IN 2008, during my tenure with the University of Dhaka, I had a three-month postdoctoral fellowship at the Forum on Contemporary Theory in Baroda, India. I made friends with some Indian researchers there. Once I asked one of them about major writers in India. Most of the names they mentioned in response to my question were from Bengal. I wondered and asked them why it was so. The answer that came was, ‘Bengal is the brain of India.’ That was a moment of epiphany for me, a moment in which I understood the profound intellectual heritage of united Bengal that includes today’s Bangladesh.
Another moment of epiphany occurred when the youth of Bangladesh took to the streets during the July 2024 revolution. I was humbled by their show of courage, defiance, and patriotism. I was heading to Kuala Lumpur International Airport when Abu Sayed – with arms spread eagle – defied police violence and was brutally murdered near his own seat of learning, Begum Rokeya University, in Rangpur. I arrived in the US and read the news of his broad-daylight murder. During the next couple of weeks, Bangladesh witnessed the selfless sacrifice of its youth against a state-sponsored carnage. Finally, on August 5, 2024, the bravery of the people triumphed over Sheikh Hasina’s tyranny, their courage broke the chains of her oppression, and their human spirit rose above the weight of her despotism. The breathtaking fearlessness of the youth of Bangladesh commanded respect from people all around the globe. When images of their fortitude and heroism began to make headlines worldwide, I wondered: How was it possible?
Soon afterwards, I started a research project to write a book chapter for a festschrift in honour of my teacher Professor Niaz Zaman. Titled ‘Away from Dhaka-centric Literary Sphere: Minnat Ali’s Kafoner Lekha, Bengal’s Anti-colonial Revolutions and Khairabadi’, it is now included in Confluence of Words and Worlds: Essays in Honour of Professor Niaz Zaman (UPL, 2026), edited by professor Fakrul Alam and professor Mohammad A Quayum.
As the title of my book chapter indicates, I had to delve deep into major anticolonial struggles that originated from Bengal. My research led me to a chain of events that happened in Bengal during the colonial period. I discovered that, during the centuries-old colonial period in the Indian subcontinent, all but one major campaign to liberate this region from colonial rule were initiated from Bengal. That led me to conclude that the July revolution was not a standalone anomaly. It was preceded by a long chain of freedom movements consistent with the heroism of the July 2024 youth.
The fall of the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-daula in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 marked the onset of British colonial expansion in the region. Seven years later in the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the coloniser crushed the combined forces of Mughal emperor Shah Alam II, the Nawab of Bengal Mir Qasim, the Maharaja of Benares Balwant Singh, and the Nawab of Awadh Shuja-ud-Daula. Thus, the British consolidated control over the resources of Bengal, Awadh, and beyond. Through successive victories in the battles of Plassey and Buxar, they became an all India power and their dominion stretched from Bengal right to the doorstep of Delhi. Sadly, the tragedies of Plassey and Buxar signalled centuries of subjugation of the people of South Asia.
However, it is also important to remember that the people of Bengal were at the forefront of anticolonial resistance; they were the driving force behind the independence movement. They never accepted their steep descent into servitude under colonial rule. They were on the lookout for every opportunity to liberate their land from colonial expropriation.
Soon after the battles of Plassey and Buxar, Haidar Ali (1720–82) and his son Tipu Sultan (1751–99) of Mysore launched a series of liberation struggles that started in 1767 and ended in 1799. Except for those formidable anticolonial campaigns, which resulted in four Anglo-Mysore Wars, all other major freedom movements that the British faced in colonial India originated from Bengal. Below I discuss the most important of them.
In 1818, Madaripur’s Haji Shariatullah (1781–1840) initiated the decades-long Faraizi Andolon (movement) which culminated with the leadership of his son Dudu Miyan (1891–62). Even though it started as an Islamic reform movement, it ended as an anti-landlord and anti-colonial one with widespread support and participation of the deprived Hindu and Muslim peasantry. It finally evolved into a resistance movement against exploitative local landlords and English indigo planters and was suppressed by them.
