Well, Suhrawardy has a bad reputation among Bengalis because of the mishandling of Direct Action Day, 16th August 1946, when he, as Prime Minister (the heads of provinces were then called Prime Minister) sat in the police control room and interfered with police action to quell rioting.
However, as a sometime disciple of Sher-e-Bangal Fazlul Huq, that great Bengali leader from Barisal who was sabotaged by the British administration in his ministry making efforts, Suhrawardy had earned respect as the head of the Muslim League in Bengal. People have the impression that Jinnah had absolute control over the Muslim League everywhere in India, but this was not true. There was no one to challenge Suhrawardy in Bengal.
So when it became clear that the British would hand over power to two Dominions, Pakistan and India, Suhrawardy felt uncomfortable. He got together with Netaji's elder brother, Sarat Bose, and another prominent Bengali politician from the Congress, and proposed to all that Bengal should be the undivided third Dominion. Jinnah, in exasperation and irritation told him that he and his friends were free to do what they liked,
It was here that Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the Congress leader who had left to lead the Hindu Mahasabha, a man far more powerful in those days than the riff-raff that the Sangh Parivar puts up as its leadership at that time, stepped in. He protested sharply to Nehru and to Patel, and they immediately bore down heavily on Sarat Bose and Kiran Shankar Rai and forced them to withdraw and to agree on a referendum for partition. The results were clear; the Hindu members voted for partition, the Muslim members opposed it, and the British decided that partition would be the wisest option.
So, but for Syama Prasad, there would have been a Dominion of Bengal, right from the outset, from 1947, and that Dominion would have suffered none of the oppression that it did for 24 years.
