Syama Prasad Mukherjee The Hindu Dissent and the Partition of Bengal 9780367530976, 9781003081739

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SYAMA PRASAD MOOKERJEE, THE HINDU DISSENT AND T H E PA RT I T I O N O F B E N G A L , 1932  1947 The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in demanding the separation of the Hindu majority districts in the western half of Bengal from the proposed East Pakistan has not been studied so far and documented. The ‘Right’ historians today try to view it as a great triumph for the Hindus while ‘Secular’ ones try to paint Syama Prasad as an ‘arch communalist’. Underlying both versions of the story is an assumption that the partition of Bengal was a much sought after goal pursued by Syama Prasad. Yet an impassioned examination of the actual documents show that Syama Prasad tried to work out a formula for the co-existence of the Hindus and the Muslims till the very last. Only when all attempts, including that of Mahatma Gandhi in the dark days of the Noakhali riots, failed to dissuade the Muslim League from trying to push the subcontinent towards partition that Syama Prasad launched his drive for the separation of the western districts of Bengal from East Pakistan. Partition was the bane of the Hindu Mahasabha. They had called a hartal on 3 July 1947 to register their disapproval of the idea. But once partition gained acceptance at all levels, beginning from the Congress to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Syama Prasad saw no alternative to making the best of a bad bargain and pushed for partition. The bloodbath of 16 August 1946 in Calcutta and the reprehensible violation of Hindu women in Noakhali the following October cast the die. He took a leaf out of Master Tara Singh's plans in the Punjab for the regrouping of the provinces by isolating the non-Muslim population from the Muslim majority zones. The Congress Working Committee took the same line passing a resolution on 8 March 1947 in favour of the isolation of the non-Muslim areas in the Punjab from the predominantly Muslim ones. This strengthened Syama Prasad’s case for the partition of Bengal. But this was a last resort measure failing all other options. Both the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee were aware of the grave consequences of the measure for the province as this much awaited volume notes, and were pledged to bring back the areas that were lost to Pakistan. Chhanda Chatterjee retired as Professor of History and Director, Centre for Guru Nanak Dev Studies in Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Currently she is the nominee of the President of India in the two central universities of Manipur and Tripura.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee,

the Hindu Dissent and

the Partition of Bengal,

1932-1947

C H H A N D A C H AT T E R J E E

Foreword by TAT H A G ATA ROY

MANOHAR

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Chhanda Chatterjee and Manohar Publishers The right of Chhanda Chatterjee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-53097-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08173-9 (ebk) Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro 11/13 by Manohar, New Delhi 110 002

To

My students of Visva-Bharati

whom I taught throughout

to avoid fundamentalism

of all hues whatsoever

Though wrongs done to individuals may remain unremedied history does not give us any instance of a wrong done to a community remaining eternally unredressed. justice manmatha nath mookerjee in the All-India Anti-Communal Award Conference Calcutta, 27 August 1939 Why should we not regard ourselves as Indians, proud of the great heritage that is jointly ours, which has given Indian civilization a memorable place in world history? Why should we not both agree to be loyal to our respective culture and religion and build up a common nationalism which will protect both of us and also merge us together in the highest ideal of service to our common motherland? Division of India into two or more independent sovereign states does not solve the communal problem; as there cannot be one territory where 100 per cent of a particular community, to the complete exclusion of the other, will reside. dr. syama prasad mookerjee Awake Hindusthan, p. 187

Contents

Foreword

9

Preface

11

Introduction

21

1. A Novel Political Arithmetic: The MacDonald Award of 1932 and the Challenge to the Hindus of Bengal

63

2. The Working of the Provincial Autonomy in Bengal: The First Phase

82

3. The Mounting of Tensions and the Dacca Riots

116

4. The Hindu Mahasabha and its Works in Bengal, 1939-1941

157

5. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Non-Communal Alternative: The Progressive Coalition Ministry

203

6. The Blighted Province: Communalism, Famine and Steps Towards Decolonization

248

7. Larke Lenge Pakistan (Pakistan by Force): Muslim League Direct Action in Calcutta and Noakhali

286

8. The Best of a Bad Bargain: Dr. Mookerjee’s Formula for Peace

337

9. Conclusion

399

Bibliography

413

Index

423

9 Tathagata Roy

RAJ BHAVAN

Governor

SHILLONG - 793001 MEGHALAYA INDIA

FOREWORD

How far is it justified, it may be argued, that a person who trained as a civil engineer (of all things) ventures to write a foreword to a learned historical treatise by an eminent scholar such as Or. Chhanda Chatterjee. However, since I have been so asked by the author, I shall try to answer the argument. At a stage of my life, in the nineteen nineties, I developed an allencompassing interest in the partition of India on its eastern flank, and the events immediately preceding and following it. It was partly driven by my anguish at the loss of the village of my ancestors in Brahmanbaria, East Bengal, later known as East Pakistan, and now known as Bangladesh; and also by the strange fact that this anguish is shared by so few who have shared the same fate. As a result, I plunged into a study of the period and the outcome of that were two books'. Hence my interest and hence this foreword. However, I also realised while working on the two books that my lack of training as a professional historian was proving to be a serious hurdle in treating the subject. But I had to hurry, because a lot of eyewitnesses to the material of the books, I suspected., would not be around much longer. The apprehension proved to be correct. I thereafter hoped that my books, however amateurish, would trigger further research by professionally qualified and competent historians into this relatively neglected subject - namely the partition on the eastern flank of India, the events leading to it and its consequences. It gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to say that Dr. Chhanda Chatterjee has come forward to undertake that task. Quite a lot of the source material for this research, especially that originating in Bangladesh, is in Bengali which Dr. ChatteIjee, being Bengali herself, had no difficulty in obtaining, analysing and dissecting. And I have no hesitation is stating that she has discharged her burden with consummate competence. While studying the pre-partition period I was often intrigued by the fact that the communalisation of the province of Bengal during the Muslim League rule of 1937-41 and 1943-47 and the travails of the minority Hindus of the province during this period seemed to have been glossed over. This included such unspeakable horrors as the Dhaka riots of 1941, the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, and the Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali Carnage, both of 1946. Knowing the identity of some of the few historians who had written about this period., the reasons were not far to seek. Politicians and later historians in the Left-Nehruvian mould had developed an unwritten rule that thou shalt not speak ill of a Muslim, and that had • 1. My People, Uprooted: The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh, Synergy Books India, Delhi, 2016 2. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Life and Times, Viking, Penguin-Random House India, Gurgaon, 2018

Phone : +91 3642223001, +91 3642223487 E-mail:[email protected]

Fax : +91 3642224902

10

FO F O R EWORD EWORD

resulted in this deliberate obfuscation of history. Another incident which I have fOWld glossed over was Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari's 'formula' , also called 'sporting offer', of 1944 which Mahabna Gandhi enthusiastically espoused. Jinnah expressed what Gandhiji described as 'staggering contempt. It resulted in the totally Wlintended and Wlwelcome (by Gandhiji) consequences of Pakistan being practically conceded, Jinnah being anointed the sole spokesman of Muslims, and 'Nationalist Muslims' from Fazlul Haq's party in Bengal and the Unionist Party in Punjab flocking to the League en masse. It was an Wlrnitigated disaster, one of the most serious errors of judgment that Gandhiji committed. The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in this period had been similarly, perhaps with a vengeance, been concealed, glossed over, obfuscated. Dr. MookeIjee is known today as the fOWlder-president of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forefWlner of today' s BJP, and one who sacrificed his life fighting for the complete integration of Jarnmu and Kashmir into India and for the rights of the Dogras of that state; but his role in Bengal, especially the snatching of the Indian state of West Bengal from the jaws of Jinnah is almost Wlknown. The reason clearly is that historians and pamphleteers from Dr. MookeIjee's own state of West Bengal were almost all of the Left-Nehruvian persuasion, to whom Dr. Mookerjee, his thoughts, his politics and his Hindu Mahasabha were anathema This sOWlds all the more paradoxical because, but for Dr. MookeIjee, there would have been no such state of India as West Bengal, but gratitude or regard for the whole truth are not some of the virtues of the group I refer to. Dr. Chhanda ChatteIjee has tried to set right these anomalies as well as she could in her paper. She has the regard for the whole truth and the dispassionate outlook of a historian which make her capable of undertaking the task. And she is not burdened by Left-Nehruvian baggage. The result is a very good treatise which, I fervently hope, will trigger further research on the subject. For me it is a matter of personal satisfaction that the objective with which I wrote my two books are on the way to being achieved.

Raj Bhavan, Shillong, Meghalaya March 21, 2019

'l~~ (Tathagata Roy)

Preface

as a professional historian perhaps I owe my readers an explanation regarding what inspired me to venture into a subject which I have chosen to write about. In August 2015 I had to write a review for Professor Tathagata Roy’s book The Life and Times of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee: A Complete Biography for the Statesman, an English daily simultaneously published from both Delhi and Kolkata. The book opened a new horizon of thinking for me. I was struck by a sense of shame for my own ignorance of what had been happening in my own province on the eve of the liberation from British rule in spite of having been engaged with the study and teaching of modern Indian history. The history of freedom movement in our school textbooks meant the successive movements launched by Mahatma Gandhi with Jawaharlal Nehru in the background and may be also a bit of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; Netaji was reduced to a short note in the same category as the Komagata Maru episode. But the test papers never considered it necessary to ask a single question regarding Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s contribution to our national life. As an undergraduate student I once asked Professor Anil Banerjee to tell me about a book from where I could have a comprehensive idea of our struggle for liberation and Sir looked helplessly and said that no clear interpretation has as yet emerged. While teaching M.Phil classes in Calcutta University in 2000 I had to plead the same helplessness when students wanted to know why the country and especially why our province had to be partitioned. The dominant political interests in the country had simply blacked out any objective discussion of the respective responsibilities for the partitioning of the country and the partitioning of our province. While working on the partition of the Punjab province for an Indian Council of Historical Research Project I gradually learnt about the protracted negotiations interspersed with violent incidents, whenever negotiations received a jolt in course of the transfer of

12

PREFACE

power. But Punjab as a source of military recruitment had been kept quiet through British help till almost the last few months before the final departure of the British from India. Punjab experienced real violence only from March 1947 when the British had decided to leave and no longer cared for recruitment of armed personnel from this hapless province. The case of Bengal was very different. Here the various European plantation, industrial and mercantile groups made a last ditch effort to save their interests by teaming up with the Muslim League from 1937. While the Congress of Sarat Bose wreaked havoc in the industries in areas like Kharagpur, Andul, Burdwan, Dacca, Mymensingh and Kushtia, the Kesoram Cotton Mills in Calcutta, the numerous jute mills dotting the banks of the river Hooghly and also in Britannia Biscuit Works, Corporation Water Works, Oriental Gas Works and the printing press trade through strikes of labour unions, Husseyn Suhrawardy, the Minister in Charge of Labour endeared himself with the British Government (Governor John Anderson rated him as a ‘competent person’, while assigning him the Ministry of Labour) and the lingering European interests in the state for breaking up those strikes with his up country Muslim following among mill workers. The Communal Award of 1932 and the Government of India Act of 1935 had carefully worked out a constitutional framework for Bengal to strengthen the Muslims in Bengal with a statutory majority so that Congress could be kept at bay. The Congress High Command at this time was busy trying to secure the unfettered control in the provincial ministries, where it had won an absolute majority, i.e. the Hindu majority provinces, by staying away from ministry formation to pressurize the British into pruning the control given to the Governor over the working of these ministries in the Act of 1935. In the process it lost the chance to combine with the Krishak Praja Party (KPP) of Fazlul Huq and keep Muslim League out of power in the province. Congress attempts to woo the Muslims into the Congress fold through the Muslim mass contact programme rather exacerbated the dormant conflicts of the Hindus and the Muslims and roused the Muslim League into a vigorous defence of the interests of their own constituents with the

PREFACE

13

full co-operation of the KPP. The communalization of the province had its roots in these complex developments and not in bhadralok contempt for their Muslim cohorts as Joya Chatterji has misleadingly argued in her treatise. The Muslim ashraf probably had no less contempt for their atrap co-religionists, but they were quick to grasp the implications of the extended franchise granted in the Act of 1935 to the lower rungs of Muslims, the increase in the number of rural constituencies for Legislative Assembly seats and the necessity for mobilizing support in the Union Boards and District Boards from the rural Muslim voters concentrated in the districts of East Bengal. The Muslim mass contact programme of the Congress roused them to action and the leaders from ashraf background did not delay in approaching the atrap masses concentrated in the villages. To emphasize their distinctiveness, the Muslims of Bengal evolved a new language with sprinklings of Urdu and Arabic words instead of the Sanskrit based language of the Hindu Bengalis and started preparing textbooks using that language by using their control on primary school education. Educational grants and scholarships were utilized to favour the Muslm students in particular to redress the imbalance in the progress of education among the two communities. The Secondary Education Bill sought to liberate secondary education from the control of Calcutta University and wanted to vest it in a new Board where the nominees of the provincial government or exofficio members would hold a sway. The Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act sought to bring the Calcutta Corporation under the control of the Muslims through the introduction of separate electorate for the Muslims. The ultimate aim of the Bill was to reserve jobs for the Muslims, which Fazlul Huq as Mayor had attempted but failed to achieve in 1935 through the alert intransigence of Congress councilors. The enforcement of the communal ratio in the services and the embargo on the appointment of Hindus till the Hindu-Muslim ratio was brought at par also created a deep sense of frustration among the educated Hindus. As Congress was not a communal organization it could not speak in favour of Hindus only. This non-commital attitude of the Congress brought the Hindu Mahasabha into action in the province. Its President Veer Savarkar started visiting Bengal since 1939 and held the All India Hindu

