Munger district is one of the thirty-eight

districts of Bihar Bihar, a state of India, currently has 38 administrative districts, 101 subdivisions (अनुमंडल) and 535 CD blocks. A district of an Indian state is an administrative geographical unit, headed by a district magistrate or a deputy ...

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

in eastern India. The city of

Munger Munger, formerly spelt as Monghyr, is a twin city and a Municipal Corporation situated in the Indian state of Bihar. It is the administrative headquarters of Munger district and Munger Division. Munger was one of the major cities in Eastern ...

is the administrative headquarters of this district. The district is a part of

Munger Division Munger division is an administrative geographical unit of Bihar state of India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; ...

. Its literacy rate of 73.3% is higher than the state literacy rate of 63.8%, but lower than national rate of 74.04%. The present collector and District Magistrate of Munger is Arvind Kumar Verma (IAS). Rajeev Rajan Singh Urf Lalan Singh is the district's MP.

History

Munger has seen five districts partitioned off from its territory:

Begusarai Begusarai is the industrial and financial capital of Bihar and the administrative headquarters of the Begusarai district, which is one of the 38 districts of the Indian state of Bihar. The district lies on the northern bank of the river Gan ...

in 1972;

Khagaria Khagaria is a town in Indian state of Bihar and the administrative headquarters of Khagaria district. Khagaria is a part of Munger division. It is located at and has an average elevation of 36 metres (118 feet). The Khagaria Junction railw ...

in 1988; and

Jamui Jamui is a town and a municipality in Jamui district in the Indian States and territories of India, state of Bihar. It is the district headquarter of Jamui district. Jamui was formed as a district on 21 February 1991 as a result of its separati ...

in 1991; and Lakhisarai district and

Sheikhpura Sheikhpura is a town and a municipality in Sheikhpura district in the Indian state of Bihar. Sheikhpura is also an administrative headquarter of Sheikhpura district. Postal code PIN code of Sheikhpura post office is 811105. Postal code for ...

in 1994.

Economy

Munger, along with Jamalpur are the major industrial cities in Bihar. Munger is also one of the most prosperous cities in Bihar with a per capita income of INR 42,793 in FY 2020-21.

Geography

District is located in the southern part of Bihar and its headquarters is located on the southern bank of

river Ganges The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary riv ...

. Munger district occupies an area of .

Flora and fauna

In 1976, Munger district became home to the

Bhimbandh Wildlife Sanctuary Bhimbandh Wildlife Sanctuary is a wildlife sanctuary in Bihar in the south-west of Munger District. Etymology During the Mahabharata period, when the Pandavas were on their exile, they had also come to this forest during that time. For his li ...

, which has an area of .

Demographics

According to the 2011 census Munger district has a

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 1,367,765, roughly equal to the nation of

Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where i ...

or the US state of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

. This gives it a ranking of 358th in India (out of a total of

640 Year 640 ( DCXL) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 640 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming y ...

). The district has a population density of . Its

population growth rate Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 70 million annu ...

over the decade 2001-2011 was 19.45%. Munger has a

sex ratio A sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. However, many species deviate from an even sex ratio, ei ...

of 879

females An organism's sex is female (symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and male ...

for every 1000 males, and a

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 73.3%. 27.79% of the population lives in urban areas. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes make up 13.44% and 1.56% of the population respectively.

Languages

At the time of the 2011 Census of India, 61.76% of the population in the district spoke

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

, 6.10%

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

and 0.93% Santali as their first language. 30.56% of the population spoke languages classified as 'Others' under Hindi in the census. The local language is

Angika Angika (also known as ''Anga'', ''Angikar'' or ''Chhika-Chhiki'') is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken in some parts of the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, as well as in parts of Nepal. Angika is closely related to neighbouring Indi ...

, sometimes classified as a Maithili dialect.

Politics

Administrative setup

The Munger district has 3 sub-divisions and 9 blocks and ''anchal'' (posts).

