Two traits become evident at this stage. First the growing formation of a loose alliance of interest between the A s h r a f (the old aristocracy) and the A t r a f (the more
indigent functional groups, rural peasantry and urban workers) poised against the State authority (the British) and the
16
burgeoning Hindu Middle Class, the b h a d r a l o k ) and second, the power of religion as the means of rousing Muslims of all classes.
The simmering discontent among Bengali Muslims that
had begun to foster the development of separatist consciousness
See Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'Communal Riots and Labour:' Bengal's Jute Mill- hands in the 1890s', Past and Present (forthcoming).
15
Addy and Azad, Blackburn, op.cit., p . 104.
16 . .
Contemporary historians and sociologists have assigned a Weberian
'status group' to the powerful bhadralok, who, unrelated to the processes of production, do not strictly constitute a class. J.H. Broomfield has described them as being 'distinguishable by many aspects of their
behaviour - their deportment, their speech, their dress, their style of housing, their eating habits, their occupations and their associations - and quite as frequently by the cultural values and their sense of
propriety'. Elite Conflict in a Plural Society (University of California Press, 1968), pp.5-6. John McGuire sees them as a composite group of middle class and rentier class of Calcutta who continued to retain strong residual ties with their own pre-capitalist past. He notes the absence of any industrial bourgeoisie among them as the paradoxy of the colonial
situation demanded that the latter was found in Britain only. (Development and Underdevelopment: Calcutta and the Bhadralok, 1857-1885\ A.N.U.
Conference Paper, December 1979), p . 11. However, S.N. Mukherjee has argued that to describe the bhadralok as a mere status group or even a category would be to ignore the economic changes and social mobility in nineteenth century Bengal. Mukherjee would go a step further and call the
bhadralok a Class. S.N. Mukherjee, 'Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta 1815-38' in Edmund Leach and S.N. Mukherjee (eds), Elites in South Asia
was yet unarticulated in any major way except for the
occasional local 'uprisings'; but this incipient 'community consciousness ' was brought a step closer to nationalism by yet another decision of the Colonial Power, the partition of Bengal (1905) that gave it a territorial content.
The Partition of Bengal (1905) ostensibly had a two fold objective, 'reinvigoration of Assam and relief of
17
Bengal'. Eastern Bengal was hived off and joined to Assam creating a separate province. It was hoped that the reduction of Bengal's size would make it more governable and that
Assam's acquisition of the port of Chittagong in East Bengal would invigorate the rather neglected province, which
together with its now larger size and population would make 1 o
it attractive for the Covenanted Civil Servants.
Curzon was certainly motivated by his desire to curb the rising power of the Calcutta b h a d r a l o k. A senior British official, H.H. Risley, recorded that
Bengal united is power. Bengal divided will pull in different ways. That is what the Congress leaders feel; their
apprehensions are perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the scheme ... one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule. 19
17
Minute by Curzon, June 1903, para 49, cited in John R. Mcl-c^Lane, 'The Decision to partition Bengal in 1905', The Indian Economic and
Social History Review (July 1965), p . 223.
1 8 \ 1
McjLane, *biCl ., pp. 22 2-22 3.
19 Quoted in Amales Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge: India between
28
Apart from dividing Bengal another way of minimising
b h a d r a l o k influence was to encourage the Muslims by giving them a separate Province of their own. In fact Curzon himself urged Nawab Salimullah of Dacca that
by means of their numerical strength and superior culture, the Mussa.lmans would have the preponderating voice in the province that would be created and that would invest the Mussalmans of Eastern Bengal with a unity which they had not enjoyed since the days of
the old Mussalmans and k i n g s .20
A period of good relations between the Raj and the Muslim leaders in Bengal began and the latter encouraged the establishment of the All-India Muslim League with its stipulation of loyalty to the Government.21 The anti-British stirrings of the 19th Century among the Muslims were now
22
calmed.
The Partition of 1905 was then the first significant step towards the recognition of the separate identity of the Bengali Muslims. It accorded a more definite shape to their growing 'community-consciousness1 by investing it with
20
Quoted in Abul Hayat, Mussalmans o f Bengal (Calcutta: Zahed Ali, 1966), p . 18.
21 . . . . .
See Abdul Hamid, Musltm Separatism in India: A B rie f Survey 1858-1947 (Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1967), p . 78.
22
This period of inproved relations between the British and the Muslim community also saw a more intense development of the process of what Professor D.A. Low has described as the 1neo-darbari' politics, which involved, on the part of the British 'a multiplicity of initiatives to associate non-official Indian "notables" with the workings of the higher level of the Raj so as to extend the linkages through which Indian
society could be controlled1. D.A. Low (ed), Congress and the Raj (London: Arnold-Heinemann, 1977), p . 5. This process largely induced the growth of a selective leadership among the Muslims which resulted in a spell of harmonious relationship between the Muslim elites and the British, that continued even beyond, as will be seen shortly, the rescindment of the Partition of Bengal.
a territorial content, which found ultimate fruition six and a half decades later in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
The Partition provoked convulsive outbursts from the b h a d r a l o k who often reached back into their mythological
past and drew inspiration from K a l i the goddess of destruction, which obviously did not find sympathy with the Bengali
Muslims. The resultant polarisation politicised and
galvanised Muslim opinion. An added impetus towards commun- alism was given by such journals as L a i I s h t i h a r ('Red
23