14

PREFACE

Mahasabha session in Calcutta in December 1940. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had left the Congress in 1939. He had to leave after the party decided to quit office in protest against the British Government’s unilateral decision to involve India as a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the popularly elected ministries. But this abrupt decision of the Congress left Bengal in such a helpless condition that Syama Prasad found it tantamount to an abrogation of its responsibilities. The interest taken by Savarkar in the affairs of the province kindled new hopes in his mind. Syama Prasad therefore decided to place his services at the disposal of the Hindu Mahasabha. He was sent on a tour of the East Bengal districts along with B.C. Chatterjee to study Hindu grievances in these districts and submit the report during the All India Hindu Mahasabha session in December 1940. Thus while the Muslim League started opening local offices all over the villages in East Bengal, officially announced the formation of the Muslim National Guard in the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1938 and started organizing the Muslims from the mosques, the Hindu Mahasabha too took care that the Hindus of Bengal were not taken unawares. They organized gymnastic and sporting societies under the aegis of various organizations like the Arya Vir Dal, the Mahavir Dal, the Bharat Sevasram Sangha, the Hindu Mission and above all the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha. Thus the ground was being prepared for a head on collision between the two communities. Chief Minister Fazlul Huq’s sudden rift with Jinnah in September 1941 opened new vistas for a Hindu-Muslim understanding when the Krishak Praja Party headed by Fazlul Huq formed an alliance with its staunch rival, the Hindu Mahasabha, led by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee. Mookerjee, who had been dubbed as an ‘arch communalist’ by Harun-or-Rashid, a renowned historian from Bangladesh, had been given a clean chit on that count by Fazlul Huq, who had been in touch with Syama Prasad since his boyhood days in course of his legal articleship with Syama Prasad’s father, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee. The renowned KPP leader Abul Mansur Ahmad recounted Fazlul Huq’s statement in that respect in his well known reminiscences Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhor. However, the poison of communalism had already seeped into the Muslim pscyche in Bengal. They had

PREFACE

15

become very sensitive on the questions of music before mosques or cow sacrifice during kurbani. Police firing inside the Jame Masjid in Kishoreganj in Mymensingh on 24 October 1942 killing several people put matters beyond repair. People renamed the mosque ‘Shahidi Mosque’ and blamed the Hindu District Magistrate Banerjee for it (Ahmad, p. 233). Syama Prasad was already irritated with the Governor and the Viceroy on several counts. He understood that it was time for him to quit and submitted his resignation in November. Syama Prasad’s resignation letter had fully exposed how the Governor John Herbert had made a sham of provincial autonomy. He kept on ignoring every suggestion that Syama Prasad made for building up a territorial army for resisting the Japanese advance towards the Indian mainland. The Finance Minister’s office was often bypassed in the huge disbursement of Government finances for building up defence mechanisms like aerodromes, etc. The Governor refused to take the coalition into confidence in any high level matter. Every order from the Governor first reached the opposition leader Nazimuddin. Subsequently it came to the ministry. The Government’s decision to embark on a programme of boat denial for the deltaic districts of East Bengal did not have the sanction of the ministry. The rice denial programme pushed up grain prices due to the arbitrary manner in which it was enforced. There were accusations of favouritism against the contract for the removal of rice being the monopoly of the Ispahanis. Congress resistance in Midnapur to this rice denial programme during the August 1942 ‘Quit India’ movement call by Gandhiji was retaliated against by indiscriminate torture by the military in the district including the violation of women. The climax was in the withholding of the cyclone alert in October 1942 by the D.M. when part of the mainland was submerged under sea water and men and beast alike died in the flood. Syama Prasad later discovered orders to delay aid by a month to punish the Congress rebels for their misdeeds. This was too much for Syama Prasad. He decided to submit his resignation and go public with it to expose the mischievousness of the Governor. The Progressive Coalition had also reached a dead end on other problems like the Secondary Education Bill and the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. Hindus had become very sensitive about

16

PREFACE

these bills as they touched upon the two most important aspects of their lives – their education and their employment. However much Syama Prasad would try, it was impossible for him to compromise on those matters without causing a widespread outcry. Muslim opinion had also hardened as was evinced in the tussle over the enforcement of communal ratio for A.R.P. appointment. It was found that the A.R.P. Commissioner Mr. Hands had not heeded the communal ratio in such appointments. But the blame inevitably went to the Hindus. The upshot of these controversies revealed the mutual distrust of the two communities which had gone beyond repair. Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy, the former Muslim League colleagues of Fazlul Huq found a very receptive audience in the Muslims of East Bengal, many of them the erstwhile loyal supporters of Fazlul Huq’s KPP. Fazlul Huq realized the damage done to his constituencies only when the KPP candidates drew a blank in the by-elections in Balurghat and Natore. It was then that he tried to set out on a tour of East Bengal only to be greeted with hostile crowds and black flags. The days of moderate KPP politics were now over. The Muslim League now held an absolute sway in the countryside. This was revealed in the landslide victory of the Muslim League in the 1946 elections. The Hindu Mahasabha had preached Akhand Hindustan as late as September 1946. But the gory incidents of Noakhali crossed all norms of civilization. Many of the rescued women later testified before Mahatma Gandhi during his tour of that hapless district that the rapists were not outsiders or goonda elements as was tried to be argued but often their neighbours themselves. Nirmal Kumar Bose who accompanied Gandhi to these villages kept a diary of those incidents narrated by the women. What was yet more shocking was the complicity of Muslim women themselves in such incidents. The aim of the rioters was mass extermination of the Hindus through mass conversion or liquidation. Gandhi tried to bring back the refugees, who had seen their neighbours being burnt alive and were, therefore, too scared to go back. His prayer meetings were avoided by Muslims as soon as the name of ‘Ram’ was uttered. The path he traversed in Noakhali was strewn with excreta to display their abhorrence of his presence. And yet Gandhi would not yield. He would never agree to the bifurcation of the country.

PREFACE

17

But better sense prevailed. When Syama Prasad approached him in his Sodepur Ashram in February 1947 for his scheme for the partition of the province into two different zones for the two communities Gandhi’s resistance had weakened. He could see the rationality in Syama Prasad’s scheme. Syama Prasad now could array the entire Hindu community behind him – men who had lost their kith and kin in the riots, whose houses had been burnt, whose relatives were burnt alive in front of them and whose mothers, wives and sisters were carried away, converted and violated. The pattern of Hindu and Muslim settlements helped his plans, since the areas of Muslim concentration fell mostly on the eastern parts. Congress had also mooted the talk of partition after the Punjab carnage of March 1947. It merely strengthened Mookerjee’s agenda. Calcutta was the bone of contention. Suhrawardy, who had thought first of bullying the Hindus to submission by the Great Calcutta Killing now changed his strategy to a United Bengal movement to prevent the dis­ memberment of his spoils. The British were also too distrustful of Congress intentions regarding British economic interests in Calcutta and proposed a condominium of this city. It required a great argumentative skill on the part of Syama Prasad and his emissary N.C. Chatterjee to salvage Calcutta for West Bengal. It was now Suhrawardy’s turn to seek reprieve for the heroes of the Great Calcutta Killing in independent West Bengal and Gandhi readily conceded to go on fast beseeching peace. Calcutta remained peaceful on the day of independence in deference to the Mahatma, while sister Punjab had all its five rivers turned crimson with the blood of warring Sikhs protesting the arbitrary Boundary Award. Tathagata Roy has called Syama Prasad ‘the architect of West Bengal’. But independent West Bengal tried to wipe out this legacy after his tragic death in Kashmir in 1953. Nobody ever thanked this hero for rescuing the province from the trauma of subjection to Muslim rule in the way the Akalis still venerate Master Tara Singh. In their anxiety to assimilate the Muslims who could not leave this province for East Pakistan, the Congress and their Marxist successors to political power in the state maintain an absolute silence on the birth of West Bengal. Marxist narratives of the pre-independence riots try to gloss over the responsibility of the respective communities.

18

PREFACE

Rather than trying to blame the ‘other’, broadminded Hindus like Tagore would try to point out their own failings. Once out of the woods we are unwilling to look back upon the trauma through which we passed. But in the process we forget the contributions of men like Syama Prasad to the freedom we enjoy today – the freedom of worship, the freedom of pursuing our cultural concerns, the freedom to develop our language and in a word the freedom to be ourselves. This research compelled me to do a lot of travelling, including a trip abroad. The major part of the material was available with the Special Branch of Kolkata Police and Intelligence Branch of Bengal Police records now kept in the Kolkata Police Museum and the Shakespeare Sarani Branch of the West Bengal State Archives. I would specially thank Dr. Champak Bhattacharya, Joint Commissioner of Police for making the necessary arrangements for examining those records. My student Dr. Madhurima Sen and her colleagues Dr. Rina Roy and Madhuri Banik in the West Bengal State Archives were extremely helpful. Part of the work was done in Delhi in the ICHR Library, where Dr. Jyotsna Arora, Deputy Director, helped a lot. The staff of the National Archives of India and the staff of the microfilm and private papers sections of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library were very cooperative. My experience in the British Library was also something to cherish and the many employees from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Asian and African Studies Section had made me feel absolutely at home. Rachel Rowe and Dr. Kevin Greenbank at the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge helped me get hold of and even photocopy and microfilm many private papers of former members of the Indian Civil Service. Funding for these trips came from our departmental UGC Special Assistance grants while I was working in Visva-Bharati. After my retirement ICHR very kindly agreed to finance a trip to the UK. I am grateful to Dr. Saradindu Mukherji, member ICHR for it. My gratitude to Professor Tathagata Roy is too much to be expressed in words. His scholarly works led me to ask questions which ultimately flowered into this book. I also profited a lot from a discussion with Professor Dilip Chakravarty, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge and Editor of the ICHR Journal The Indian Historical Review. Dilipda’s comments

PREFACE

19

came as an eye opener and helped me a lot in my understanding the intricacies of Bengal politics in the years from 1937 to 1947. Among others who deserve my thanks is my daughter Anupurba, who helped me take print outs, get them bound up and reach them to the publisher even during her short ten day vacation from her studies in Paris. She even flew all the way to the UK with interruptions to her classes to get me settled first in the British Library and then in Cambridge. The YMCA in London was a home away from home. My kind hosts Damien and his wife Su with their beautiful daughter Louise made me forget my loneliness. I am grateful to the Director General of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library Dr. Shakti Sinha, IAS and Research Director Dr. Narendra Shukla for all the cooperation I received. Dr. Anirban Ganguly, Director, Shyama Prasad Foundation, New Delhi and Mahua Dhar of Kolkata always encouraged me in my venture. I must also mention the help of Dr. Debdutta Chakravarty of Ashutosh Foundation, Kolkata in getting hold of the latest edition of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s Awake Hindusthan. I am grateful to Ramesh Jain of Manohar for publishing the book quickly. My husband Arun Roy drew my attention to various recent publications for studying the Noakhali carnage as he was himself a refugee from East Bengal and whole-heartedly sympathized with my work. Without his encouragement and deep respect for Syama Prasad I could not have gone ahead with my work. Santiniketan, 2019 [email protected]

Chhanda Chatterjee

Introduction

this study aims to understand the circumstances which forced the hands of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee to assume the leading role in the carving out of the province of West Bengal from the littoral that was soon to become the province of East Pakistan. It was curious that the leadership of this process came from the Hindu Mahasabha, an organization which had been ardently propagating Akhand Hindustan all through the 1940s. While Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, had been looking for ‘a plan which will enable the vast majority of Hindus and Muslims to live under circumstances which will give freedom and peace to the common man’ and wanted to banish ‘the false and foolish idea of Pakistan or Islamic rule’1 till even September 1946, in May 1947 he had been writing to the Viceroy that Hindus ‘must not be compelled to live within the Moslem State and the area where they predominate should be cut off’.2 How did this transition come about? What were the compulsions behind such a decision? What part did the political developments in Bengal under the dual scheme of provincial autonomy and the Communal Award of 1932 play in bringing about this turn around in Bengal politics? The answer to all these questions is sought in the following pages. The most remarkable thing about this period was the sudden and meteoric rise of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1939 till after the declaration of independence in the politics of the province of Bengal. The catastrophic news of the murder of Gandhi by a Mahasabha activist Nathuram Godse in 1948 made the name of the Hindu Mahasabha a taboo in most political circles.3 That may be a major reason why there has been no rational historical analysis of what happened in Bengal politics between the schism in the Bengal Congress since 1939 and the partition of the province on communal lines. What were the problems ailing the province in this period, why was an extraordinarily talented and gifted man of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s stature4 inclined towards the Hindu Mahasabha, how

