The first partition

Bengal was partitioned a hundred years ago this month.

Kanchan Gupta examines the consequences of the split. The Pioneer July 31, 2005

A hundred years ago this month, Lord Curzon, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, in a momentous decision that was to irrevocably alter the course of the nationalist movement and shape the destiny of modern India, announced the partition of Bengal. Although popular folklore credits Lord Curzon with the idea of carving up the Presidency of Bengal, that is not quite entirely true. The chipping began in 1874 when Assam was made a separate entity along with Sylhet, a Bengali-speaking area. In 1892, the Lushai Hills were added to this new Chief Commissioner's province. What remained of the original Bengal Presidency were Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

A further split was suggested in 1896-97 to enable better administration of the eastern hinterland. The Bengal Presidency was considered too large for "efficient administration". Kolkata and adjacent districts had prospered on account of trade and were the focus of administrators of the Raj. But peasants in eastern Bengal languished - suffering on account of lack of administration as well as the excesses of absentee landlords. Lord Curzon was impressed with the initial suggestion by officials of the Raj for an administrative restructuring of the province. Later, he discovered potential political gains in the proposal. The idea of separating the Hindu elite of western Bengal, who had begun to take an active interest in the nascent nationalist movement, from the Muslim landholders and peasantry of eastern Bengal, already talking of a separate identity, made good political sense to him and he pursued the proposal with great fervour.

On July 19, 1905, the British India Government announced its decision to create a province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The new province would comprise nearly all of Bengal east of the river Padma (Dhaka, Rajshahi and Chittagong divisions) and Malda, Tripura and Assam. Bengal was formally partitioned on October 16 that year. There was an instant uproar of protest. Bhadralok Bangalis of Kolkata, more so the intelligentsia, hit back with meetings, petitions and public rallies. One petition carried 70,000 signatures, demanding that the partition of Bengal be undone immediately. Rabindranath Tagore, appalled by the carving up of Bengal, wrote stirring songs to unite Bangalis on either side of the Curzon line. On August 7 Tagore penned his immortal lines, "Aamaar sonaar Bangla, Aami tomaai bhaalobaashi / Chirodin tomaar aakaash tomar baataash, Aamaar praaney baajaaye baashi..." Half-a-century later, Bangladesh adopted this song which came to symbolise the umbilical link between all Bangalis and their land, as its national anthem.

Prabhat pheris were taken out to awaken Bengal's "sleeping soul" to the injustice committed by India's British rulers. Bauls, or minstrels, travelled from village to village, spreading the message of resistance. Dwijendralal Roy and Rajanikanta Sen added to the repertoire of swadeshi songs. That resistance soon became the source of two distinctive traits of the nationalist movement: Swadeshi and militant struggle. Krishna Kumar Mitra, editor of Sanjivani, called upon Bangalis - both Hindus and Muslims - to boycott British goods. In rural Bengal, this meant boycotting Lancashire and Manchester textile. Surendranath Banerjea, Aurobindo Ghosh and Bipin Chandra Pal asked for a total boycott of all things British, including officials of the Raj. Aurobindo Ghosh later added boycott of British educational institutions to the list. A huge meeting was held in Kolkata on August 7 where swadeshi was the main theme of the speakers. A resolution was adopted, urging people to boycott British products till partition was undone.

While Tagore and other members of Kolkata's intelligentsia focused their energies on uniting Hindu and Muslim Bangalis through symbolic gestures like rakhi-bandhan, others were not too sure whether this was a good idea. What were till then vague notions of nation, motherland and nationalism began to take concrete shape. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Vande Mataram became the idiom of swadesh and swadeshi as well as the leitmotif of militant nationalism, all of which attracted young Hindus in cities, towns and villages. Even before Lord Curzon and his men had formally implemented the partition policy, Muslims had expressed their support for the move. For them, partition of Bengal held the promise of a possible Muslim majority province. Since swadeshi was adopted as an instrument of resistance against partition, most Muslims - both landholders and peasants - refused to respond to the call for boycott of British goods. This was naturally viewed as treachery and fuelled the militant Hindu resistance.

