Partition of Bengal (1947)

H. S. Suhrawardy, the last Prime Minister of Bengal, urged a separate independent status for the whole province

Sarat Chandra Bose supported the United Bengal plan

After it became apparent that the division of India on the basis of the two-nation theory would almost certainly result in the partition of the Bengal province along religious lines, the Bengal provincial Muslim League leader Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy came up with a new plan to create an independent Bengal state that would join neither Pakistan nor India and remain unpartitioned. Suhrawardy realised that if Bengal was partitioned, it would be economically disastrous for East Bengal[4] as all coal mines, all jute mills but two and other industrial plants would certainly go to the western part since they were in an overwhelmingly-Hindu area.[5] Most importantly, Calcutta, then the largest city in India, an industrial and commercial hub and the largest port, would also go to the western part. Suhrawardy floated his idea on 24 April 1947 at a press conference in Delhi.[6]

However, the plan directly ran counter to that of the Muslim League's, which demanded the creation of a separate Muslim homeland on the basis of the two-nation theory. The Bengal provincial Muslim League leadership opinion was divided. The leader Abul Hashim supported it.[7] On the other hand, Nurul Amin and Mohammad Akram Khan opposed it.[7][8] However, Muhammad Ali Jinnah realised the validity of Suhrawardy's argument and gave his tacit support to the plan.[9][10][11] After Jinnah's approval, Suhrawardy started gathering support for his plan.

For the Congress, only a handful of leaders agreed to the plan, such as the influential Bengal provincial Congress leader Sarat Chandra Bose, the elder brother of Netaji and Kiran Shankar Roy. However, most other leaders and Congress leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, rejected the plan. The nationalist Hindu Mahasabha, under the leadership of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, vehemently opposed it.[12] Its opinion was that the plan is nothing but a ploy by Suhrawardy to stop the partition of the state so that the industrial western part including the city of Kolkata would remain under League control. It also claimed that even though the plan asked for a sovereign Bengal state, it would be a virtual Pakistan, and the Hindu minority would always be at the mercy of the Muslim majority.[12][13]

Although the chance of the proposal seeing light without the Congress central committee's approval was slim, Bose and Suhrawardy continued talks to reach an agreement on the political structure of the proposed state. Like Suhrawardy, Bose also felt that the partition would severely hamper Bengal's economy, and almost half of the Hindus would be left stranded in East Pakistan.[14] The agreement was published on 24 May 1947[15] but was largely a political agreement. The proposal had hardly any support at grassroots level, particularly among Hindus.[16] The Muslim League's continuous propaganda for the two-nation theory during the past six years, as well as the marginalisation of Hindus in the Suhrawardy ministry and the vicious 1946 riots, which many Hindus believed had been sponsored by the state, left little room for trust in Muslim League by Bengali Hindus.[17] Soon, Bose and Suhrawardy were divided on the nature of the electorate: separate or joint. Suhrawardy insisted upon maintaining the separate electorate for Muslims and non-Muslims. Bose opposed and withdrew. The lack of any other significant support from the Congress's side caused the United Bengal plan to be discarded.[18] Still, the relatively-unknown episode marked the last attempt among Bengali Muslim and Hindu leadership to avoid partition and to live together.

After the partition of Bengal between Hindu majority West Bengal And Muslim majority East Bengal there was an influx of refugees from both the sides. An estimation suggest that before Partition, West Bengal had a population of 21.2 million, of whom 5.3 million or roughly 25 per cent were Muslim minorities, whereas East Bengal had 39.1 million people, of whom 11.4 million or roughly 30 per cent were predominantly Hindu minorities. Nearly 5 million Hindus have left Pakistan's East Bengal for India's West Bengal region and about 2 million Muslims have left India's West Bengal for Pakistan's East Bengal region immediately after Partition due to violence, riot which have occurred on both the sides by mobs.

