CHAPTER VII.
THE STORM IN BENGAL.
The merits or demerits of the Partition of Bengal have already been discussed to satiety.

As far as its purpose was to promote administrative efficiency it is no longer on its defence.

Bengal proper is still the most populous province in India, but it has been brought within limits that at least make efficient administration practicable.
The eastern districts, now included in the new province, which had been hitherto lamentably neglected, have already gained enormously by the change, which was at the same time only an act of justice to the large Mahomedan majority who received but scanty consideration from Calcutta.
The only people who perhaps suffered inconvenience or material loss were absentee landlords, pleaders, and moneylenders, and some of the merchants of Calcutta, Anglo-Indian as well as native, who believed their interests to be affected by the transfer of the seat of provincial government for the Eastern Bengal districts to Dacca.

Nevertheless the Partition was the signal for an agitation such as India had not hitherto witnessed.

I say advisedly the signal rather than the cause.