Tebhaga Movement
Partition and Late Colonial Politics
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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.
Noakhali Riots
Partition and Late Colonial Politics
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In October 1946, large-scale communal violence in Noakhali and nearby areas of eastern Bengal led to killings, forced displacement, and coercive conversions in some localities. Coming after the Calcutta killings and amid wider retaliatory violence across the subcontinent, the Noakhali riots intensified insecurity among communities and fed arguments that coexistence was collapsing in late colonial India.
Partition and Eastern Bengal
Partition and Late Colonial Politics
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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.