Partition of Bengal (1947)

The partition of Bengal in 1947 was part of the partition of India after the Mountbattenplan in a Hindu part and a Muslim part.

History

The Bengal Presidency was established in 1684 and administered by the East India Company until it was incorporated in 1858 the British Crown. The seat of government was in the fortress of Fort William in Calcutta. In 1877, Queen Victoria was given the title Empress of India, and the British declared Calcutta the capital of the " crown colony India ". On October 16, 1905, India's most populous province of Bengal (one of the most active in the liberation struggle ) divided by the British for administrative reasons - into a western part of the country including Bihar and Orissa with an overwhelming Hindu majority and an eastern part of the country, including the province of Assam with a significant Muslim majority. Indian nationalists saw this division as a means of British colonial masters to sow discord among the Bengali population, which had always formed a unity in language and history. After several violent unrest the British revised the partition of Bengal in 1912. His formal end of the Bengal Presidency was with the Montague - Chelmsford Reforms 1919 until 1921.

When in 1947 the partition of the former British colony of India was made ​​after the Mountbattenplan in a Hindu part and a Muslim part, the second partition of Bengal was again carried along almost the same boundaries as 1905. The parts onward formed the Indian state of West Bengal and the Pakistani region of East Bengal, which was renamed East Pakistan in 1958.

By the end of the following decade East Pakistan rebelled against the West Pakistani military rule. The resulting therefrom struggle for independence led to the Bangladesh war in 1971 and then establishing the independent Republic of Bangladesh.