Chitalmari () is an

upazila An ''upazila'' ( pronounced: ), formerly called ''thana'', is an administrative division in Bangladesh, functioning as a sub-unit of a district. It can be seen as an analogous to a county or a borough of Western countries. Rural upazilas ...

Bagerhat District Bagerhat District () is a district in south-western Bangladesh. It is a part of Khulna Division. Geography Bagerhat district has a total area of 44,959.11 square kilometres. It is bounded by Gopalganj District and Narail District on the north, ...

in the

Khulna Division Khulna Division () is the second largest of the eight divisions of Bangladesh. It has an area of and a population of 17,416,645 at the 2022 Bangladesh census (preliminary returns). Its headquarters and largest city is Khulna city in Khulna Dist ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

Geography

Chitalmari is located at . It has 30264 households and a total area of 191.99 km². Chitalmari Upazila is bounded by

Tungipara Upazila Tungipara () is an upazila of Gopalganj District in Dhaka Division, Bangladesh. It is the birthplace of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first President of Bangladesh. In 1995, it was carved out of Gopalganj Sadar Upazila to become an upazila. Etymo ...

on the north, Kachua Upazila and

Bagerhat Sadar Upazila Bagerhat Sadar () is an upazila of Bagerhat District in the Division of Khulna, Bangladesh. The municipality was established in 1958. It consists of 9 wards and 31 mahallas. History Khan Jahan Ali established a pargana named Khalifatabad here in 1 ...

on the south, Nazirpur Upazila on the east, and Mollahat Upazila and

Fakirhat Upazila Fakirhat () is a Upazila (sub-district) of Bagerhat District in the Division of Khulna, Bangladesh. The medieval Sixty Dome Mosque (ষাট গম্বুজ মসজিদ) and the Khan Jahan Ali Mazar are situated here. History During the ...

on the west. Lakkhanar Beel, Kalshirar Beel and Ruiar Beel are notable. The main rivers are the

Madhumati ''Madhumati'' is a 1958 Indian Hindi-language paranormal romance film directed and produced by Bimal Roy, story and screenplay written by Ritwik Ghatak and dialogues written by Rajinder Singh Bedi. The film stars Vyjayanthimala and Dilip ...

, Kaliganga, Chitra, and Baleshwar.

Demographics

As of the

2011 Census of Bangladesh In 2011, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics conducted a national census in Bangladesh, which provided a provisional estimate of the total population of the country as 142,319,000. The previous decennial census was the 2001 census. Data were r ...

, Chitalmari upazila had 30,264 households and a population of 138,810. 32,789 (23.62%) were under 10 years of age. Chitalmari had an average literacy rate of 56.19%, compared to the national average of 51.8%, and a sex ratio of 1000 females per 1000 males. 1,272 (0.92%) of the population lived in urban areas. As of the

1991 Bangladesh census In 1991, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, conducted a national census in Bangladesh. They recorded data from all of the districts and upazilas and main cities in Bangladesh including statistical data on population size, households, sex and a ...

, Chitalmari upazila had a population of 127,524. Males constituted 50.78% of the population, and females 49.22%. This Upazila's eighteen-and-up population is 65,065. Chitalmari had an average

literacy rate Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

of 37% (7+ years), and the national average is 32.4% literate. Chitalmari's religious composition is 60.45%

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

, 39.35%

Hindu Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...

, and 2% others. Religious institutions include 184

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

s, 72

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

s, and one

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

. Sacred places are Central Jami Mosque, Durgapur Temple. Boalia Durga Mandir and Panchapalli Sarbojnin Durga Mandir. There was a Jamidari Kachharibari at Sabokhali.

Economy

The majority of the population, 76%, is engaged in agriculture. There are 15,584 hectares of

arable land Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of a ...

, and 74% of the population owns property to some extent. The main crops grown include paddy,

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

jute Jute ( ) is a long, rough, shiny bast fibre that can be Spinning (textiles), spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', of the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ...

, and

pulse In medicine, the pulse refers to the rhythmic pulsations (expansion and contraction) of an artery in response to the cardiac cycle (heartbeat). The pulse may be felt ( palpated) in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surfac ...

, with fruits including

mango A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree '' Mangifera indica''. It originated from the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. ''M. indica'' has been cultivated in South and Southeast As ...

blackberry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

papaya The papaya (, ), papaw, () or pawpaw () is the plant species ''Carica papaya'', one of the 21 accepted species in the genus '' Carica'' of the family Caricaceae, and also the name of its fruit. It was first domesticated in Mesoamerica, within ...

watermelon The watermelon (''Citrullus lanatus'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Cucurbitaceae, that has a large, edible fruit. It is a Glossary of botanical terms#scandent, scrambling and trailing vine-like plant, and is plant breeding ...

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (biology), family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, ...

guava Guava ( ), also known as the 'guava-pear', is a common tropical fruit cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions. The common guava '' Psidium guajava'' (lemon guava, apple guava) is a small tree in the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), nativ ...

and

betel nut The areca nut ( or ) or betel nut () is the fruit of the areca palm ('' Areca catechu''). The palm is originally native to the Philippines, but was carried widely through the tropics by the Austronesian migrations and trade since at least 1 ...

. The last three fruits are among the primary exports of the region, along with

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

, vegetables and

leather Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning (leather), tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffal ...

. Other major occupations include

commerce Commerce is the organized Complex system, system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered large-scale exchange (distribution through Financial transaction, transactiona ...

(11%),

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

(6%) and

transport Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...

communication Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

(1%).

Administration

Chitalmari, formed as a Thana in 1981, was turned into an upazila on 7 November 1983. The upazila is divided into seven union parishads: Barabaria, Char Baniari, Chitalmari, Hizla, Santoshpur, Kalatala, and Shibpur. The union parishads are subdivided into 55 mauzas and 121 villages.

Infrastructure

There are many private hospitals and one 50-bed hospital. Educational institutions include three colleges (Sher-E-Bangla Degree College and Bangobondhu Women's College, Kalidas Baral Smriti Degree College), 26 high schools, 14

madrasa Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , ), sometimes Romanization of Arabic, romanized as madrasah or madrassa, is the Arabic word for any Educational institution, type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whet ...

s, 63 government primary schools and 45 non-government primary schools. Many high-ranking government officials have come from Chitalmari Upazila. There is one public library, one cinema hall, 2 theatre groups, 123 rural clubs and 30 playgrounds.

References

{{Authority control Upazilas of Bagerhat District