Bengal

Former province of British India, in the northeast of the subcontinent. It was the first major part of India to come under the control of the British East India Company (the ‘Bengal Presidency’). When India gained independence in 1947, Bengal was divided into West Bengal, a state of India, and East Bengal, which from 1972 onwards became part of the newly independent state of Bangladesh.

Bengal was first partitioned in 1905, when the viceroy, Lord Curzon, decided to divide the huge single province of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in two to simplify administration. The mainly Muslim East Bengal, which incorporated the Assam region, was centred around Dhaka (Dacca), while Hindu West Bengal had its capital at Calcutta (now Kolkata). Many Bengalis saw the partition as an attempt to stifle the strong independence movement in the province, and the change was bitterly resented. The strength of opposition led the British to reunite East and West Bengal in 1911, with Assam and Orissa-Bihar as two new administrative regions. In 1943 a devastating famine, caused by a slump in demand for jute and a bad harvest, resulted in the death of over 3 million of Bengal's inhabitants.

The dispute over the 1905 partition saw the Indian National Congress, which had strong support in Bengal, grow from a middle-class pressure group into a national mass movement.