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167-503: The Partition of India , which divided Bengal along religious lines, established the borders of the Muslim-majority area of East Bengal. The province existed during the reign of two monarchs, George VI and Elizabeth II ; and three governors-general , Muhammad Ali Jinnah , Khawaja Nazimuddin and Ghulam Muhammad . Its provincial governors included a British administrator and several Pakistani statesmen. Its chief ministership

334-556: A mother goddess , who stood variously for Bengal, India, and the Hindu goddess Kali . The unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcutta's English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. The religious stirrings of the slogan and the political outrage over the partition were combined as young men, in such groups as Jugantar , took to bombing public buildings, staging armed robberies, and assassinating British officials. Since Calcutta

501-713: A Muslim India and a non-Muslim India". Lala believed in partition in response to the riots against Hindus in Kohat, North-West Frontier Province which diminished his faith in Hindu-Muslim unity. Hindu Mahasabha leader Vinayak Damodar Savarkar 's Hindutva ideology had embryonic form of a two-nation theory since 1920s. Savarkar in 1937 during the 19th session of the Hindu Mahasabha in Ahmedabad supported two-nation theory where he said "there are two nations in

668-500: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from

835-540: A boycott of British goods. Sporadically, but flagrantly, the protesters also took to political violence , which involved attacks on civilians. The violence was ineffective, as most planned attacks were either prevented by the British or failed. The rallying cry for both types of protest was the slogan Bande Mataram ( Bengali , lit: 'Hail to the Mother'), the title of a song by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , which invoked

1002-546: A de jure Pakistan, which may make the League more responsible. Freedom is coming. We have 75 to 80 percent of India, which we can make strong with our genius. The League can develop the rest of the country. Following Gandhi's denial and Congress' approval of the plan, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari represented Congress on the Partition Council, with Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar representing

1169-596: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises

1336-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where

1503-611: A divided India or a destroyed India." On that morning, armed Muslim gangs gathered at the Ochterlony Monument in Calcutta to hear Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy , the League's Chief Minister of Bengal, who, in the words of historian Yasmin Khan, "if he did not explicitly incite violence certainly gave the crowd the impression that they could act with impunity, that neither the police nor the military would be called out and that

1670-600: A group of "Young Party" Muslims from the United Provinces (UP), most prominently, the brothers Mohammad and Shaukat Ali , who had embraced the Pan-Islamic cause. It gained the support of a young lawyer from Bombay, Muhammad Ali Jinnah , who later rose to leadership roles in the League and the Indian independence movement. In later years, as the full ramifications of the pact unfolded, it was seen as benefiting

1837-692: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of

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2004-608: A large share of political spoils for the Indian Muslims with the withdrawal of British rule, others believed the main political objective was the preservation of the cultural entity of Muslim India. The two-nation theory was a founding principle of the Pakistan Movement (i.e., the ideology of Pakistan as a Muslim nation-state in South Asia), and the partition of India in 1947. Theodore Beck , who played

2171-564: A major role in founding of the All-India Muslim League in 1906, was supportive of two-nation theory. Another British official supportive of the theory includes Theodore Morison . Both Beck and Morison believed that parliamentary system of majority rule would be disadvantageous for the Muslims. Arya Samaj leader Lala Lajpat Rai laid out his own version of two-nation theory in 1924 to form "a clear partition of India into

2338-682: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,

2505-612: A mass nationalist movement of millions. In August 1942, Congress launched the Quit India Resolution , asking for drastic constitutional changes which the British saw as the most serious threat to their rule since the Indian rebellion of 1857 . With their resources and attention already spread thin by a global war, the nervous British immediately jailed the Congress leaders and kept them in jail until August 1945, whereas

2672-593: A new province with a Muslim majority would directly benefit Muslims aspiring to political power. World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. 1.4 million Indian and British soldiers of the British Indian Army would take part in the war, and their participation would have a wider cultural fallout: news of Indian soldiers fighting and dying with British soldiers, as well as soldiers from dominions like Canada and Australia, would travel to distant corners of

2839-558: A plan". He said that if the Muslims were not granted a separate Pakistan then they would launch "direct action". When asked to be specific, Jinnah retorted: "Go to the Congress and ask them their plans. When they take you into their confidence I will take you into mine. Why do you expect me alone to sit with folded hands? I also am going to make trouble." The next day, Jinnah announced 16 August 1946 would be " Direct Action Day " and warned Congress, "We do not want war. If you want war we accept your offer unhesitatingly. We will either have

3006-490: A population of 19 million people in the year 1800 A.D, of which 10.716 million people were followers of Hinduism representing a majority of about 56.4% of the region's population, while 7.961 million adheres to the Muslim faith, constituting 41.9% of the region's population as 2nd largest community. The smaller number of 323,000 people followed Buddhism , Animism and Christianity , together presenting around 1.7% of

3173-411: A quicker transfer of power. When Lord Mountbatten formally proposed the plan on 3 June 1947, Patel gave his approval and lobbied Nehru and other Congress leaders to accept the proposal. Knowing Gandhi's deep anguish regarding proposals of partition, Patel engaged him in private meetings discussions over the perceived practical unworkability of any Congress-League coalition , the rising violence, and