22

INTRODUCTION

the communal scene in the province was changing under the impact of imperial legislation and the continuous abetment5 to communal forces by the powers that be – all these questions are intended to be taken up for discussion. In this context Joya Chatterji’s attempt to throw the entire blame for the partition at the door of the Hindu bhadralok element6 has also been subjected to a fresh examination. THE EMERGENCE OF A JIHADI IDEOLOGY

AMONG THE MUSLIM MASSES

The movement for partition was, however, much more than the animus of the bhadralok for their social inferiors. Individual aberrations on the social front might have been there. Sometimes the Muslim peasants of East Bengal might have felt humiliated by their economic bosses (the zamindars and mahajans), who held the key to rural credit.7 The rising Muslim gentry typified by men like Fazlul Huq, Shamsuddin Ahmed or Tamizuddin must have confronted prejudice and competition from their Hindu peers. But that sort of social friction could not have led to an entire community’s decision to sever connections with their ancestral homes8 and embark on an uncertain future. It was rather the jihadi psychology9 of the Muslim League Ministries from 1937 to 1947 (with a short break of a mere fourteen months from December 1941 to February 1943) which tried to block all the avenues of education, employment and political power for the Hindus that gave birth to a feeling of great resentment among the latter. Contemporary observers like Nirad C. Chaudhuri could detect a clash of cultures in the new social developments of the nineteenth century, which broke up the placid currents of life in the villages of Bengal: Not only were the Hindu and Muslim masses of India closely related ethnically, they were also on a level of culture which was fairly uniform and which in its essentials was a folk civilization almost wholly devoid of selfconsciousness. In the contact of diverse cultures the absence of selfconsciousness always favours assimilation and absorption. This was also the case with the common heritage of the Hindu and Muslim masses of India. . . . As a result of the resuscitation of the Hindu past, the nineteenth century witnessed a progressive de-Islamisation of the non-Muslims of India and together with it a tremendous revival of Hindu traditions. On the Muslim

INTRODUCTION

23

side there was continuous attempt to complete the Islamisation of the Muslims of India, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The proselytizing zeal of the Muslim priestly order was not satisfied with the existing state of affairs. Its steady object was an increasing reclamation of the semi-Islamised converts who had remained lax and latitudinarian in their religious tenets. The process inevitably tended towards a waning loyalty to the common heritage.10

With the stress on reform of the sabiqi (traditional) life style, Muslims were confronted with a dilemma between their identity as Muslims and their identity as Bengalis. They started evolving a new sartorial, colloquial and literary style to distinguish themselves from Hindus. Lungis or pyjamas took the place of dhotis; the former pre­ dominance of Sanskrit words in the spoken language was discarded and a larger number of Urdu/Persian words made their way into the dialects spoken by the average Muslims.11 The importance of Urdu and also Persian as the lingua franca of the Muslims was asserted by Fazlul Huq himself in 1905, when during the Mahomedan Educational Conference at Barisal he demanded that in order to qualify for government grants in Bengal all Muslim maktabs should engage a teacher competent to teach Urdu and Persian. If the Muslims of Bengal wanted to fraternize with Muslims outside the province they could do it only by means of Urdu and Persian.12 The Bengali Muslim knew at the core of his heart that his ideological roots were not in Bengal and in order to be true to his traditions he must break out of his insularity and look to the holy land in Arabia, where his faith had originated. Even a Bengali to the core like Fazlul Huq was affected with this sense of alienation from his own birthplace and expressed a desire to leave Bengal and spend his last days in Arabia: ‘From boyhood I have been of a religious bent of mind and I have been hoping to pass the last years of my life in our Holy Land in one of the holy cities of Arabia.’13 Gandhiji’s call for non-cooperation in 1920 over the issue of the Khilafat linked Hindu bhadralok grievances against post-war retrenchments of additional clerks, petty officials, labourers of the war with the frustration of the Muslim cultivator of East Bengal at the collapse of the jute boom of 1914-17 and a rise in the price of rice beyond the purchasing power of the landless labourers and middle

24

INTRODUCTION

ranking tenants. But this apparently impossible alliance was made possible only through the further penetration of the ulama of the politics of the lower peasantry in the East Bengal villages. The Congress used both the Muslim League and the ulama to spread the vague idea of swaraj in the villages. In the religious verbiage of the Muslim preacher swaraj for the peasants conjured up some Islamic paradise which they would not easily be persuaded to give up long after the enthusiasm for the Khilafat had died down. As Taj ul-Islam Hashmi pointed out: Like the socalled Wahhabi movement of the nineteenth century, the Khilafat Movement had also tremendous impact on the Muslim masses of the region. The formal appearance of the ulama in the arena of politics injected a new dose of religious fervor into the body politic of the Muslm society. Pan Islamism and Muslim solidarity vis à vis the Hindus emerged as more important political issues among Muslims irrespective of class and profession.14

Chittaranjan Das interpreted the rising tide of communalism among the Bengal Muslims as ‘essentially a struggle for power by the marginal sections of the educated classes of Bengal society’15 and tried to make some concessions to the Muslims by his Bengal Pact of December 1923. A joint session of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and the Khilafatists ratified the voluntary banning of music before mosques, unrestrained cow sacrifice during Eid and larger employment of Muslims in the Swarajist controlled Calcutta Corporation. The Muslims were also promised a statutory majority in the government and administration after the attainment of swaraj.16 Although the provisions related to the statutory majority were to come into force only after the attainment of swaraj, the European Group persuaded Nawab Musharraf Hussain to demand immediate implementation of the Pact by reserving 80 per cent of all future vacancies in jobs till the Muslims could attain the agreed proportion of 55 per cent. The move was stalled for the time being through an adjournment.17 But subsequently the Hindus argued that as only 47 per cent of the Swarajists (of whom 30 were Muslims) out of a total of 114 had signed the Pact, the Pact was not representative of the views of the Bengali community. Prominent persons like Bipin Chandra Pal, S.N. Banerjee and Maharaja Manindra Chandra Nandy

INTRODUCTION

25

opposed the Pact. It was formally rejected by the Congress under the influence of Gandhi at the Cocanada Session on 29 December 1924.18 The rejection of the Pact thus brought the entire question of Hindu-Muslim relations to the fore. The fundamentalist ulama now found the Muslim liberal nationalists at their side. The richer sections of the peasantry, who had started sending their children for higher education and had aspirations to a better life fell heart and soul for the propaganda of men like Pir Abu Bakr Siddique of Furfura, Maulana Ismail Siraji and A.M. Abdul Hamid of Pabna and helped spread the campaign among the lower orders. At the Serajgunge Conference Maulana Ismail Hossein Siraji exhorted the audience that the Amir of Afghanistan was soon to arrive at India to redress the economic wrongs and establish the rule of Islam. The smouldering fire of discontent finally manifested itself in the Calcutta riots of 1926.19 The failure of the Nehru Report to satisfy minority aspirations took the Indian political representatives to London; but even after three Round Table Conferences they could not arrive at a consensus. Aga Khan parroted Fazl-i-Hussain’s demand for strong provinces and a weak centre, which Congress was not prepared to concede. For Bengal Fazl-i-Hussain’s instructions to Shafaat Ahmad Khan was to demand representation on a population basis, leaving the large European quota undisturbed. Even if Gandhi could be cajoled into it, Malaviya and Moonje were adamant.20 This pushed the ball into the British Premier’s court and the MacDonald Award of 1932 conceded separate electorate to the Muslims, with statutory majorities in the Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi would not countenance the creation of the Scheduled Castes as a separate block. He would rather concede them seats from the general constituencies. He therefore went into a fast unto death till Dr. Ambedkar, the leader of the Scheduled Castes accepted it. But in Bengal this compromise cost the upper caste Hindus dear. They were reduced to a small rump in the legislature of 250. Congress unwillingness to stage any protest against the injustice now began to bring voices of dissidence to the fore. Congressmen like Malaviya, Moonje and Aney, who were shocked at the Congress inaction in the face of the Communal Award and refused to accept its modifications under the Poona Pact, formed a new group called the Congress Nationalist Party.21 The Hindu Mahasabha now came

26

INTRODUCTION

to the fore to the rescue of Hindu interests in Punjab and Bengal and started mobilizing public opinion for sending a petition to the Secretary of State, seeking its reversal.22 TACTICAL MISTAKES OF THE CONGRESS

The new Government of India Act of 1935 was based on the Communal Award and elections to the provincial legislatures were held in 1937 on the basis of it. The overwhelming victory of the Congress in six provinces made them too confident about their popularity. They now started on a series of tactical mistakes. They refused take into account the good showing of the Muslim League in the few seats, which they had contested. Even in provinces like the UP, where they had an electoral understanding with the Muslim League, they offered very difficult terms to the League for coming into a coalition. These terms would have amounted to almost a selfeffacement of the League.23 Thus the coalition did not materialize. The Congress thought that their poor performance in the Muslim constituencies was due to imperfect mobilization. They therefore embarked on a programme of Muslim mass contact. In the context of Bengal this meant a renewed engagement with the ulama. It also offered a challenge to the Muslim League to put their house in order. The Muslim League was awakened to the necessity of shedding their image as an urban party; they intensified their efforts to turn rural and opened new offices in remote villages to get close to the people. Congress initiative gave a boost to their energy by challenging them in their home turf.24 In the words of an expert on the Muhammadan question: The campaign was a political blunder and had the effect of unifying the Muslims against the Congress in a manner hitherto unknown in Indian political experience. The Muslim League came into its own. Prior to the elections the League had but a loosely knit organization, was divided within itself and was marred with jealousies among its leaders; after the elections it was not called upon to form Ministries, even in the Muslim provinces. The Congress campaign among the Muslim masses changed that. The belief emerged that the Congress party was endeavouring to cause divisions among the Muslims, with the object of impressing the world that the Congress party was the sole representative organization of politically minded India.

INTRODUCTION

27

The Congress policy gave new life to the Muslim League whose members rallied with such enthusiasm behind the leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah that he was virtually given a blank cheque on behalf of the League…. The League achieved a new unity and a new importance in current politics and no other Muslim Party has such an all-India influence.25

In the case of Bengal also the Congress betrayed a tremendous ignorance of ground realities and forbade the local leadership to take any move towards forming any coalition till the question of the Governor’s special powers in the Act of 1935 was resolved. Nevertheless the local leadership had carried on some negotiations with the Krishak Praja Party, which had opposed the Muslim League at the hustings. The uppermost concern of the Congress leadership in Bengal was the release of political prisoners. Congress in Bengal had its base mainly in the Hindu middle class. From them had come most of the terrorists. They were therefore very keen on it. The Prajas, on the other hand, were pledged to abolish the exploitative zamindari system and try to improve the lot of the peasantry. They knew that insistence on release of prisoners in Bihar had induced the Governor to demand the resignation of the ministry. The Prajas were not willing to forfeit their hard won victory before they could fulfil their promises to the electorate for the sake of the terrorist convicts. Fazlul Huq, the leader of the Prajas, was moreover, personally loyal to Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, who had financed Huq’s election expenses. But he was the bête noire of the Congress leader Sarat Bose. Huq’s decision to offer Sarkar a berth in the ministry upset Bose and they had to part company.26 This drove the hapless Huq to the arms of the Muslim League, which eventually spelt such great disaster for the province. THE WORKING OF THE MUSLIM LEAGUE

COALITION MINISTRY

Huq was offered the premiership for his personal popularity as it was well known that ‘no Moslem party in Bengal could under present conditions hold together without him’.27 But he was soon isolated in his own ministry by the exclusion of his own supporters. In order to pre-empt all possibilities of the inclusion of Congress members in the Cabinet, Sir John Anderson, the Governor of Bengal referred to

28

INTRODUCTION

some pre-electoral understanding between the Maharaja of Burdwan and Sir A.H. Ghuznavi, a member of the Central Legislative Assembly and an ex-minister of the Bengal Government under the diarchy, for sharing an equal number of berths in the Ministry28 and forced Huq to exclude his closest associate Shamsuddin Ahmad, the Secretary of the Krishak Praja Party, from the Cabinet. Huq’s other party colleague, Nausher Ali, too soon became disillusioned with the new coalition. His resignation was forced through the intransigence of Huq’s Muslim League colleagues.29 Huq was now pressed into action for implementing the political programme of the Muslim League with the zeal of a new recruit. It was nothing but a jihadi mentality which led the Muslim League to try to make up for their erstwhile exclusion from power, profit and government patronage by trying to grab the maximum that came their way all at once. Huq declared in the Sirajgunge Conference of the Muslim League in Pabna in 1939 that his government was ‘morally committed to undo the wrongs of history by bringing the Muslims in line with the advanced Hindus.’30 The educated Muslims were conscious that they had entered the race late and it was impossible for them to compete with the Hindus on equal terms. They wanted to get a favoured treatment in educational opportunities and appointments by trying to exploit the political power that came their way through numerical superiority. That alone could explain the consecutive bills brought before the Bengal Legislative Assembly like the Secondary Education Bill or the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. The Secondary Education Bill (introduced on 21 August 1940) tried to take away the control of secondary education from under the wings of the Calcutta University and place secondary education under the close control of the government by creating a new Board consisting of official nominees. The new Board was expected to be more representative of Muslim interests and take measures to alleviate the backwardness of Muslims in education. But to the Hindus it appeared to be a sinister plot to whittle down their erstwhile predominance in education and deprive them of their legitimate share in educational opportunities. Middle class Hindus could no longer live as rentiers on the income from land. Sub-infeudation for generations,

