Bengaala

Republic of Bengala প্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলা
Flag
Motto:  "জনগণের শাসনই ভবিষ্যৎ" (Bengali) "People's rule is the future"
Anthem:  ""আমার সোনার বাংলা" (Bengali)" My Golden Bengal a
Capital and largest city	Kolkata
Official languages	Bengali
Ethnic groups	87% Bengali 12% Rajbanshi <1% Others
Demonym(s)	Bengali
Government	Republic
• President	Naba Kumar Ghosh
• Prime Minister	Pratap Chandra Mukherjee
Legislature	National Assembly
Independence from India
• Declared	7 June 1970
Population
• October 2021 estimate	10,629,214
• 2017 census	9,541,873
GDP (PPP)	2018 estimate
• Total	$900.854 billion
GDP (nominal)	2018 estimate
• Total	$78.652 billion
Gini (2018)	13.5 low
HDI (2018)	0.951 very high (2nd)
Currency	Bengali Taka
Time zone	IST
Driving side	left
Calling code	+92
Internet TLD	.bn

The Republic of Bengal (Bengali: প্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলা), also Bengaala (বাংলা), is an independent Republic in southern part of the continent of Asia . It is a regional power in the region, with the status of the fifth largest country in the Indian subcontinent. The capital and largest city is Kolkata. It has a population of 9.5 million, with 30% of the population residing in Kolkata and surrounding regions.

Bengal, then known as Gangaridai, was a leading power in ancient South Asia, with extensive trade networks forming connections to as far away as Roman Egypt. The Bengali Pala Empire was the last major Buddhist power in the subcontinent, founded in 750 CE and becoming the dominant power in the northern Indian subcontinent by the 9th century CE. It was replaced by the Hindu Sena dynasty in the 12th century. Islam had been introduced during the Pala Empire, through trade with the Abbasid Caliphate; it spread across Bengal following the formation of the Delhi Sultanate. The region reached its highest prosperity under the Bengal Sultanate, founded in 1352, which became one of the world's richest trading nations.

Absorbed into the Mughal Empire in 1576, the Bengal Subah was the empire's wealthiest province, and became a major global exporter, and center of industries such as cotton textiles, silk, and shipbuilding. Its economy was worth 12% of the world's GDP, a value bigger than the entirety of Western Europe, and its citizens' living standards were among the world's highest. Bengal's economy underwent a period of proto-industrialization during this period. The region was conquered by the British East India Company after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, and became a part of the Bengal Presidency of British India. Bengal made significant contributions to the world's first Industrial Revolution, but later suffered its own deindustrialisation. East India Company policies, such as increasing agriculture tax rates from 10% to up to 50%, alongside drought and epidemics, contributed to famines such as the Great Bengal famine of 1770, which resulted in the deaths of 1 million to 10 million Bengalis.

After World War Two, it faced a threat of invasions from Japan. the subsequent famine of 1943 took a heavy toll on life in Bengal. Bengal hosted the Indian Independence Movement then, with a significant part of it being led by revolutionaries and communist partisans. The region was divided into two states during the partition- the western part being the Indian state of West Bengal, and the eastern part being incorporated into Pakistan as East Pakistan. The Bengali independence movement grew especially stronger in the 1950s and 60s, as the communists spearheaded the popular revolts, culminating in the overthrow of the military jurisdiction set up by the Indian government in 1970, and the proclamation of an independent republic in 1971.

Bengal is a regional power and a developing country in South Asia, with leading infrastructure, healthcare and economy in the area. The country has the highest HDI rate in the Asian continent, particularly due to investments in development by the government since late 1990s, before which the country was known for instability and poverty.

History

Prehistory

Human settlement in Bengal can be traced back 20,000 years. Remnants of Copper Age settlements date back 4,300 years. Archaeological evidence confirms that by the second millennium BCE, rice-cultivating communities inhabited the region. By the 11th century BCE, the people of the area lived in systemically aligned housing, used human cemeteries and manufactured copper ornaments and fine black and red pottery. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers were natural arteries for communication and transportation. Estuaries on the Bay of Bengal allowed for maritime trade. The early Iron Age saw the development of metal weaponry, coinage, permanent field agriculture and irrigation. From 600 BCE, the second wave of urbanisation engulfed the north Indian subcontinent, as part of the Northern Black Polished Ware culture.

