West Bengal.

West Bengal
Capital. Kolkata.
Area. 34267 square miles.
Population. 90 million.
Revenue Districts. 17.

One of the most powerful states of India, West Bengal enjoys a unique place in all matters relating to the country. It is the fourth populous state. It is the third largest contributor to the country’s GDP. Bangladesh lies on its east. To its northeast lie the states of Assam and Sikkim and Bhutan, and to its southwest lies Orissa. To the west it borders the states of Jharkhand and Bihar, and to the northwest, Nepal.
The region that is now West Bengal was where a number of empires and kingdoms were founded. East India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of Plessey in 1757, and the city of Calcutta, served for many years as the capital of the British rule.
A hot-bed of the Independence movement, through the early 20th century, Bengal was divided along religious lines into two separate entities, West Bengal—a state of India, and East Bengal a part of the new nation of Pakistan which is now Bangladesh.
Following India's independence in 1947, West Bengal's economic and political systems were dominated for many decades by Marxism, Naxalite movements and trade union activities.
While West Bengal has made economic gains recently, it still remains one of the poorest states in India because of high political instability, strike, low development level, abysmal medical treatment or health care services, tremendous lack of social development, lack of industrialization, excessive corruption and violence.
An agriculture-dependent state, West Bengal occupies only 2.7% of the India's land area, though it supports over 7.8% of the Indian population, and is the most densely populated state in India. West Bengal has been dominated by the Communist Party of India for three decades.



Remnants of civilization in the greater Bengal region date back 4,000 years, when the region was settled by Dravids, Tibetans peoples. The exact origin of the word Bengal is unknown, though it is believed to be derived from the Dravidian-speaking tribe Bang that settled in the area around the year 1000BC.

The kingdom of Magadha was formed in 7th century BC, consisting of the Bihar and Bengal regions. It was one of the four main kingdoms of India at the time of Maha Vira and the Buddhist.
Magadha Empire extended over nearly all of South Asia including Iran and Afghanistan under Asoka in the 3rd century BC.

Bengal had overseas trade relations with Java, Sumatra and Siam, and many countries. According to Maha Vamsha, Vijay Singh a Vanga prince, conquered Lanka in 544 BC and gave the name Sinhala to the country. Bengali people migrated to Malaya and Siam, establishing their own colonies there.
From the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD, the kingdom of Magadha. served as the seat of the Gupta Empire. The first recorded independent king of Bengal was Shashanka reigning around early 7th century. After a period of anarchy, the Pal dynasty ruled the region for four hundred years, followed by a shorter reign of the Sen. Dynasty.
Islam was introduced to Bengal in the twelfth century by Sufi missionaries. Subsequent Muslim conquests helped spread Islam throughout the region. Bakhtiar Khilji, Turk general of the slave dynasty defeated Lakshman Sen. of the Sen Dynasty and conquered large parts of Bengal.
Consequently, the region was ruled by dynasties of Sultans and feudal lords under the Delhi Sultanate for the next few hundred years. In the sixteenth century, Mughal general Islam Khan, conquered Bengal. However, administration by governors appointed by the court of the Mughals gave way to semi-independence of the area under the Nawabs of Murshidabad, who nominally respected the sovereignty of the Mughals in Delhi.
Raja Ram Manohar Roy is regarded as the Father of Bengal renaissance.
European traders arrived late in the fifteenth century. Their influence grew until the East India Company gained taxation rights in Bengal, following the Plessey battle, when Siraj-ud Daulah the last independent Nawab, was defeated by the British.

The Bengal Presidency was established by 1765, eventually including all British territories north of Madhya Pradesh, from the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to the Himalayas and the Punjab. Calcutta was named the capital of the British in 1772.

The Bengal Renaissance and the Brahmo Samaj socio-cultural reform movements had great impact on the cultural and economic life of Bengal. The 1857 mutiny started near Calcutta and resulted in transfer of authority to the British. Between 1905 and 1911, attempt was made to divide the province of Bengal into two zones. Bengal suffered from the famine in 1943 that claimed life of three million people.
Bengal played a major role in the Indian Independence movement in which, Armed attempts against the British from Bengal reached a climax when Sub hash Bose led the National Army against the British. When India was independent, in 1947, Bengal was divided along religious lines. The western part went to India (and was named West Bengal) while the eastern part joined Pakistan in the east, giving rise to independent Bangladesh.

Both West and East Bengal suffered from large refugee influx during the partition in 1947, leading to the political unrests later on. The partition of Bengal entailed the greatest exodus of people in Human History. Millions of Hindus migrated from East Pakistan to India and thousands of Muslims too, went across the borders to East Pakistan.
Because of the immigration of the refugees, there occurred the crisis of land and food in West Bengal; and such condition remained for long duration for more than three decades. The politics of West Bengal since the partition in 1947 developed round the nucleus of refugee problem.

Both the Rightists and the Leftists in the Politics of West Bengal have not yet become free from the socio-economic conditions created by the partition of Bengal. These conditions as have remained unresolved in some twisted forms have given birth to local socio-economic, political and ethnic movements.
In 1950 the Princely State of Cooch Behar merged with West Bengal after King Jagaddipendra Narayan had signed the Instrument of Accession with India.
In 1955, the former French Enclave of Chandan nagar which had passed into Indian control after 1950 was integrated into West Bengal; portions of Bihar were subsequently merged with West Bengal.
In the fifties, it was decided by the then Congress Government to shift industries from the state to other parts of the country. The value of freight tax and other taxes were also kept higher for the state by the Central Government till the eighties. This contributed to very few manufacturing industries being set in the state from 1950 to 1969.
During the 1970s and 1980s, severe power shortages, strikes and a violent Marxist- Naxalite movement damaged much of the state's infrastructure, leading to a period of economic stagnation. The Bangladesh liberation war of 1971 resulted in the influx of millions of refugees to West Bengal, causing significant strains on its infrastructure.
The 1974 smallpox epidemic killed thousands. West Bengal politics underwent a major change when the Left Front won the 1977 assembly election, defeating the Congress. The Left Front, led by the Marxists has governed for the state for the subsequent three decades.
The state's economic recovery gathered momentum after the economic reforms were introduced in the mid-1990s by the central Government aided by election of a new reformist CM Buddha Deb Bhattacharya in 2000. As of 2007, armed activists have been organizing minor terrorist attacks in some parts of the state, while clashes with the administration are taking place at several sensitive places on the issue of industrial land acquisition.