ABSTRACT
The announcement of the transfer of the seat of government was made by the British monarch, George V, at the 1911 Delhi Durbar as one of the ‘royal boons’ given by the emperor to the people of India (Frykenberg, 1986). It was accompanied by the announcement of a new governorship for the Presidency of Bengal, with the province’s boundaries redrawn to separate it from Behar, Chota Nagpur, and Orissa, as well as Assam. The 1905 Partition of Bengal that had bisected the Bengali-speaking people into two separate provinces was effectively annulled, although no direct reference to the partition was made in the ‘boon’.