Antiquity

Ancient Bengal was divided between the regions of Varendra, Suhma, Anga, Vanga, Samatata and Harikela. Early Indian literature described the region as a thalassocracy, with colonies in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. For example, the first recorded king of Sri Lanka was a Bengali prince called Vijaya. The region was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Gangaridai. The Greek ambassador Megasthenes chronicled its military strength and dominance of the Ganges delta. The invasion army of Alexander the Great was deterred by the accounts of Gangaridai's power in 325 BCE. Later Roman accounts noted maritime trade routes with Bengal. A Roman amphora has been found in Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal, made in Aelana (present day Aqaba in Jordan) between the 4th and 7th centuries AD. Another prominent kingdom in ancient Bengal was Pundravardhana, which was located in Northern Bengal with its capital being located at Mahasthangarh in modern-day Bogra district. The kingdom was Buddhist, and left behind historic viharas (monasteries). In vedic mythology the royal families of Magadha, Anga, Vanga, Suhma and Kalinga were all related and descended from one King.

Ancient Bengal was considered a part of Magadha region, which was the cradle of Indian arts and sciences. Currently the Maghada region is divided into several states that are Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal (West Bengal and East Bengal) The legacy of Magadha includes the concept of zero, the invention of Chess and the theory of solar and lunar eclipses and the Earth orbiting the Sun. Sanskrit and derived Old Indo-Aryan dialects, was spoken across Bengal. The Bengali language evolved from Old Indo-Aryan Sanskrit dialects. The region was ruled by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain dynasties, including the Mauryans, Guptas, Varmans, Khadgas, Palas, Chandras and Senas among others. In the 9th century, Arab Muslim traders frequented Bengali seaports and found the region to be a thriving seafaring kingdom with well-developed coinage and banking.

Medieval Era

The Pala Empire was an imperial power in the Indian subcontinent, which originated in the region of Bengal. They were followers of the Mahayana and Tantric schools of Buddhism. The empire was founded with the election of Gopala as the emperor of Gauda in 750. At its height in the early 9th century, the Pala Empire was the dominant power in the northern subcontinent, with its territory stretching across parts of modern-day eastern Pakistan, northern and northeastern India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The empire enjoyed relations with the Srivijaya Empire, the Tibetan Empire, and the Arab Abbasid Caliphate. Islam first appeared in Bengal during Pala rule, as a result of increased trade between Bengal and the Middle East. The resurgent Hindu Sena dynasty dethroned the Pala Empire in the 12th century, ending the reign of the last major Buddhist imperial power in the subcontinent.

Beginning around 1199, a military commander from the Delhi Sultanate, Bakhtiar Khilji, overran a few western districts of Bengal. Muslim rule introduced agrarian reform, a new calendar and Sufism. The region saw the rise of important city states in Sonargaon, Satgaon and Lakhnauti. By 1352, Ilyas Shah achieved the unification of an independent Bengal. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Bengal Sultanate was a major diplomatic, economic and military power in the subcontinent. It developed the subcontinent's relations with China, Egypt, the Timurid Empire and East Africa. In 1540, Sher Shah Suri was crowned Emperor of the northern subcontinent in the Bengali capital Gaur.

Mughal Era

The Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the 16th century. The Bengal Subah province in the Mughal Empire was the wealthiest state in the subcontinent. Bengal's trade and wealth impressed the Mughals so much that it was described as the Paradise of the Nations by the Mughal Emperors. The region was also notable for its powerful semi-independent aristocracy, including the Twelve Bhuiyans and the Nawabs of Bengal. It was visited by several world explorers, including Ibn Battuta, Niccolo De Conti and Admiral Zheng He.

Under Mughal rule, Bengal was a center of the worldwide muslin and silk trades. During the Mughal era, the most important center of cotton production was Bengal, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka, leading to muslin being called "daka" in distant markets such as Central Asia. Domestically, much of India depended on Bengali products such as rice, silks and cotton textiles. Overseas, Europeans depended on Bengali products such as cotton textiles, silks and opium; Bengal accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia, for example, including more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks. From Bengal, saltpetre was also shipped to Europe, opium was sold in Indonesia, raw silk was exported to Japan and the Netherlands, cotton and silk textiles were exported to Europe, Indonesia, and Japan, cotton cloth was exported to the Americas and the Indian Ocean. Bengal also had a large shipbuilding industry. In terms of shipbuilding tonnage during the 16th–18th centuries, economic historian Indrajit Ray estimates the annual output of Bengal at 223,250 tons, compared with 23,061 tons produced in nineteen colonies in North America from 1769 to 1771.

Since the 16th century, European traders traversed the sea routes to Bengal, following the Portuguese conquests of Malacca and Goa. The Portuguese established a settlement in Chittagong with permission from the Bengal Sultanate in 1528, but were later expelled by the Mughals in 1666. In the 18th-century, the Mughal Court rapidly disintegrated due to Nader Shah's invasion and internal rebellions, allowing European colonial powers to set up trading posts across the territory. The British East India Company eventually emerged as the foremost military power in the region; and defeated the last independent Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

Colonial Era

In Bengal effective political and military power was transferred from the old regime to the British East India Company around 1757–65. Company rule in India began under the Bengal Presidency. Calcutta was named the capital of British India in 1772. The presidency was run by a military-civil administration, including the Bengal Army, and had the world's sixth earliest railway network. Great Bengal famines struck several times during colonial rule (notably the Great Bengal famine of 1770 and Bengal famine of 1943).

