Tangra is a region in East Kolkata that traditionally housed many tanneries owned by people of Hakka Chinese origin.

The East India Company obtained from the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar, in 1717, the right to rent from 38 villages surrounding their settlement.

After the fall of Siraj-ud-daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, it purchased these villages in 1758 from Mir Jafar and reorganised them.

[4][5][6] In the eastern fringes of Kolkata, the neighbourhoods such as Tangra, Tiljala, Topsia and Dhapa, were populated largely with people who migrated from poverty-ridden and caste-ridden villages, in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

They came with dreams of a better life but landed in the slums with open drains, pigsties, factory chimneys and pungent chemicals.