INTRODUCTION

29

indebtedness, disaffection of tenants and emergence of a new class of overmighty tenants (jotedars) through the cultivation of cash crops had diminished the income from land. Education and white collar employment was the only avenue of success open to them. The Secondary Education Bill threatened to close it for them. Yet more obnoxious to the Hindus was the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, which tried to introduce separate electorate in the elections of Councillors in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. In 1921 Surendranath Banerjee had reserved a few seats in the Corporation for the Muslims. But election to these seats was to be through general electorate. But this implied that instead of representing only Muslim interests, the Muslim candidates should be amenable to the Hindus as well for securing their election through a general electorate. The proposed amendment was to reserve 22 per cent of the seats for the Muslims and election to these seats was to be through separate electorates. Hindus being the largest ratepayers in the city (65 per cent), with a voting strength of 85 per cent as against the only 10 per cent voting strength of the Muslims, paying 5 per cent of the municipal taxes (although the Muslims formed 25-6 per cent of the population of the city), Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee thought that the new Bill would militate against all principles of fairness, equity and justice.31 The implementation of the communal ratio in the services created a fresh set of grievances. It was a setback to all considerations of merit in the services. In the words of Sir Arthur Dash, the Chairman of the Public Service Commission since 1942: They (the communal ratios) were designed to secure that the best candidate would not be appointed unless the vacancy had been reserved for his community or his community could supply no candidates who would be pronounced fit: merit in fact, was not the sole criterion of eligibility. Government showed no inclination to allow the administration of these Rules to be carried out by an extra executive impartial body: operation was kept jealously in Muslim Government hands. The Rules were intended to bring up the number of Muslims and S.Cs to what was held by Muslim dominated Ministries to be a reasonable figure and Ministries used them as major weapon of policy so vigorously that the extent to which merit had to be neglected received little attention: if a post could be filled by a Muslim,

30

INTRODUCTION

it was a matter of satisfaction which left little room for doubts or misgivings about merit.32

The prevalence of communal bias in the matter of appointments gradually began to result in problems of wider dimensions affecting the whole administration. It was not merely a question of efficiency but the discipline and impartiality in the administrations was also thrown to the winds. As Sir Arthur Dash noticed: In the past 8 years there has been a very general lowering of the efficiency and discipline of the permanent staff of the provincial administration accompanied by the appearance of communal cells in the administrative organism. Muslim officers are in service who are suspected of readiness to act in furtherance of communal policies at the instance of individual Ministers or political leaders. Some officers are suspected of conniving at violence to secure what political results are required. All this is believed to take place under cover of an administrative policy of apparent impartiality and rectitude. The knowledge that this sort of thing could take place gives rise to a good deal of distrust.33

The Bengali Hindu also felt threatened by the other legislations related to agrarian reforms like the Bengal Tenancy Amendment Bill, the Bengal Agricultural Debtors’ Act and the Bengal Moneylenders’ Act. The working of the Debt Settlement Boards was particularly arbitrary, hitting the small rural capitalist hard. The peasant suffered in the difficult years of world economic depression for the flight of capital; but for the small Hindu rural capitalists it spelt utter ruin. The League Ministry’s partisan legislation provoked even a person of confirmed secular credentials like Subhas Chandra Bose to protest: ‘To the Government of the day, I say, “Cry halt to your mad drive along the path of communalism and injustice. There is yet time to retrace your steps. Do not use a boomerang which will soon recoil on you. And do not make another Sindh of Bengal”.’34 But ‘a psychopathic case’35 as Jinnah had been diagnosed by Lord Mountbatten during his encounter with him later, he was committed to a path of jihad. It was on Jinnah’s promptings that Fazlul Huq had exhorted his Muslim cohorts during the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1938: ‘If Mohammad bin Qasim, an eight year

INTRODUCTION

31

old lad with 18 soldiers could conquer Sindh, then surely nine crores of Muslims can conquer the whole of India.’36 DETERIORATION OF COMMUNAL RELATIONS

AND THE RISE OF THE HINDU MAHASABHA

Relations between the two communities had been deteriorating over these years over the issue of music before mosques, propaganda against participation by Muslims in Hindu religious fairs, breaking or defilement of Hindu images and clashes during religious events like Eid, Muharram or Holi. Muslims were often addressed by local politicians in the mosque compounds after the dispersal of Friday prayers to sow poison against the other community. As the decennial census drew close the propaganda carried on by both communities to boost up their respective numbers in the census caused serious rift between them.37 The plight of the Hindus brought Savarkar, the leader of the All India Hindu Mahasabha to Bengal. In the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha Conference at Khulna in February 1939 he criticized the Muslim League Coalition Ministry for trying to establish a ‘Muslim Raj’ in Bengal. He raised his voice against the domination of Muslims in the Calcutta University and the Calcutta Corporation. The inability of the ministry to prevent the breaking of Hindu images and attacks on Hindu immersion processions during various pujas came under attack. He called upon the 30 per cent of the Scheduled Castes for integration with the Hindus and offer united resistance to the threat faced by Hindu religion, culture, education and even life, property and honour.38 Savarkar’s meetings in Bengal won a new recruit to the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal. This was the young Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee who had just completed his four year term as the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University and was itching for new assignments. He had entered the Legislative Assembly with Congress support but had laid down office when in September 1939 the Congress decided to quit office in protest against the involvement of India as a belligerent in the Second World War by Britain, without any consultation with its elected representatives. Congress inaction during the oppression of the past few years of the Muslim League

32

INTRODUCTION

Coalition Ministry had filled Dr. Mookerjee with dismay. Savarkar’s exhortations appeared to him as a light at the end of the tunnel and he immediately jumped to the Hindu Mahasabha bandwagon.39 Syama Prasad Mookerjee and B.C. Chatterjee were commissioned by the Hindu Mahasabha to tour the East Bengal countryside in September 1939 and study the conditions of the East Bengal Hindus under the Muslim League Coalition Ministry and submit a report to the Calcutta session of the All India Hindu Mahasabha at the end of December 1939. By March 1941 both sections of the Congress in Bengal, the official Congress and the Forward Bloc of Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose were virtually compelled to lend their support to the Hindu Mahasabha point of view that ‘the present constitution was undemocratic as it had given power to a community not responsible to the other communities’. The revision of the Communal Award and the restoration of joint electorate alone could set things right, they argued. Hindus in Bengal had become so bitter about the arbitrary legislation of the ministry that this was the only course open to the Congress to hold on to their electorate.40 All these frictions gradually snowballed in the Dacca riots of 1941, which raged first in the town and then spread slowly to the suburban market town of Narayangunge and thereafter to the neighbouring villages like Raipura, Shibpur, Narasinghdi and the like. There was a ‘tremendous damage to Hindu property in the mofussil’.41 The Additional Magistrate, Mr. Hatch Barnwell, who had recently joined his post, was injured, his forearm was broken and his revolver was snatched away.42 The local administration failed to contain the disturbances till October 1941 and trouble erupted repeatedly in Dacca city all through the year. It was difficult to deal with the riots as ‘marauding bands disperse immediately after looting’, as the Governor wrote in his report to the Viceroy, ‘thus rendering contact difficult’.43 The simultaneous outbreak of arson and looting in different localities of Raipura and Sibpur thanas led people to believe that the outbreak was deliberately planned.44 Members of the Dacca Nawab family like Nazimuddin, Shahabuddin and Nasrullah were suspected to have a hand in the riots as a man wanted by the police in connection with the riots was seen entering the precincts of the Dacca Nawab

INTRODUCTION

33

family residence Ahsan Manzil.45 Fazlul Huq had a taste of his own medicine during these riots. The Pandora’s Box of communalism, which had been opened in course of his premiership, could never be closed after that. HUQJINNAH FEUD

It was the Dacca riots, which sowed the seeds of discord between Fazlul Huq and his colleagues in the Muslim League. The suspected hand of Nazimuddin in these disturbances had already irritated him. Nazimuddin had to be warned sternly against his inability to contain disturbances in his home town.46 Fazlul Huq was very apprehensive about the possible repercussions of the riots in Calcutta. He therefore decided to cancel the proposed ‘Pakistan Day’ celebrations in Calcutta during the first anniversary of the Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940, in which he had played the prime mover.47 It was feared that these celebrations might encourage Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee to stage an anti-Pakistan Day demonstration, which might bring an open clash between the two communities.48 But Jinnah would not listen; he organized a ‘Pakistan Day’ with his up country Muslim riff raff on 23 March with the help of Suhrawardy and Ispahani.49 Fazlul Huq felt shocked and humiliated that Jinnah could brush aside his concern for maintaining peace in Calcutta and take decisions over the head of the Chief Minister.50 He too tried to demonstrate his independence by talking about ‘national cabinets’ both at the provincial and at the national level in course of a press interview after a visit to the Viceroy at Simla.51 Mutual recriminations followed with an agitated resolution from the Calcutta District Muslim League that the C.M.’s proposal was an infringement of the authority of the All India Muslim League and an attack on Muslim solidarity. The C.M. came up with a prompt rejoinder. These heated exchanges were made much of in the nationalist press and the unity in the Muslim ranks was sorely strained. The Viceroy’s inclusion of Huq in a Defence Council, along with the other Muslim premiers soon involved Huq in a political duel with Jinnah and Huq was ultimately dismissed from the membership of the Working Committee of the All India Muslim League as well as the Presidency of the Bengal Provincial

34

INTRODUCTION

Muslim League.52 The feud had its impact on the coalition and there was a ‘Cabinet crisis’.53 THE PROGRESSIVE COALITION MINISTRY

The schism in the Muslim camp was not undesirable to the British Government at the initial stage when it was worried about Muslim reactions to British occupation of Iran. The Secretary of State in course of a debate in the House of Commons had welcomed the Muslim premiers as ‘patriotic leaders’ in the National Defence Council ‘regardless of party leaders and in defiance of party discipline’.54 But when Fazlul Huq demonstrated his strength with a Progressive Muslim Party ready at hand, Governor Herbert was worried. The hand of Sarat Bose was seen behind it. Herbert was anxious about uninterrupted war production from Bengal and for this he relied on Suhrawardy’s collaboration in keeping mill hands quiet.55 He therefore waited for Nazimuddin to cobble up a majority. This could be possible with the cooperation of the orthodox Congress. But Nalini Ranjan Sarkar’s manoeuvres kept the official Congress neutral.56 Nazimuddin sent overtures to the Hindu Mahasabha as well. But to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Huq was a better option. Thus the Progressive Coalition Government came to power with Fazlul Huq as Chief Minister in December 1941. The Hindu Mahasabha and the Forward Bloc were to support him. Governor Herbert was suspicious of the intentions of this government from the very beginning. He pre-empted the possibility of the inclusion of Sarat Bose in the cabinet by securing his prompt arrest. Sarat’s brother Subhas had already escaped to the enemy camp and Sarat was accused of being in touch with the Japanese. The main worry of the Government was that Sarat as Home Minister would immediately order the release of notorious terrorists and jeopardize the war efforts of the British.57 The Governor remained in close touch with Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy and they found no difficulty in organizing meetings in the countryside to mobilize opinion against the Progressive Coalition. The Coalition was disparagingly called the ‘Syama-Huq’ ministry by the Muslim League, to emphasize Huq’s subservience to the dictates

INTRODUCTION

35

of the Hindu Mahasabha leader.58 In course of the seven months following the advent of the new ministry, Muslim League organized 500 to 800 meetings in East Bengal.59 Even Praja leaders like Yusuf Ali Chaudhuri (Mohan Mia) and Abdus Salam Khan (Badshah Mia) openly condemned Huq as a traitor. In a futile attempt to retrieve lost ground Huq along with a few ministers of his cabinet came to Bakargunge, his home district as well as a KPP stronghold in 1942. But to their dismay they found that most Muslim lawyers of Barisal town boycotted a reception given in his honour. Even Muslim shopkeepers observed a hartal (general stike) to drive home their rejection of Huq’s political line. Wherever they went they were hounded by the angry masses with the shout gaddar murdabad! (down with the traitor!). They were shown black flags and rotten eggs were thrown at them.60 Huq’s political bankruptcy came to the fore with the defeat of the sitting Minister Abdul Karim in the Natore byelections in early 1942.61 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had initially tried to bring about amicable solutions of the thorny questions plaguing the relations between the two communities like music before mosques or kurbani (slaughter of cows) during Eid. He tried to shelve the controversial questions like the Secondary Education Bill, the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill and Communal Ratio in services, which resulted in great discontent. The question of enforcement of communal ratio in the A.R.P. led to murmurs within the ministerial party. Provincial autonomy was found by him to be a mere sham and the ministry was never taken into confidence by the bureaucracy in the matter of crucial decisions. The Muslim League still remained the pet child of the government even after falling out of power. League leaders always had the ears of the Governor and enjoyed the confidence of the bureaucracy. Finding himself totally isolated and ignored, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee preferred to resign from the ministry rather than cling to the shadow of power. This was the period when the Japanese army was advancing unopposed in South-East Asia. Singapore, Malayasia and Burma had fallen. Aerial attacks had already been made thrice on the eastern coast of India. The eastern sector had been denuded of all combatant forces for fighting the battle in the Middle East. Syama Prasad wrote

