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 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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