3340-523: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in

3507-477: A separate country were thus conceded. The Congress 's position on unity was also taken into account while making Pakistan as small as possible. Mountbatten's formula was to divide India and, at the same time, retain maximum possible unity. Abul Kalam Azad expressed concern over the likelihood of violent riots, to which Mountbatten replied: Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ),

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3674-732: A separate homeland. Tensions heightened while the Muslim League was unable to form ministries outside the two provinces of Sind and Bengal, with the Congress forming a ministry in the NWFP and the key Punjab province coming under a coalition ministry of the Congress, Sikhs and Unionists. The British, while not approving of a separate Muslim homeland, appreciated the simplicity of a single voice to speak on behalf of India's Muslims. Britain had wanted India and its army to remain united to keep India in its system of 'imperial defense'. With India's two political parties unable to agree, Britain devised

3841-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in

4008-581: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,

4175-634: A substantial rural buffer to support Chittagong , a major city and port; advocates for Pakistan forcefully argued to the Bengal Boundary Commission that the only approach was through Chittagong. As a result of these mandates, the Mountbatten Plan and Radcliffe Line established East Bengal as a province of the newly formed Dominion of Pakistan in August 1947. Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin , a former prime minister of Bengal ,

4342-455: A transfer of populations (i.e., the total removal of Hindus from Muslim-majority areas and the total removal of Muslims from Hindu-majority areas) was a desirable step towards a complete separation of two incompatible nations that "cannot coexist in a harmonious relationship." Opposition to the theory has come from two sources. The first is the concept of a single Indian nation , of which Hindus and Muslims are two intertwined communities. This

4509-464: A two-hour speech in English, in which were laid out the arguments of the two-nation theory , stating, in the words of historians Talbot and Singh, that "Muslims and Hindus...were irreconcilably opposed monolithic religious communities and as such, no settlement could be imposed that did not satisfy the aspirations of the former." On the last day of its session, the League passed what came to be known as

4676-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are

4843-500: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it

5010-547: Is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali

5177-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since

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5344-434: Is a founding principle of the modern, officially- secular Republic of India . Even after the formation of Pakistan, debates on whether Muslims and Hindus are distinct nationalities or not continued in that country as well. The second source of opposition is the concept that while Indians are not one nation, neither are the Muslims or Hindus of the subcontinent, and it is instead the relatively homogeneous provincial units of

5511-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It

5678-707: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,

5845-666: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use

6012-451: Is followed by 991,000 people (0.6 percent of population), Christianity is followed by 495,000 people (0.3 percent of the population) and tiny micro-scopic minority of 165,000 people (0.1 percent of population) follow other religions most being tribal and Animists . 25°13′09″N 90°59′20″E  /  25.2192°N 90.9889°E  / 25.2192; 90.9889 Partition of India The Partition of India in 1947

6179-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of

6346-490: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of

6513-555: Is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It

6680-508: Is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America,

6847-509: The 1857 Rebellion and the Second Anglo-Afghan War . In the three decades since the 1871 census, Muslim leaders across North India had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups. The Arya Samaj , for example, had not only supported the cow protection movement in their agitation, but also—distraught at the census' Muslim numbers—organized "reconversion" events for

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7014-509: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played

7181-691: The Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861, but its sovereignty had been left undefined. In 1947, Sikkim became an independent kingdom under the suzerainty of India. The Maldives became a protectorate of the British crown in 1887 and gained its independence in 1965. In 1905, during his second term as viceroy of India , Lord Curzon divided the Bengal Presidency —the largest administrative subdivision in British India—into

7348-675: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including

7515-477: The Cabinet Mission Plan . Through this mission, Britain hoped to preserve the united India which they and the Congress desired, while concurrently securing the essence of Jinnah's demand for a Pakistan through 'groupings.' The Cabinet mission scheme encapsulated a federal arrangement consisting of three groups of provinces. Two of these groupings would consist of predominantly Muslim provinces, while

7682-474: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of

7849-794: The East Bengal Legislative Assembly . Between 1905 and 1911, a province called Eastern Bengal and Assam existed in the region as part of the British Indian Empire . The All India Muslim League was founded in the British province in 1906. The All India Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940, which envisaged the creation of sovereign states in the Muslim-majority areas of eastern and northwestern British India. The League won elections in Bengal in 1946, receiving its largest mandate in

8016-546: The House of Commons , with an offer of dominion status to India at the end of the war in return for the Congress's support for the war effort. Not wishing to lose the support of the allies they had already secured—the Muslim League, Unionists of Punjab, and the princes—Cripps's offer included a clause stating that no part of the British Indian Empire would be forced to join the post-war dominion. The League rejected

8183-579: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c.  1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in

8350-444: The Lahore Resolution , sometimes also "Pakistan Resolution," demanding that "the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in the majority as in the north-western and eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." Though it had been founded more than three decades earlier, the League would gather support among South Asian Muslims only during