36

INTRODUCTION

to the Governor repeatedly on 7 March 1942 and again on 26 July 1942 and finally to the Viceroy on 12 August 1942 requesting sanction to form a Home Army with the sons of the soil to defend the eastern sector with whatever arms and ammunitions they could lay their hands on. But the Bengal Governor ridiculed Syama Prasad’s proposed Home Army as a ‘guerrilla army of bhadralok’62 and interpreted that its ‘sole object is Hindu domination’.63 Churchill had planned to resort to a ‘scorched earth’ policy or to resist possible Japanese advance from the east by leaving no stocks of food or means of communication for the enemy. The British attempted a quick evacuation of all stocks of rice and destruction or removal all bicycles and boats, which could serve as possible means of transportation for the enemy to get into the interior of the country. As the Government was not having sufficient resources to siphon off all the grain from the countryside at so short a notice Fazlul Huq was compelled to make a grant of Rs. 2 crores to the rice merchant Ispahani & Co. to drain the East and South Bengal districts of all grain.64 These were also the days of the Quit India movement (Gandhi gave the call on 8 August 1942 from Bombay) and the people of Medinipur had resisted the attempt to take away their rice. The local magistrate retaliated by withholding the cyclone alert to the people residing in the coast and delaying aid for a month. As an insider of the government the secret circular came into Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s hands. He now decided to go public over the matter and offer his resignation to the Governor. The explanation offered by him for his resignation alarmed the Government for exposing the political torture going on in the colonies and the undemocratic manner in which provincial autonomy was being operated. Churchill was anxious to get the assistance of the US in the prosecution of the war and President Roosevelt was pressurizing him to liberate all colonies. Calcutta was swarming with scores of American journalists ready to snatch whatever snippets of information they could lay hands on. The Government therefore hurried to check the publication of this letter through countrywide press censorship. But before that the resignation letter had been leaked out to the nationalist press and the Government had been exposed. 65 The contents of the letter were later used to publish a book A Phase of Indian Struggle by Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

INTRODUCTION

37

THE FAMINE OF 1943

‘Scorched earth’, denial and evacuation together gave rise to a man made famine from 1943. In the six months following the December 1942 harvest of the main crop (the aman crop) the first signs of famine began to appear. By the time the poorer cultivators had exhausted their stocks of rice and came to the market to buy more, prices had gone up beyond their reach. The stocks of merchants simply disappeared. ‘Although powers existed to locate hidden stocks and severely punish the guilty,’ pointed out M.O. Carter, the Secretary to the Governor of Bengal, ‘It is extremely difficult in practice to ferret out the stocks of thousands of traders, large and small, positively when time is the essential factor in the operation.’66 The flow of Pegu rice, on which people in Chittagong depended, had also stopped since the occupation of Burma. Sir Arthur Dash, the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, had been an eye-witness to all that was happening in the province: The real disaster was the lack of any consistent policy on the part of the provincial government. Contradictory orders were issued and were changed to avoid any interference with the profits being made by the political men out of the procurement and distribution of food. In February and March ominous rises in the price of rice began. From Rs. 10 per maund it rose to Rs. 50. War industries bought up food in huge quantities to ration their labour. The Army probably did so too. Civilian officers were advised by the Provincial Government to do the same for the police and for their own servants. . . . With all these pre-emptions shortages developed everywhere. District officers were given powers to control the movements of foodstuffs: but were given no policy by which to exercize these powers. The result was that surplus areas refused to part with any of their stocks to relieve areas in deficit. The implementation of this policy (scorched earth) disorganized completely the rural economy and hordes of starving wanderers moved into Calcutta in a vague search for work and subsistence. No relief was organized in the villages and there was no attempt to deal with these vagrants in spite of what the famine code laid down, i.e. that as soon as there are signs of the population wandering from their villages in search of food or work, relief works must be started in the villages from which the vagrants were emerging.67

By July 1942 villagers from East and South Bengal walked all the way to Calcutta in search of food. The bountiful harvest of 1943-4 could not save them from hunger as there was a ruthless speculation

38

INTRODUCTION

in grain. As soon as the grain was harvested Government contractors took hold of all stocks from the villages through threats and intimidations. ‘The administration in Bengal had issued five thousand licenses for grain procurement,’ as Madhushree Mukherjee’s findings showed, ‘and licensees could store rice with impunity.’68 The Government tried to procure food from other provinces, but rice growing areas in other provinces were limited. Bengal Government imported a quantity of millet which proved uneatable in Bengal. It could only be used in preparing gruel, mixed with rice, where the maximum of millet could be only 15 per cent.69 People swarmed into the city by thousands and died on the streets for want of food. The number of deaths exceeded the number of casualties of the Second World War by three times. The military later cleared the streets of the corpses. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee tried to draw public attention to the matter in the pages of a book Panchasher Manwantar. The Government promptly banned the book. But not before it had fully sold out its first edition. S.G. Taylor, the I.G. Police, attributed the the tragedy ‘almost entirely’ to the black market which had been established almost from the very beginning. All available rice was being acquired and hoarded by certain dishonest individuals who were ‘becoming rich at the expense of the dying populace’.70 Taylor approached the higher authority as members of the Provincial Government were involved in the black market. But in due course he was informed that ‘because too many individuals in the Government of India were concerned no action could be taken!’ 71 Sir Arthur Dash, the Chairman of the Public Service Commision, had come to know that Suhrawardy as the Civil Supplies Minister had a large share in these spoils along with many other Muslim League big shots.72 The scandal ultimately cost Nazimuddin, Huq’s successor as the CM his chair and the ministry had to go (although Nazimuddin personally might have been honest and above board). The loot continued even after Suhrawardy became Chief Minister after an eleven months’ interlude of Section 93 (Governor’s rule). Suhrawardy was like the Roman Emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome was burning: he capitalized on people’s miseries and made so much profit from speculation in food grains (even with wheat imports from Punjab) that the income tax officials were after

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39

him even after the declaration of Indian Independence, in 1954 when he was the Law Minister of the Pakistan Government; he had to make a special request to Prime Minister Nehru to ensure that income tax people did not catch hold of him in the event of his plane landing to refuel at Dum Dum airport, Calcutta.73 THE WHETTING OF LEAGUE APPETITE

The political developments in the years from 1942 to 1947 gradually saw a slide of Indian politics into the abyss of communalism, leading ultimately to the partition of the province. In 1937 Jinnah had appeared to be politically a spent force, with six provinces under Congress rule. The Muslim majority provinces were also not in his control, Punjab being a Unionist stronghold, NWFP having a Congress coalition, Sind changing hands alternately between the Congress and the League and Bengal sharing power with the Krishak Praja Party. The Muslim mass contact campaign of the Congress alerted the KPP in Bengal to the attempted inroads on its strong bastions and roused its leader Fazlul Huq to a frenzy of Islamic consciousness. The Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1938 saw the birth of the Muslim National Guard to protect Muslim interests in the Congress dominated provinces. In the Calcutta session of 1938 Jinnah tried to assert ‘the status of complete equality with the Congress’.74 But Jinnah had to wait till the Congress domination of the six provinces in which they had won a massive victory in the elections of 1937 came to an end with their quitting of office in protest against the arbitrary involvement of India as a belligerent in the Second World War by the Viceroy’s declaration without consultation with the elected governments. Congress refusal to cooperate in the war efforts without a definite declaration from the British Government about complete independence (purna swaraj) led Viceroy Linlithgow to turn to the Muslims and encourage them to come up with their demands, so that the Congress claim to represent Indian interests could be undermined before world opinion.75 Jinnah could now manipulate his colleagues Sikander Hyat Khan in the Punjab and Fazlul Huq in Bengal to proclaim during the Lahore session of the Muslim League that ‘geographically contiguous units’ in which the

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Muslims had a majority should be made into ‘independent states’.76 The Viceroy could now set a seal on the demand by his ‘August Offer’ of 1940, which assured the Muslims that the British Government would never transfer its responsibilities arbitrarily ‘to any system of government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life’.77 The Cripps offer was a logical sequel of this imperialist strategy to keep Indian nationalism at bay. Prime Minister Churchill had to bow before international, especially American, pressure for an early settlement of the colonial question. Therefore he sent Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal, to work out a formula for transfer of power. Cripps offered an elected body (including the rulers of princely states) at the end of the war, which was to be entrusted with the work of making a new constitution for India. But he virtually conceded on the principle of Pakistan by accepting the right of unwilling states to opt out of the Union. However, It was mentioned that in Punjab and Bengal, where the minorities had been granted a weightage, a 60 per cent majority vote would be required for non-acccession.78 The offer did not strike a responsive chord in any of the political camps, the Muslim League, the Indian National Congress or the Hindu Mahasabha. Nevertheless it set the tone for all future negotiations regarding the transfer of power in India. Gandhi’s call of ‘Quit India’ had landed him along with the entire Congress Working Committee in prison. He tried to open a dialogue with Jinnah from jail but Jinnah did not respond. Gandhi renewed the offer for talks in May 1944 on the basis of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari’s formula. This was nothing but a new version of the Cripps’ offer, whereby contiguous areas in the north-west and the east of India might demand a plebiscite by a 60 per cent majority vote in the legislature. The plebiscite held on the basis of adult male suffrage might decide on the non-accession of those areas to the Indian union.79 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee lamented this mentality of surrender to Jinnah and sneeringly termed the Gandhi-Jinnah talks as ‘Bharat Bhango Andolan (Break India movement)’. The talks came a cropper but it immensely increased Jinnah’s prestige and raised hopes for Pakistan in Muslim circles. Similarly the talks between Bhulabhai Desai, the leader of the

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Congress Parliamentary Party in the Central Assembly and Liaqat Ali Khan, the Deputy leader of the League Parliamentary Party, about parity in the central and provincial executives provided the Viceroy with the basis on which to plan the Interim Government, which he had proposed to the HMG for approval as far back as September 1943.80 THE SIMLA CONFERENCE

Wavell’s plan was to invite all political leaders to Simla to decide on the mode of election of a Constituent Assembly to work out the constitution for the new government to which power could be transferred. While the Constituent Assembly would work on the constitution, an Interim Government was to carry on the administration. Representatives of political parties were invited to Simla in June 1945 to discuss these matters. But the meeting never took off as Jinnah was indignant about the Congress claim to have a Muslim amongst its representatives.81 THE CABINET MISSION

The British Cabinet then sent three members to India to decide on a formula for a provisional government and a constitution making body. When the expectations of the Muslim League from the recommendations of the Cabinet Delegation (which stayed in India from 16 March to 29 June 1946) were not fulfilled and they failed to wrench parity with the Hindus in the interim government they were quite disappointed. Their only hope was the three tier constitution devised by the Mission on 16 May where the provinces would be grouped into three Sections, the Muslim majority provinces being in Group B and C on the extreme west and east, the rest being in Group A. These groups could go into Sections when the Constituent Assembly met and form Group constitutions. But when Nehru openly denied the possibility of the formation of such clusters, as all the provinces had wanted to go their own way, and Gandhi too affirmed his wish for provincial autonomy, Jinnah was sorely disappointed and turned down these proposals. The Viceroy then tried to work out the interim

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government; but here also the talks faltered. Finally the Viceroy declared a list of fourteen names taking six from Congress, five from Muslims and one each from Christians, Sikhs and Parsees. But Gandhi would not accept that the Congress was merely a Hindu organization. He therefore wanted to include a nationalist Muslim among Congressmen. Jinnah found this unacceptable. So the Congress refused to come. Jinnah now wanted the delegation to stick to their promise held out on 16 June that the interim government will continue with whoever is willing to join. But the Viceroy demurred as the Congress had conveyed acceptance to the long term plan for a Constituent Assembly. Jinnah then accused the Government of debunking the whole process and resolved in the All India Muslim League Council of 29 July to go for ‘direct action’ on 16 August 1946.82 THE CALCUTTA CARNAGE

When asked to explain ‘direct action’ on 31 July, Jinnah had replied ‘I am not going to discuss ethics.’83 Things remained peaceful in all the Muslim majority provinces since the League’s control on those provinces was only tenuous. The League Ministry had its real stranglehold only in Bengal. Here the ministers sang a different tune. Khwaja Nazimuddin declared that ‘the Muslim population of Bengal know very well what direct action would mean and so we need not bother to give them any lead’.84 General Secretary Liaqat Ali defined it as ‘non-constitutional action or any action against law’.85 J.D.Tyson, the Secretary to the Governor of Bengal, tried to explain the outbreak in Calcutta as the culmination of a process that had been going on for long: Both sides had been working up to this for ages: that the general defiance of law and order which leaders on both sides had preached for months (if not years) past, in connection with the 1942 Congress rebellion and post war movements like that connected with the rebel ‘I.N.A.’ had undermined all respect for Government and the police and had led the unruly elements of both parties to think that they could take the law into their own hands with impunity. Latterly the preaching of hatred had been more communal than against Britain (one result of the failure of the Cabinet Mission was to intensify this mutual distrust) and most people think of a trial of strength