An estimated 30 lakh Hindu refugees had entered West Bengal by 1960 as close to 7 lakh Muslims left for East Pakistan. The refugee influx in Bengal was also accompanied by the fact that the government was less prepared to rehabilitate them, resulting in huge housing and sanitation problems for the millions, most of whom were owners of large property back in East Bengal.[19]

During East Pakistan riot of 1964, it is estimated that Since 1 January of that year, according to Indian authorities, 135,000 Hindu refugees have arrived in West Bengal from East Pakistan. Also the Moslems started to migrate to East Pakistan from West Bengal. According to Pakistani figures, 43,000 Moslem refugees have arrived from West Bengal since 1 January.[20]

In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan, a large group of refugees numbering an estimated 7,235,916 have arrived from Bangladesh to India's West Bengal, Out of which nearly 80% of them are Bengali Hindus and after Independence of Bangladesh, nearly 15,21,912 people belonging to Bengali Hindu refugees have decided to stay back in West Bengal, India.[21] The Bangladeshi Hindus have been mainly settled in Nadia, North 24 parganas and South 24 parganas district of West Bengal after 1971.[22]

Gandhi in Noakhali, 1946

A massive population transfer began immediately after partition. Millions of Hindus migrated to India from East Bengal. The majority of them settled in West Bengal. A significant number even went to Assam, Tripura and other states. However, the refugee crisis was markedly different from Punjab at India's western border. Punjab witnessed widespread communal riots immediately before partition. As a result, population transfer in Punjab happened almost immediately after the partition as terrified people left their homes from both sides. Within a year the population exchange was largely complete between East and West Punjab. But in Bengal, violence was limited only to Kolkata and Noakhali. And hence in Bengal migration occurred in a much more gradual fashion and continued over the next three decades following partition.[24][25] Although riots were limited in pre-independence Bengal, the environment was nonetheless communally charged. Both Hindus in East Bengal and Muslims in West Bengal felt unsafe and had to take a crucial decision that is whether to leave for an uncertain future in another country or to stay in subjugation under the other community.[26] Among Hindus in East Bengal those who were economically better placed, particularly higher caste Hindus, left first. Government employees were given a chance to swap their posts between India and Pakistan. The educated urban upper and middle class, the rural gentry, traders, businessmen and artisans left for India soon after partition. They often had relatives and other connections in West Bengal and were able to settle with less difficulty. Muslims followed a similar pattern. The urban and educated upper and middle class left for East Bengal first.[26]

However poorer Hindus in East Bengal, most of whom belonged to lower castes like the Namashudras found it much more difficult to migrate. Their only property was immovable land holdings. Many sharecropped. They didn't have any skills other than farming. As a result, most of them decided to stay in East Bengal. However, the political climate in Pakistan deteriorated soon after partition and communal violence started to rise. In 1950 severe riots occurred in Barisal and other places in East Pakistan, causing a further exodus of Hindus. The situation was vividly described by Jogendranath Mandal's resignation letter to the then prime minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan. Mandal was a Namashudra leader and despite being a lower caste Hindu, he supported Muslim League as a protest to the subjugation of lower caste Hindus by their higher caste co-religionists.[27] He fled to India and resigned from his cabinet minister's post. Throughout the next two decades, Hindus left East Bengal whenever communal tensions flared up or relationship between India and Pakistan deteriorated, as in 1964. The situation of the Hindu minority in East Bengal reached its worst in the months preceding and during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, when the Pakistani army systematically targeted ethnic Bengalis regardless of religious background as part of Operation Searchlight.

In independent Bangladesh, state-sponsored discrimination of Hindus largely stopped. But like India, the two communities' relationship remains tense and occasional communal violence occurred, such as in the aftermath of Babri Mosque demolition. Migration to India continues to present day although now it is mostly due to economic reasons and is not limited to Hindus alone.

Though Muslims in post-independence West Bengal faced some discrimination, it was unlike the state sponsored discrimination faced by the Hindus in East Bengal. While Hindus had to flee from East Bengal, Muslims were able to stay in West Bengal. Over the years, however, the community became ghettoised and was socially and economically segregated from the majority community.[28] Muslims lag well behind other minorities like Sikhs and Christians in almost all social indicators like literacy and per capita income.[29]

Apart from West Bengal, thousands of Bihari Muslims also settled in East Bengal. They had suffered terribly in severe riots before partition. But they supported West Pakistan during Bangladesh's liberation war and were subsequently denied citizenship by Bengalis in independent Bangladesh. Most of these Bihari refugees still remain stateless.

