17 | Cooch-Behar merger into West Bengal

Cooch Behar was an ancient princely state, founded over three centuries before its merger, with its traditions and history preserved in the Bengali epic, Rajmala. The Cooch dynasty had ruled it for centuries. In 1773, Cooch Behar signed a treaty with the East India Company, and its Raja agreed to its annexation to the province of Bengal. It was included in the districts of Bengal by section 2 of Regulation III of 1793. However, the question of whether it was a State or an Estate persisted until 1873, when it was finally decided that it was not British territory.

At the time of its integration, Cooch Behar spanned an area of 1,318 square miles with a population of approximately 6.5 lakh. Its annual revenue was about ₹1.11 crores. The state was known for being a surplus area in food production, growing the best kind of tobacco that fetched Rs. 40 lakhs in export duty. Geographically, it shared boundaries with East Pakistan, West Bengal, and Assam. This border location had strategic importance and posed administrative challenges. Its varied territorial divisions, including plains and hill tracts, and its borders with potentially volatile areas, underscored the need for a stable administration (White Paper, 1950).

The enclaves presented unique challenges. Enclaves are tracts or patches of land belonging to one administrative unit that are entirely surrounded by the territory of another. The enclaves, or Chhits known in Bengali, were believed to have originated from a historic chess game between Maharaja of Cooch Behar and Foujdar of Rangpur, in which they stacked villages. After partition in 1947, these tracts of land belonging to India and East Pakistan became surrounded by territories of either countries. For decades after Independence, enclave dwellers were virtually stateless and largely excluded from basic infrastructure and services. After a failed Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) in 1974, the two governments of India and Bangladesh finally ratified the LBA to exchange the enclaves and adverse possessions between both the countries. In this exchange, Bangladesh gained more territories than India (Banerjee et al., 2017).

VP Menon noted the volatility of Cooch Behar's populace and intrigues by its Prime Minister, Himmat Singh Maheshwari, with plots against the new Union of India. There were also reports of Pakistan attempting to strengthen communal elements in Cooch Behar. Initially, due to the conditions in the border area, it was decided that Cooch Behar should be administered as a Chief Commissioner's province. This was seen as a temporary measure to stabilize the situation before a final decision on its merger with a larger province could be made. Menon personally pushed for this approach, convincing Sardar Patel of the necessity to act swiftly given the external influences (Menon, 1956).

The Maharaja signed the merger agreement on August 30, 1949, and the state was taken over as a Chief Commissioner's province by the Government of India on September 12, 1949. Shortly thereafter, in December 1949, Sardar Patel, after consulting with the Premier of West Bengal, decided that Cooch Behar should be merged with West Bengal. The merger agreement had several key assurances and provisions:

• The agreement involved the cession of ‘full and exclusive authority, jurisdiction and powers for and in relation to the governance of the State’ to the Dominion Government.

  
  

• The West Bengal Premier, Dr. B.C. Roy, assured the people that Cooch Behar would be maintained as a separate district with its headquarters at Cooch Behar. The existing administrative setup would not be disturbed in the immediate future, with a transition period of three to six months before it became a full-fledged district of the presidency division of West Bengal.

  
  

• Representation would be given to the people of Cooch Behar in the provincial legislature based on population. All State servants were to be absorbed into West Bengal Government service on terms no less advantageous than their previous ones, with adequate compensation for any necessary discharges.

  
  

• The balance of the State treasury at the date of merger, amounting to approximately ₹1.5 crores, was to be spent on nation-building schemes for the benefit of the people of Cooch Behar. While the rulers were shorn of all power, they retained their titles, dignities, private property, and stipulated privy-purse allotments, initially charged on the revenues of the merged areas and later on the central budget. The privy purse amount was fixed on Rs. 8,50,000

  
  

The merger was implemented by an order issued under Section 290A of the Government of India Act, 1935. This section allowed for the administration of acceding states as part of a Governor's or Chief Commissioner's Province, effectively assimilating their position with that of the Provinces. The merger was effective from January 1, 1950 (White Paper, 1956).

Several decades later, in 1998, Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association (GCPA) was formed which explicitly stated that the manner in which Cooch Behar became part of West Bengal ‘violated the terms of the agreement’(Kumar, 2012). Their leaders alleged that its inclusion in West Bengal was illegal, as it promised to be a Part C state, instead of merging within a Part A state. The GCPA demanded the implementation of the "original merger agreement" between the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Government of India, rather than accepting the existing merger with West Bengal (Kumar, 2012).

References:

• (1950). Cooch-Behar Merges with Bengal. Hindustan Times

  
  

• Banerjee, S., Guha, A., & Basu Ray Chaudhury, A. (2017, July 24). The 2015 India-Bangladesh Land  Boundary Agreement: Identifying  Constraints and Exploring  Possibilities in Cooch Behar. Observer Research Foundation - Occasional Papers.

  
  

• Kumar, A. (Ed.). (2012). Rethinking State Politics in India (0 ed.). Routledge India. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203813997

  
  

• Menon, V. P. (1956). The Story of Integration of the Indian states. Orient Blackswan.

  
  

• Ministry of States. (1950). White Paper on Indian States. Government of India. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/White_Paper_on_Indian_States_(1950)

Annexure