Bengal

Bengal is the deltaic region drained by the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna river system, historically encompassing present-day West Bengal, Bangladesh, and parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura and Odisha. As Subah Bangla it was the wealthiest province of the Mughal Empire, contributing roughly a tenth of imperial revenue, and under semi-autonomous Nawabs after 1717 it became the richest commercial frontier of the subcontinent. The decisive rupture came with the Battle of Plassey (23 June 1757), where Robert Clive defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula, and the Battle of Buxar (1764), after which the Treaty of Allahabad (1765) granted the East India Company the Diwani — the right to collect revenue — of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Bengal thus became the financial and administrative cradle of British colonial rule, with Calcutta serving as the capital of British India until 1911.

Bengal's administrative history is a recurring examination theme. The Permanent Settlement of 1793, introduced by Lord Cornwallis, fixed land revenue and created the zamindari class. The Regulating Act of 1773 made the Governor of Bengal the Governor-General. The Partition of Bengal (16 October 1905), ordered by Lord Curzon ostensibly for administrative convenience but widely seen as a strategy to divide Hindus and Muslims, triggered the Swadeshi and Boycott movements; it was annulled in 1911 amid sustained agitation. Bengal also experienced the catastrophic famines of 1770 and 1943, the latter killing an estimated three million during the Second World War. The province was finally partitioned again under the Radcliffe Line of the Indian Independence Act 1947, with East Bengal becoming East Pakistan and, after the Liberation War of 1971, the sovereign state of Bangladesh.

Culturally, Bengal was the epicentre of the nineteenth-century Bengal Renaissance, producing reformers and thinkers from Raja Ram Mohan Roy (who founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828) and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar to Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Laureate, 1913) and Subhas Chandra Bose. It nurtured revolutionary nationalism through the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, and gave India schools of art such as the Bengal School led by Abanindranath Tagore. In 2026, West Bengal remains an Indian state with Kolkata as its capital, while Bangladesh is an independent member of the United Nations and SAARC; Bengali (Bangla) is the official language of both and the sixth most-spoken language globally.

For aspirants, Bengal is tested heavily across the UPSC Modern History and Art & Culture papers (GS-I), and analogously in Bangladesh BCS and Pakistan CSS history syllabi. Typical question angles include the constitutional and revenue significance of the Diwani grant, the chronology and consequences of the 1905 partition, the socio-religious reform movements of the Bengal Renaissance, and the causes of the 1943 famine (often linked to Amartya Sen's entitlement-failure thesis). Prelims frequently pose match-the-following items on Bengal-based associations, journals and reformers, while Mains questions probe how Bengal shaped Indian nationalism and the colonial economy. Mastery of precise dates and named authorities — Plassey 1757, Permanent Settlement 1793, Partition 1905 — is essential.