The change of Capital from Calcutta to Delhi was another blow to Bengal politics and the status of Calcutta as a cultural hub of India. The official explanation of the British Raj was that the strategic position of Calcutta was geographically remote from other Indian States, especially from the North Western frontier. But most of the historians were of the opinion that this move was directly connected with the British initiative to Partition of Bengal. As the commercial and literary hub of India, Calcutta had become the epicenter of the nationalist as well as extremist movements since the late nineteenth century. In a bid to weaken this opposition, in 1905, the colonial government cleaved the powerful province of Bengal into two portions. However, this decision inflamed anti-colonial sentiments, leading to a call for a boycott of British goods but also to bombings and political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. Such was the outpouring of public outrage that by 1911, the British were compelled to announced the reunification of Bengal as well as the immediate move of the capital to Delhi. Lord Curzon (the former viceroy who had taken the decision to partition Bengal) even made a speech to the House of Lords in which he singled out the reason behind the change of capital to Delhi. Officially, in a letter to the Secretary of State for India (sent from Shimla to London on August 25, 1911), the then-Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, pointed out that it has “long been recognized to be a serious anomaly” that the British governed India from Calcutta, located on the eastern extremity of its Indian possessions. He argued that the rising importance of elected legislative councils meant that the British Raj needed to find a more centrally located capital. However, large-scale immigration towards the urban centre was not unknown in the city of Calcutta. Even after the shift of the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi, the city retained its importance in trade and administrative matters which continued to attract people with aspirations from the neighbouring provinces. Calcutta was almost ten times bigger than Dacca, and thus the chief centre of migration in eastern India. The residents of the city of Calcutta were primarily non-Muslims and they owned 91.55 percent of the residential buildings (The Statesman, 18 July 1947). They paid bulk of municipal and other taxes; they owned and operated major industries and educational institutes of the city