Awakening and the Making of Bihar Province

Why a separate Bihar?

Until 1912 Bihar was part of the Bengal Presidency, governed from Calcutta. Educated Bengalis held most government posts in Bihar, and Bihar's needs were often overlooked. A new middle class of lawyers, teachers and journalists in Patna began to ask for a province of their own.

Schools, societies and newspapers

• Patna College opened in 1863.
• The Bihar Scientific Society was founded at Muzaffarpur in 1868 by Syed Imdad Ali, to teach modern subjects in Indian languages.
• Newspapers:
  • Bihar Bandhu (1872, Keshav Ram Bhatt), one of the earliest Hindi papers;
  • Bihar Times (1894, Sachchidananda Sinha and Mahesh Narayan), later renamed Bihari, which led the separate-province campaign;
  • The Searchlight (1918) and The Indian Nation later became the voice of nationalism.
• The Hindi movement: in 1881, Hindi in Devanagari replaced Urdu (Persian script) as the court language of Bihar.

The road to 22 March 1912

1. Sachchidananda Sinha and his colleagues argued the case in the press and with officials.
2. The Bihar Provincial Conference first met at Patna in 1908, presided over by Ali Imam, and demanded a separate province.
3. At the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, King George V announced the reversal of the Partition of Bengal and the creation of a new province of Bihar and Orissa.
4. The province came into being on 22 March 1912, with Patna as its capital. 22 March is Bihar Diwas.

A capital takes shape

• New government buildings rose in the area now called New Capital (around the Secretariat and Raj Bhavan).
• Patna High Court: 1916.
• Patna University: 1917.
• Orissa became a separate province on 1 April 1936, leaving the province of Bihar (which then still included today's Jharkhand).

Exam tip: Don't mix up the three dates: 22 March (Bihar Diwas, 1912), 1 April (Orissa separated, 1936) and 15 November (Jharkhand formed, 2000).