8517-568: The Minto-Morley Reforms , and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims , Sikhs , Indian Christians , Anglo-Indians , and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and imperial legislative councils. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms offered Indians the most significant opportunity yet for exercising legislative power, especially at

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8684-524: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In

8851-540: The People's Republic of Bangladesh . The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947 . The change of political borders notably included the division of two provinces of British India , Bengal and Punjab . The majority Muslim districts in these provinces were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim to India. The other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army ,

9018-612: The Royal Indian Navy , the Royal Indian Air Force , the Indian Civil Service , the railways , and the central treasury. Self-governing independent Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively. The partition caused large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration between the two dominions. Among refugees that survived, it solidified

9185-626: The United Provinces (where Hindus attacked Muslims), and on to Rawalpindi in March 1947 in which Hindus and Sikhs were attacked or driven out by Muslims. In London, the president of the India League , V. K. Krishna Menon , nominated Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma as the only suitable viceregal candidate in clandestine meetings with Sir Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee. Prime Minister Attlee subsequently appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten as India's last viceroy , giving him

9352-607: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"

9519-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script

9686-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong

9853-457: The "Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946". The next day, Hindus struck back, and the violence continued for three days in which approximately 4,000 people died (according to official accounts), both Hindus and Muslims. Although India had outbreaks of religious violence between Hindus and Muslims before, the Calcutta killings were the first to display elements of " ethnic cleansing ". Violence

10020-589: The "official majority" in unfavourable votes. Although departments like defence, foreign affairs, criminal law, communications, and income-tax were retained by the viceroy and the central government in New Delhi, other departments like public health, education, land-revenue, local self-government were transferred to the provinces. The provinces themselves were now to be administered under a new dyarchical system, whereby some areas like education, agriculture, infrastructure development, and local self-government became

10187-568: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of

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10354-494: The 1920s, being surrounded by Labour statesmen who were affiliated with Krishna Menon and the India League , and for years had supported it. He now took charge of the government position and gave the issue the highest priority. A Cabinet Mission was sent to India led by the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence , which also included Sir Stafford Cripps , who had visited India four years before. The objective of

10521-652: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as

10688-422: The 64 reserved Muslim seats. In the Muslim-majority regions of the Punjab and Bengal regional parties outperformed the League. In Punjab, the Unionist Party of Sikandar Hayat Khan , won the elections and formed a government, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal , which lasted five years. In Bengal, the League had to share power in a coalition headed by A. K. Fazlul Huq ,

10855-421: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by

11022-401: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,

11189-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,

11356-416: The British and their allies were now in conflict with the Ottoman Empire, doubts began to increase among some Indian Muslims about the "religious neutrality" of the British, doubts that had already surfaced as a result of the reunification of Bengal in 1911, a decision that was seen as ill-disposed to Muslims. In the Lucknow Pact, the League joined the Congress in the proposal for greater self-government that

11523-587: The British government decided to end British Raj in India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948. Attlee wrote later in a memoir that he moved quickly to restart the self-rule process because he expected colonial rule in Asia to meet renewed opposition after the war from both nationalist movements and the United States, while his exchequer feared that post-war Britain could no longer afford to garrison an expansive empire. Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee had been deeply interested in Indian independence since

11690-425: The Center weak. On 10 July 1946, Nehru gave a "provocative speech," rejected the idea of grouping the provinces and "effectively torpedoed" both the Cabinet mission plan and the prospect of a United India. After the Cabinet Mission broke down, in July 1946, Jinnah held a press conference at his home in Bombay. He proclaimed that the Muslim League was "preparing to launch a struggle" and that they "have chalked out

11857-400: The Congress itself rallied around the symbolism of Kali. It was not lost on many Muslims, for example, that the bande mataram rallying cry had first appeared in the novel Anandmath in which Hindus had battled their Muslim oppressors. Lastly, the Muslim elite, including Nawab of Dacca , Khwaja Salimullah , who hosted the League's first meeting in his mansion in Shahbag , were aware that

12024-520: The Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in the third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history,

12191-424: The Muslim League was now free for the next three years to spread its message. Consequently, the Muslim League's ranks surged during the war, with Jinnah himself admitting, "The war which nobody welcomed proved to be a blessing in disguise." Although there were other important national Muslim politicians such as Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad , and influential regional Muslim politicians such as A. K. Fazlul Huq of

12358-480: The Muslim League, which functioned under state patronage, organized "Deliverance Day" celebrations (from Congress dominance) and supported Britain in the war effort. When Linlithgow met with nationalist leaders, he gave the same status to Jinnah as he did to Gandhi , and, a month later, described the Congress as a "Hindu organization." In March 1940, in the League's annual three-day session in Lahore , Jinnah gave

12525-557: The Muslim League. Late in 1946, the Labour government in Britain , its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, with power being transferred no later than June 1948. With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten , advanced the date, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947,

