Partition of Bengal (1905-1911): A Critical Study

The enthusiasm of the articulate representatives of the educated middle class-the newly acclaimed leaders of Indian Society appears to have considerably diminished by the close of the 19th century. People who understood the value of educated Indians and had empathy for their hopes and dreams—people like Gladstone in Britain and Lord Ripon in India—were no longer in charge. Instead, the government of India was run by individuals who distrusted them uniformly and opposed any attempt to weaken Britain's colonial grip on the subcontinent. The government paid little attention to Indian concerns and covered up officials' displays of racial superiority. They went so far as to try to undo the occasional, token concessions that had been made to Indians in the past. Even the early nationalists were beginning to see the Raj's hatred for what it was. By the year 1900, many of them had realized the pointlessness of appealing and praying to the Government. Their very insignificant requests for positions in the Indian Civil Service and a few changes to the Legislative Councils had been mostly dismissed. However, their pleas for a more equitable form of British rule in India to replace the current "un-British" misrule fell on deaf ears. The Indian National Congress had been pushing for constitutional changes for almost to twenty years, but the meager reforms of 1892 were all that came of it. When Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India at the turn of the twentieth century, he intended to regard the Congress as a "unclean thing," reject all its leaders' pleadings with "frigid disdain," and saw the Civil Service as one "particularly designated for Europeans," all of which made things far worse. Curzon, like many stalwart imperialists, was an unapologetic racist. He once said, "the ultimate ideal of truth is to a considerable part a Western construct," and he would talk about Indians in his most charitable moments with the tone "one typically reserved for pet animals." (S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905,Cambridge, 1965, p. 227). Alarmed and ruffled by the Curzonian presence as the earlier nationalists were, they werenot so dispirited as to swallow every humiliation or to lie ignominiously low. They hadgrown in stature in the eyes of their own people, learnt from their social reformers andideologue to have faith in themselves and acquired sufficient amount of self-respect to ask for civilized treatment and natural justice. Thus, a showdown between Curzon and the well-educated Curzon was the first to start his attack in Bengal. As early as 1899 he reduced the number of elected members in the Calcutta Corporation. This measure was intended primarily to satisfy the European business interests in the city, who often complained of delays in the grant of licences and similar other facilities. The thought process underlying the move was transparent, and its anti-democratic aspect was glaringly clear. The people of Calcutta were greatly insulted and abused. But before they had time to process this injustice, Curzon began an attack on the independence of Calcutta University, the pride of Bengal's educated classes. Curzon enacted the Universities Act based on the recommendations of the Indian Universities Commission, despite the fact that the commission's lone Indian member (Gurudas Banerji) strongly disagreed with the majority's position (1904). Pretextualized as a desire "to elevate the level of education allround," the real goal was to improve schools across the board. The number of elected senate members (mainly Indians) was reduced, and the authority to affiliate universities and provide financial assistance was shifted to government officials. The angered members of the educated middle class had no doubt after this piece of legislation that the Viceroy was out to damage them and shatter their spirit in any way he could. Because they anticipated the worst, they had to plan for opposition. Unfortunately, the worst was declared by Curzon in July 1905, when he partitioned Bengal.

The province of Bengal under a Lieutenant Governor was an unwieldy territory of diverse population, using various languages and dialects and differing widely in terms of economic development. Apart from Bengal proper (i.e. Bengali-speaking western and eastern Bengal), it originally comprised the whole of Bihar, Orissa and Assam. Earlier, too, the British authorities did occasionally think of reducing the size of he province for administrative convenience. In 1874 they actually separated Assam from Bengal by making it a Chief Commissioner's province, and adding to it, despite some local opposition, the predominantly Bengali-speaking area of Sylhet. Assam was further extended in 1897 by thetransfer for the time being of South Lushai hill tracts from Bengal. Such piece-meal reductions, however, had not conclusively solved the British difficulty in managing a province of the proportion of Bengal with all its attendant problems. Territorial reorganization of Bengal's province was necessary from an administrative standpoint, as well as from the perspective of providing equitable developmental chances for all the territories. Curzon did not appear to be thinking unreasonably when he talked of 'readjustments' ofBengal early in 1904. If he had ever thought of streamlining the province by disassociatingthe linguistically divergent, Orissa and Bihar from it, as it was so aptly and main advisors- Sir A. Fraser, theLieutenant Governor of Bengal, and H.H. Risley, Secretary, Home Department, Governmentof India- were determined to use the plea for territorial readjustment to throttle the voice of nationalism. The move was calculated to hurt chiefly those who spearheaded the national movement in the eastern part of India, namely, the Bengali-speaking educated middle class. Having been the first to be brought under the British rule, the Bengalis were among the pioneers in taking to English education, imbibing Western Liberal ideas and airing nationalistic and patriotic views. This annoyed the imperialist authorities and they decided to take action.

