United Bengal

What if, during the partition of India, the United Bengal proposal had been accepted? How would such a country have been? What impact would it have on the region and on the world?
 
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Srihari14

Banned
Well, North East of India is just disconnected, what about the region?
But in all honesty, A united Bengal would be just a larger stronger Bangladesh, it would also be huge in terms of population
however it needs to sort out religious issues that might arise
 

Srihari14

Banned
North East India would become a part of Bangladesh
Nope, Assamese and Northeastern Tribals do not want Cultural Invasion from Bengalis, so it would be impossible, also, you would require a really old POD, as by 1945, communal tensions were too high
 
If partition had not happened and Bengal had remained a single province then it would have been the most populous state in India pushing U.P. to the second place. There would be calls for the division of the state from areas far away from Calcutta which would have naturally become the capital of the state. The demands for separate states would rise from north and east parts of the state.
 
Nope, Assamese and Northeastern Tribals do not want Cultural Invasion from Bengalis, so it would be impossible, also, you would require a really old POD, as by 1945, communal tensions were too high

Sorry for taking days to answer but perhaps the Assamese and the Northeastern Tribals could have been given autonomy in some kind of federal system. This could also have solved tensions between Muslims and Hindus in Bengal. What do you think?
 
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Srihari14

Banned
Sorry for taking days to answer but perhaps the Assamese and the Northeastern Tribals could have been given autonomy in some kind of federal system. This could also have solved tensions between Muslims and Hindus in Bengal. What do you think?
This could work, but the problem is there is nothing really uniting the country, In India for example, Hinduism has defacto united the country, but here the religion would be split and there would be both communal and lingustic nationalism, add to that this country would be surrounded by India and China, leading to very tough diplomatic relations
 
If partition had not happened and Bengal had remained a single province then it would have been the most populous state in India pushing U.P. to the second place. There would be calls for the division of the state from areas far away from Calcutta which would have naturally become the capital of the state. The demands for separate states would rise from north and east parts of the state.

Calcutta being the capital of an United Bengal would be good as it was the only well developed city in the area. Without it, the area was doomed to poverty.
 
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Nope, Assamese and Northeastern Tribals do not want Cultural Invasion from Bengalis, so it would be impossible, also, you would require a really old POD, as by 1945, communal tensions were too high

Both Gandhi and Jinnah were willing to accept the United Bengal proposal. While Gandhi was against the partition of India, he prefered United Bengal to East Pakistan, that was considered a bizarre idea by some. Jinnah once said he would be delighted to see an United Bengal.
 

Srihari14

Banned
Calcutta being the capital of an United Bengal would be good as it was the only well developed city in the area. Without it, the area was doomed to poverty.
Yes, true, The government would try to develop Cities like Dhaka and Chittagong to be similar to Calcutta
 

Srihari14

Banned
Both Gandhi and Jinnah were willing to accept the United Bengal proposal. While Gandhi was against the partition of India, he prefered United Bengal to East Pakistan, that was considered a bizarre idea by some. Jinnah once said he would be delighted to see an United Bengal.
Both of them would be useless in this endeavour, by 1945, Gandhi was effectively sidelined by Congress who now worked over How they would Govern India, and Jinnah was still busy with the Muslim Homeland dream
 
The Northeast India issue keeps getting raised in these threads. The area historically has had little to do with Bengal. It was about to be absorbed by Burma when Burma started losing a series of wars to Britain. If separated from India, the natural country to put this area is Burma, at least the hghlands tribal areas.

I'm not well versed with the negotiations leading up to Indian independence, but I have wondered how close things came for the subcontinent being broken up into several independent countries, a few of which would have been the among the most populous countries in the world, instead of one or two huge countries. This is what happened with the Spanish vice-royalties when they became independent from Spain and a more "natural" division, given even none of the Indian empires before the Raj ever quite managed to control the entire subcontinent.
 
Both Gandhi and Jinnah were willing to accept the United Bengal proposal. While Gandhi was against the partition of India, he prefered United Bengal to East Pakistan, that was considered a bizarre idea by some. Jinnah once said he would be delighted to see an United Bengal.
Gandhi had not expressed any opinion about the proposal of United Bengal. Jinnah expected to get both Punjab and Bengal undivided as parts of Pakistan. When Mount Batten told him that the partition of Punjab and Bengal on religious lines was unavoidable if India was to be partitioned, he was disappointed. When he heard about the proposal for a United Bengal put forward by Suhrawardi he supported it with a crooked aim. He thought that as the united Bengal will have a Muslim majority he can later persuade them to join Pakistan. But the Congress saw through his cunning idea and rejected the idea of United Bengal and insisted on the partition of Bengal Province.
 
Imagine this scenario: United Bengal gets West Bengal, East Bengal and Tripura. The rest of the Northeast joins Myanmar. Sikkim remains independent. According to the people who proposed it, United Bengal was to have a complex political system, assuring political representation for both Muslins and Hindus. How sucessful would such a Bengal have been?
 
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