12692-479: The Muslim masses of future Hindu domination. The view that Muslims would be unfairly treated in an independent India dominated by the Congress was now a part of the public discourse of Muslims. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Lord Linlithgow , Viceroy of India , declared war on India's behalf without consulting Indian leaders, leading the Congress provincial ministries to resign in protest. By contrast

12859-480: The Muslim minority elites of provinces like UP and Bihar more than the Muslim majorities of Punjab and Bengal. At the time, the "Lucknow Pact" was an important milestone in nationalistic agitation and was seen so by the British. Secretary of State for India Montagu and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford presented a report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter. After more discussion by

13026-546: The Muslim-majority province of Eastern Bengal and Assam and the Hindu-majority province of Bengal (present-day Indian states of West Bengal , Bihar , Jharkhand , and Odisha ). Curzon's act, the partition of Bengal —which had been contemplated by various colonial administrations since the time of Lord William Bentinck , though never acted upon—was to transform nationalist politics as nothing else before it. The Hindu elite of Bengal, many of whom owned land that

13193-755: The Punjab border between North India and Pakistan. Jinnah made his sole visit to East Bengal as governor general in 1948. During a speech to students in Dacca University , he resisted demands to make Bengali a federal language. His refusal sparked fierce protests among East Bengalis who comprised the majority of Pakistan's population. The proposal for Urdu as the sole national language met with strong opposition in East Bengal, where Urdu considered rather alien, especially in light in Bengali's rich literary heritage. When Jinnah died in 1948, Nazimuddin became

13360-470: The Second World War. In August 1940, Lord Linlithgow proposed that India be granted dominion status after the war. Having not taken the Pakistan idea seriously, Linlithgow supposed that what Jinnah wanted was a non-federal arrangement without Hindu domination. To allay Muslim fears of Hindu domination, the "August Offer" was accompanied by the promise that a future constitution would consider

13527-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on

13694-499: The belief that safety lay among co-religionists. In the instance of Pakistan, it made palpable a hitherto only imagined refuge for the Muslims of British India. A poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan in 2011 shows that an overwhelming majority (92%) of Pakistanis held the view that separation from India was justified in 1947. The migrations took place hastily and with little warning. It is thought that between 14 million and 18 million people moved, and perhaps more. Excess mortality during

13861-530: The central and provincial legislatures. The Muslim League favoured this "communal award" as it had the potential to weaken the Hindu caste leadership. Mahatma Gandhi , who was seen as a leading advocate for Dalit rights, went on a fast to persuade the British to repeal these separate electorates. Ambedkar had to back down when it seemed Gandhi's life was threatened. Two years later, the Government of India Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy, increasing

14028-640: The confidence of a majority in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan . The governor general later dissolved the constituent assembly itself. In the case of Federation of Pakistan v. Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan , the speaker of the dissolved constituent assembly challenged the governor general's decision in the Sindh High Court. The case proceeded to the apex court- the Federal Court of Pakistan- where Justice M. Munir ruled in favour of

14195-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in

14362-455: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in

14529-604: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on

14696-478: The disemboweling of pregnant women, the slamming of babies' heads against brick walls, the cutting off of the victim's limbs and genitalia, and the displaying of heads and corpses. While previous communal riots had been deadly, the scale and level of brutality during the Partition massacres were unprecedented. Although some scholars question the use of the term ' genocide ' concerning the partition massacres, much of

14863-428: The displacement of any of its inhabitants, whether they were Sikhs or Hindus. The theory is also a source of inspiration to several Hindu nationalist organizations, with causes as varied as the redefinition of Indian Muslims as non-Indian foreigners and second-class citizens in India, the expulsion of all Muslims from India , the establishment of a legally Hindu state in India, prohibition of conversions to Islam , and

15030-700: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In

15197-553: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around

15364-519: The federal government's responsibilities limited to only foreign affairs and defense. King Saud of Saudi Arabia sent a plane to bring Huq to a meeting with the monarch. The New York Times published an article claiming Huq wanted independence for East Bengal. While visiting Calcutta and New Delhi, Huq was received by Indian leaders. Barely a few months into office, Huq was dismissed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad due to allegations against of Huq of inciting secession. After Governor General's rule

15531-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,

15698-488: The first flights between Karachi and Dacca . The airline later evolved into Pakistan International Airlines . The Chittagong Tea Auction was established in 1949. As a result of the Bengali language movement, East Bengal was a center of Bengali cultural activities. The University of Dacca was a hotspot of political thought. The East Bengal Regiment was formed on 15 February 1948 following Pakistan's independence and transition from post British rule. The infantry of

15865-628: The form of the 1946 elections with the Congress winning 91 percent of the vote among non-Muslim constituencies, thereby gaining a majority in the Central Legislature and forming governments in eight provinces, and becoming the legitimate successor to the British government for most Hindus. If the British intended to stay in India the acquiescence of politically active Indians to British rule would have been in doubt after these election results, although many rural Indians may still have acquiesced to British rule at this time. The Muslim League won