The 1951 census in India recorded 2.523 million refugees from East Bengal. Among them 2.061 million settled in West Bengal. The rest went to Assam, Tripura and other states.[30] By 1973 their number reached over 6 million. The following table shows the major waves of refugee influx and the incident that caused it.[31][note 1]

The 1951 census in Pakistan recorded 671,000 refugees in East Bengal, the majority of which came from West Bengal. The rest were from Bihar.[30] By 1961 the numbers reached 850,000. Crude estimates suggest that about 1.5 million Muslims migrated from West Bengal and Bihar to East Bengal in two decades after partition.[32]

In Punjab, Indian Government anticipated a population transfer and was ready to take proactive measures. Land plots which were evacuated by Muslims were allotted to incoming Hindu and Sikh refugees. Government allocated substantial resources for rehabilitation of refugees in Punjab. In contrast, there was no such planning in the eastern part of the country. Neither Central nor West Bengal state Government anticipated any large-scale population exchange and no coordinated policy was in place to rehabilitate millions of homeless people. The newly independent country had few resources and the Central Government was exhausted in resettling 7 million refugees in Punjab. Instead of providing rehabilitation, the Indian Government tried to stop and even reverse the refugee influx from East Bengal. India and Pakistan signed the Nehru-Liaqut pact in 1950 to stop any further population exchange between West and East Bengal. Both countries agreed to take the refugees back and return them their property which they evacuated in their respective countries. But in practice, both countries failed to uphold it. Even after it became clear that refugees were determined not to be sent back, the governments of both countries failed to provide any significant assistance. The Government policy of East Bengal refugee rehabilitation mostly consisted of sending them to 'empty areas', mostly outside of West Bengal. One of the most controversial of such schemes was the Government's decision to settle the refugees by force in Dandakaranya, a barren plot of land in central India.[25][26]

Without the government's assistance the refugees often settled themselves. Some found jobs in factories. Many took small businesses and hawking. Numerous refugee colonies sprang up in Nadia, 24 Paraganas and Kolkata's suburbs.

The princely state of Tripura had a predominantly tribal population. But educated Bengalis were welcomed by the King and they were prominent in the state's administration in pre-independence India. But after partition, thousands of Bengali Hindus migrated to Tripura. This changed the state's demography completely. Tripura's tribes became a minority in their own homeland and also lost their land holdings. As a result, tribal insurgency began which led violent riots among tribes and Bengalis in 1980. Low scale insurgency continues to this day.[33] . This is true that many of Bengali was migrated from East Bengal side in the time of Bengal partition and Bangladesh liberation war but half of the Bengali community of Tripura live in Tripura from hundreds of years and that is proven by the 1901 census report. This report clearly mentions that Bengali and Tripura tribal numbers were almost equal.

Radcliffe's line split Bengal, which historically was always a single economic zone, single cultural and ethnic (Bengali-Hindu or Bengali-Muslim) zone, into two-halves. The two-halves were intricately connected with each other. The fertile East produced food and raw materials which the West consumed and the industrialised West produced manufactured goods which were consumed by the East. This mutually beneficial trade and exchange was severely disrupted by the partition. Rail, road and water communication routes were severed between the two. After partition, West Bengal suffered from a substantial food shortage as the fertile rice producing districts of Bengal went to the eastern half. The shortage continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. By 1959, West Bengal faced an annual food shortage of 950,000 tones. Hunger marches became a common sight in Kolkata.[34]

Prafulla Chandra Ghosh (left), the first chief minister of West Bengal, with Mohammad Ali of Bogra

