Bengal in Maps

Summary

Published in 1949, S. P. Chatterjee’s Bengal in Maps: A Geographical Analysis of Resource Distribution in West Bengal and Eastern Pakistan maps Bengal’s physical and socioeconomic conditions and resource distributions. The visible preface explains that the maps developed from years of fieldwork and library research, initially for postgraduate teaching at the University of Calcutta; some were exhibited in 1947. Agricultural maps draw chiefly on Bengal Agricultural Department statistics, revised using land-utilisation surveys in selected districts. Unavailable agricultural statistics for Sylhet led to retention of the name “East Bengal” in the text. Most maps show the Radcliffe boundary, which the author describes as cutting important roads, railways, and areas of regional unity. He envisages uses in development planning, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, and as a record of resources at partition for subsequent comparisons of the two territories’ economies. Financial and documentary constraints limited coverage, scale, and colour printing; dot mapping was widely used, with a common base map adopted wherever possible to facilitate comparison. In the foreword, Mookerjee praises the work’s accuracy and detail and calls for state support for atlas compilation. The visible closing pages contain numbered administrative place lists organised by district and subdivision for West and East Bengal, with notes on some boundary allocations.