Bengal Provincial Congress Party (BPCP) was a provincial branch of the Indian National Congress in the Bengal province of British India. The party's early leadership played an important role in organizing political programmes against the British Raj, such as the Non-Cooperation Movement and the Civil Disobedience Movement.
According to historian Joya Chatterji, after the 1937 election the party emerged as the largest single party in the Bengal Legislative Assembly and became the main opposition force. In the 1937 Bengal Legislative Assembly election, the party won 54 seats in the legislature, but having failed to form a coalition with the Krishak Praja Party, it was unable to form a government.
Several leaders of this party later emerged as statesmen of independent India, among them Bidhan Chandra Roy (the first Chief Minister of West Bengal) and Sarat Chandra Bose (who played an important role in the final negotiations preceding the 1947 partition of Bengal).
Background
When the party was founded in 1920, British India was undergoing major constitutional change, particularly through the reforms of the Government of India Act 1919 and, later, the Government of India Act 1935, which brought a number of powers at the provincial level into Indian hands. Although initially little more than a collection of a few elite groups, the new constitution adopted at the 1920 Nagpur session set out to transform it into a party of the masses at every level. As a result, on 2 July 1921 the party was formally reorganized with Chittaranjan Das as its first president and Birendranath Sasmal as secretary.
According to historian Gordon Johnson, the party was dominated by the educated Hindu Bhadralok class, made up mainly of upper-caste Brahmins, Baidyas and Kayasthas, who wielded influence over the professional and social life of the province. Under Chittaranjan Das's leadership, the party took a reform-minded stance. In order to oppose Mahatma Gandhi's policy of total boycott and instead contest legislative council elections, they formed the Swarajya Party in 1923.
To secure communal cooperation, Das concluded the Bengal Pact of 1923. However, the party was frequently marked by factional conflict, particularly between the camps led by Jatindra Mohan Sengupta and Subhas Chandra Bose. Alongside open politics, the party also maintained notable contact with revolutionary organizations such as Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti.
Anti-British Movements Various movements against the British Raj took place across India. The party played the leading role in organizing these movements in Bengal.
Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement In 1920, under the leadership of Chittaranjan Das, the party joined the Non-Cooperation Movement. The Khilafat Movement united both Hindu and Muslim communities during this period, further strengthening the overall movement. Chittaranjan Das and his associates called for a boycott of British legislative councils, educational institutions and courts. During this period, around 170 national schools were established in Bengal, and students left government schools to join the movement.
As part of the movement, huge hartals were observed in Calcutta and various district towns, and widespread discontent spread among railway workers and tea-garden labourers. From late 1921 until March 1922, peasants stopped paying rent and taxes in Tippera (Comilla), Rangpur and Noakhali districts. In Midnapore, an anti-tax movement against the Union Boards took a strong form, laying the foundation for later agitation.
Civil Disobedience Movement In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience Movement, which had a wide impact in Bengal. However, there was disagreement among leaders over strategy, resulting in the formation of two separate 'Civil Disobedience Councils' in Bengal. A defining feature of this movement was defiance of the salt laws (Salt Satyagraha), which mainly occurred in coastal districts.
In Midnapore district the movement took on an intense character. The British government's Home Secretary remarked that nowhere else had the government's prestige been damaged as much as in Midnapore. In the Kanthi and Tamluk subdivisions of Midnapore it became a mass movement — 64 of Kanthi subdivision's 76 union boards refused to pay the chowkidari tax. British police arrested many agitators; between January and June 1932, 5,900 people were arrested in Tamluk and 4,343 in Kanthi. The tax-refusal campaign also achieved considerable success in the Arambagh subdivision of Hooghly and the Mahishbathan area of 24 Parganas. However, in the Muslim-majority districts of East Bengal (Dhaka, Faridpur, Mymensingh), the movement did not achieve the hoped-for success, as a large section of Muslims stayed away from it.
Quit India Movement (1942) The party's role in the 1942 Quit India Movement was extremely important. During the Second World War, most of the party's top leaders were in jail, but grassroots leaders continued the movement. In the Tamluk and Kanthi subdivisions of Midnapore district, it achieved considerable success.
During this period, local leaders in Midnapore built their own administration, known as the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, which operated independently alongside the British. The party had already been weakened following Subhas Chandra Bose's expulsion in 1939; from 1942 to 1945 it had almost no formal activity. Even so, the British had extreme difficulty suppressing the local uprising, and it was the scale of this movement that later helped force the British to leave India.
Language The Bengal Provincial Congress Party conducted most of its activities mainly in Bengali and English, reflecting both the party's elite political character and its dual role as a mass movement. After the 1920 Nagpur session, the Indian National Congress reorganized its provincial branches along linguistic lines, allowing the Bengal branch to focus specifically on the Bengali-speaking population within its jurisdiction.
