partition of Bengal, (1905), reorganization ofBengal during theBritish raj, carried out by the British viceroy inIndia,Lord Curzon, despite strong Indian nationalist opposition. It divided Bengal in two—aHindu-majority west and aMuslim-majority east—until 1911, when it was annulled and the changes were reversed. Thepartition began a transformation of theIndian National Congress from a middle-classpressure group into a nationwide mass movement.

Background

The politically and economically significantBengal Presidency includedBihar (including the now-separate state of Jharkhand) andOrissa (now Odisha) and had formed a single province of British India since 1765. By 1900 the province had grown too large to handle under a single administration. Eastern Bengal, because of isolation and poor communications, had been neglected in favor of western Bengal and Bihar. Commercial activity and modernization largely centered on Calcutta (nowKolkata), which was the capital of both the presidency and British India. In comparison, the eastern region was impoverished and undeveloped. Curzon chose one of several schemes for partition: to uniteAssam, which had been part of the presidency until 1874, with 15 districts of east Bengal and thus form a new province with a population of 31 million. The capital was Dacca (nowDhaka, Bangladesh), and the people were mainly Muslim. The new province was named Eastern Bengal and Assam.

Divide and rule

The declared intention for the partition was ease of administration. However, the territorial division of the region also led to a separation of its population on the basis of religion—a consequence of the British policy ofdivide and rule (a colonial strategy to maintain power by exploiting cultural or communal divides). The largely Muslim population of the neglected eastern region welcomed the partition, although some Muslim leaders initially opposed it in the interest of solidarity with Bengalinationalism. In west Bengal and across the rest of India, however, the partition was condemned as a British attempt to debilitate theIndian Independence Movement—the suppression of nationalist feeling was a motivating factor of divide and rule.

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India: The first partition of Bengal

Protests

The Hindus of west Bengal, who dominated the presidency’s commercial, professional, and rural life, opposed the fracturing of Bengali identity. They also raised concerns that the Bengalicommunity would be reduced to a minority if Bihar and Orissa were left intact but Bengal wasbifurcated. They regarded the partition as an attempt to strangle nationalism in Bengal, where it was more developed than elsewhere in the country.

Agitation against the partition included mass meetings and rural unrest. The Congress Party revised its previously moderate approach to self-determination and launched theSwadeshi Movement (swadeshi: “of our own country”), whichboycotted British goods and promoted self-sufficiency. The movement was championed by prominent Congress Party leadersBal Gangadhar Tilak,Lala Lajpat Rai, andBipin Chandra Pal. The three, known collectively as “Lal Bal Pal,” were regarded as the “extremist” faction of the Congress Party because of theiradvocacy ofassertive methods of resistance. In Bengal, leaders such asSurendranath Banerjea and lawyers Taraknath Palit and Ananda Mohan Bose became key figures in the protests. Art and literature served as rallying calls—patriotic fervor crystallized around the devotional poem “Vande Mataram” from writerBankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novelAnandamath. Artist Abanindranath Tagore’s paintingBharat Mata, depicting India as a goddess, became symbolic of the ideals of theswadeshi movement.

Partition and aftermath

Despite the agitations, Bengal was partitioned on October 16, 1905. The day coincided with the Hindu festival ofRaksha Bandhan that year, and protests continued, withRabindranath Tagore urging Hindus and Muslims to exchangerakhis (string bracelets symbolic of sibling bonds). However, the Hindu undertones of the protestsalienated Muslims, most of whom supported the bifurcation of Bengal. TheMuslim League was founded in Dacca in 1906; it would eventually lead the separatist movement that resulted in thepartition of India and the creation ofPakistan in 1947.

The Congress Party, controlled by moderates such asGopal Krishna Gokhale andDadabhai Naoroji, remained opposed to the reorganization of Bengal. The radical ideas of Lal Bal Pal informed extreme opposition groups, which went underground to form revolutionary organizations. Of these, Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti were the most prominent. Led byAurobindo Ghosh and other extremists, these outfits were involved in bomb making, collecting arms and ammunition, and conspiring to assassinate British officials.

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Partition reversed

Instead of weakening the nationalist movement, the partition of Bengal intensified anti-colonial thought and activity. It was annulled in 1911, the year that the capital was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi, and the administrative units were reorganized again. East and west Bengal were reunited, Assam again became a province under a chief commissioner, and Bihar and Orissa were separated from the Bengal Presidency to form a new province. The aim was to combine appeasement of Bengalisentiment with administrative convenience. This end was achieved for a time, but the Bengali Muslims, having benefited politically and economically from partition by forming the majority population in the eastern half, were angry and disappointed. This resentment remained throughout the rest of the British period. The final division of Bengal at the partitioning of the subcontinent in 1947, which separatedWest Bengal (part of India) and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), was accompanied by intense violence.