About 50 million were killed in Bengal due to massive plague outbreaks and famines which happened in 1895 to 1920, mostly in western Bengal.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was initiated on the outskirts of Calcutta, and spread to Dhaka, Chittagong, Jalpaiguri, Sylhet and Agartala, in solidarity with revolts in North India. The failure of the rebellion led to the abolition of the Company Rule in India and establishment of direct rule over India by the British, commonly referred to as the British Raj. The late 19th and early 20th century Bengal Renaissance had a great impact on the cultural and economic life of Bengal and started a great advance in the literature and science of Bengal. Between 1905 and 1911, an abortive attempt was made to divide the province of Bengal into two: Bengal proper and the short-lived province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. Under British rule, Bengal experienced deindustrialisation.

In 1876, about 200,000 people were killed in Bengal by the Great Bangladesh cyclone.

Bengal played a major role in the Indian independence movement, in which revolutionary groups were dominant. Armed attempts to overthrow the British Raj began with the rebellion of Titumir, and reached a climax when Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army against the British. Bengal was also central in the rising political awareness of the Muslim population—the All-India Muslim League was established in Dhaka in 1906. The Muslim homeland movement pushed for a sovereign state in eastern India with the Lahore Resolution in 1943. Hindu nationalism was also strong in Bengal, which was home to groups like the Hindu Mahasabha. In spite of a last-ditch effort by politicians Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sarat Chandra Bose to form a United Bengal, when India gained independence in 1947, Bengal was partitioned along religious lines. The western joined India (and was named West Bengal) while the eastern part joined Pakistan as a province called East Bengal (later renamed East Pakistan, giving rise to Bangladesh in 1971). The circumstances of partition were bloody, with widespread religious riots in Bengal. During late 1940s, The Communist Party of India had got stronger in Bengal, particularly due to the demise of Hindu nationalist and Islamist groups, and a strong message was sent to the Dominion of India that Bengali people advocated for a socialist state, through many popular uprisings and demonstrations against the Indian leadership, labelled as "bourgeois" by the CPI, and particularly the regional wing of the party, lead by the popular and charismatic left-wing politician Sarat Chandra Bose, who oversaw the AIFB and CPI merge in 1947.

Indian rule and independence (1947-present)

Bengal was rife in instability and political chaos after partition, particularly due to the strong opinion of Bengalis on staying independent. The Indian government responded through imposing martial law in 1949, followed by setting up the rule of lieutenant governor in Bengal. The CPI suffered a split in 1951, with the Bengali regional wing seperating due to dissatisfaction over "CPI surrendering to the Indian state". Protests in Kolkata in 1955 were quelled through force by the Indian military, in response to which the reorganized Communist Party of Bengal (CPB) sought international help. The Bengali regional wing of the Indian National Congress also split, forming the Bangla Congress (BC). The 1955 reactions made the population silent for the rest of the decade, upto early 1960s, when the government decided to merge Bengal with neighbouring Bihar, a step heavily opposed by the organised CPB and BC, along with a large portion of the Bengali populace. The Communists organised an underground militia named "Bengal People's Army (বাংলা গণবাহিনী)". The BPA carried underground attacks on state leaders, and actively funded and supported popular revolts. The 1967-68 protests in Bengal escalated into an armed revolution, in response to which the Indian government took the decision to give independence to the state through peaceful means, especially due to growing pressure from the international community. The Bengal Constitutional Assembly was formed in 1968, with its members elected through a popular vote, the first democratic election held in the state since 1954. The Communist Party became the largest party, followed by the Bangla Congress. The Assembly drafted a new constitution in 1969. A subsequent key event in Bengali politics was the split of the CPB between its more reformist, democratic socialist wing against the more revolutionary Marxist wing. The reformists eventually formed their own party named the Socialist United Party (SUP), though it later moved towards closer cooperation with the communists as the BC ruled out an alliance with the SUP. The Republic of Bengal was declared independent on March 4, 1970. Polls held during the time expressed 87% of the population being in favor of the act. Kolkata was the capital of the newly formed republic. The first free, democratic elections in the country were held in 1970, after the Draft Constitution was adopted. The Bangla Congress was the strongest political force in the country for two decades, before the Ratnapur scandals and the subsequent crisis and protests forced the government to resign. It ultimately led way to the first Communist victory in 1997. The Communist Party has continuously governed the country since 1997 until now.