Partition's Ghost and the BJP's Rise

The decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led West Bengal government to observe 20 June  as Paschimbanga Diwas (West Bengal Day) from 2026 onwards is not merely an act of historical commemoration. By foregrounding 20 June 1947—the date on which the Bengal Legislative Assembly voted for creation of a Hindu-majority West Bengal—the state seeks to recover a foundational yet long-muted chapter of Bengal’s past. It is in this context that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tarakeshwar in Hooghly district, where he inaugurated several mega projects, was deeply symbolic and cathartic. Far more than a site of religious importance, Tarakeshwar was one of the ideological nerve centres of Bengal’s partition movement. At the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha session convened there on 15 April 1947, presided over by N.C. Chatterjee and guided by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the demand for a separate province for Bengali Hindus acquired a decisive political shape. The session not only represented a political resolution, it marked the crystallization of a historical sentiment that had been steadily building among Bengali Hindus since colonial times.

Yet to understand the significance of 20 June, one must move beyond legislative resolutions and elite negotiations. The creation of West Bengal was fundamentally shaped by long-suppressed social anxieties, communal violence and the traumatic politics of survival. The demand for partitioning did not emerge in a vacuum. It was rooted in the lived experience of Bengali Hindus, forged through colonial statecraft, revivalist politics of memory and an increasingly majoritarian political order. The Communal Award of 1932, Muslim League dominance in provincial politics and the gradual weakening of Hindu influence in administration, education and municipal governance produced a growing sense of insecurity among Bengali Hindus. Opposition to measures such as the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill (1939) and the Secondary Education Bill (1940) reflected more than ordinary political disagreement. Many Bengali Hindus interpreted these developments as evidence of a gradual erosion of their cultural, institutional and political influence in Bengal. The horrific communal violence of 1946 transformed this anxiety into existential fear. The Great Calcutta Killings, followed by massacres in Noakhali and Tippera, not only weakened Bengal’s fabled syncretic civic order, but also shattered whatever confidence remained in the possibility of secure coexistence under Muslim League rule. The question was no longer about representation or political rights alone, but about survival, dignity and homeland. This subterranean Hindu sentiment has often remained absent from mainstream nationalist historiography.

Yet it was precisely this emotional reservoir of fear, humiliation, dispossession and primordial anxiety that generated mass support for Bengal’s partition. Petitions demanding partition poured in from clubs, bar associations, traders’ organizations, district committees, and local associations across Bengal, intensifying communal tensions and straining civic order. These were not elite conspiracies engineered from above for partisan gains. They reflected powerful bottom-up pressures from ordinary Bengali Hindus who increasingly came to believe that remaining within Pakistan would render them a permanently insecure minority. In short, the movement for West Bengal went beyond the question of territorial division. It was a struggle for security, belonging and the preservation of identity. Within this charged political climate, contemporary political discourse often emphasizes the role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Hindu Mahasabha in the creation of West Bengal. Mookerjee played a pivotal role in mobilizing opposition to both Bengal’s inclusion in Pakistan and the United Bengal scheme advanced by Huseyn Suhrawardy and Sarat Chandra Bose. However, one of the central paradoxes of this history is that the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, responding to intense local pressures, also aligned with the Hindu Mahasabha in supporting Bengal’s partition. This convergence was politically extraordinary, bringing together two ideologically opposite forces around a common objective of preventing Bengal’s incorporation into Pakistan. Joint mobilization occurred through public meetings, coordinated resolutions, and political campaigns across Calcutta and Delhi. The Jatiya Banga Mahasammelan at Singhee Park in Calcutta on 10 May 1947 attended by leaders from both the Congress Party and the Hindu Mahasabha symbolized this rare collaboration. 

Prominent Congress leaders such as Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, Surendra Mohan Ghosh and Lakshmi Kanta Maitra worked alongside Dr. Mookerjee to generate pressure for the creation of West Bengal. This intriguing aspect of the history of Bengal also reveals a deeper paradox. While Bengal Congress leaders were acutely aware of the existential anxieties gripping Bengali Hindus, the national Congress leadership often appeared detached from Bengal’s ground realities. Delhi viewed Bengal’s partition primarily through an administrative and constitutional lens, failing to comprehend the depth of insecurity and the fear of annihilation unleashed by the violence in Noakhali and Calcutta. This disconnect between provincial realities and national leadership would have long-term consequences. In many ways, Congress’s inability to engage seriously with refugees, demographic anxieties, and identity-based concerns continues to shape its troubled relationship with contemporary West Bengal politics. In other words, the creation of West Bengal cannot be understood solely through either administrative or communal arithmetic. It must also be situated within the broader intellectual traditions of Bengal’s revivalist nationalism.

The Indian Renaissance in Bengal, often described as the Bengal Renaissance, produced multiple ideological currents. Alongside liberal and secular reformism emerged a powerful revivalist current represented by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and later nationalist thinkers who emphasized Hindu civilizational selfhood. These ideas also found political expression in revolutionary organizations such as the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, which fused cultural nationalism with militant anti-colonial activism. This strand of Bengal Renaissance viewed Bengal not merely as a territorial unit but as a sacred civilizational space shaped by Hindu historical memory, most memorably expressed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in Anandamath. Concepts such as Matribhumi, Shakti, and cultural self-preservation deeply influenced Bengali bhadralok political consciousness. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Hindu Mahasabha inherited this intellectual tradition. Recognizing Bengal’s deeply rooted syncretic traditions, their demand for West Bengal was framed not as crude majoritarian politics but as the preservation of a civilizational homeland where Bengali Hindus could live with dignity, security and harmony.

In this sense, Bengal’s partition movement formed part of a larger ideological continuum from Bengal’s cultural renaissance to organized Hindu political assertion in postcolonial India. Unlike in Punjab, the partition did not end in 1947. It remained an unfinished historical process. And the refugee crisis further exacerbated this. Millions of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan and later Bangladesh entered West Bengal, profoundly reshaping the state’s demography, economy and political culture. Tragically, their trauma remained largely absent from mainstream liberal and Marxist political discourse. The memory of displacement survived instead in refugee colonies, oral histories and family narratives while remaining marginal to the official historiography of the nation. No wonder refugee politics remains central to contemporary Bengal. Illegal immigration, citizenship, and religious demography evoke intense emotional responses because they are not merely contemporary policy questions. They are deeply tied to inherited historical trauma. In short, the BJP’s rise in West Bengal, especially in recent elections, cannot be fully understood without recognizing this subterranean historical memory. Thus, the creation of West Bengal cannot be understood as a settled chapter of 1947. As political psychologist Ashis Nandy reminds us, partition did not merely divide territory; it also divided memories, cultures and selves. Nowhere is this rupture more visible than in Bengal. The partition of Bengal survives not only in archives and official histories but in memory, inherited trauma, refugee consciousness and contemporary political contestation. It continues to shape Bengal’s electoral battles and debates over identity, citizenship, borders and belonging. In that sense, Bengal’s partition is not merely history; it remains an unfinished and a living political reality in the consciousness of Bengalis today. 

Ashwani Kumar, Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Souradeep Banerjee, Department of Political Science, Temple University, Philadelphia. 

(views expressed are personal)