Although the British Raj partitioned India in haste, Bengal's political tensions had been building for decades.
Since the first partition of Bengal in 1905, known as Bongobhongo, the Bengali middle class, comprising both Hindu and Muslim individuals, had taken an active role in politics.
Following the Government of India Act of 1935, which granted provinces of colonial India greater autonomy, Bengal became even more politically active.
By the 1940s, Bengal was undergoing a period of significant political and social transformation. The fight for independence was at its peak. In rural areas, peasants were organising movements, some led by communists, to demand better lives.
Among them, one of the most important was the Tebhaga movement, which called for sharecroppers to retain two-thirds of their harvest instead of giving most of it to zamindars. At the same time, the All India Muslim League (ML), which supported creating a separate Muslim state called Pakistan, was gaining influence.
"For Abba, things were different. It was a crucial choice for many to join the Muslim League; for Abba – and many others like him – the League did not represent a symbol of 'communalism', but a platform of religious-national identity offering autonomy to the oppressed Muslims of India. A historical shift had taken place in the years between my adolescence and my father's; state, nation, and identities had emerged, and everything attached with them attained new meanings. Is it possible to trace this shift of meaning?" — Sayeed Ferdous, Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh
Land transfer and loss of peasant rights
Before colonial rule, land in Bengal was rarely sold to pay debts, and cultivators who cleared land were recognised as owners. The East India Company's infamous permanent settlement changed this, creating a middleman system called zamindars.
The Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 left the transfer of occupancy rights to "local custom", which allowed wealthy non-cultivators, especially the bhadralok, to acquire peasant land, which was often by force or legal tricks.
Scholars like MN Srinivas argued that pre-colonial India was a caste-based society. But during the colonial period, a new class-based society emerged, the bhadraloks.
The bhadralok class marked a major change in the region's urban social order. This class, often associated with refinement and influence, was primarily composed of educated professionals, lawyers, teachers, doctors, engineers, and civil servants, who benefited from new educational and occupational opportunities under colonial administration.
Landowning elites occupied the upper ranks of the bhadralok class, distinguished by their sophisticated lifestyles, distinct values, and active roles in art, culture, and politics.
Muslim bhadraloks emerged in the early 1920s, shaped by the political and social changes of Bengal. Many wealthy Muslim agricultural landowners, and newer generations that were educated in the Western education system, stepped into this space.
By the early 1900s, bhadralok, mahajans, and rich farmers (jotdars) were taking land from smallholders, turning many into sharecroppers (bargadars) or landless labourers (din-mojurs). The bhadraloks, both Hindu and Muslim, resisted giving sharecroppers legal rights, arguing that sharecropping helped poor families, and the bhadraloks' presence was needed for "cultural leadership".
In reality, this process pushed many peasants off their land, especially in fertile areas like Noakhali and Tippera (now Cumilla), making them more vulnerable, especially during the Bengal famine of 1943.
The Bengal Tenancy Act and the Krishak Praja Party's role
After the election, in 1938, the first cabinet of AK Fazlul Huq's Krishak Praja Party (KPP) passed the Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Act in the Bengal Legislative Assembly to protect peasants from rising taxation. Since the implementation of the permanent settlement, zamindars could raise taxes freely, trapping peasants in debt. The new law froze rent increases for 10 years and cancelled recent decrees or contracts that had raised them.
The KPP, supported mainly by Muslim peasants, presented itself as the rural poor's voice. Huq's government also passed laws limiting mahajans' power and reducing debt. The act did not end the zamindari system, but it gave quick relief to millions of peasants and built KPP's rural base.
The Tebhaga movement and peasant power
At the same time, the Tebhaga movement, led by the Communist Party of India (CPI) and its peasant wing, the Kisan Sabha, demanded that sharecroppers keep two-thirds of their crops.
This challenged the zamindari system directly. The movement was strongest in northern and eastern Bengal, which were mostly Muslim-majority areas, with a significant number of Bengali Hindus and indigenous communities like the Santals and Mundas.