"Bengal united is a power, Bengal divided will pull in several different ways". For the British, it was imperative to "break apart and therefore weaken a substantial body of opponents," and Curzon and Company were intent on doing just that. The splitting up operations, or the arrangement for giving effect to the maxim "divide and rule", had to be done in such a manner as to make the Bengalis suffer physical as well as mental division. This Curzon wanted to achieve by creating a situation of mutual suspicion and jealousy between the two major communities in Bengal- the Hindus and the Muslims. Curzon and his advisors knew that their opponents in Bengal came largely from among the Hindus, who had benefited more than their Muslim brethren by taking socio-economic and educational advantage of the British rule. Majority of the Muslims being agriculturists could not manage to take a similar advantage. By shrewedly suggesting that his Government wished to standby the Muslims in their race for advancement with the Hindus, and secure them from any threat of Hindu domination, Curzon planned to take away from Bengal those territories where Muslims were more numerous, combined with Assam to create a new province, with Dacca as its capital. "would infuse the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not experienced since the days of the great Mussalman viceroys and monarchs," Curzon said of his hopes for the new province. And he anticipated that Dacca "would acquire the peculiar character of a Provincial Capital where Mohammedan interest would be significantly

Bengal, therefore, Curzon and his lieutenants wanted to set up Dacca as a parallel political centre to the nationalistically oriented Calcutta. They planned to utilize the Muslim population to balance out the Hindus by making Bengal into a Muslim-majority province (15 million Muslims would coexist with 12 million Hindus, making Bengali speakers a minority in the province that would still be called Bengal) (where 19 million Bengali speaking persons should be outnumbered by 35 million speakers of Hindi, Oriya and other languages). This mischievous game was being played, above all, to cripple the educated Indian middle class nationalists.

From 1 June 1903, when the Viceroy prepared his minute on Territorial Redistribution, until 2 February 1905, when the final model of division was sent to the home authorities in London for authorization, the Curzonian project to split Bengal gained solid form gradually. The Chittagong, Dacca, Rajshahi, Hill Tippera (Tripura), Malda, and Assam districts were combined to create the new province of "Eastern Bengal and Assam" on July 19, 1905. On October 16, 1905, the province was officially established after the partition of Bengal and its 41.5 million Bengali-speaking inhabitants.

The overwhelming, predominantly- Hindu protest against the partition of Bengal, along with the fear of reforms favouring the Hindu majority, led the Muslim elite of India in 1906 to the new viceroy Lord Minto, asking for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded representation in proportion to their share of the total population, reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This would result in the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca in December 1906. Although Curzon by now had returned to England following his resignation over a dispute with his military chief, Lord Kitchener, the League was in favor of this partition plan. During the preceding three decades, starting with the 1871 Census of British India, which first measured the populations in places with a Muslim majority, the attitude of the Muslim elite, which was mirrored in the League's position, had consolidated. Curzon's interest in East Bengal's Muslim population stemmed from British concerns about the community after the 1871 census and the history of Muslim hostility against the British, most notably during the 1857 Mutiny and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. encountered public hostility from some of the emerging Hindu political and social formations on and off in the three decades after the 1871 census. For instance, the Arya Samaj, which was upset by the Census's Muslim population estimates, hosted "reconversion" activities with the aim of inviting Muslims back into the Hindu fold and had previously backed Cow Protection Societies in their activism. Concerns about Hindu political power grew among United Provinces' Muslims in the late 19th century, when the Hindi-Urdu dispute and the anti-cow- killing riots of 1893 galvanized the Hindu population. Tilak and Lajpat Rai's attempts to advance in the Congress in 1905 stoked Muslim anxieties, while the Congress itself united behind the emblem of Kali. The fact that the "Bande Mataram" rallying cry initially emerged in the book Anandmath, in which Hindus fought their Muslim captors, was not missed on many Muslims, for example. Last but not least, the Muslim aristocracy, especially Nawab of Dacca Khwaja Salimullah, who held the League's inaugural gathering in his house in Shahbag, saw that a new province with a Muslim majority would be advantageous for Muslims seeking political power.