16032-422: The globe and Islam is the official state religion of Bangladesh by Article (2A). The population of Bangladesh is 165.2 million as per 2022 census report, of which majority of 150.49 million people (91.1 percent of Bangladeshis ) follow Islam , Hinduism is followed by 13.05 million people (7.9 percent of population) as second-largest religion, Buddhism being third-most followed religion and

16199-426: The goddess of small pox, Oladevi , goddess of cholera, Manasa , goddess of snakes and are recognised by Hindus and Muslims of Bangladesh both alike. Religion in Bangladesh ( 2022 census ) As of 21st century, the present region of East Bengal exists in form of sovereign Bangladesh today and is now an Islamic country both demographically and constitutionally as the country holds fourth-largest Muslim population in

16366-718: The government and parliament in Britain, and another tour by the Franchise and Functions Committee to identify who among the Indian population could vote in future elections, the Government of India Act of 1919 (also known as the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms ) was passed in December 1919. The new Act enlarged both the provincial and Imperial legislative councils and repealed the Government of India's recourse to

16533-670: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form

16700-401: The governor general of Pakistan. The conservative Muslim League leader Nurul Amin succeeded Nazimuddin as chief minister. According to some sources, Amin had strained relations with the federal government, including Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Governor General Khawaja Nazimuddin. Historians have noted that Amin's government was not strong enough to administer the provincial state; it

16867-592: The governor general. Justice A. R. Cornelius expressed dissent and supported Speaker Khan. The dismissal of the prime minister and assembly was one of the first major blows to democracy and the rule of law in the Pakistani Union. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah called for Pakistan's constituent assembly to convene in Dacca as East Bengal was home to the majority of Pakistan's population. Orient Airways , owned by an East Bengal-based industrialist, launched

17034-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,

17201-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –

17368-402: The incorporation of the enclaves of French India into India during the period 1947–1954; and the annexation of Goa and other districts of Portuguese India by India in 1961. Nepal and Bhutan , having signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states , were not a part of British-ruled India. The Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a princely state after

17535-522: The infamous trial of three senior officers − Shah Nawaz Khan , Prem Sahgal , and Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon − of Subhas Chandra Bose 's defeated Indian National Army (INA) who stood accused of treason . Now as the trials began, the Congress leadership, although having never supported the INA, chose to defend the accused officers and successfully rescued the INA members. British rule had lost its legitimacy for most Hindus, and conclusive proof of this came in

17702-494: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,

17869-523: The language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal

18036-547: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in

18203-481: The leader of the Krishak Praja Party . The Congress, on the other hand, with 716 wins in the total of 1585 provincial assemblies seats, was able to form governments in 7 out of the 11 provinces of British India . In its manifesto, Congress maintained that religious issues were of lesser importance to the masses than economic and social issues. The election revealed that it had contested just 58 out of

18370-659: The leaders of the Indian National Congress , it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians. The 1916 Lucknow Session of the Congress was also the venue of an unanticipated mutual effort by the Congress and the Muslim League, the occasion for which was provided by the wartime partnership between Germany and Turkey. Since the Ottoman Sultan, also held guardianship of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca , Medina , and Jerusalem , and, since

18537-551: The leftist Krishak Praja Party in Bengal, Sikander Hyat Khan of the landlord-dominated Punjab Unionist Party , and Abd al-Ghaffar Khan of the pro-Congress Khudai Khidmatgar (popularly, "red shirts") in the North West Frontier Province , the British were to increasingly see the League as the main representative of Muslim India. The Muslim League's demand for Pakistan pitted it against the British and Congress. The 1945 United Kingdom general election

18704-766: The legislative assembly. In the 1954, the United Front coalition resoundingly defeated the Muslim League with a landslide majority. The coalition included the Awami League, the Krishak Praja Party , the Democracy Party and Nizam-e-Islam . The esteemed lawyer A. K. Fazlul Huq , popularly known as the Sher-e-Bangla (Lion of Bengal), became chief minister. Huq established the Bangla Academy and called for greater provincial autonomy. He wanted

18871-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between

19038-453: The main: the Hindus and the Muslims, in India". Muhammad Ali Jinnah undertook the ideology that religion is the determining factor in defining the nationality of Indian Muslims in 1940. He termed it as the awakening of Muslims for the creation of Pakistan. However, Jinnah opposed Partition of Punjab and Bengal, and advocated for the integration of all Punjab and Bengal into Pakistan without

19205-469: The majority of the Muslim vote as well as most reserved Muslim seats in the provincial assemblies, and it also secured all the Muslim seats in the Central Assembly. Recovering from its performance in the 1937 elections, the Muslim League was finally able to make good on the claim that it and Jinnah alone represented India's Muslims and Jinnah quickly interpreted this vote as a popular demand for

19372-415: The ministry would turn a blind eye to any action they unleashed in the city." That very evening, in Calcutta, Hindus were attacked by returning Muslim celebrants, who carried pamphlets distributed earlier which showed a clear connection between violence and the demand for Pakistan, and directly implicated the celebration of Direct Action Day with the outbreak of the cycle of violence that would later be called

