A Bangladeshi official’s revival of the long-defunct “United Bengal” idea highlights lingering partition-era grievances and risks inflaming tensions with India.

There’s a saying that I am paraphrasing: “An elephant has two sets of teeth—one for display, the other for chewing.” For years, the Awami League in Bangladesh embraced that maxim, projecting one image while concealing another. But now, the veneer has faded. What’s left is a renewed nationalism among a new crop of political figures—and with it, a strange resurrection of a controversial and long-dead idea: a “United Bengal.”

Mahfuz Alam, currently serving in a senior role in Bangladesh’s interim government, recently posted an imaginary map on social media. The map didn’t just include present-day Bangladesh—it stretched across the western banks of the Ganges, swallowed Kolkata, and even absorbed India’s seven northeastern states. Though the post was hastily deleted, its implications can’t simply be dismissed as youthful delusion. Instead, it echoes a lingering grievance: the failure to wrest West Bengal from India during the 1947 partition.

The decades-old dream of a united Bengal—Hindu and Muslim, East and West—dates back to the fevered and turbulent years leading up to India’s independence. The province of Bengal in 1946 was a land of contradictions. February of that year saw Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta rally together to demand the release of INA officer Rashid Ali. But the communal camaraderie shattered by August, when the Muslim League declared “Direct Action Day” to push for the creation of Pakistan.

What followed was one of the bloodiest pogroms in the subcontinent’s history. Though Bengal was a Muslim-majority province, Calcutta had a Hindu majority—and its residents watched in horror as sectarian violence exploded on August 16. The Muslim League had failed to anticipate that Calcutta, despite being Bengal’s economic jewel, would not fall easily into Pakistan’s grasp. Why, one wonders, would they target a Hindu-majority city like Calcutta for violence? Why not a district like Noakhali, where a brutal Hindu massacre would occur later?

The answer lies in ambition. By early 1946, the League had secured a decisive victory in Bengal’s provincial elections. They had every reason to believe that East Bengal, including Dhaka and Chittagong, would become part of Pakistan. But Calcutta was a different story. The city was predominantly Hindu, economically vital, and home to the region’s only major riverine port. Jinnah’s famous lament—“What is the use of Bengal without Calcutta?”—captured the dilemma. To resolve it, some League leaders resorted to violence in hopes of engineering demographic change.

Chief among them was Bengal’s then-premier, Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, who harbored his own ambitions for Calcutta. The British military’s Eastern Command placed direct blame on him for the carnage. In a report dated August 24, 1946, a British officer wrote, “There is hardly a person in Calcutta who has a good word for Suhrawardy, respectable Muslims included. For years he has been known as ‘The king of the goondas,’ and my own private opinion is, that he fully anticipated what was going to happen.”

The League had long claimed that Muslims couldn’t coexist with Hindus in India—yet when it came to Bengal, they reversed course. Suddenly, unity was possible, provided it meant bringing the Hindu-majority state of West Bengal into their orbit. The duplicity was naked. With increasing desperation, the League’s strategy shifted from partition to annexation.

At the eleventh hour, Suhrawardy ditched his push for Pakistan in Bengal and floated the idea of an independent “United Bengal”—a sovereign entity unaligned with either India or Pakistan. He gained temporary support from some prominent Hindu leaders, including Sarat Chandra Bose and Satyaranjan Bakshi. At a press conference on April 27, 1947, Suhrawardy spoke of a grand vision—but conspicuously failed to clarify whether this new Bengal would eventually merge with Pakistan.

Initially, Mahatma Gandhi entertained the idea under pressure from Sarat Bose, but soon rescinded his support as Hindu communities across Bengal overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. A Gallup poll in a major newspaper found that 99 percent favored creating a new state—West Bengal—within India.

The final nail came on June 20, 1947. In a joint session of the Bengal legislative assembly, the proposal to keep Bengal united was defeated 126–90. Hindu-majority districts in West Bengal voted to remain with India by a margin of 58–21. Suhrawardy’s grand plan—particularly his desire to wrench Calcutta from Indian control—died that day.

And yet, Alam’s recent cartographic fantasy shows the ghost of that ambition still lingers. It’s not simply a fringe delusion. When such ideas emerge from within the ranks of an interim government, they risk igniting reciprocal demands. West Bengal, after all, was awarded just 36 percent of Bengal’s land during partition, despite housing 45 percent of its non-Muslim population. If Bangladeshi officials revive dreams of annexing Indian territory, what’s to stop voices in West Bengal from demanding “justice” by reclaiming lost ground?

That would open the floodgates for a dangerous, destabilizing revisionism—and spell disaster for radical Islamist factions eager to upend the current order.

Partition, as painful and imperfect as it was, happened. India accepted it. Bangladesh emerged from it. But the idea of a United Bengal, born of ambition and bloodshed, was always a mirage. It remains so today. The faster Bangladesh’s leadership abandons this delusion, the more secure its place will be in South Asia’s future.