of land on the bank of the river Hooghly, where the statue of Mary was reestablished. There the Portuguese constructed a church to house the statue, which still receives pilgrims today. The church was renovated in the 1980s and has been declared as a basilica by the authority of Rome. After the Portuguese expulsion, the town was made the royal port of Bengal, and all the public offices and records were established there. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal. In 1656 the Dutch also erected a factory on the site of the town. At that time Calcutta was the principal settlement in Dutch Bengal, who used it as a base for Dutch intra-Asian trade in opium, saltpetre, spices, cotton and indigo. However, in 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. In 1759 the Dutch garrison of Chinsura, on its march to Chandernagore, attacked a British force under Colonel Forde. The Battle of Chinsurah lasted less than half an hour and ended with the rout of the Dutch attackers. In 1795, during the Napoleonic Wars, a British garrison occupied the settlement. The peace of 1814 restored Hughli to the Dutch. However, in 1825, the Dutch ceded many of their possessions in India to the British, in exchange for the British-occupied possessions in Sumatra. Both Chinsurah and Hooghly played a role in the Bengal renaissance and the Indian independence movement. "Vande Mataram", India's national song, was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay at Joraghat in Chinsurah, who had been an alumnus of the Hooghly Collegiate School. Nazrul Islam's revolutionary songs were penned while he was imprisoned by the colonial government in Hooghly Jail (Hooghly District Correctional Home). Geography Location Hugli-Chuchura is located at . This city is on the flood plain on the right bank of river Bhagirathi-Hooghly. The area is composed of flat alluvial plains that forms part of the Gangetic Delta. The high west bank of the tidal Hooghly River is highly industrialised. Keota, Manushpur, Naldanga, Kodalia, Kulihanda, Dharampur and Simla form a cluster of census towns on the eastern side of Hugli-Chuchura. Urbanisation There are 13 statutory towns and 64 census towns in Hooghly district. The right bank of the Hooghly River has been industrialised over a long period. With foreigners dominating the area's