Formation of Bihar 1912 and the Separation of Jharkhand

Modern Bihar was shaped by three separations. It was cut away from the Bengal Presidency in 1912, lost Orissa in 1936, and lost its southern plateau to Jharkhand in 2000. BPSC, BSSC and Bihar Police papers return to this chapter every year, because each step has a clean date, a named law and a set of leaders attached to it.

Bihar inside the Bengal Presidency

After the grant of the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company in 1765, Bihar was governed as part of Bengal for nearly a century and a half. Educated Biharis complained that revenue raised in Bihar was spent in Calcutta, that Bengali was the language of the courts and offices, and that Bihari candidates were passed over for government jobs. The demand for a separate province was carried by newspapers and associations: the Hindi weekly Bihar Bandhu, started by Keshav Ram Bhatt, the English weekly The Beharee of Mahesh Narayan, and the Bihari Students Conference founded in 1906. The leading voice was Sachchidananda Sinha, whose pamphlet of 1906, The Partition of Bengal or the Separation of Bihar, put the case in print; he is called the architect of the separate Bihar movement. Ali Imam, Hasan Imam, Mazharul Haque and Rajendra Prasad worked with him.

1912: the Province of Bihar and Orissa

At the Delhi Durbar of December 1911, George V announced the annulment of the partition of Bengal, the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, and the creation of a new province. The Province of Bihar and Orissa came into being on 22 March 1912, with Patna as its capital and Sir Charles Stuart Bayley as its first Lieutenant Governor. That date is observed every year as Bihar Diwas. Under the Government of India Act, 1935, the province was divided again and Orissa became a separate province on 1 April 1936, leaving Bihar on its own. After independence, Shri Krishna Sinha, known as Shri Babu, became the first Chief Minister with Anugrah Narayan Sinha as his deputy, and Jairamdas Daulatram was the first Governor. In the reorganisation of 1956 Bihar transferred parts of the Purnea and Manbhum areas, including Purulia, to West Bengal.

The Jharkhand movement

The tribal belt of the Chhotanagpur and Santhal Parganas plateau had asked for a separate home since colonial times. The Chhotanagpur Unnati Samaj of 1915 and the Adivasi Mahasabha of 1938, led by Jaipal Singh Munda, were its early platforms; Jaipal Singh, who had captained India's gold-winning hockey team at the 1928 Olympics, turned the Mahasabha into the Jharkhand Party in 1950 and pressed the demand before the States Reorganisation Commission, which rejected it in 1955. The movement revived with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, formed in 1972 by Binod Bihari Mahto, Shibu Soren and A. K. Roy, and the Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council of 1995 was an interim answer.

2000: the Bihar Reorganisation Act

Parliament passed the Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000, and Jharkhand was created on 15 November 2000 as the twenty-eighth state of India. The date is the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda. Ranchi became the capital, Babulal Marandi the first Chief Minister and Prabhat Kumar the first Governor, and the new state began with 18 districts taken from Bihar. It was the third state created that year, after Chhattisgarh on 1 November and Uttaranchal on 9 November. Bihar was left with 37 districts, which became 38 when Arwal was carved out in 2001, and its area fell from about 1,73,877 square kilometres to 94,163, Jharkhand taking 79,714. The split cost Bihar nearly all of its mineral wealth and heavy industry, the coal of Dhanbad, the steel of Jamshedpur and Bokaro, and left it an overwhelmingly agrarian state on the Gangetic plain, while Jharkhand inherited the minerals but a smaller revenue base in agriculture.

Dates at a glance