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on a big scale was bound to come either here or in the Punjab or the U.P. before long.86

The question had been asked from all quarters why Suhrawardy declared a holiday on 16 August. As it turned out to be ‘Satan would find work for idle hands to do’.87 The Muslim League had called a hartal and the state machinery was pressed into service to help it. For three days from 16-18 August the city saw ‘an unbridled savagery with homicidal maniacs let loose to kill and to maim and burn. The underworld of Calcutta was taking charge of the city.’88 Chief Minister Suhrawardy was sitting in the control room of the Lalbazar police headquarters on the fateful day of the 16th with the Police Commissioner, whom he later held to be guilty for all the murder and the mayhem.89 The Governor later claimed in a report that the entire police force including the traffic police had been armed on that day and kept ready for meeting an emergency.90 But there were several reports of police pickets acting merely as onlookers. When approached for help they were heard to have said that they had no orders to act. ‘All the streets at that time were lined with youths carrying most murderous looking weapons,’ but for some inexplicable reasons ‘no arrests were being made’.91 J.D. Tyson, the Secretary to the Bengal Governor, also had to admit that the police was affected by the communal virus: In the opening stages of the massacres, looting and arson, the police stood by and did little or nothing. We got many complaints at Government House, at the time, that the police were not answering calls for help. We were not first inclined to attach undue importance to these SOS – we knew how prone the Hindu richmen is to shout (and specially to shout to the Governor – whom, the day before, he has been asking to ‘quit India’) for help when his property is in danger. We knew also that as it was a Muslim Ministry in power, it would be the Hindus who would mainly ring up Government House – the Muslims would ring up their own Ministers.92

The military was ordered only on the afternoon of the 17th, when the tide was turning against the Muslims. S.G. Taylor, the I.G. Police wondered why the military was not called upon to assist the Calcutta police at the very outset of violence.93 The Bengal Governor tried to absolve the police from the blame by suggesting that the police

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probably could not guess initially what was going on in the lanes and alleys.94 ‘I do not believe that with twice the police force that we had,’ J.D. Tyson corroborated, ‘we could have prevented a large scale disturbance on 16 August, tempers being what they were and Calcutta being what it is for that sort of thing (a city of narrow lanes and gullies and slums which would swallow an army of police and still produce incidents.’95 There was also no guarantee of impartial behaviour by the military if the Muslim League jihadists had their way for long. We have it on the authority of the I.G. Police S.G. Taylor that while driving through the streets of Calcutta with Suhrawardy at the height of the disturbances, the Army Commander expressed surprise at the clashes between the two communities saying, ‘This is all extraordinary; in the Army Hindus and Muhammadans live and work happily together.’ To this the C.M. replied: ‘We shall soon put an end to all that.’96 The Muslim League ministry’s blatant use of the machinery of Government for communal ends has been documented in yet another of Taylor’s encounters with the C.M. Suhrawardy: One day, when a number of Mahomedans had been arrested on a charge of murder in the 24 Parganas District on the borders of Calcutta, the C.M. called me up and told me that I was to order the Superintendent of Police of the District to release the arrested persons at once. I pointed out that he had no authority to give such an order, secondly that I was quite sure that the arrests would not have been made without justification, and thirdly that by then the arrested persons would have been produced before the Magistrate and were therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Superintendent of Police; therefore, I added, I declined to give such instructions to the latter. The C.M. then angrily said, ‘Do you refuse to obey my orders?’ ‘Certainly, your orders are illegal, and I am here to uphold the law not to break it.’ ‘Very well then’, said the C.M., ‘you will tell the Superintendent of Police that he has occasion to arrest any Mahomedans in the future he will arrest as many Hindus!’97

While the Governor tried to explain the incident as ‘a pogrom between two rival armies of the Calcutta underworld’ who had been confined under the Defence of India Rules but had secured release between December 1945 and July 194698 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee viewed it as ‘an attempt on the part of the majority community,

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backed by its own government, to crush the minority community into submission.’99 EASTERN BENGAL

The Great Calcutta Killing gave the people of Bengal ‘a glimpse of the Pakistan to come’, as Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee put it.100 This was a decisive turning point in the thinking of Hindu Bengalis. The trouble soon filtered into Eastern Bengal. Disturbances in Dacca had been going on ceaselessly since 1941. Chittagong, Bakargunge, Mymensingh and Faridpur were also experiencing clashes. But Noakhali in October 1946 hit the headlines for a gruesome replay of the Calcutta carnage. Matters came to a head with the return of some Muslims from Calcutta during the Puja holidays carrying exaggerated reports of the Calcutta riots. During the early part of October the situation deteriorated. There were mass meetings urging Muslims to enrol in the National Guard. Some violent speeches were made and a movement for the economic boycott of Hindus was urged. One company of troops was moved from Chittagong to the Feni subdivision expecting trouble. But the actual trouble was started in the Ramganj police station area by a former M.L.A., Gholam Sarwar Hosseini. He made a provocative speech and the Ramganj Bazar was looted. Bands of hooligans had at this time entered the district from outside and incited the villagers to attack Ramganj Bazar. Hindu homesteads and villages were identified and looting and arson followed. Besides shops and bazaars, a good many houses numbering between 250 to 300 were burnt. Trouble spread quickly to Ramganj as a whole and from there to neighbouring Begumgunj, Lakhimpur and Raipur. The hooligans then crossed over to neighbouring Tippera district and spread to the southern part of Hajiganj, Faridganj and Chandpur to the west and Laksham and Chouddagram to the east in the few following days. Forty villages in two districts were attacked. Fifty thousand persons were uprooted from their houses and became refugees. At least 10,000 persons escaped to the neighbouring Tripura state where the Maharaja of Tripura opened relief camps. The total number of the murdered ultimately turned out to be not exceeding 300. But the main objective of the outbreak was abduction of women

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and mass conversion. Rajendra Lal Ray Chowdhury, the President of the local Bar Association in Noakhali tried to stop the hooligans by firing from his rooftop. Ultimately he had to give way to their determination and weight of numbers and he along his entire family was dragged out of the house and killed mercilessly.101 ‘What is happening in East Bengal,’ wrote an indignant Patel to Sir Stafford Cripps, ‘is much worse and the Calcutta incident pales into insignificance’. Wavell’s objection against central interference into provincial subjects left him disappointed. Provincial autonomy serves as a screen to prevent Government action. You could realize how difficult it is for an Indian Home Member to sit in his office quietly day by day, when innumerable piteous appeals and complaints are received for some kind of help which would give these unfortunate and helpless victims some protection.102

On 20 October 1946, N.C. Chatterjee apprised Dr. B.S. Moonje, Acting President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, of the chilling frightfulness of the Noakhali situation for its calculated attempt ‘to terrorise the minority and to enforce mass conversion at the point of dagger’. He appealed to all the provinces to stand by Bengal in the rescue of abducted and converted women.103 Moonje thought that the Bengal Governor had played into the hands of Suhrawardy and failed to protect the minority in Bengal and he shot off a cable to Prime Minister Attlee to recall the Bengal Governor and ask the Viceroy to take charge of the protection of the Hindu minority in East Bengal.104 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee called the riot ‘an attempt on the part of the majority community, backed by its own government, to crush the minority community into submission’ in his inaugural address at the All India Session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Gorakhpur on 27 December 1946. ‘Mass conversion, desecration of all religious symbols, loot, arson, murder and attacks on women represent modes of oppression and destruction which a barbarous community or Government employs against another whose body and soul it wants to destroy.’105 Dr. Mookerjee repeated the same allegation again on 6 February 1947 during a debate in the Bengal Legislative Assembly.106

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Gandhi, who was chasing the chimera of an independent, united and peaceful India arrived and stayed in Noakhali in the wake of the outbreak. He tried to familiarize himself with the local people, stayed in Muslim houses and persuaded the refugees to come back and settle in their homesteads. But unfortunately his mission did not meet much success. Some liberal Muslims came to his meetings but the impact was only superficial. N.K. Bose mentions that in some villages the path which he was to traverse was sometimes strewn with excreta.107 The summing up by S.G. Taylor, the I.G. Police, of the outcome of the whole exercise was not very encouraging: Actually, he achieved absolutely nothing; his presence in the area increased the tension if anything and added considerably to the difficulties of the police. It was necessary to place a strong guard over his place of residence for there was ample evidence that the local Mahommedans, encouraged by the C.M.’s Direct Action speech and smarting from their losses at the hands of Calcutta Hindus regarded Gandhi with great disfavor and were ready to liquidate him at any moment.108 DEATH OF THE CABINET MISSION PLAN

These clashes between the two communities led the Viceroy to think that an understanding between them over the sharing of power in the interim government alone could bring peace among them. On 6 August he had invited the Congress to join the interim government and CWC had conveyed its acceptance on 8 August 1946. Nehru wanted the Constituent Assembly to begin work soon. But Wavell was desperate to bring the Muslim League in the interim government before that. On 24 August Wavell again asked the League to join the interim government. Congress now agreed to accept Sections but they refused to commit themselves as regards the method of voting inside the Sections.109 On 10 September Jinnah expressed his willingness to open negotiations and finally on 15 October he joined the interim government.110 The Congress had to accept it as the escalation of violence all over India alarmed them. They probably feared that if they did not agree the British Government might decide to postpone the work of handing over power indefinitely.111 Congress insistence on summoning the meeting of the Constituent

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Assembly forced Wavell to schedule the meeting for 9 December. But Jinnah would not accept the long term plan without Congress agreement to Groups. Finally they were invited to London to settle their differences. Nehru thought that there could be no satisfactory settlement as long as the British were present. He declared in London on 5 December that the presence of this third party was an impedi­ ment to a settlement.112 HMG wanted Jinnah to participate in the Constituent Assembly and then refer the matter to the Federal Court.113 But this was not acceptable to Jinnah. Gandhi, on the other hand, advised Assam not to go into Sections. Finally Jinnah returned from London, convinced that Pakistan was the only solution.114 On the request of 12 members of Constituent Assembly Nehru agreed to Sections, but he would not force any province or part of a province (he meant the Sikhs) to enter Sections.115 The AICC now expressed doubts about Sections. Sarat Bose resigned from CWC protesting against making the Constituent Assembly a subservient body and destroying provincial autonomy. ‘A Constituent Asembly acting in accordance with the British Government’s interpretation and mandate’ he declared, ‘cannot possibly frame a constitution for a sovereign republic of India’.116 Gandhi too thought that instead of forcing a province into Groups, the concerned party should try to make its programme attractive to the province so that it enters the Group of its own free will.117 The League Working Committee met in Karachi on 29 January and conveyed its decision to the British Government to declare that the Cabinet Plan had failed. The AICC resolution was called ‘a dishonest trick’. It had ignored the basic tenets of the May 16 Resolution. The League Working Committee refused to recognize the validity of the elections to the Constituent Assembly or the summoning of it.118 SEPARATE PROVINCE FOR WEST BENGAL

Wavell had discovered by this time that it was beyond his powers to reconcile the different desires and demands of the Indian leaders. He is said to have once told George VI that to induce the Congress and the Muslim League to cooperate often reminded him of: ‘One of my childhood puzzles – a little glass-covered box with three or different coloured marbles which one had to manipulate into their respective

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pens by very gentle oscillation; just as the last one seemed on the point of moving in, some or all of the others invariably ran out.’119 As the Cabinet Mission negotiations seemed to come a cropper the Attlee Government began to think seriously of replacing Lord Wavell and entrusting the transfer of power negotiations to some other hands. The choice fell on yet another military personnel, the Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma. He got his appointment as early as December, but did not land up in India till March. Before the formal assumption of his charge he wanted that, to speed up matters, HMG should come up with a deadline by which they would vacate their charge.120 Thus it was on Mountbatten’s prompting that Prime Minister Attlee came up with the declaration of 20 February 1947, which was jocularly called ‘the H.M.G.’s Quit India Statement’,121 by J.D. Tyson, the Secretary to the Governor, which made it clear that the British Government would complete the process of transfer of power latest by June 1948. The British Government would have liked to hand over power to a body duly elected by the Indian people according to the procedure laid down by the Constituent Assembly as provided by the negotiations of the Cabinet Mission with the Indian representatives. But since no consensus had been arrived at, ‘His Majesty’s Government will have to consider to whom the powers of the Central Government of British India should be handed over, on the due date, whether as a whole to some form of Central Govern­ ment for British India, or in some areas to the existing provincial Governments.’122 The Hindu Mahasabha took great alarm at the prospect of sovereign power being transferred to provincial governments. In the context of Bengal this would have meant the setting of a permanent seal on the tyranny under which the province had been groaning for the last ten years. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee therefore immediately launched a movement for the formation of a separate state of West Bengal. The Hindus were in a majority in the western districts of Bengal. The demographic strength of the Muslims was concentrated mostly in the eastern districts. Syama Prasad proposed that instead of continuing the bickerings among the Hindus and Muslims, the Hindus should be content with a smaller area for the peaceful pursuit of their social, economic and cultural concerns. The Bengal Governor Sir Frederick Burrows was surprised that the demand was so heartily reciprocated