Like Haji Shariatullah and Dudu Miyan, Sayyid Mir Nisar Ali (also known as Titu Mir [1782–1831]) of Bengal’s 24 Parganas also worked for the dispossessed Hindu and Muslim peasantry. Soon after returning from Makkah in 1827, he launched a resistance movement against local zamindars and colonial indigo planters to free his country from both domestic and foreign agents of oppression. Thousands of freedom fighters responded to Titu Mir’s call and received military training. Eventually, in 1831, independence was declared from Narikelbaria near Barasat in 24 Parganas, leading to what is known as the Barasat Rebellion. From Narikelbaria, the movement spread to all areas in 24 Parganas, Nadia, and Faridpur. Titu Mir and his followers built a strong basher kella (bamboo fort) and fought fearlessly. However, with only traditional weapons, they couldn’t defeat the joint forces of the Hindu zamindars and the British who were equipped with the sophisticated weaponry of the time. The bamboo fort was destroyed, and Titu Mir and many other freedom fighters were killed, but the outcry for freedom from colonialism among the people of Bengal did not quiet down with the Narikelbaria debacle.
Only a couple of decades after the Barasat Rebellion and a couple of years before the Great Rebellion of 1857–58, the aboriginal Santal community launched a movement against the British and the Hindu moneylenders. They became united to fight their dual oppressors who took advantage of their simplicity, dispossessed them of their land, and encroached upon their natural rights for a long time. In 1811, 1820, and 1831, the Santals rose against the British in small ways. However, in 1855, their leader Bir Singh was chained and beaten by colonial forces in front of his followers. The public humiliation of Bir Singh added insult to their injury and sparked the Santal Hul (rebellion) of 1855-56. The British sent a number of military units and quashed the revolt. Many of the Santal leaders and fighters were killed, imprisoned, and executed; their houses were razed to the ground. However, the British didn’t have to wait long to face the greatest anticolonial rebellion that also originated from Bengal.
The widely discussed anticolonial struggle was the Great Rebellion of 1857-58, which marked the culmination of people’s discontent with colonial rule. It represented the greatest defiance of colonial rule and was the ultimate test of colonial authority. However, what is not adequately emphasised is that this great rebellion also sprang from Bengal. More specifically, this anticolonial campaign was spearheaded from Parade Ground in Chittagong by sipahis (native soldiers in the British Indian Army).
At that time, the British Indian Army had three main forces known as Presidency Armies. The Madras Army consisted of 50 to 60 thousand soldiers; the Bombay Army had 30 to 40 thousand soldiers; and the Bengal Army alone had over 150 thousand soldiers. The majority of these soldiers were sipahis commanded by British army officers.
Initially, a native soldier named Mangal Pandey refused to use rifle cartridges greased with animal fat. On March 29, 1857, he encouraged his colleagues at the Barrackpore parade ground near Calcutta to take up arms against the British. The insurgency was aborted, and on April 8, 1857, Pandey was hanged from a banyan tree that still stands in Barrackpore.
However, the rebellion was reignited on November 23. Under the leadership of Havildar Rajab Ali, native soldiers of the 34th Bengal Regiment stationed in Chittagong’s Parade Ground declared independence and took arms against the British. The rebellion soon spread far and wide, and eventually the British took complete control of Delhi and other important areas. In a 2011 journal article titled ‘The Backlash in Delhi’, Dr Arshad Islam narrates the British response to the rebellion and atrocities against Indians in the following way:
‘The British soldiers started looting, plundering, and demanding money. However, after gorging money they put to the sword Hindus and Muslims indiscriminately, but later they only fell upon the Muslims …. Babies were crying for milk in the arms of their mothers and many of them died of hunger. Mothers who could not bear the miseries of their children threw themselves into wells. To guard their chastity, a few thousand Muslim women choked the wells’ (p. 199).
What is important to reiterate is that the Great Rebellion of 1857-58 started from Bengal. The British heavy-handedness continued for many decades, but the yearning of the colonised for freedom from colonialism remained unbroken. In the ultimate anticolonial struggle that liberated the region from the British in 1947, Bengal provided ideological, intellectual, and military impetus and accelerated the exit of the British.
Thus, what my friend in Baroda called the brain of India is indisputably also the centre of revolutionary activity in the subcontinent. Considered from this perspective, the July 2024 revolution was a continuation of a long chain of freedom struggles emanating from Bengal which was the epicentre of anticolonial struggles in British India.
Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is a professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia.