Leaders like Ila Mitra lived with peasants, building trust and organising them against zamindars. By the mid-1940s, Tebhaga had become a major political force, rivalling both Congress and the Muslim League.
Muslim League's rural strategy and communal framing
Until the mid-1940s, the ML had little presence in villages. It was mainly urban, led by elite Ashraf Muslims, while KPP and the communists were already rooted in rural struggles. The ML avoided radical land reform to keep Muslim zamindars on its side, but it needed peasant support.
Its solution was to turn class struggles into religious ones. Unlike in British India's Western frontier, in Bengal, the Muslim League claimed that Pakistan would be such a land where peasants would be free from taxation.
The Tebhaga Movement and KPP already preached among peasants that zamindars, jotdars, and mahajans are the enemy of the peasants, and a significant number of them in East Bengal were upper caste Hindus.
Instead of promising land reform, the League focused on Hindu zamindars as the main enemy, shifting the fight from "peasants versus landlords" to "Muslims versus Hindus".
Communal violence and the 1946 election victory
In 1946–47, major communal riots, such as the Great Calcutta Killings, the Noakhali riots, and the Bihar riots, decisively deepened Hindu-Muslim divisions.
British lawyer Radcliffe had never set foot in British India before this assignment. Yet he was given only five weeks to divide millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs between the two new dominions
In his analysis of this period, scholar Sayeed Ferdous details how the cycle of violence began with the "Great Calcutta Killing" on 16 August 1946, sparked by the Muslim League's "Direct Action Day."
He describes the violence that ensued as both spontaneous and highly organised, involving grassroots mobilisation that appeared to be legitimised by political leaders. It quickly spread from students to ordinary citizens.
Ferdous observes a similar pattern of calculated brutality emerging two months later in the Noakhali riots in East Bengal.
There, he notes, perpetrators systematically isolated villages to prevent outside interference, while local authorities reportedly sided with their communities. According to his account, the violence was savage, featuring targeted attacks, the extortion of wealthy Hindus, forced conversions, and the widespread abduction and violation of women.
This horrific violence shattered any remaining semblance of inter-communal trust and solidified the belief that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist, making Partition seem inevitable.
As a direct result, unifying peasant movements like Tebhaga and the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, which had previously cut across religious lines, began to weaken.
For many Muslim peasants, the idea of Pakistan transformed from a political concept into a desperate search for protection from such violence. The Muslim League adeptly channelled this fear to secure the rural Muslim vote, leading to its landslide victory in the 1946 Bengal Legislative Assembly election.
At the time of Partition, this left Bengal as the only province where the Muslim League held power alone.
Ignored movements, bhadralok departure, and League contradictions
The ML focused only on Muslim peasants, ignoring other rural struggles like the Tanka movement and the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, which had united Hindus and Muslims against both colonial and landlord rule.
During Bengal's first partition in 1905, the Hindu bhadraloks stood against the coloniser's decision; they declared it as Bongomatar Ongocched, the severing of Mother Bengal's limb. Interestingly, during the second partition, they advocated for the severing of the same Mother Bengal.
Many Hindu bhadraloks supported partition to remain in Hindu-majority India, leaving Eastern Bengal despite deep economic ties there, and that vacuum was soon filled by the Muslim bhadralok.
The ML used peasant grievances to gain support, but never challenged Muslim landlord power. Its vision of Pakistan promised dignity for Muslims but left the colonial land system intact.
After 1947, many peasants were disappointed that real land reform never came. This betrayal wiped out the Muslim League from East Bengal in the 1954 East Bengal Legislative Assembly Election.
Religion over reform: how the League won and what it left behind
The League succeeded by turning peasant anger into a religious cause, promising unity and justice for Muslims without threatening elite interests. The Second World War, the famine, land loss, and communal violence helped it overshadow class-based movements and dominate the 1946 elections.
The Pakistan movement in Bengal drew on both economic and religious issues. While the ML highlighted real grievances, it offered no deep reforms in East Bengal. Religious identity became the unifying force, and economic change was left behind.
Pakistan was created, but many peasants' dreams of true economic justice went unfulfilled.
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