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by all sections of the population. The results of the 1946 elections did not register the Hindu Mahasabha to be a very popular party in Bengal; Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was the lone candidate returned to the legislature with a popular mandate. And yet the huge crowds attending the meetings of Hindu Mahasabha leaders all over the province seemed to point out to the undisputed popularity of the demand put forward by the Hindu Mahasabha.123 The Hindu Mahasabha tried to convince the people that if the Muslim minority would not like to come into the Indian Union for fear of Hindu domination, by the same logic it was immoral to impose Pakistan on the Hindu and Sikh minorities of Punjab and the Hindu minorities in Bengal, Sind and Baluchistan.124 The bloody massacres of Multan and Rawalpindi in the Punjab in March 1947 had compelled the Congress to talk about a partition of Punjab on 8 March 1947. On 20 April Nehru again spoke of partitioning both the provinces of Punjab as well as Bengal.125 These talks of partition strengthened Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s arguments. Syama Prasad had a friend in the Akali leader Master Tara Singh, who visited Calcutta at this time and took care that the Sikhs and Hindus in Bengal remained firm in their resolve to partition the province.126 The Bengal Premier Suhrawardy shied away from a Hindu dominated centre; but nor would he look forward to a remotecontrolled centre operated from a thousand miles away at Lahore or Karachi. He therefore tried to secure the alliance of Congressmen of various hues like Sarat Bose (Forward Bloc) and Kiran Shankar Roy (Orthodox) for a sovereign united Bengal. He even visited Mahatma Gandhi at his Sodepur ashram to seek his blessings for his scheme. Gandhi was not averse to the scheme as this would be a negation of Jinnah’s ‘two nation’ theory. Suhrawardy could even secure Jinnah’s compliance with the prospect of retaining Calcutta thereby. Abul Hashim of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League was very enthusiastic to the idea. But the scheme failed to get off to a good start since the Muslims were unwilling to give up their separate electorate for the joint electorate which was the price for winning Hindu compliance to the scheme. Hindus moreover, saw in it the prospect of a ‘subsidiary Pakistan’. Above all ‘the net effect of its (Syama Prasad’s movement

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for a separate West Bengal) being launched’ as J.D. Tyson, the Secretary to the Governor of Bengal, could see it, ‘is that the prospects of Suhrawardy getting away with an independent Bengal without fighting for it, which was never very bright, are now down to zero’.127 The division of Bengal into two homogeneous provinces was not undesirable from an administrative point of view. Its large population of 60 million consisted of 33 million Muslims and 25 million Hindus, including 9 million Scheduled Castes. Syama Prasad wanted to carve out a separate homeland for the Hindus even if the partition of the country could be avoided through a loose federation as devised by the Cabinet Mission. The past ten years’ experience had been so bitter that the Hindus, mostly concentrated in West Bengal would try to escape from the clutches of a badly administered provincial govern­ ment. ‘Our fate will be even more tragic in future,’ Syama Prasad tried to alert his people, ‘if we have to live in a so-called United Bengal under a weaker central government than the present one.’ Bengal should not be left in the hands of a one party government swayed by the totalitarian and fanatical doctrine of the Muslim League. Partition was the only long term solution. Till then he demanded an immediate promulgation of Section 93 or formation of regional ministries and he wanted to send deputations to the Viceroy, VicePresident of the Central Government and President of Constituent Assembly to impress upon the immediate need for taking charge of law and order.128 The tremendous success of the annual session of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha on 4 April in Tarakeshwar, Hooghly and presided over by N.C. Chatterjee practically decided the matter. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Major A.C. Chatterjee addressed a huge crowd of 25,000. Taking a leaf from the Akalis in the Punjab they declared their plans to appoint a Council of Action to provide direction to the partition movement, establish a Rs. 50 lakh fund from the contributions of its sympathizers and enroll one lakh volunteers for the execution of the plan.129 A hartal was organized in Calcutta on the issue of partition to which there was an overwhelming response from all sections of society. Jubilant at the success of the hartal and vindicated by the gallop poll about the support of the people of Bengal Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee

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addressed a letter to the Viceroy on 2 May in which he put forward the arguments in favour of partition.130 The Secretary of State, Lord Listowel and Sir Stafford Cripps were personally addressed by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee informing them of the strong public opinion against the inclusion of the Hindu majority districts of Bengal either in Pakistan or a sovereign Bengal.131 At the instance of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha 10,000 telegrams were also sent to the Viceroy by different individuals and organizations from all over India with copies to the Secretary of State on 12 May 1947.132 Gandhi’s experience at Noakhali had made him see the reason for partition.133 But nevertheless he was known for his opposition to the idea of dismembering the country. Dr. Mookerjee met him at his ashram at Sodepur and tried to persuade him about the logic of partition.134 The political situation in India, in the meanwhile, was on the brink of collapse. The food situation was gloomy. There was labour unrest. The services were being affected by the communal virus. Muslim League had been carrying on civil disobedience against the ministries in the Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province and preaching ‘Direct Action’ from within the Interim Government.135 In Bengal there was considerable tension over the question of the partition of the province and the Muslim League National Guard was flexing its muscles everywhere from the Natore subdivision of Rajshahi to Dacca, Noakhali and Comilla. Large scale recruitment and training under ex-military personnel was going on.136 To counteract the threat from the Muslim League National Guard, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee launched his Hindustan National Guard and the two looked like two belligerent forces gearing up for the upcoming battle.137 Lord Ismay could sense the ‘devouring flame’ of inter-communal hatred and wrote to his wife that such a situation could not be allowed to continue till June 1948. ‘If we do not make up our minds on what we are going to do within the next two months or so, there will be pandemonium.138 The Viceroy was, therefore, induced to speed up matters. There was a broadcast by the Viceroy on 3 June for ‘immediate

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transfer of power’ to two successor states, leaving the work of defining the new boundaries to a Boundary Commission appointed for the purpose. It was decided that the provincial assemblies of Bengal and the Punjab would each be asked to meet in two parts, one representing the Muslim majority districts and the other the rest of the provinces. The members of the two parts of each assembly sitting separately would be empowered to vote whether or not the province should be partitioned. If a simple majority of either part decides in favour of partition, division will take place and arrangements would be made accordingly.139 Hindu Sabha leaders tried to persuade the people that Pakistan happened because of League policy and appeasement by the Congress. They called a hartal on 3 July to protest against the vivisection of the country. The 3 June announcement brought despair in the eastern Bengal districts and a large exodus from the eastern to the western districts started. The Mahasabha started preaching that there could never be peace unless and until the separated areas were brought back into the Indian union and made its integral part. People began to look upon the Hindu Mahasabha as their only saviour.140 A ‘Partition Protest Day’ was held on 5 July and several meetings were organized under the auspices of the Mahasabha to reaffirm the pledge of bringing back East Bengal once again to the fold of the Indian Union.141 The Viceroy announced on 10 June that the Bengal Legislative Assembly was to meet on 20 June in two parts represented by Muslim and non-Muslim members to decide whether there would be partition.142 The voting passed off peacefully, 126 members deciding in favour of a new Pakistan Constituent Assembly and 90 members voting in favour of taking part in the existing Constituent Assembly. Members from the Hindu majority districts later decided in favour of partition by 58 to 21 votes.143 This was followed up by the demand to replace the Muslim League ministry and a new Hindu ministry was sworn in with P.C. Ghosh at the helm of affairs.144 By the declaration of 30 June a Boundary Commission was set up by the Viceroy for defining the boundaries of the two parts of the province. In course of the discussions in the Boundary Commission, there was a fierce contest between the Muslim League and the

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Mahasabha for the control of Calcutta. But N.C. Chatterjee of the Hindu Mahasabha could save Calcutta for West Bengal after a prolonged argument.145 Thus were at least the western districts of Bengal salvaged from the nightmare of the torture that was the legacy of the past ten years of Muslim League rule with the tacit complicity of British imperialism in Bengal. The twin engines of oppression had bequeathed a long trail of continuous riots, forcible conversion, rape, a terrible famine, black marketing, profiteering, hoarding and price inflation to the province. Together they brought about such a situation that the people of the province preferred to live in a truncated territory rather than undergo daily miseries. The threat of a united Bengal, which would probably have been a preliminary to an incorporation into Pakistan was thus averted. The Hindu Mahasabha leaders tried their utmost to convince the people of this necessary sacrifice of large parts of their homeland and make them agree to part with some to save the rest. The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in organizing this movement cannot be minimized even after acknowledging the contribution of many of his competent cohorts. But behind all these was the inspiration of that great thinker, Veer Savarkar, who had talked about ‘the first war for Indian independence’. Syama Prasad drew his inspiration from exemplary thinkers like them. And behind all these of course were the efforts of the numerous voluntary associations like the Hindustan National Guard, the Shakti Sangh, the Vir Dal, the Arya Dal and above all the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha who provided the muscles of the struggle. Savarkar had pointed out that the world does not belong to the weak. To escape oppression and humiliation the Mahasabha needed strength to fight violence and oppression. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee charted out this new path for the province by leading it to the right direction through the dark days of 1937 to 1947. NOTES 1. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible? in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi (henceforth NMML).

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2. Dr. S.P. Mookerjee to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 2 May 1947, in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document no. 281, p. 255. 3. The Hindu Mahasabha though it was not able to do much in the political field was at least pointing out where the Congress was going wrong and was protesting whenever the Congress was yielding to the Muslims, betraying the cause of the Hindus. ‘Killing of Mahatmaji betrayed the cause of the Hindus. Now people have begun to be suspicious of every activity of the Hindu Mahasabha. By destroying Gandhiji they were destroying themselves and even the chance of taking the leadership of India as Tilak did.’ An Obscure Hindu, What Shall We Do (Thompson & Co., Madras, 1949), p. 106. 4. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had been an outstanding scholar, having come first in the first class with Honours in English for his B.A. and Bengali for his Masters. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln’s Inn at a very young age (1927) and joined Calcutta University as its Vice-Chancellor at the youthful age of 34. He had served his apprenticeship in legislative politics by representing the University constituency. 5. Sir Frederick Burrows, the Governor of Bengal, himself had admitted that the Muslim League ministry owed its strength to the backing of the British. ‘I doubt if the rank and file of the party have the vision to realize that they cannot hope by means of their personal political power (which is to some extent the artificial creation of British rule ) to dominate the Hindus with whom the economic power still rests.’ See ‘Burrows to Wavell’, 19 March 1947, in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. IX, Document 546, pp. 985-86. 6. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). 7. The Muslim naib (the manager looking after the zamindari) was addressed as an inferior as ‘tui’; tenants were not offered a mat to sit on when they came to visit the zamindar; Muslim tenants were compelled to pay mathot or contribution for Kalipuja, in which they had no interest and which was not part of their faith. Abul Mansur Ahmed, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhor (Navroz Kitabistan, Dhaka, 3rd enlg. edn. August 1975), pp. 14-17 and 22. 8. See Dipesh Chakravarty, ‘Remembered Villages: Representation of HinduBengali Memories in the Aftermath of Partition’, in D.A. Low and Howard Brasted (eds.), Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence (Sage, New Delhi, 1998), pp. 133-52 or Tathagata Roy, My People Uprooted (Synergy, New Delhi, 2015) for the nostalgia in men who had to leave home and hearth for ever.

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9. Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan, History of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal, 1818-1906 (Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, 1965) pp. 60-103; Rafi­ ud-din Ahmad, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1st pub. 1981, 2nd edn. 1988; Oxford India Paperbacks, 1996), Chapters I-IV. The ideology of Jihad spread into the East Bengal villages through the reformist ideologies of the Fara’idis, Ta’aiyyunis, Wahabbis and the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah movements. Although differing in details they all served to promote an Islamic con­ sciousness among the Muslim peasantry and arrested their assimilation with the local inhabitants belonging to other belief systems. According to the Fara’idi doctrine a fara’id was to observe the five fundamentals of Islam (bina’ al-Islam) like reading the Kalimah (the article of faith), offering five times daily namaz, fasting during ramzan, paying poor tax (zakat), and performing hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). The poor, however, were exempted from the last two. The Fara’idis tried to restore tawhid (belief in one God) and tried to stop un-Islamic practices. They insisted that congregational prayers of Jum’ah and Eid could not be held except in misr al jami (a city where the city lord or Amir and the Qazi or Judge were appointed by a Sultan, enjoying the sanction of Islamic law). All places other than that were dar-ul-harb, a country of the enemy. They pure way of life, they believed, would help them regain their political power and restore the dar ul Islam (rule of Islam). The Tariqah-i Muhammadiah, propagated in Bengal by the Patna caliphs, Maulanas Inayet Ali (1794-1858) and Wilayet Ali (1791­ 1835) succeeded in mobilizing a large number recruits from the Bengal districts like 24-Parganas, Jessore, Faridpur, Pabna, Rajshahi, Malda and Bogra for the purpose of retrieving the holy land from the incursions of Sikh infidels on the Afghan border. This Tariqah movement was sometimes confused with Wahabbism of Shah Waliullah (1703-62) of Delhi. Maulana Karamat Ali’s Ta’aiyyuni movement too had the same goal of winning over the Muslims of Bengal from the mire of local customs. Although the Fara’idis did not support jihad, unlike the Wahabbis, yet ultimately they all converged in propagating jihad to rescue the converts from the evil contact of infidel religion. This urge for uniting against the infidels at one point helped to bridge the yawning gap between the ashraf (elite) and the atrap (plebian) among the Muslims. The ideology of ‘Pakistan’ penetrated the rural interiors of East Pakistan only through the slogan of ‘Islam in danger’ and the poor illiterate masses looked upon ‘Pakistan’ as an Utopia where they could retrieve the lost glory of their Turko-Afghan and Mughal ancestors. Cited in Saradindu Mukherji, ‘Unanticipated Catastrophe: Bengal in the 1940s’, in Thierry Di Constanzo and Guillaume Ducoeur (eds.), Decolonization and the Struggle for National Liberation in India (1909-1971), pp. 169-84. 10. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Jaico Publishing House, 2013; 1st pub. 1951), pp. 531-2.

