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.

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. For if the
Partition in itself had sufficed to rouse spontaneous popular feeling,
it would have been unnecessary for the leaders of the agitation to
resort in the rural districts to gross misrepresentations of the objects
of that measure. What all the smouldering discontent, all the
reactionary disaffection centred in Calcutta read into the Partition was
a direct attack upon the primacy of the educated classes that had made
Calcutta