Bengal Divided: The Unmaking of a Nation (1905-1971)

In 1905, the people of Bengal rejected the British-directed division of their land and fought against it. Yet just four decades later, in 1947, they asked for a partition between Muslim majority and Hindu majority areas. The roots of alienation of two communities that spoke the same language went deep. Was it because socially the Bengali Hindu Bhadralok looked down upon their Muslim neighbours? Or that the great intellectual awakening in Bengal in the nineteenth century left the Muslim community largely untouched? Why did things come to such a pass that when the British partitioned the province in 1905, while Kolkata protested vigorously, there was celebration in Dhaka? The author brings alive the personalities that dominated politics in the years that followed, throwing new light on historical facts and events in the turbulent pre-independence period. He dissects the process by which two separate identities were forged, culminating in the creation of East Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971. As the tale unfolds, so do the roles of personalities such a Chittaranjan Das, Subhas Chandra Bose, Nazrul Islam, Fazlul Huq, H.S. Suhrawardy and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. The underlying sentiment of the book is a desire to see–even if political separation continues-much greater interaction in terms of common culture, shared history and geography and economic complementarity. By offering insights into the Bengali psyche, Bengal Divided holds out hope for a less fractious future.