19539-460: The mission was to arrange for an orderly transfer to independence. In February 1946, mutinies broke out in the armed services, starting with RAF servicemen frustrated with their slow repatriation to Britain. These mutinies failed to turn into revolutions as the mutineers surrendered after the Congress and the Muslim League convinced the mutineers that they won't get victimised. In early 1946, new elections were held in India. This coincided with

19706-501: The much earlier separation of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from the rule of the EIC in 1796. Other political entities or transformations in the region that were not a part of the partition were: the political integration of princely states into the two new dominions; the annexation of the princely states of Hyderabad and Junagadh by India; the dispute and division of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir between India, Pakistan, and later China;

19873-592: The national level, they constituted only 10% of the total adult male population, many of whom were still illiterate. In the provincial legislatures, the British continued to exercise some control by setting aside seats for special interests they considered cooperative or useful. In particular, rural candidates, generally sympathetic to British rule and less confrontational, were assigned more seats than their urban counterparts. Seats were also reserved for non- Brahmins , landowners, businessmen, and college graduates. The principle of "communal representation," an integral part of

20040-486: The nationalist leaders, including Nehru , Valllabh Bhai Patel and J B Kripalini on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan, and Abdul Rab Nishtar representing the Muslim League, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs , agreed to a partition of the country in stark opposition to Gandhi's opposition to partition. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to

20207-605: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of

20374-653: The new Pakistan Army was made up exclusively of men from the western part of the country. It was consequently necessary to raise a regiment in the east. A total of eight battalions were raised. Paramilitary forces like the East Pakistan Rifles and East Pakistan Ansars were established, Ansars were deployed to the border areas in 1948 during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948 to prevent crimes and smuggling. Religions in East Bengal (1800 AD before partition) East Bengal (present-day-Bangladesh) had

20541-532: The new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The communal violence that accompanied the publication of the Radcliffe Line , the line of partition, was even more horrific. Describing the violence that accompanied the partition of India, historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh wrote: There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims. The catalogue of horrors includes

20708-492: The number of voters in India to 35 million. More significantly, law and order issues were for the first time devolved from British authority to provincial governments headed by Indians. This increased Muslim anxieties about eventual Hindu domination. In the 1937 Indian provincial elections , the Muslim League turned out its best performance in Muslim-minority provinces such as the United Provinces , where it won 29 of

20875-419: The offer, seeing this clause as insufficient in meeting the principle of Pakistan. As a result of that proviso, the proposals were also rejected by the Congress, which, since its founding as a polite group of lawyers in 1885, saw itself as the representative of all Indians of all faiths. After the arrival in 1920 of Gandhi, the pre-eminent strategist of Indian nationalism, the Congress had been transformed into

21042-490: The office of prime minister . Mountbatten remained in New Delhi for 10 months, serving as the first governor-general of an independent India until June 1948. Gandhi remained in Bengal to work with the new refugees from the partitioned subcontinent. At a press conference on 3 June 1947, Lord Mountbatten announced the date of independence – 14 August 1947 – and also outlined the actual division of British India between

21209-517: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming

21376-466: The period of the partition is usually estimated to be around one million. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that affects their relationship to this day. The term partition of India does not cover the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the separation of Burma (Myanmar) from the British Raj in 1937 or

21543-438: The preserve of Indian ministers and legislatures, and ultimately the Indian electorates, while others like irrigation, land-revenue, police, prisons, and control of media remained within the purview of the British governor and his executive council. The new Act also made it easier for Indians to be admitted into the civil service and the army officer corps. A greater number of Indians were now enfranchised, although, for voting at

21710-704: The promotion of conversions or reconversions of Indian Muslims to Hinduism. There are varying interpretations of the two-nation theory, based on whether the two postulated nationalities can coexist in one territory or not, with radically different implications. One interpretation argued for sovereign autonomy, including the right to secede, for Muslim-majority areas of the Indian subcontinent, but without any transfer of populations (i.e., Hindus and Muslims would continue to live together). A different interpretation contends that Hindus and Muslims constitute "two distinct and frequently antagonistic ways of life and that therefore they cannot coexist in one nation." In this version,

21877-707: The province. In May 1946, Rohingya Muslim leaders met with Muhammad Ali Jinnah , and asked for a formal annexation of the Mayu region . Two months later, the North Arakan Muslim League also asked Jinnah to annex the region. Jinnah refused, saying he could not interfere with Burma's internal matters. Proposals were also made to the Burmese government but they were rejected. The District of Sylhet in Assam Province also voted to reunite with

22044-640: The provincial level, though restricted by the still limited number of eligible voters, by the small budgets available to provincial legislatures, and by the presence of rural and special interest seats that were seen as instruments of British control. The two-nation theory is the assertion, based on the former Indian Muslim ruling class' sense of being culturally and historically distinct, that Indian Hindus and Muslims are two distinct nations . It argued that religion resulted in cultural and social differences between Muslims and Hindus. While some professional Muslim Indian politicians used it to secure or safeguard

