Bengali freedom struggle

The Bengali freedom struggle refers to various movements and wars over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries aimed at liberating the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal from colonial rule and later from ruling establishments located outside historic Bengali territory. During the 20th Century, Bengali nationalism developed and emerged as a popular political ideology glorifying the Bengali people as a distinctive cultural and linguistic nation.

In 1757, Siraj ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal and his French allies suffered an overwhelming defeat while fighting against the British East India Company in the Battle of Plassey. The defeat paved the way for Company rule in Bengal and eventually British colonial authority across South Asia over the next 190 years.

During the 19th Century, the first organized movements against colonial rule in the British Indian Empire began appearing in Bengal. The period also witnessed an intellectual awakening in the region, that came to be known as the Bengal renaissance; which continued well into the 20th Century and was driven by celebrated Bengali intellectuals including Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. As a result of the period, Bengal became the prime center for social reform movements, political activism and revolutionary activities during The INDIAN independence movement.

The region was engulfed in turmoil following its first partition in 1905. Protests by the educated Bengali middle class led to the annulment of the partition in 1911. In 1946, as the end of British colonial rule in South Asia approached, Muslim League leader Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Congress leader Sarat Chandra Bose floated a proposal of an independent and undivided Bengal. However, both their parties and the British rejected their proposal. In 1947, British India was partitioned into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. Hindu majority districts of Bengal compromised the Indian state of West Bengal while the Muslim majority districts compromised the Pakistani province of East Bengal, later named East Pakistan.

In Pakistan, there was growing disillusionment with the dominance of the military, bureaucratic and feudal elite of the country. Cultural and linguistic nationalism began to emerge in the province that was separated from the rest of Pakistan by 1500 kilometers of Indian territory. Wide spread discrimination against Bengalis in national politics and the armed forces and the huge economic disparity that the province endured converged with the surging Bengali nationalist sentiment, leading to calls for independence.

The Bengali freedom struggle took a decisive organized nature during the Bengali Language Movement that saw its climax in 1952. Subsequently, Bengali nationalist forces mobilized the masses of province against the political and military establishment of the Pakistani state. A string of civil disobedience movements political crisis eventually culminated in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 that led to the establishment of Bangladesh, which is GeneRally considered as a modern day Bengali nation-state.

Bengali Freedom movements

The following contains a list of Bengali struggles aimed against colonial rule

• Battle of Plassey
• United Bengal

The following contains a list of the organized Bengali movements driven by Bengali nationalism.

• Bengali Language Movement
• Six point movement
• Bangladesh Liberation War

See also

• This time the struggle is for our freedom
• Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
• Subhash Chandra Bose
• Chittaranjan Das
• Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani
• A. K. Fazlul Huq
• Bangladesh Awami League

External links

• Banglapedia. History of Bangladesh
• Library of Congress (1988). A Country Study: Bangladesh