In this book, Professor A. F. Salahuddin Ahmed, a leading historian of Bangladesh gives a brief analytical account of the growth of national consciousness in Bengal in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries particularly among the Bengali Muslims which led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and subsequently its break-up and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. Dr. Ahmed deftly analyses in historical perspective the different trends in Bengali social and political thought. He particularly highlights the remarkable transformation that had taken place in the Bengali Muslim psyche during the past decades. He explains how the Bengali Muslims in their search for cultural identity had been pulled by forces from two opposite directions. On the one hand, there was the pull of the past calling for upholding the Islamic traditional identity; on the other, there was the pressure for establishing indigenous Bengali identity cutting across religious and sectarian barriers. Particularly through the language movement of 1948-52 a new secular national consciousness was aroused which first led to the demand for regional autonomy and then for independence.