British Bengal from 1757 to 1947: Impacts

• Mohammad Morad Hossain Khan

• Assistant Professor
• General Education Department
 Arrival of the Europeans to India
• Portuguese East India Company, 1628
• Dutch East India Company, 1602
• French East India Company, 1664
• English East India Company, 1600
 The
route
followed
in Vasco
da
Gama's
first
voyage
(1497 -
1499)
The World
 The (British) East India Company
• The East India Company (EIC), originally chartered
as the Governor and Company of Merchants of
London trading into the East Indies, and often
called the Honourable East India Company, was
an English and later (from 1707) British joint-stock
company and megacorporation formed for
pursuing trade with the East Indies but which
ended up trading mainly with only the Indian
subcontinent, North-west frontier
province and Balochistan.
The (British) East India Company (cont.)
• The East India Company traded mainly
in cotton, silk, indigo
dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium.

• The Company was granted a Royal

Charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, making it the
oldest among several similarly formed
European East India Companies.
Robert Clive
 British Policy: Divide and Rule

• Bangla
• Punjab
• Kashmir
 Permanent Settlement 1793
• Permanent Settlement Concluded by the Cornwallis
administration in 1793, Permanent Settlement was a
grand contract between the EAST INDIA COMPANY
government and the Bengal landholders (ZAMINDARs and
independent talukdars of all denominations).
General Lord Cornwallis (1786-1793)
 Partition of Bengal (1905)
• The government announced the idea for partition
in January 1904. The idea was opposed by Henry
John Stedman Cotton, Chief Commissioner of
Assam 1896-1902.
• The Partition of Bengal in 1905 was made on
October 16 by Viceroy Curzon. The former
province of Bengal was divided into two new
provinces "Bengal" (comprising western Bengal,
Bihar and Odisha) and "East Bengal and Assam"
with Dacca (Dhaka) being the capital of the latter.
 Background/Causes of the Partition
• The province of Bengal had an area of
189,000 miles2 and a population of nearly 8 crores
(80 million). Eastern Bengal was almost isolated
from the western part by geography and poor
communications. It was hard to manage a
province as large as Bengal with this large
population.
Partition of Bengal (1905)
 Annulment/Reaction of the partition
• Partition sparked a major political crisis along
religious lines. Hindu resistance exploded as the
Indian National Congress began the swadeshi
movement that included boycotting British goods,
terrorism, and diplomatic pressure.
• The Muslims in East Bengal hoped that a separate
region would give them more control over for
education and employment, but they instead lost
ground.
• In 1906, Rabindranath Tagore wrote Amar Shonar
Bangla as a rallying cry for proponents of annulment
of Partition; in 1972, it became the national anthem
of Bangladesh.
 Partition of Bengal (1947)
• The Partition of Bengal in 1947, part of the Partition of
India, was a religiously based partition that divided the
British Indian province of Bengal between India and
Pakistan. Predominantly Hindu West Bengal became a
province of India, and predominantly Muslim East Bengal
became a province of Pakistan.
• The partition, with the power transferred to Pakistan and
India on 14–15 August 1947, was done according to what
has come to be known as the "3 June Plan" or
"Mountbatten Plan". India’s freedom on 15 August 1947
ended over 150 years of British rule in the Indian
subcontinent.
• East Bengal, which became a province of Pakistan according
to the provisions set forth the Mountbatten Plan, later
became the independent country of Bangladesh after the
1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
In 1947 Clement Attlee selected Mountbatten as
Viceroy of India and he oversaw the creation of the
independent states of India and Pakistan.
 Results/Impacts of the British Rule in Bangla
Political
• Bangali nationalism developed in 19th century.
• Bangla was divided into two: East & West.
• Political Parties were formed, i.e. the Muslim
League on 30 December 1906, the Krishak Proja
Party founded in 1936 and so on.
• Dhaka became the capital of East Bangla.
• East Bangla became a part of Pakistan in 1947.
• Monarchy was abolished during the British Period.
 Economic Impacts
• Rich or affluent Bangla became one of the poorest
regions in the world. Backbone of the economy of
Bangla was broken down in different ways like
forceful indigo cultivation, destroying muslin
cottage industry and so on.
• Huge tax or revenues were imposed on the
farmers and local business classes in Bangla.
• Two famines occurred in Bangla, one in 1770-71
and another one in 1943-44 during the Second
World War (1939-1945) in which about 3 million
people died.
• Communication system like railway developed a
lots.
 Social Impacts
• The middle class developed in Bangla.
• Hindu-Muslim relations became fragile or bitter.
• Due to poverty, begging, prostitution, cheating and so
on increased very much.
• Bentinck turned to social reforms and abolished the
practice of SATI, i.e. burning of Hindu windows on
funeral pyres of their dead husbands, a long standing
practice among the Hindus who regarded it as an act
of conjugal piety. Bentinck made the practice illegal
and suppressed it firmly though many orthodox
Hindus regarded it as an interference with their
religion.
• Bentinck suppressed child sacrifice and infanticides.
 Cultural Impacts
• English becomes one of the main languages in
Bangla.
• Western education i.e. school, college (Dhaka College
established in 1841) or university (Dhaka University
estd in 1921) started developing in Bangla.
• Under Lord Bentinck, schools were opened in many
places and a medical college was established in 1835
at Calcutta to train Indian doctors. Superstitions
started reducing in medical sector.
• Western cultural influence through media like Radio
and television became very dominant in Bangla.
 Cultural Impacts (cont.)
• Bengal Renaissance started in the 19th century.
• Bengali literature started booming under the
scholars like Ram Mohan Roy, Iswar Chandra
Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-
1894), and later Saratchandra Chatterjee (1876-
1938)and so on.
• With a specific interest in educational reform, the
Tagore family was very influential and active in
the Bengal Renaissance. Rabindranath Tagore
became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for
Literature, awarded to him in 1913 for his English
translation of poems titled the Gitanjali.
Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of India,
from 1828 to 1835.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (22 May 1772 –
27 September 1833)
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (26 Sept. 1820 –
29 July 1891)
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
(27 June 1838– 8 April 1894)
Nawab Abdul Latif (1828–1893),
educator and social worker
Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928),
 Jagadish Chandra Bose
(30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937)
Rabindranath Tagore (born on May 7, 1861,
death on 7 August 1941 (aged 80)
Kazi Nazrul Islam, National Poet of Bangladesh (1899-1976)