The new school represented, perhaps most conspicuously, by Mr.Arabindo Ghose scarcely disguised its hostility to British rule itself and to all that British ascendancy stands for.

Hinduism for the Hindus, or, as they preferred to put it, "Arya for the Aryans," was the war-cry of zealots, half fanatics, half patriots, whose mysticism found in the sacred story of the _Bhagvat Gita_ not only the charter of Indian independence but the sanctification of the most violent means for the overthrow of an alien rule.

With this "Aryan" reaction, having to a great extent the force of religious enthusiasm behind it, orthodoxy also recovered ground, and Brahmanism was not slow to show how potent it still is even in Bengal when it appeals to the superstitions of the masses.

In one form or another this spirit had spread like wildfire not only among the students but among the teachers, and the schools of physical training to which young Bengal had taken, partly under the influence of our British love of sports and partly from a legitimate desire to remove from their "nation" the stigma of unmanliness, were rapidly transforming themselves into political societies modelled upon the bands of gymnasts which figured so prominently in Tilak's propaganda in the Deccan.

Among the older men, some yielded to the new spirit from fear of being elbowed out by their youngers, some were genuinely impatient of the tardiness of the constitutional reforms for which they had looked to the agency of the Indian National Congress; a few perhaps welcomed the opportunity of venting the bitterness engendered by social slights, real or imaginary, or by disappointments in Government service.
Such appears to have been the _etat d'ame_ of Bengal when the Government of India promulgated the measure of administrative redistribution known as the Partition of Bengal..