Road To Freedom

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• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

Partition of Bengal

Partition of Bengal

Calcutta was the capital and Bengal the nerve centre of the British empire in India. Bengalis were the first people in the country to be exposed to English education and also the first to enter government service. They were also the first to demand civil rights. This made the administration wary of Bengalis who came to be looked upon as troublemakers. Later when patriotic fervour among the people began to grow the British decided to partition Bengal and disperse the Bengalis so that they would not develop into a threat to their empire. Bengal presidency included besides Bengal proper the provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Chota Nagpur. It had an area of 190,000 square miles and a population of 78 million which was close to a quarter of the entire population of British India. No one could have faulted the government for wanting to re-organise the huge presidency into smaller, manageable administrative units. But the scheme for re-organisation that had been drawn up showed that the British were taking advantage of the situation to further their own political interests. The presidency could have been pruned by divesting it of its provinces. This would have left Bengal intact. Instead they proposed to separate Dacca, Chittagong and Rajshahi divisions of Bengal and merge them with Assam. The idea was to disperse the Bengalis and divide them along religious lines. Eastern Bengal would get a Muslim identity and the Bengalis of West Bengal would be outnumbered by Biharis and others in the new province. Not surprisingly, the scheme, when it was announced in 1903, drew an angry response from the people. Thousands of meetings to condemn the scheme were held. Numerous petitions were submitted, including one to the secretary of state which was signed by 70,000 people. But the government was unmoved and went on with its plan to divide Bengal. The Bengali weekly Sanjeevani then suggested that the government would be compelled to take note of the people's mood if the public stopped buying British goods. The idea may have been borrowed from the Chinese who at that time were boycotting American goods to protest against American policy towards Chinese immigrants, but it appealed to readers of the weekly. A meeting held at the small town of Berhat on 16th July, 1905 ended with the participants endorsing the policy of boycott of British goods. Meetings in other towns passed similar resolutions.

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But the British paid no heed to the sentiments of the people and the partition of Bengal became a reality on October 10, 1905. The British probably thought the people would accept it as a fait accompli and set aside their agitation. But they were proved wrong. Instead of dying out, the campaign against partition became intensified.
The idea of boycotting British goods spread like wildfire through Bengal and then to different parts of the country. In many places, people not only decided not to buy foreign goods but also to burn all the foreign goods they already possessed. The boycott was given a new dimension when people imposed a social boycott on those who were reluctant to switch over to Swadeshi.
The boycott was extended to the British system of education too. National education was offered with the opening of national schools, national colleges and rashtriya vidyalayas in different parts of the country.
Indian literature, music and the arts of that period reflected the spirit of Swadeshi. The Swadeshi spirit had its impact on science and industry too.
The agitation against the partition of Bengal did not remain confined to Bengal. It spread to all parts of the country and for the first time the people of India behaved like the people of one nation. Such a thing had never happened before since the arrival of the British, not even during the great uprising of 1857, when the non-combatants had remained mere spectators and the South, largely unsympathetic. This time people from Punjab to Madras and from Bombay to Calcutta were caught up in the mood of rebellion.
1905 was, therefore, clearly a watershed in the history of the Independence movement. Before 1905, all protests against British rule were isolated developments. After 1905, the movement against the British assumed national dimensions.
Instead of dividing the people, the partition of Bengal united a nation. In the words of Abdul Rasul, president of Barisal Conference in 1906 : "What we could not have accomplished in 50 or 100 years, the great disaster, the Partition of Bengal, has done for us in six months."