22211-460: The purpose of welcoming Muslims back to the Hindu fold. In the United Provinces , Muslims became anxious in the late-19th century as Hindu political representation increased, and Hindus were politically mobilized in the Hindi–Urdu controversy and the anti-cow-killing riots of 1893. In 1905, Muslim fears grew when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to leadership positions in the Congress, and

22378-528: The reforms and reorganization policies of Prime Minister of Pakistan Mohammad Ali of Bogra , East Bengal was renamed as East Pakistan on 14 October 1955. East Bengal existed when Pakistan did not have a written constitution. Instead, the Pakistani courts relied on English common law and the Objectives Resolution . In 1953, Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin's government was dismissed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad, in spite of enjoying

22545-587: The region's population. Bangladesh's capital Dhaka city name is said to have been derived from Dhakeshwari the patron goddess of the city, whose shrine is located in Ramna of Dhaka city. In Bangladesh, there's exist a blending culture of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, folk religion, deities and practices. Worship exchanges takes place at temples and mosques and religious folk music gatherings (especially at Vaishnavite gatherings and among Muslim Sufis). Folk deities recognized by both Hindus and Muslim have included Shitala ,

22712-541: The rest of East Bengal, and the Muslim League's campaign played a great role in facilitating this. A plebiscite was held which resulted in joining Pakistan. However, a large part of Sylhet's Karimganj subdivision was barred due to Abdul Matlib Mazumdar 's delegation. The Chittagong Hill Tracts , which had a 97% non-Muslim population (mostly Buddhist ), was awarded to Pakistan , by the Boundary Commission, due to it being inaccessible to India and to provide

22879-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent

23046-633: The subcontinent which are true nations and deserving of sovereignty ; the Baloch have presented this view, Sindhi , and Pashtun sub-nationalities of Pakistan and the Assamese and Punjabi sub-nationalities of India. In 1933, Choudhry Rahmat Ali had produced a pamphlet, entitled Now or Never , in which the term Pakistan , 'land of the pure,' comprising the Punjab , North West Frontier Province (Afghania) , Kashmir , Sindh , and Balochistan ,

23213-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where

23380-562: The supposed merits of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Except for a few honourable exceptions, Muslim officials from the top down to the chaprasis ( peons or servants) are working for the League. The communal veto given to the League in the Mission Plan would have blocked India's progress at every stage. Whether we like it or not, de facto Pakistan already exists in the Punjab and Bengal. Under the circumstances, I would prefer

23547-526: The task to oversee British India's independence by 30 June 1948, with the instruction to avoid partition and preserve a united India, but with adaptable authority to ensure a British withdrawal with minimal setbacks. Mountbatten hoped to revive the Cabinet Mission scheme for a federal arrangement for India. But despite his initial keenness for preserving the centre, the tense communal situation caused him to conclude that partition had become necessary for

23714-418: The third grouping would be made up of the predominantly Hindu regions. The provinces would be autonomous, but the centre would retain control over the defence, foreign affairs, and communications. Though the proposals did not offer independent Pakistan, the Muslim League accepted the proposals. Even though the unity of India would have been preserved, the Congress leaders, especially Nehru, believed it would leave

23881-706: The threat of civil war. At the All India Congress Committee meeting called to vote on the proposal, Patel said: I fully appreciate the fears of our brothers from [the Muslim-majority areas]. Nobody likes the division of India, and my heart is heavy. But the choice is between one division and many divisions. We must face facts. We cannot give way to emotionalism and sentimentality. The Working Committee has not acted out of fear. But I am afraid of one thing, that all our toil and hard work of these many years might go waste or prove unfruitful. My nine months in office have completely disillusioned me regarding

24048-407: The total 482 Muslim seats, and of these, it won in only 26. In UP, where the Congress won, it offered to share power with the League on condition that the League stops functioning as a representative only of Muslims, which the League refused. This proved to be a mistake as it alienated Congress further from the Muslim masses. Besides, the new UP provincial administration promulgated cow protection and

24215-479: The total population, reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This would result in the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca in December 1906. Although Curzon by now had returned to England following his resignation over a dispute with his military chief, Lord Kitchener , the League was in favor of his partition plan. The Muslim elite's position, which

24382-493: The two new dominions in what became known as the "Mountbatten Plan" or the "3 June Plan". The plan's main points were: The Indian political leaders had accepted the Plan on 2 June. It could not deal with the question of the princely states , which were not British possessions, but on 3 June Mountbatten advised them against remaining independent and urged them to join one of the two new Dominions. The Muslim League 's demands for

24549-509: The use of Hindi. The Muslim elite in UP was further alienated, when they saw chaotic scenes of the new Congress Raj, in which rural people who sometimes turned up in large numbers in government buildings, were indistinguishable from the administrators and the law enforcement personnel. The Muslim League conducted its investigation into the conditions of Muslims under Congress-governed provinces. The findings of such investigations increased fear among

24716-744: The views of minorities. Neither the Congress nor the Muslim League were satisfied with the offer, and both rejected it in September. The Congress once again started a program of civil disobedience . In March 1942, with the Japanese fast moving up the Malayan Peninsula after the Fall of Singapore , and with the Americans supporting independence for India, Winston Churchill , then Britain's prime minister, sent Sir Stafford Cripps , leader of

