Colonization Through Municipalization: The Politics of Sanitation and Municipal Governance in the ‘Mofussils’ of Colonial Bengal, c. 1870–1940s

How does a state govern a territory which has seen a sudden spurt in population and become the most densely populated regions of the province? How does the state account for the governance of a place which very recently has seen the transition from a rural or a semi-rural tract to a town? And most importantly, how does the state govern a place where the main source of power resides with the proprietors of private enterprises? These were some of the questions which the colonial state had to deal with when it was faced with the prospect of administering some of the most rapidly ‘urbanizing’ or expanding regions of Bengal, that is, the industrial belt or the riparian municipalities of the districts of 24 Parganas and Hooghly and the mining and railway junctions of Ranigunj and Asansol from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. How was their administration going to be any different from the other mofussil municipalities, which also had a semi-rural character? This article will look at these questions and try to understand how through the process of municipalization the colonial state was trying to control the newer territories and how the locals reacted to these attempts. This article will investigate and hence argue that any attempt at improvement in these mofussil municipalities was being throttled due to the lack of understanding, on the part of the provincial government, of the local socio-economic conditions and the ineffectiveness of the local self-government in these towns.