After the Orissa famine in 1866, Sir Stafford Northcote proposed reducing the region of Bengal presidency, which encompassed Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam, for administrative ease and efficiency. After the province of Assam was split from Bengal in 1874, additional regions, such as the south Lushai hills, demanded independence in 1892. In 1901, the government took a second look at the Bengal province by redrawing the border between Bengal and Central. ‖ On March 28, 1903, Fraser wrote a note advocating for the transfer of the Chittagong division, along with Dacca and Mymensingh, and possibly for the first time highlighting the political advantages of the blueprint; this idea was well received and included in Curzon's note titled "Viceroys' Minute on Territorial Redistribution in India" (19 May/1 June 1903) and accepted by the viceroy. This Minute served as the foundation for Risley's proposal to move the Chittagong division to Assam, together with Dacca and Mymensingh, in his letter of 3 December 1903. Public criticism and unrest ensued when the plan was published in the Government of India Gazette on December 12, 1903. Meetings were conducted in cities and towns, and tributes and telegrams were sent to the government. In addition to tenants and tenants' advocates, the agitation also included professionals and landlords. Chittagong was the site of protests led by Jatra Mohan Sen. The Superintendent of Police in Chittagong stated the the Agitations. Even vernacular journals like the Sanjibani and the Bangabasi displayed unyielding antagonism to the policy, joining four major newspapers in Calcutta in protesting the racial segregation of the Bengali people. Sanjibani "sought to enlist the sympathies of the Zamindars by reminding them that simple a gazetteer notice is necessary to remove the permanent settlement in the non-regulation province" (7 January 1904 issue). The Indian Association of Calcutta, directed by Surendra Nath Banerjee, sent out circulars to its branches in the mofussil as early as January 1904, urging local leaders to convene meetings, approve resolutions, and telegraph them to newspapers in Calcutta. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce members came out to provide promises of support to the Partition agitations, and many landowners, like the Maharaja of Mymensingh, Cassimbazar, Nattore, etc., were also opposed to the partition. At the outset, however, the demonstrations were orchestrated by the "local bar association and school masters," or the affluent middle class with an English education. Despite widespread opposition, the Secretary of State approved the plan on June 9th, and on July 19th, the Government of India announced its intention to establish the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam; a formal proclamation was issued on September 1st, and on October 16th, 1905, Bengal was officially partitioned. Many people have their own theories on why Bengal was split apart, but the two most common are administrative needs and economic and political expediency. Whatever they were, Curzon and Risley had a firm grasp on the idea. The decision was ostensibly made for solely administrative and commercial reasons, to protect the tea, oil, and coal sectors. Sumit Sarkar argues that the claims that "Assam growers would have a cheaper marine outlet via the port of chittagang; put Assam-Bengal railroads under one administration" are "appear to have been erroneous." The attempt to split Hindus and Muslims and establish a Muslim-only region was motivated by political expediency. In his notes dated 7 February 1904 and 6 December 1904, Risley claimed that:

Virtually every Bengali group considered the division to be an abomination. Beginning with, "We felt that we had been insulted, humiliated, and deceived," Surendra Nath Banerjee expressed his displeasure with the situation. It was a deliberate blow to the rising Grave National Disaster" appeared in the Bengalee, authored by Surendra Nath Banerjee, warning the Government of an endless national battle of the largest extent if the Government did not change its decision. Many newspapers in England, including The Times, The Daily, and The Manchester Guardian, as well as the Muslim Chronicle and the Anglo-Indian press (including the Times of India and the Statesman), strongly criticized the plan.‖ When Curzon visited East Bengal in February of 1904, agitators were already divided over many issues. As the Viceroy was touring Dacca, Chittagong, and Mymensingh, the Nawab of Dacca had swayed some locals in Bengal's eastern regions to express their support for a different partition plan. The idea "would endow the Mohammedans in East Bengal with a unity which they had not enjoyed since the days of the ancient Mussalman Viceroys and Kings," Curzon argued to win over the Muslim community. The Decca would become the capital and center of the newly constituted province of full Muslims. By further stating that "the Bengali people instead of being the pre-dominant factor in one local authority will in future become the predominant element in two," he showed his determination to disregard widespread opposition to the plan. We will never be able to dismember or shrink Bengal again if we give in to their demands now, and you will be hardening and cementing on the eastern border of India a force that is already powerful and sure to be a source of increased problems in the future." The viceroy's comments "chilled the populace and crushed their dreams to the ground," according to the Amrita Bazar. Therefore, one month after the Viceroy's visit, the first of the large protest gatherings took place at the Calcutta Town Hall on March 18th, 1904. The Viceroy's visit did not calm the nerves of the Bengali instigators, but rather served to heighten their concern. In an article published on August 12th, the Bengalee stated that the Bengali race had lost all hope of progressing through sympathy and that instead, "antagonism or political nirvana" was the only option for the Bengali people. This meeting took place on January 10th, 1905, to coincide with the visit of Sir Henry Cotton to the Town Hall in Calcutta to discuss the question of partition. " At a conference on July 17, 1905, in Calcutta, a call went out for a boycott of Western institutions and commodities. ...and another on the 7th of August in the Calcutta Town Hall, when a formal boycott resolution was approved, thereby kicking off the Swadeshi movement. It was started by a "Punjabi agitator" named Tahil Ram Ganga Ram in February of 1905. At the conference held on August 1, 1905, one of the motions accepted was to "establish a boycott of

