During the late Mughal era Bihar was part of Bengal suba and remained so for most of British rule. As an appendage of Bengal for a couple of centuries, Bihar remained a backward region. It was only in 1911 that it became a separate province. When I was a student in Patna in the 1930s and early 1940s, Biharis constituted a minority amo­ng the intelligentsia. It was Bengalis who dominated — as professors, school teachers, government officers, lawyers, doctors and even clerks.