The Curzonian scheme to partition Bengal took a concrete shape gradually from the time the Viceroy wrote his minute on Territorial Redistribution on 1 June, 1903 to the day the final scheme of division was dispatched to the home authorities in London for sanction on 2 February, 1905. On 19 July 1905 the Government of India announced its decision to form the new province of “Eastern Bengal and Assam”, comprising the Chittagong, Dacca and Rajshahi divisions, Hill Tippera (Tripura), Malda and Assam. The province came into existence on 16 October 1905, by breaking up Bengal and its 41.5 million Bengali speaking people.

The motive behind the plan

In the eyes of Curzon and others like him Bengal was the most vulnerable point in the entire British Indian Empire. In their view the Bengalis were “a force already formidable and certain to be a source of increasing trouble in the future”. To meet the growing nationalist challenge in eastern India Curzon and his advisors searched for an effective answers, and eventually found it in the division of the Bengali-speaking people. The official assessment (Risley) was: “Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided will pull in several different ways”. Curzon and Company were determined “to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents” to the British rule. The splitting up operations, or the arrangement for giving effect to the maxim “divide and rule”, had to be done in such a manner as to make the Bengalis suffer physical as well as mental division. This Curzon wanted to achieve by creating a situation of mutual suspicion and jealousy between the two major communities in Bengal - the Hindus and the Muslims.

Curzon and his advisors knew that their opponents in Bengal came largely from among the Hindus, who had benefited more than their Muslim brethren by taking socio-economic and educational advantage of the British rule. Majority of the Muslims being agriculturists could not manage to take a similar advantage. By shrewdly suggesting that his Government wished to stand by the Muslims in their race for advancement with the Hindus, and secure them from any threat of Hindu domination, Curzon planned to take away from Bengal those territories where Muslims were more numerous, and join these with Assam to form a new province with Dacca as its Capital. The new province, Curzon hoped, “would invest the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not enjoyed since the days of the old Mussalman viceroys and kings”. He also expected Dacca “to acquire the special character of a Provincial Capital where Mohammedan interest would be strongly represented if not predominant”. By partitioning Bengal, therefore, Curzon and his lieutenants wanted to set up Dacca as a parallel political centre to the rationalistically oriented Calcutta. To make use, of the Muslims to counter-balance the Hindus they intended to create out of Bengal a Muslim-majority province where 15 million Muslims would live with 12 million Hindus and reduce the Bengali speaking people into a minority in what would remain as Bengal (where 19 million Bengali speaking persons should be outnumbered by 35 million speakers of Hindi, Oriya and other languages). The partition mainly aimed at weakening the rising force of nationalism which was threatening the British.

The anti-partition agitation began in Bengal on the conventional moderate nationalist lines, though with a great deal of noise and angry protestations. There were sharp press campaigns against the partition scheme, numerous public meetings in opposition to it and the drafting of petitions to the Government for its annulment. Big conferences were held at the Town Hall, Calcutta, where delegates from districts came to participate and gave vent to their injured sentiments. All this was impressive, making the educated middle class’ case against the partition loud and clear. But it made no effect on the indifference of the authorities in India and Britain.

Extremist phase

The evident failure of these methods, therefore, led to a search for new techniques from the middle of 1905 and resulted in the discovery of the boycott of British goods as an effective weapon. The boycott suggestion first came from Krishnakumar Mitra’s journal Sanjivani on 3 July, 1905, and was later accepted by the prominent publicmen at the Town Hall meeting of 7 August, 1905. The discovery was followed by the calls of Rabindranath Tagore and Ramendra Sunder Trivedi, respectively, for the observance of raksha-bandhan (the tying of sacred threads among Hindus and Muslims as a mark of unity) on the day the partition was put into effect. With these measures the movement gained a new fervor.

The boycott of British products was followed by the advocacy of swadeshi or exhorting purchasers to buy indigenously produced goods as a patriotic duty.

Charkha (the spinning wheel) came to typify the popular concern for the country’s economic self-sufficiency, and the holding of swadeshi melas or fairs for selling handicrafts and other articles became a regular feature.

A considerable enthusiasm was created for undertaking swadeshi or Indian enterprises. A number of exclusively Indian industrial ventures, such as the Calcutta Potteries, Bengal Chemicals, Benge Lakshmi Cotton Mills, Mohini Mills and National Tannery were started. Various soap, match box and tobacco manufacturing establishments and oil mills, as well as financial activities, like the swadeshi banks, insurance and steam navigation companies also took off the ground under the impetus generated by the movement.

