A History of India, Third Edition

THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

The Dravidian south, however, was not stirred by any movements of
this kind. Nationalism remained restricted to the small circles of liberal
intellectuals. A number of factors contributed to this situation: the scarcity
of urban centres of communication; the plurality of languages; the fact that
the south contained several important princely states (Hyderabad, Mysore,
Travancore) which provided no scope for nationalist politics; and the social
distance between Brahmins and the rest of the population. Although the
Brahmins of the south did turn towards nationalism, consciousness of their
isolation tended to make them very moderate liberals. Northern liberal
nationalists found in them faithful allies against the radicalism of a
younger generation of national revolutionaries.

The partition of Bengal and the rise of extremism

Radical nationalism was stimulated by the partition of Bengal in 1905.
Originally the partition of this vast province—which at that time still
included Assam, Bihar and Orissa, in addition to Bengal proper—was
mooted for purely administrative reasons. But when Viceroy Lord Curzon
finally executed this administrative act, it was obviously meant to strike at
the territorial roots of the nationalist elite of Bengal. The province was
split right down the middle, east Bengal and Assam formed one province,
and west Bengal, Bihar and Orissa another. Lord Curzon did not hesitate
to point out to the Muslims of eastern Bengal that he conceived of this
province as Muslim. The Bengali Hindus, on the other hand, noted with
dismay that they were in a minority in the new province of Bengal. They
mounted a furious agitation in which political terrorism became a
prominent feature as young ‘Extremists’ took to the cult of the pistol and
the bomb. The repartition of Bengal in 1911 showed that the
administrative needs could have been met in a different way to begin with:
Bengal was once more amalgamated and Bihar and Orissa formed a new
province. Had the British refrained from splitting Bengal in the first place,
they would have saved themselves a great deal of trouble. Terrorism now
spread in Bengal and increased with every future instance of repression;
without this first partition of Bengal, Indian nationalism might have
retained more of its liberal features. The Indian National Congress was
greatly embarrassed by the partition of Bengal. Gopal Krishna Gokhale,
who was the Congress president in 1905, had met leading Liberals in
London shortly before that year’s Congress, which was held at Benares
(Varanasi). He hoped for an advance in Indian constitutional reforms after
a victory of the Liberals in the elections and he had even toyed with the
idea of contesting a seat on a Liberal ticket himself in order to promote
Indian political progress from the floor of the House of Commons. If
Indian nationalism now took a radical turn due to the partition of Bengal,
this could greatly reduce the chances for a constitutional reform. But