Jute was the largest industry in Bengal at the time of partition. Radcliffe's line left every single jute mill in West Bengal but four-fifths of the jute producing land in East Bengal. The best quality fibre yielding breeds of jute were cultivated mostly in East Bengal. India and Pakistan initially went into a trade agreement to import raw jute from East Bengal for West Bengal's mills. However, Pakistan had plans to set up its own mills and put restrictions on raw jute export to India. West Bengal's mills faced acute shortage. The industry faced a crisis.[35] On the other hand, jute farmers in East Bengal were now without a market to sell their produce. Jute export to West Bengal suddenly became an anti-national act for Pakistan. Smuggling of raw jute shot up across the border.[36] However West Bengal rapidly increased jute production and by mid-to-late 1950s became largely self-sufficient in jute.[37] West Bengal's mills became less dependent on East Bengal for raw material. Pakistan also set up new factories to process its local produce instead of exporting to India.[38] The following table shows jute production details in two countries in 1961.[37]

West Bengal's paper and leather industry faced similar problems. The paper mills used East Bengal's Bamboo and the tanneries consumed leather, also mainly produced in East Bengal. Like jute, lack of raw material pushed these two industries into decline.[39]

Despite center and state governments' best efforts, the pressure of millions of refugees, food shortages and industrial decline put post-independence West Bengal in a severe crisis. Dr. B. C. Roy's government tried to cope up with the situation by initiating several projects. The government built irrigation networks like DVC and Mayurakshi project, the Durgapur industrial zone and the Salt Lake City. But these failed to arrest West Bengal's decline. Poverty rose. West Bengal lost its top place and lagged well behind other Indian states in industrial development. Massive political unrest, strikes and violence crippled the state throughout the next three decade after partition.[26]

Rail and road links connecting North East India to the rest of the country passed through East Bengal territory. The lines connecting Siliguri in North Bengal to Kolkata and Assam to Chittagong were severed. The whole Assam Railway was cut off from the rest of the Indian system.[40] These lines carried almost all freight traffic from these regions. The most important commodities were tea and timber. The tea industry in Assam depended on the Chittagong port to export its produce and import raw materials for the industry such as coal which was used as the fuel to dry the tea leaves. The industry was severely hit as Chittagong port went to Pakistan. Initially, India and Pakistan reached an agreement to allow cross-border transit traffic but now India had to pay a tariff. By 1950, India reconnected Assam to the rest of the country's rail network by building a 229 km meter gauge rail link through the Siliguri Corridor.[40] But now the Tea chests from Assam's gardens would have to be carried over a much longer distance to reach the Kolkata port. Exporting tea via the nearby Chittagong port was still an option but after 1965's war all transit traffic was switched off by Pakistan.[41]

East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh in 1971 but cross-border railway traffic did not resume until 2003. By the 1990s, India upgraded the Assam rail link to broad gauge right up to Dibrugarh thereby easing the traffic problem in Brahmaputra Valley region, but the southern section of this area which comprises Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Barak valley of Assam still faces serious connectivity problem. Talks between the two countries are currently underway to allow transit traffic between this area and mainland India through Bangladesh.

Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin, the first chief minister of East Bengal

At the time of partition, East Bengal had no large industry. There were few mineral resources in this region. Its economy was completely agrarian. The main produce was food grains and other crops, jute, bamboo, leather and fish. These raw materials were consumed by factories in and around Kolkata. Kolkata was the center of Bengal's economic and social development for both Hindus and Muslims. All large industries, military bases, government offices and most of the institutions of higher education were situated in Kolkata. Without Kolkata, East Bengal was decapitated.[42] It lost its traditional market for agricultural products. It also lost the Kolkata port, the premium port of the whole country at that time. East Bengal had to begin from nothing. Dhaka at that time was only a district headquarters. Government offices had to be placed inside makeshift buildings. Dhaka also faced a severe human resource crisis. The majority of high-ranking officers in British Indian administration were Hindu and they migrated to West Bengal. Often these posts had to be filled up by West Pakistani officers. Desperately poor, East Bengal soon became politically dominated by West Pakistan. Urdu was imposed upon the whole country. Economic disparities and subjugation of Bengalis by the Punjabi elite eventually led to a struggle for separation.