Economy

In 2006, the

Ministry of Panchayati Raj The Ministry of Panchayati Raj () is a branch of the Government of India. The Ministry is in charge of the Panchayati Raj and Panchayati Raj Institutions. It was created in May 2004. The Ministry is headed by a minister of cabinet rank / Min ...

named Munger one of the country's 250 most backward districts (out of a total of

). It is one of the 36 districts in Bihar have been receiving funds from the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF).

Tourism

Munger has many historically popular destinations that are visited by tourists all year round.

Chandika Temple

The Chandika Sthan temple where

Sati Sati or SATI may refer to: Entertainment * ''Sati'' (film), a 1989 Bengali film by Aparna Sen and starring Shabana Azmi * ''Sati'' (novel), a 1990 novel by Christopher Pike *Sati (singer) (born 1976), Lithuanian singer *Sati, a character in ''Th ...

is worshiped. The legend says that the left eye of Maa Sati fell at Munger, which subsequently developed into a place of worship of the Divine Mother

Chandi Chandi (, ) or Chandika () is a Hindu deity. Chandika is a form of goddess Durga. She shares similarities with the Goddess Chamunda, not only in name but also in attributes and iconography. Due to these similarities, some consider them to ...

Bihar School of Yoga

Bihar School of Yoga The Bihar School of Yoga is a modern school of yoga founded and developed by Sri Swami Satyananda Saraswati in Munger, Bihar, India, in 1963. The system of yoga taught at the school is recognized worldwide as Bihar Yoga or the Satyananda Yoga ...

also known a
Bihar Yoga Bharati
was established in 1963. It is dedicated to the study of yoga in an ashram environment, providing a spiritual oasis in the material and technological desert of the 21st century. Bihar Yoga Bharati (BYB), an Institute for Advanced Studies in Yogic Sciences, is the first of its kind in the world wholly devoted to the subject of

yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

Munger Fort

Munger Fort The Munger Fort, located at Munger (also spelt as Monghyr during the British Raj), in the state of Bihar, India, is built on a rocky hillock on the south bank of the Ganges River. Its history is not completely dated but it is believed that it wa ...

is an almost two thousand-year-old fort tracing back to

Chandragupta Maurya Chandragupta Maurya (Sanskrit: elp:IPA/Sanskrit, t̪͡ɕɐn̪d̪ɾɐgupt̪ɐ mɐʊɾjɐ (reigned 320 BCE – c. 298 BCE) was the founder and the first emperor of the Maurya Empire, based in Magadha (present-day Bihar) in the Indian ...

period. During the

British raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

it was occupied by the British. The story of

Monghyr Mutiny The Monghyr Mutiny (also known as the White Mutiny) occurred among European officers of the East India Company stationed in Bengal in 1766. The mutiny arose after the East India Company's governor of Bengal, Robert Clive, implemented an order to ...

is well known among the locals.

Pir Shah Nafah Shrine

The tomb o
Pir Shah Nafah Shrine
is a sacred Muhammdan shrine built on an elevated piece of ground near the southern gate of the

. It is said that it was a

mazaar A Sufi shrine or dargah ( ''dargâh'' or ''dargah'', Turkish: ''dergâh'', Hindustani: ''dargāh'' दरगाह درگاہ, ''dôrgah'') is a shrine or tomb built over the grave of a revered religious figure, often a Sufi saint or dervis ...

of a Pir or Saint whose name is still unknown. He is said to have travelled from Persia to Ajmer and from there came down to Munger under the instructions from Khwaza Moin-Uddin Chisti.

Kastaharani Ghaat

Kastaharani Ghaat
traces its origin back to

Ramayana The ''Ramayana'' (; ), also known as ''Valmiki Ramayana'', as traditionally attributed to Valmiki, is a smriti text (also described as a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic) from ancient India, one of the two important epics ...

. It is believed that on his return journey from Mithila to Ayodhya after marrying Sita,

Rama Rama (; , , ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric Hindu traditions, he is considered the Supreme Being. Also considered as the ideal man (''maryāda' ...

and company took a dip in this water to relieve themselves from fatigue (kasta) and hence the name Kastaharani (reliever of stress).

References

External links

Munger District-Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Munger District Munger division Districts of Bihar 1832 establishments in India