It has been a year since unprecedented violence took place in West Bengal after the Assembly election results were announced. Why has Bengal been suffering violence (both West Bengal and Bangladesh)? What was the original demographic composition of Bengal and how has it changed; and how this has affected the socio-political milieu in this region? This multi-part series would attempt to trace the origin of socio-political trends in the larger Bengal region (state of West Bengal and Bangladesh) over the last several decades. These trends are related to the evolution of Bengal over the last 4000 years. It’s a long journey and unfortunately most part of it has been forgotten.
In 1946, two major riots happened in West Bengal. The first one took place in August 1946 in Calcutta known as ‘The Great Calcutta Killings’ while the second one happened in Noakhali in October, often called ‘The Noakhali Genocide’. Both these riots are significant case studies as the Calcutta riots seem to have set a trend, which was followed in decades to come in what has become West Bengal after the partition of India in 1947 while the Noakhali riots unleashed a template of violence against Hindus in East Bengal that has been repeatedly followed since then.
The name of organisations and the political leaders at the helm of affairs in these regions might have undergone a change with the passage of time but the templates of communal violence remain the same in both the regions since 1946. That is why it is important to take a look at the anatomy of both these riots.
In this article, we would take a look at ‘The Great Calcutta Killings’.
Setting the Stage for the Riots
The Muslim League had demanded, since its 1940 Lahore Resolution, that the Muslim-majority areas of India in the northwest and the east, should be constituted as ‘independent states’. The resolution passed on March 23, 1940 said, “…it is the considered view of this session of the All-India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principle, namely, that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern Zones of India, should be grouped to constitute ‘Independent States’ in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The divide between the Congress and Muslim League continued to widen between 1940 and 1946. The 1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed a three-tier structure: a centre, groups of provinces, and provinces. The “groups of provinces” were meant to accommodate the Muslim League demand. Both the Muslim League and Congress, in principle, accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan. However, the Muslim League later withdrew its consent to the plan in July 1946 and decided to launch ‘Direct Action’ to achieve Pakistan and “to organise the Muslims for the coming struggle to be launched as and when necessary”.
The Muslim League passed a resolution on July 29 ,1946 declaring August 16 as a ‘Direct Action Day,’ to be observed all over India as a day of protest. Immediately after the adoption of this resolution, Jinnah, in the concluding session of the Council of Muslim League, declared, “Today, we bid goodbye to Constitutional methods…we have also forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.”
In a Press Conference on July 31, Jinnah said while both the British and the Congress were armed in their own way, one with weapons and the others with a threat of mass struggle, the Muslim League felt the need to forge its own methods and be prepared for a struggle to enforce its demand for Pakistan. He declined to discuss the details of the proposed Direct Action saying, “I am not prepared to tell you that now”.
Bengal being the only province in India under the Muslim League’s rule was apparently chosen by its leadership as the suitable place for “demonstrating” ‘Direct Action’. The general public was vaguely apprehensive but nobody had any idea whatsoever about what was going to happen on the Direct Action Day of August 16, 1946.
However, the stage had been apparently set when in pursuance of their resolution of July 29, the Muslim League had set up a Council of Action. It met behind closed doors but the programme of action which it drew up and subsequently elaborated by the Muslim League press was clear enough. A leaflet containing a special prayer for this Direct Action announced that “ten crores of Indian Muslims who through bad luck had become slaves of Hindus and the British would be starting a Jehad in the very month of Ramzan”. Another leaflet bearing a picture of Jinnah with sword in hand said: “We Muslims have had the crown and have ruled. Be ready and take your swords…O Kafer!…your doom is not far and the general massacre will come!”
A Muslim League government with Saheed Suharawardy as the Chief Minister was in power in West Bengal. After this rupture between the League and the Cabinet Mission, Suharawardy had already declared that if the Congress were put in power at the Centre, Bengal would rebel and sent up an independent state owing no allegiance to the Central government.
The Great Calcutta Killings
The Direct Action Programme triggered what has come to known as ‘The Great Calcutta Killings’. From the midnight of August 15 up to August 19, 1946, massive anti-Hindu riots took place in the city of Calcutta. The death toll in these riots was estimated to be between 5,000 and 10,000 and around 15,000 persons were wounded. Some estimates have put the figure of dead at 15,000.
Tathagata Roy observed in ‘The Suppressed Chapter of History(Pp105), “How many people died in the killings? No estimate is available, the reason for which is probably that the killings were started by none other than the officialdom… A large number of bodies had been thrown into the river Hooghly, or in the canals that pass through the city, or were pushed into manholes.”
Roy further added, “As an example of deliberate abuse of state power to cause mass murders, it compares well in intensity, though not in breadth, with the Nazi holocaust and the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia.”
Dr. DC Sinha, Ashok Dasgupta and Ashis Chowdhury have provided detailed account of these riots in their seminal work The Great Calcutta Killings and Noakhali Genocide (Pp104-106), “The arrangements were perfect for the programme of loot, arson, rape and murder and truck-loads of goondas (hooligans) armed with dangerous weapons and incendiary material were rapidly sent to the more distant part to reinforce the local hooligans. Soon the city was ablaze from North to South and from East to West. The telephone wires were jammed with frantic appeals of police aid from Hindus of all sections of the city, but these appeals were disregarded in toto…The Hindus of Calcutta gradually realized that denial of police aid was part of the programme… The situation soon became precarious for the Hindus all over Calcutta. The entire city was at the tender mercies of tens of thousands of armed ruffians mad for loot, rape and murder. Their Fuehrer had declared a Jehad and, and thousands of gangsters had been imported to reinforce them. Further they seemed immune from the action of law, for the police had so far been mostly lookers-on.”
Modern Review, one of the most respected journals at that time wrote in its September, 1946 issue, “There is not enough space in these columns to give fuller details of this horrible catastrophe.”
To understand the anatomy of communal violence in the state of West Bengal post-independence, it is probably important to understand the anatomy of ‘The Great Calcutta Killings’.
The writer, an author and columnist, has written several books. One of his latest books is ‘The Forgotten History of India’. The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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