Meanwhile, the swadeshi wave hit other parts of India. Punjab, Central Provinces, Poona, Madras and Bombay saw an outburst of nationalism. Indian entrepreneurs came forward to set up cotton mills, match factories and foundries. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya set up Benaras Hindu University in 1910 as an alternative to British institutions of higher learning. But not all of the protest was pacific. Back in Bengal, Aurobindo Ghosh, Barin Ghosh and Raja Subodh Mallik set up a secret militant outfit called Jugantar. Soon, young men and women were enthusiastically taking to guns and bombs. Several attempts were made on the lives of British officers. Vande Mataram, Sandhya and Jugantar, popular journals of those turbulent, uncertain times, played an important role in propagating the ideology of militant resistance against those implementing British policies.

A shining example of the militant resistance is the plot to kill Chief Presidency Magistrate Kingsford. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki, the chosen assassins, bombed the wrong carriage. Khudiram Bose was sentenced to death; Prafulla Chaki shot himself to evade arrest. The militant resistance peaked between 1908 and 1910, as did the severity of official repression. Militant resistance in Bengal had a profound impact on Congress politics. At the Surat session of 1907, the Indian National Congress split into moderate and militant groups. Bal Gangadhar Tilak supported the "cult of the bomb and the gun" while Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Surendranath Banerjea cautioned against anarchy and violence. Back in Bengal, Muslim support for partition and subsequent strong-arm measures adopted by the British to thwart the swadeshi movement and militant resistance was building up by the day. The Muslim intelligentsia criticised militant nationalism which was denounced as going "against the spirit of Islam". The Muslim press, especially the Muslim Chronicle, called upon co-religionists "to remain faithful to the Government" and support the creation of a separate, self-contained Muslim majority province.

The Mohammedan Literary Society published a manifesto in 1905, calling upon all Muslims to "give their unqualified support to Bengal's partition". The new province, it pointed out, was an incentive for Muslims to "unite into a compact body and form an association to voice their own views and aspirations relating to social and political matters." Accordingly, the Mohammedan Provincial Union was launched on October 16, 1905, and existing Muslim organisations were invited to join the new Muslim representative body. Nawab Salimullah was chosen as its patron. The seed of Muslim separatism in India was sown. Nationalist Muslims like Khwaza Atiqullah, who moved a resolution at the Kolkata session of the Congress in 1906 denouncing the partition of Bengal, Abdur Rasul, Khan Bahadur Muhammad Yusuf, Mujibur Rahman, AH Abdul Halim Ghaznavi, Ismail Hossain Shiraji, Muhammad Gholam Hossain (a writer and a promoter of Hindu-Muslim unity), Maulvi Liaqat Hussain, Syed Hafizur Rahman Chowdhury and Abul Kasem were soon an insignificant minority within the larger Muslim community of Bengal.

There was overwhelming support for partition among Muslims in both Bengal and Eastern Bengal. The All India Muslim League was founded on December 30, 1906 in Dhaka, to mobilise and consolidate support for partition and opposition to the nationalist resistance. At its first meeting, the Muslim League adopted a resolution that said: "...in view of the clear interest of the Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal (we) consider that Partition is certain to prove beneficial to the Muhammadan community which constitutes the vast majority of the populations of the new province and that all such methods of agitation such as boycotting should be strongly condemned and discouraged."

The Wahabis lent their support to the emerging Muslim separatism. A Red Pamphlet, published by Anjuman-i-Mufidul Islam and edited by Ibrahim Khan, containing incendiary anti-Hindu, anti-swadeshi propaganda, was circulated among the Muslims of Eastern Bengal and Assam, asking them to dissociate themselves from Hindus. Not surprisingly, riots broke out in Comilla in March 1907, followed by riots in Jamalpur in April. Soon, communal violence became a familiar feature in Eastern Bengal and Assam. The League's early dreams of a separate political identity for Muslims came partially true with the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 that included separate communal electorates. The rest, as the cliche goes, is history. The partition of Bengal was undone in 1911, but neither Bengal nor Kolkata regained its political primacy. The British shifted India's political centre to the dusty plains of Delhi.

Looking back at 1905 from the vantage point of a 100 years later, one cannot but feel that perhaps Lord Curzon was a visionary. The separation he forced may have unleashed a tidal wave of emotional upheaval, but it was founded on a principle that was proved true in the run-up to India's independence. Those who denounce the permanent partition of 1947 as the fruition of Britain's policy of divide and rule and the outcome of Mohammed Ali Jinnah's dogged persuasion of his two-nation theory, forget that the Muslim response to Bengal's partition in 1905 was adequate demonstration that there never was a harmonious Hindu-Muslim nation.