Different Nationalisms: Bengal, 1905-1947

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Semanti Ghosh

A major study of competing Bengali Hindu and Muslim nationalisms across the partition, Swadeshi, and late-colonial periods.

Est. 1947 · Bengal✺A Bilingual Archive

Referenced In Events

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Timeline View

1905

Partition of Bengal

In 1905, the British colonial government partitioned Bengal and created the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam with Dacca as its capital. Officials defended the move as administrative reform, but many critics treated it as a divide-and-rule intervention that weakened Bengali political influence. The measure triggered boycott campaigns, Swadeshi activism, new cultural forms of protest, and differentiated Hindu and Muslim political responses across Bengal.

1919-1924

Khilafat Movement in Bengal

The Khilafat movement in Bengal connected post-World War I Muslim political mobilization with anti-colonial agitation, local leadership networks, and wider Indian non-cooperation politics.

1946-1947

Tebhaga Movement

The Tebhaga Movement (1946-1947) was a major sharecropper mobilization in Bengal in which bargadars demanded that two-thirds of harvested produce should remain with cultivators instead of the customary half-share claimed by jotedars. Organized through peasant networks with strong left participation, the movement spread across multiple districts and became one of late-colonial Bengal's most significant agrarian confrontations.

1947

Partition and Eastern Bengal

In 1947, British India was divided into India and Pakistan, and Bengal itself was split into West Bengal and East Bengal. The chapter is not only about constitutional division: the delayed Radcliffe boundary, minority insecurity, refugee movement, and administrative rupture reshaped everyday life and set the stage for later struggles over language, autonomy, and state legitimacy in East Bengal.