Diocesan See to Khulna, which by then had become a large town of about 60,000 inhabitants. After the Partition of India, many Muslim refugees started residing in this city where, now separated from Calcutta, a number of industries were set up. Furthermore, two new vital ports were opened at Chalna in 1950 and Monglaport in 1954. This also favoured the development of rail, road, and river networks, thus boosting more immigration to Khulna from other areas of the country and increasing its population to 646,359 in 1981; ² in 1986, being the third largest city of the country, it was declared a ‘Metropolis’.