The most imprudent decision taken in the regime of lord Curzon was the partition of a major province of India. Lord Curzon was of the opinion that it was difficult to provide effective rule by only one lieutenant governor from an administrative point of view. In order to justify his view, he made a plan to divide Bengal into two parts.
Soon the news of a proposed plan to divide Bengal spread like a wildfire in the entire Bengal and very strong protests were put forth. Lord Curzon. In the guise of partition, wanted to have a communal divide between Hindus and Muslims. In December 1903, the news of proposed division of Bengal broke and there were massive movements to protest against the proposal in the whole of Bengal only in East Bengal , there were more than 500 protest meetings held, more than 40-50 thousand pamphlets were distributed against the partition. In the same sequence, there were many massive protest meetings held in the Town Hall of Kolkata.
Despite the massive protection, British Government declared on 19th July 1905, the decision of partition of Bengal now a different method of protests was adopted i.e. to take a vow to boycott the British goods. In a historic meeting held at the Town Hill of Kolkata on 7th August 1905.
A new province was made by combining East Bengal and Assam, this included 3 districts of raj Shahi. Chatgaon and Dhaka. Muslim population outnumbered Hindu in this province. Dhaka was made the capital of this province.
Another province was created by combining west Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. This province had a majority of Hindu population. Kolkata was made Capital of this province .
The division of Bengal was not done for administrative reasons but was done for political reasons. Lord Curzon had the intention of hitting Bengal,
As soon as the news of partition of Bengal was received people observed the day as a ‘Black day’. People kept fasts. Marched on roads, observed strikes and demonstrated on roads while chanting ‘Vanda mataram’. People tied rakhis on one another’s wrist to convey that British would not succeed in their effort to divide the people and their unity During the movement, Surendra Nath Benarjee, Krishna Kumar Mishra, Prithvish Chandra rai, Anand Mohan Bose etc. addressed many public meetings to intensify the voice of protest. Thus partition of Bengal gave a new direction to national movement and Swadeshi movement.
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