In 1905 Bengal partition, the making of Bangladesh

The roots of Bangladesh go back in the 1905 partition of Bengal.

- Nayana Goradia

Ostensibly an administrative measure to provide relief to an overburdened state, it laid down the footprint of a longer partition that changed the history of the subcontinent.

The idea of partitioning Bengal was neither new nor Lord Curzon's idea (Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905), as is generally believed to be. Nor was it part of a sinister plot to solidify British rule. For more than a quarter of a century before Curzon's arrival, there prevailed a belief that Bengal was too large under a single administration. In 1874, the province of Assam was stripped off from Bengal. The idea of transferring the Chittagong Division and giving a port to the Eastern province constantly cropped up but was never implemented.

When the scheme was suggested to Curzon's predecessor Lord Elgin, he had sat on it, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie. But the ever-energetic Curzon was quick to pick it up, debating whether he should transfer out from Bengal parts of Orissa and the Ganjam district of Madras. To his surprise, he found that the bureaucrats in his department had diametrically opposite plans.

Theirs was to leave Orissa within Bengal but find a way to divide the province in a way that would "weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule". The rise of the bhadralok had begun to cause apprehensions. Police commissioner Andrew Fraser reported that Dhaka and Mymensingh had become "hot beds of purely Bengali movement that was seditious in character", and he instigated Curzon towards their amputation from Bengal.