Although the primary language of the party's elite leadership — particularly the Western-educated Hindu Bhadralok of Calcutta — was English, the party gradually increased its use of the vernacular (Bengali) in order to organize ordinary people.
In the national schools established by the party, the curriculum was deliberately arranged so that the mother tongue was taught as the first language, with English only as a second language.
The party's political ideology was widely supported by the press; its major English-language mouthpieces included Forward, Liberty and Advance, while influential Bengali-language papers such as Anandabazar Patrika and Basumati also supported the party's aims.
To reach rural peasants and Muslim cultivators in the mofussil, the party used vernacular media during its outreach campaigns, including Bengali songs, folk songs and pamphlets.
Organization All of the party's activities were run from its permanent headquarters at 33 Forbes Mansion, Calcutta. A council and an executive committee controlled the party's organizational affairs.
The party's initial structure was formed in 1921–22, when 268 representatives were elected from 28 districts based on population. In the first half of the 1920s, the organization's activities spread to 32 districts: 26 districts of the Presidency, 4 separate committees in Calcutta, and two Bengali-speaking districts of Assam (Cachar and Sylhet).
Factionalism and Splits
Historically, the party was marked by continuous internal conflict, which intensified after Chittaranjan Das's death on 16 June 1925.
Two major factions formed within the organization: one led by Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, who had the full support of Mahatma Gandhi and the central Congress leadership, and the other by Subhas Chandra Bose.
Bose was frequently either imprisoned or abroad; during those times, control of the party often passed to a group of influential Calcutta politicians known as the "Big Five" — Tulsi Charan Goswami, Sarat Chandra Bose, Nirmal Chandra Chunder, Bidhan Chandra Roy and Nalini Ranjan Sarkar.
In August 1931 the All India Congress Committee intervened in the provincial dispute. Its representative, M. R. Jayakar (Ane), investigated the party's affairs strictly, after which he installed Sengupta's faction as the official leadership of the provincial committee.
The party's deepest rupture came in 1939, when Subhas Chandra Bose was re-elected Congress president against the wishes of the Congress high command. He subsequently resigned and was expelled, the official provincial committee was suspended, and a parallel "Congress" loyal to the Bose brothers was later formed in Bengal.
Internal disagreement, ideological difference and leadership conflict repeatedly produced new factions within the Bengal Provincial Congress, with many leaders leaving to form new political platforms, notably:
Swarajya Party (1923): Formed within Congress itself by Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru after disagreeing with Mahatma Gandhi over entering the legislature. It was extremely strong in Bengal and did well in the 1923 elections. Sengupta faction: Emerged after Chittaranjan Das's death under the leadership of Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, fully loyal to the Congress central high command and Gandhi's non-violent policy, with close contact with a section of the revolutionary organization Anushilan Samiti. Bose faction: Led by Subhas Chandra Bose and drawn from the party's youth, students and radicals; favoured uncompromising struggle and was backed by the revolutionary organization Jugantar. Pro-Praja movement section: After Chittaranjan Das's death, when the Bengal Provincial Congress abandoned the Bengal Pact, A. K. Fazlul Huq and other Muslim leaders left Congress. They later formed the Nikhil Banga Praja Samiti (later the Krishak Praja Party) to pursue rural peasants' rights. Parallel Congress and Forward Bloc (1939): After Subhas Chandra Bose was elected president at the 1939 Tripuri Congress, an extreme conflict arose with the high command. Bose was forced to resign and was temporarily expelled from Congress. In protest, his Bengal loyalists formed a parallel Congress or rebel committee, which later became the basis of his new political party, the Forward Bloc. Provincial Autonomy (1937–1947) The era of Provincial Autonomy began under the Government of India Act 1935. This era fundamentally transformed the political landscape of Bengal. It ended the system of dyarchy and placed the provincial government entirely in Indian hands. The franchise was also significantly widened. The number of eligible voters increased from 1.3 million to approximately eight million. For the Bengal Provincial Congress Party, this period presented both a prospect of self-rule and a severe strategic crisis.
1937 Elections and Coalition Failure In the 1937 elections, the Congress emerged as the largest single party in the Bengal Legislative Assembly. They secured 54 seats, which included general, scheduled caste, and labour seats. Despite this success, the party failed to form a government.
A. K. Fazlul Huq, leader of the Krishak Praja Party (KPP), initially sought a coalition with the Congress. However, the Congress central leadership refused to permit this alliance. The central leadership demanded that the release of political prisoners be the first priority. Meanwhile, Huq's party prioritized agrarian reform and peasant welfare. This deadlock forced Huq into a coalition with the All-India Muslim League. As a result, the Congress was relegated to long-term opposition.
Legislative Challenges to Bhadralok Interests During the era of autonomous rule, the Muslim-led coalition ministries introduced several new laws. These measures targeted the traditional dominance of the Hindu bhadralok: