Partition of Bengal

The Viceroy, Lord Curzon, announced the partition of Bengal in July 1905, and it took effect on October 16. The huge Bengal Presidency, with roughly 80 million people, was divided into a new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, with its capital at Dhaka, and a western part that kept Calcutta. The British said the old province was too big to govern well.¹²

Bengalis saw it as an attack on their growing nationalism, since the split would also reduce Bengali speakers to a minority in the west, and it divided Hindus and Muslims, who were a majority in the east. A mass protest followed. Leaders such as Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal led the Swadeshi movement, a boycott of British goods, with foreign cloth burned and national schools opened. On the day of partition Rabindranath Tagore led a Rakhi ceremony of unity, and his song Amar Sonar Bangla, written in 1905, later became Bangladesh's national anthem. Some young radicals turned to violence. The movement also helped to widen the split in Congress in 1907 between moderates and extremists, and it encouraged Muslim leaders to form the Muslim League in 1906. In 1911, at the Delhi Durbar of King George V, the partition was reversed and the capital was moved from Calcutta to Delhi.¹²