United Bengal
The British government proceeded to partition Bengal in accordance with the Mountbatten Plan and Radcliffe Line.
The Treaty of Yandabo in 1826 facilitated the transfer of the former Bengal Subah's southeastern frontier (which stretched up to Akyab and the Kaladan River) to British Burma.
[5] On 27 April 1947, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the Prime Minister of Bengal and a Muslim League leader, addressed a press conference in New Delhi outlining his opposition to the looming partition of Bengal under the British government's plans.
At the press conference, Suhrawardy made an impassioned plea for setting aside religious differences in order to create an "independent, undivided, and sovereign Bengal".
[6]Suhrawardy, a lawyer from Midnapore, did not want to lose western Bengal to the opposing side of the Hindu-Muslim divide.
The proposal elicited support from Bengali Hindu leaders Sarat Chandra Bose of the Indian National Congress, Kiran Saankar Roy (Leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in the Bengal Assembly), and Satya Ranjan Bakshi.
[7] Prominent Bengali Muslims in support of Suhrawardy included Bengal Finance Minister Mohammad Ali Chaudhury, Bengal Revenue Minister Fazlur Rahman, Islamic scholar Shamsul Huda Panchbagi,[8] Tippera politician Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, Mayor of Calcutta Syed Badrudduja and Bengal Muslim League secretary Abul Hashim.
On 12 May 1947, Bose and Hashim met Congress stalwart Mahatma Gandhi to discuss the United Bengal scheme.
[citation needed] Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, was also open to the idea of an independent Bengal.
It mirrored some of the confessionalist practices adopted in French Lebanon in 1926, where the positions of President and Prime Minister rotated among Muslims and Christians.
In reply to the plea made by Ashrafuddin Chowdhury, Kripalani stated "All that the Congress seeks to do today is to rescue as many areas as possible from the threatened domination of the League and Pakistan.
The United States government was also briefed on the possibility of three countries emerging out of partition, including Pakistan, India, and Bengal.
On 2 June 1947, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee informed the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom Lewis Williams Douglas that there was a "distinct possibility Bengal might decide against partition and against joining either Hindustan or Pakistan".
In the 1950s, the Calcutta-based Hindu nationalist volunteer group Sri Aurobindo Sevak Sangha included in their programme "Annulment of the ill-fated partition and reunification of India.