OF PARTITION

The new epoch-making politics of dividing in later Indian political history began with the division of Bengal and ultimately resulted in India's second partition. Instead of weakening and splitting the Bengalis, the division actually brought them closer together in their anti-partition campaign. Many Muslims were relieved by Bengal's division into East Bengal and Assam; they believed that living in a more autonomous area would improve their prospects in terms of access to quality education, job, and social mobility. What the Curzonian government failed to see was the emergence of a pan-Bengali identity that transcended traditional divisions of class, geography, and ethnicity. Rajat Ray argues that the division was "nothing less than a revolution in the political structure of Bengal society" because it brought into existence a "Swadeshi Coalition" by further strengthening the political alliance between the Calcutta elites and their equivalents in East Bengal. The government of Sir Bam Fylde Fuller made no secret of its support for the Muhammadans, and it did so from the very top of the parliament. It was recklessly pursued as a policy to pat the latter on the back while 'hammering' the former. The 16th of October was designated as a day of mourning across Bengal. Many participated in processions, with musicians playing "Bande Mataram" by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee as they marched barefoot and bathed in the Ganges River. The day was also observed in the old province of Bengal as ―a day of Arandhan‖ in almost all houses. Rabindranath Tagore called for Rakhi Bandhan as a day of unity.‖ The Government tried to suppress the anti-partition agitation by introducing repressive measures. As a reaction, swadeshi and boycott movements were started which resulted in the growth of nationalistic feelings among the people, for the first time started mass agitation which later shaped the methods of Gandh. In 1905 Gokhale identified Swadeshi with the highest type of patriotism, Dadabhai Naoraji referred to Swadeshism as the "cradle of New India." In 1908 Gandhi wrote that the real awakening of India took place after the Partition of Bengal which might lead to the partition of the British Empire. In 1905, Lala Lajpat Rai observed: If the people of India will just learn that lesson from the people of Bengal, then the struggle is not hopeless. The agitation gave rise to the Extremist and Nationalist Party under Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh, Lala Lajpat Rai, and other leaders, and radically changed the conception of political goal and the method to achieve it, upheld by the INC since 1885. This newly born nationalism was first expressed in the Home Rule Movement of Tilak and Besant, and then in the Non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi. Indian Revolution began. Almost all the characteristic features that marked India‘s struggle for freedom up to 1947 can be traced to the Swadeshi agitation. Even Gandhi‘s Non-Cooperation and passive Resistance had their origin in the Swadeshi movement. Non-Cooperation and passive Resistance were preached by Aurobindo during the Swadeshi movement. Aurobindo anticipated Gandhi‘s enunciation of the high moral and spiritual values of a non-violent struggle. Aurobindo said: " Hope for a nonviolent and enlightened uprising hinged on their unwavering commitment to Swadeshi, boycott, and passive resistance. Also, the differences between the political Ideologies of the Moderates and the Extremists, the Hindus and Muslims, were developed during the Swadeshi agitation and this persisted till the very end. It is the Swadeshi movement that gave rise to militant nationalism, generally referred to as terrorism and more properly called revolutionaries. The revolutionaries galvanized the political consciousness of the country which really commenced the national struggle for freedom as we conceive it today. Besides trying to suppress the anti-partition agitation, The British government made efforts to gain the support of Muslims. Secretary of State Morley's budget address in 1906 suggests that representative government was going to be established in India; this was despite the fact that Bam Fylde Fuller, a prominent figure in eastern Bengal, was renowned for his pro-partition and pro-Muslims sentiments. This alarmed the Muslims and provided the context for Simla deputation of Oct 1, 1906. The idea came from Mohsin-ul-Mulk who met the Viceroy at Shimla with 35 Muslims deputationists led by the Aga Khan and presented an Address to the Viceroy for separate electorates for the Muslims and an excess Muslim representation on the Viceroy‘s Executive Council and Provincial Legislatures as compared to their numerical strength in the country. Minto received the deputation gracefully, and recognizing the representative character of the deputationists and they quickly enlisted the support of Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, who was regarded by the British as a ―natural‖ leader of the Bengali Muslims. They even demanded a separate entity of the Muslims. Partition of Bengal strengthened this separatist trend resulting in the formation of the All-India Muslim League under Nawab Salimullah in December, 1906. Lord Morley, the secretary of states for India, welcomed the foundation of the All-India Muslim League as he had thought that it would act as ―a native opposition to the Congress‟. In its next session in Karachi in December, 1907 the Constitution of the League was framed, objectives were (i) to promote loyalty towards the British Govt. (ii) to protect political and other rights of the Indian Muslims; and (iii) to promote friendly relatio ns between the other communities. At the representation to the self-governing institutions, at that time Muhammad Ali Jinnah, criticized the principle of communal representation as pursued by the League. Lord Minto had already intended to grant a favourable concession and finally passed Morley-Minto Reforms, known as the Indian Councils Act,1909 which is called command performance that provided separate electorate or communal representation for creating a discrimination between the Muslim and Hindu voters, thus, undermining the feeling of a growing nationality.‖ The headquarter was shifted to Lucknow in 1910. The seeds of separation in politics had been sown obstructing the growth of inter-communal nationalism. Now he declared the Muslim League not only promoted Muslim interests but could also curtail the growing influence of the so-called Indian National Congress in favour of British. Not all Muslims supported the government on the issue of Bengal Partition. The nationalist newspaper Mussulman, opposed the Nawab Salimullah‘s stand against Congress and argued that the work of the Congress was ―beneficial to both communities‖. The partition definitely engendered new thinking about the Bengali Muslim ―leadership.‖ The British, seeking allies, identified Ashraf Muslims, particularly those associated with the Nawab of Dacca a ―natural leaders‖.

