British

West Bengal, the Gateway to eastern India boasts of a cultural legacy and glorious history. The state was a former kingdom of several powerful rulers and part of the splendid Mughal culture. Besides, the state had also been an established colony of several foreign nations and subjugated to the oppressive British rule.

The East India Company arrived in India to set up a trading center in a country noted for its business potential. The first notable footprint of the British in West Bengal was when Job Charnock, an agent form the East India Company found the site formed by the three large villages of Sutanuti, Gobindpur and Kolikata suiltable for the establishment of a trade center. The agglomeration of these three villages culminated in what is known as modern day Kolkata, the urban metropolis that is the present capital of West Bengal.

The efficacy of the East India Company’s rule in Bengal is questionable considering the number of deaths that occurred following the cataclysmic famine of 1770. The control of Bengal was passed on to the hands of British crown from that of the East India Company after the disaster following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, a rather unfortunate affair that sprung up at a Sepoy Mangal Pande’s initiative in Bengal’s Barrackpore.

Bengal, located in the fertile Gangetic plains and noted for its agricultural produce, became an established center of trade and commerce 1850 onwards. The state’s commercial ventures were centered mainly on Kolkata. When Queen Victoria was conferred the title of “Empress of India”, in the year 1877, Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta was declared to be the capital of the British Raj.

The oppressive British Rule in India prompted Bengal’s young revolutionaries to launch the Swadeshi movement where many young lives were sacrificed at the altar of freedom. However it is this path breaking movement of these martyr’s that eventually won India its much-desired freedom in 1947.