The colonial period ushered in major political and cultural renewal. Establishing British authority was not simply a question of defeating former rulers at Polashi and controlling zamindars. An authoritarian state based on an alliance with rural grandees was bound to call forth opposition, and, indeed, rebellion was a frequent companion of colonial rule. Right at the outset British rule was challenged severely and unexpectedly by thousands of armed religious mendicants who were enraged by an ill-advised government policy of banning the collection of alms. The revolt gained widespread support from a rural population suffering under the newly imposed system of taxation and it turned against tax collectors and armed forces. Known as the Fakir–Sannyasi resistance – fakir and sannyasi being the terms for Muslim and Hindu religious men, respectively – it combined guerrilla tactics and mass battles in which thousands participated. These rebels engaged the British all over Bengal and Bihar from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Resentment against the encroaching colonial state also found expression in various local revolts – for example, in Chittagong and Mymensingh – and these movements took the form of protecting community rights.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, British rule was no longer threatened in the Bengal delta. When the large revolt of 1857 – known to the British as ‘the Mutiny’ and to some nationalist historians as ‘the First War of Independence’ – brought the near-collapse of British rule in many parts of northern and central India, the Bengal delta remained aloof.