Meanwhile, the picketing before the shops selling British goods soon led to a boycott of the officially controlled educational institutions. The British threat to the student-picketers in the form of the withdrawal of grants, scholarships and affiliations of the institutions to which they belonged (through the infamous circular of 22 October, 1905 issued by Carlyle, the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal, known otherwise as the “Carlyle Circular”) and the actual imposition of fines and rustication orders on them resulted in the decision by large number of students to leave these schools and colleges of “slavery”. Boycott of schools and colleges forced the leaders of the Swadeshi movement to think in terms of running a parallel system of education in Bengal. Soon appeals were made, donations collected and distinguished persons came forward to formulate programmes for national education. These efforts resulted in the establishment of the Bengal Technical Institute (which was started on 25 July, 1906, and which later turned into the College of Engineering and Technology, Jadavpur (the nucleus of the present day Jadavpur University), the Bengal National College and School (which was set up on 15 August, 1906 with Aurobindo Ghosh as its Principal) and a number of national, primary and secondary schools in the districts.

The samitis and the political trends

For aiding the cause of national education, and for spreading the messages of boycott and swadeshi, a large number of national volunteer bodies or samitis sprang up in Calcutta and the districts. Some of the distinguished among them were the Dawn Society (named after the famous journal of the time - Dawn), the Anti-Circular Society (formed initially to protest against the “Carlyle Circular”), the Swadeshdhandhav, the Brati, the Anushilan, the Suhrid and the Sadhana samitis. These samitis preached the essentials of swadeshi and boycott, took up social work during famines and epidemics, imparted physical and moral training, organised crafts and national schools and set up arbitration committees and village societies. They encouraged folk singers and artistes (notably persons like Mukunda Das, Bhusan Das and Mufizuddin Bayati) to perform on the swadeshi themes in local dialects. These efforts served to supplement at the rural level the spate of patriotic compositions by literary stalwarts like Rabindranath Tagore, Rajanikanta Sen, Dwijendralal Roy, Girindramohini Dasi, Sayed Abu Mohammed, or playwrights like Girishchandra Ghosh, Kishirodeprasad Vidyavinode and Amritalal Bose. The ideologies of samitis ranged from secularism to religious revivalism, from moderate politics to social reformism (through constructive economic, educational and social programmes), and included within their range political extremism.

As a matter of fact several trends of political thinking were competing with one another for popular acceptance during the swadeshi days in Bengal:

i)     The moderate nationalist opinion (which was represented by persons like Surendranath Banerjee, Krishnakumar Mitra and Narendra Kumar Sen) still had abiding faith in the British sense of justice, and were not in favour of stretching the agitation too far. Its advocates actually pinned their hopes on the Liberal Morley’s appointment as Secretary of State for India in Britain. Their lukewarmness was so obviously out of tune with the prevailing militant mood against the British authorities that the moderates rapidly and conclusively lost their popularity.

ii)    The second or the social reformist creed of “constructive swadeshi” - as it was termed aimed at gathering national strength through a persistent movement of self-help and self-reliance (or Atmashakti according to Rabindranath Tagore) by organising indigenous enterprises, nationalistic educational process and setting up village upliftment societies to bridge the gulf between the rural and urban people. All those who did not see eye with the moderate nationalists supported the cause of “constructive swadeshi” in the beginning. Satishchandra Mukherji, Aswini Kumar Dutta, Rabindranath Tagore, Prafulla Chandra Roy and Nilratan Sircar were its prime adherents.

         Even though the programme recommended by the social reformists was significant in some ways, it was too arduous and unexciting to have wide appeal in these heady days. It could neither match the exuberance of political leaders like Bipinchandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh and Brahmabandhav Upadhayaya, nor satisfy the impatient, adventurous youth of Bengal. In such circumstances, the appearance of political extremist - the third trend - was natural. It found expression in periodicals like New India (edited by Bipinchandra Pal), Bande Mataram (edited by Aurobindo Ghosh), Sandhya (edited by Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya) and Yugantar (edited by Bhupendranath Dutta). The political extremists demanded self-government for India, not under British tutelage or British Paramountcy (as the moderates wished), but by severing all British connections, and wiping off all British influences.