Short answers, pulled from the story.
West Bengal had a population of over 91 million according to the 2011 census, making it the fourth-most populous state in India and the eighth-most populous country subdivision in the world. The estimated population as of 2026 is 106 million.
The capital of West Bengal is Kolkata, the third-largest urban agglomeration and the seventh-largest city by population in India. Kolkata served as the capital of all British-held territories in India from 1773 and as the capital of British India from 1772 until 1911.
Bengal was partitioned in 1947 along religious lines by a vote of the Bengal Legislative Council and the Bengal Legislative Assembly. West Bengal became a Hindu-majority state within India, while East Bengal became a Muslim-majority province of Pakistan, later becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.
The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), governed West Bengal for 34 years from 1977 to 2011, making it the world's longest-running democratically elected communist government. It was defeated in the 2011 assembly election by the Trinamool Congress under Mamata Banerjee.
The Sundarbans are a mangrove forest at the Ganges delta in southern West Bengal, forming part of the world's largest mangrove forest. The area has been declared a Biosphere Reserve and is noted for sheltering the endangered Bengal tiger, Gangetic dolphin, river terrapin, and estuarine crocodile.
West Bengal has produced multiple Nobel laureates, including Rabindranath Tagore (literature), C. V. Raman (physics, for the discovery of the Raman Effect at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in Kolkata), Amartya Sen, and Abhijit Banerjee.