Lord Curzon steadfastly rejected calls to reverse Bengal's division. A fixed truth cannot be unsettled, he added, thus the partition of Bengal is final. Great Bengali nationalist Surendra Nath Banerjee who came to be called ―the uncrowned king of Bengal‖ came out with his famous rejoinder: ―We shall make the settled fact unsettled.‖ Colonial India saw unprecedented surge of nationalistic feelings among Bengalis, their struggle, agitations, swadeshi and boycott movements, their solidarity and passion for getting free from the clutches of oppressors, the British Administrations. Large-scale popular engagement in the fight for Swaraj, a necessary requirement for effective passive resistance, was not, however, entirely accomplished. As an anti-imperial agitation of great intensity, it had to bear continuously the repressive measures of its powerful opponent. The climax was reached in April 1906 when the delegates attending the provincial conference at Barisal were lathi-charged heavily by the police. The question of meeting force with force, using terror against terror naturally came to the front. Violent methods also appealed to the romantic recklessness of the middle class youth of Bengal who sought solace in heroic individual acts when mass actions did not materialize and who pinned their hopes on secret societies when open politics could not overwhelm the Government. The cult of violence was also attracted to those who were in a desperate hurry and whose patience practically ran out. The alternative was for the advanced elite section to take up arms against the Yugantar Group in Calcutta, Anushilan Samiti in Dacca were the examples. Revolutionary terrorism continued to operate- even spread in other parts of India and abroad- as the clandestine legacy of the momentous, uproarious Swadeshi and anti- partition movement. For different reasons, the colonial Government had to yield at the last. It was on December 12, 1911, at King George V's spectacular Delhi durbar coronation, that the reunification of Bengal was declared. Calcutta, the previous capital of India, was subsequently abandoned in favor of Delhi. Following the re-union of the two Bengals in 1911, there was a new phase of Hindu and Muslim rapprochement and a new attitude of acceptance of each other, in spite of their difference. For several reasons during the First World War (1914-1918) and afterwards, the Congress and the League used to hold their sessions one after another in the same town, enabling common delegates to attend both. The Congress-League scheme forged at the 1916 Lucknow session of the Congress headed by Motilal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the hope for a bright future.

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[9]. Chatterji, Jaya, ―Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition 1932-1947‖, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi,1996. [10]. Hardy, Peter. The Muslims of British India. London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Naba Barrackpur Prafulla Chandra Mahavidyalaya, Kolkata-700131 Email: ekramul.choudhury@gmail.com