24883-677: The violence was manifested with genocidal tendencies. It was designed to cleanse an existing generation and prevent its future reproduction." Mountbatten administered the independence oath to Jinnah on the 14th, before leaving for India where the oath was scheduled on the midnight of the 15th. On 14 August 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor-General in Karachi . The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now Dominion of India , became an independent country, with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi , Jawaharlal Nehru assuming

25050-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on

25217-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory

25384-476: The word Muslim, fashioned itself as secular and courted votes from East Bengal's large non-Muslim minorities. The language movement reached a climax in 1952. During the unrest, the police shot dead four student activists. This raised more opposition in the region to the Muslim League. Leading politicians in West and East Pakistan called for Amin's resignation. In subsequent provincial elections, Amin lost his seat in

25551-542: The world both in newsprint and by the new medium of the radio. India's international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s. It was to lead, among other things, to India, under its name, becoming a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and participating, under the name, "Les Indes Anglaises" (British India), in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp . Back in India, especially among

25718-568: Was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what

25885-515: Was campaigned for by Tilak and his supporters; in return, the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in the provincial legislatures as well as the Imperial Legislative Council. In 1916, the Muslim League had anywhere between 500 and 800 members and did not yet have its wider following among Indian Muslims of later years; in the League itself, the pact did not have unanimous backing, having largely been negotiated by

26052-486: Was coined for the first time. It did not attract political attention and, a little later, a Muslim delegation to the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Constitutional Reforms gave short shrift to the idea of Pakistan, calling it "chimerical and impracticable." In 1932, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald accepted Ambedkar 's demand for the " Depressed Classes " to have separate representation in

26219-486: Was completely under the control of the central government of Nazimuddin. His government did not enjoy enough power and lacked vision, imagination, and initiatives. In 1949, Maulana Bhashani led left-wing elements in the Muslim League to break away and form the Awami Muslim League . The new party was joined by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy , a former prime minister of British Bengal. The new party later dropped

26386-616: Was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of

26553-464: Was held by leading Bengali politicians. East Bengal was the most populous and cosmopolitan province in the dominion . It was a hub of political movements, including the Bengali language movement and pro-democracy groups. It was dissolved in 1955 and replaced by East Pakistan during the One Unit Scheme implemented by Prime Minister Mohammad Ali of Bogra . The provincial legislature was

26720-447: Was leased out to Muslim peasants in East Bengal, protested strongly. The large Bengali-Hindu middle-class (the Bhadralok ), upset at the prospect of Bengalis being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas , felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness . The pervasive protests against Curzon's decision predominantly took the form of the Swadeshi ('buy Indian') campaign, involving

26887-483: Was not confined to the public sphere, but homes were entered and destroyed, and women and children were attacked. Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, in September, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru as united India's prime minister. The communal violence spread to Bihar (where Hindus attacked Muslims), to Noakhali in Bengal (where Muslims targeted Hindus), to Garhmukteshwar in

27054-409: Was reflected in the League's position, had crystallized gradually over the previous three decades, beginning with the 1871 Census of British India , which had first estimated the populations in regions of Muslim majority. For his part, Curzon's desire to court the Muslims of East Bengal had arisen from British anxieties ever since the 1871 census, and in light of the history of Muslims fighting them in

27221-428: Was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions : India and Pakistan . The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India , and the Dominion of Pakistan—which at the time comprised two regions lying on either side of India—is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and

27388-468: Was the first chief minister of East Bengal after partition. Nazimuddin was a senior leader of the Muslim League and a close confidante of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah . Sir Frederick Chalmers Bourne was the first governor of East Bengal. Partition resulted in making many Hindus to leave East Bengal while Muslims from different parts of the Indian subcontinent migrated to East Bengal. The East–West Bengal border did not see as much violence as seen in

27555-423: Was the imperial capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became known nationally. The overwhelming, predominantly-Hindu protest against the partition of Bengal, along with the fear of reforms favouring the Hindu majority, led the Muslim elite of India in 1906 to the new viceroy Lord Minto , asking for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded representation in proportion to their share of

27722-521: Was withdrawn in 1954, Abu Hussain Sarkar briefly served as chief minister, before Governor General's rule was again imposed. He started the construction of Central Shaheed Minar . Governor General's rule was withdrawn in June 1955. Ataur Rahman Khan of the Krishak Sramik Party was the last chief minister. His government declared 21 February, the anniversary of the language movement, a public holiday. He later resigned on 30 August 1956 over inflation of food grains and subsequent food shortages. As part of

27889-440: Was won by the Labour Party . A government headed by Clement Attlee , with Stafford Cripps and Lord Pethick-Lawrence in the Cabinet, was sworn in. Many in the new government, including Attlee, had a long history of supporting the decolonization of India. The government's exchequer had been exhausted by the Second World War and the British public did not appear to be enthusiastic about costly distant involvements. Late in 1945,

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