Barisal

The town on the Kirtankhola river in southern Bangladesh, formerly a key centre of the 1905-11 Swadeshi movement in Bengal. The 1905 Bengal Partition's division of Hindu-majority West Bengal from Muslim-majority East Bengal (with Barisal in East Bengal) triggered the Swadeshi boycott of British goods; Barisal held the April 1906 Bengal Provincial Congress at which Surendranath Banerjee's chairmanship was interrupted by Lord Carmichael's police attack — the first major colonial suppression of a political gathering in Bengal. Aswini Kumar Dutta's Swadesh Bandhab Samiti (founded 1905) organised village-level anti-partition activity. The 1911 Partition reversal did not quiet the organising; Barisal remained a Swadeshi stronghold through to Independence. Modern Barisal is Bangladesh's sixth-largest city.