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11. Rafi-ud-din Ahmad, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1st pub. 1981; 2nd edn. 1988; Oxford India Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 109-11. 12. Ibid. pp. 130-1. 13. Fazlul Huq to John Herbert, 27 September 1941 in India Office Records No. R/3/2/18 in British Library, London. 14. Taj ul-Islam Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalisation of Class Politics in East Bengal, 1920-1947 (Westview Press, Boulder, 1992) pp. 49-50. 15. Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927, (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1984), p. 315. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 321. 18. Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, p. 93. 19. Ibid., pp. 93-6. 20. Edward Benthall, Member, Minorities Commission to P.H. Browne, President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, 30 September 1931 and 28 October 1931 in Benthall Papers, Box 2, in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge, London (henceforth CSASAC). 21. Notes by C.C. Miller, ‘British Constitutional Reform in India’, in Benthall Papers, Box 2, in CSASAC. 22. Hindu Mahasabha Papers in the NMML, New Delhi. 23. Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Longmans, Pakistan Branch, Lahore, 1961), pp. 157-61; K.K. Aziz, The Partition of India and Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publication, Delhi, 1990), pp. 89-91. 24. Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, pp. 189-90. 25. Inglis’ note on the Muhammedan Question (released on 27 March 1940 in The Times), 28 March 1940 in Benthall Papers, Box 18, in CSASAC. 26. Enayetur Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943 (The Institute of Bangladesh Studies, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh, 1981), pp. 99-104. 27. Fortnightly Letters to the Viceroy by temporary Governor of Bengal (Sir J.A. Woodhead), 20 July 1939 in Reid Collection in India Office Records, British Library. 28. Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943, pp. 86-7. 29. Ibid., pp. 129-34. 30. Cited by Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 (Routledge, London and New York, 2004), p. 114. 31. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 27 February 1939 in vol. LIV, no.1. 32. Sir Arthur Dash Papers, Box 2, in CSASAC. 33. Sir Arthur Dash, ‘A Bengal Diary’, vol. IX, Box 3 in Sir Arthur Das Papers in CSASA, Cambridge, London. 34. Cited by Saradindu Mukherji, ‘Unanticipated Catastrophe: Bengal in the

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35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

INTRODUCTION

1940s’, in Thierry Di Costanzo and Guillaume Ducoeur (eds.), Decolonisation and the Struggle for National Liberation in India (1909-1971) (Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2014), pp. 169-84. Mountbatten Papers, Viceroy’s Staff Meetings, Mountbatten Lord Ismay, Sir E. Mieville, Mr. Abell, Captain Brockman, Mr. I.D. Scott, Mr. Campbell John, Lt. Col. Erskine Crum, 11 April 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in­ chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), Assisted by Lionel Carter and David M. Blake, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document no. 119, p. 190. Cited by Saradindu Mukherji, ‘Unanticipated Catastrophe: Bengal in the 1940s’, in Thierry Di Costanzo and Guillaume Ducoeur (eds.), Decolonisation and the Struggle for National Liberation in India (1909-1971) (Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2014) pp. 169-84. From John Herbert, Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 23 February 1941 in MSS Eur F125/41 in India Office Records, British Library, London. Indian Annual Register, 1939, vol. I, pp. 383-5. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from Diary. Governor of Bengal to Viceroy, 20 March 1941 in Linlithgow Collection, MSS Eur F125/41 in India Office Records, British Library, London. Herbert to Linlithgow, 5 May 1941 in ibid. Ibid., 5 April 1941 in ibid. Ibid., 10 April 1941 in ibid. Ibid., 22 April 1941 in ibid. Ibid., 9 July 1941 in ibid. Ibid., 8 September 1941 in ibid. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah and the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985). Herbert to Linlithgow, 25 March 1941 in ibid. Herbert to Linlithgow, 5 April 1941 in ibid. On 30 March 1941 Fazlul Huq ruefully wrote to Abdul Hamid Khan, the Chairman of the Reception Committee during the Madras session of the AIML held in April 1941, ‘At the present moment I do not think that people assign much value to Bengal Muslims and I therefore feel unhappy about the whole situation.’ Cited in Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh (The University Press Limited, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1987; 2nd impression, 2012), p. 121. Herbert to Linlithgow, 20 May 1941 in ibid. File R/3/2/18, India Office Records, London. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 16 September 1941. M.O. Carter, Secretary to the Governor to Gilbert Laithwaite, Secretary to the Viceroy, 14 August 1941 in Linlithgow Collection, India Office Records, MSS Eur F125/41.

INTRODUCTION

59

55. Herbert to Linlithgow, 21 September 1941 in Linlithgow Collection, MSS Eur F125/41 in India Office Records, British Library, London. 56. Herbert to Linlithgow, 1 October 1941 in ibid. 57. Herbert to Linlithgow, 8 December 1941 in ibid. 58. Star of India, 19 February 1942 and 3 March 1942. 59. Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh, op. cit., pp. 138-9. 60. Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, op. cit., p. 221. 61. Ibid. 62. Herbert to Linlithgow, 25 February 1942 in Linlithgow Collection in India Office Records, British Library, London. 63. Ibid. 64. Herbert to Linlithgow, 8 April 1942 in Linlithgow Collection in India Office Records, London. 65. In R/3/2/41 1942-43, File 31, Collection 2, India Office Records, London. 66. M.O. Carter Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 67. Sir Arthur Dash Papers, Box 3, ‘A Bengal Diary’ (unpublished reminiscences), vol. IX in CSASA, Cambridge. 68. Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (Tranquebar Press, Westland, Chennai, 2010), p. 189. 69. M.O. Carter Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 70. S.G. Taylor Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 71. Ibid. 72. Michael Edwardes, ‘The Last Year of British India’, cited in ‘A Bengal Diary’ (unpublished reminiscences), vol. IX, in Sir Arthur Dash Papers, Box 3 in CSASA, Cambridge. 73. Sir Arthur Dash Papers, Box 3 in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 74. Jinnah in Calcutta Session of the Muslim League in AICC Papers, G 32, 1938 in NMML, New Delhi. 75. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, op. cit., p. 48. 76. Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Longmans, Pakistan Branch, Lahore, 1961), p. 236. 77. R. Coupland, The Cripps Mission (Humphrey Milford, Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1942). 78. Ibid. 79. Wavell to Amery, 16 April 1944 in the Transfer of Power, vol. IV, Document no. 462, p. 883. 80. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Oxford University Press, London, 1973), p. 110.

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81. Ibid., pp. 137-58. 82. See Chapter 6 for details. 83. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible?, op. cit. 84. Provincial Fortnightly Report August 1946, First Half in File No. 18/8/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 85. Speech by Dhirendra Chandra Datta in Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 19 September 1946. 86. J.D. Tyson Papers, MSS Eur E341 in British Library, London. 87. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson of London, 1969), p. 166. 88. Sir Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves (Cassell and Co., London, 1950), p. 160. 89. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible?, op. cit. 90. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 197, p. 293. 91. Mr. Horace Alexander, Red Cross to Lord Pethick Lawrence, 22 August 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 194, p. 287. 92. J.D. Tyson Papers, MSS Eur E341 in British Library, London. 93. S.G. Taylor Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 94. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 197, p. 293. 95. J.D. Tyson Papers, MSS Eur E341 in British Library, London. 96. S.G. Taylor Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge 97. Ibid. 98. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 197, p. 293. 99. Inaugural Address of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, opening the All India Session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Gorakhpur on 27 December 1946 in Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in NMML, New Delhi. 100. Ibid. 101. P.D. Martyn, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bengal to Secretary to the Government of India, 25 October 1946; Report of the GovernorGeneral to the Viceroy, 29 October 1946; Report of the Governor of Bengal, 18 November 1946 in File no. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Nehru to Wavell, 14 October 1946

INTRODUCTION

102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

120. 121. 122.

123.

124. 125. 126. 127.

61

in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 451, p. 724. Patel to Cripps, 19 October 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ) Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document no. 478, p. 750. The Statesman, 21 October 1946. Ibid., 2 November 1946. Inaugural Address of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, opening the All India Session of the Hindu Mahasabha at Gorakhpur on 27 December 1946 in Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, V-VII, Instalment, Speeches and Writings in NMML, New Delhi. The Statesman, 8 September 1946. Nirmal Kumar Basu, Shatchollisher Diary (Punashcha, 2017), p. 22. S.G. Taylor Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. The Statesman, 12 September 1946. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan, op. cit., p. 172. Ibid., p. 174. The Statesman, 6 December 1946. Ibid., 8 December 1946. Ibid., 22 December 1946. Ibid., 5 January 1947. Ibid., 7 January 1947. Ibid., 19 January 1947. Ibid., 1 February 1947. Quoted by Olaf Caroe, the Governor of the North-West Frontier Province in unpublished memoir (copy in Broadlands Archives) in Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (Collins, London, 1985). Ibid. p. 355. J.D. Tyson Papers, File 341/41 in India Office Records in the British Library, London. Statement made by Prime Minister Attlee in the House of Commons, 20 February 1947, in V.P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Orient Longman, Madras, 1957; rpt. 1993), Appendix IX, pp. 506-9. Minutes of Viceroy’s Ninth Miscellaneous Meeting, Item 1 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), Assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document no. 264, p. 507. The Statesman, 10 March 1947. The Statesman, 21 April 1947. Provincial Fortnightly Report, March 1947, Second Half in File no. 18/3/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. J.D. Tyson Papers, File 341/41 in India Office Records in the British Library, London.

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128. The Statesman, 23 April 1947. 129. Secret Report for the first half of April 1947 in File no. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Sir F. Burrows to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 11 April 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, p. 203. 130. Mr. S.P. Mookerjee to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 2 May 1947 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), Assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document no. 281, p. 555. 131. The Statesman, 28 April 1947. 132. The Statesman, 8 May 1947. 133. N.K. Bose, Shatchollisher Diary, 18 February 1947, p. 21. 134. The Statesman, 14 May 1947. 135. V.P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Orient Longman, Madras, 1957; rpt. 1993), pp. 348-9. 136. Provincial Fortnightly Report, Second Half of May 1947, in Home Poll (I) File 18/5/47 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 137. I.B. Records, serial no. 411, File no. 1036/46. 138. Ismay to Lady Ismay, 25 and 28 March 1947 in Ismay Papers III/8/I cited in Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (Collins, London, 1985) p. 372. 139. The Statesman, 4 June 1947. 140. The Statesman, 9 June 1947; Provincial Fortnightly Report, First Half of June 1947 in 18/6/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 141. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the Second Half of June and First Half of July 1947 in File no. 18/7/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 142. The Statesman, 19 July 1947. 143. Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. XI. 144. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the Second Half of June and First Half of July 1947 in File nos. 18/6/47 and 18/7/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 145. The Statesman, 19 July 1947.

CHAPTER 1

‘A Novel Political Arithmetic’: The MacDonald Award of 1932 and the Challenge to the Hindus of Bengal

the macdonald award of 1932, which is also sometimes known as the Communal Award, awakened the Bengali Hindus for the first time to the necessity of having an organization of their own to put up a defence against the divisive tactics of the Government. Indian political circles were engaged in a frenzied speculation on a further devolution of power on the part of the Government as the periodic revision of the constitutional provisions of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms began to approach nearer. While mature politicians like Sir Fazl-i-Husain in the Punjab began to plan the contours of the predominance of their own community under the garb of provincial autonomy, political players of different hues began to think of wresting new concessions, both from the Government as well as other rival groups on the basis of new understandings. Different plans were floated for the purpose with claims and counter claims, none of which, however, yielded anything definite. The inability of the different interest groups to reach a consensus finally provided the Government with the opportunity of assuming the role of the final arbiter and come up with its own solution of the discordant claims in the shape of the Award of 1932. The Award inflicted a body blow on the Hindus by treating the Scheduled Castes as a separate category. Mahatma Gandhi could avert this attempt at splitting up the Hindus by making substantial concessions for the Scheduled Castes. For Bengal Hindus this proved to be a hard bargain, making further inroads into their slender constituencies. They had no one to help them out in these dark days of despondency. The Indian National Congress shied away

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from taking a strong stand against this surrender of Hindu interests in the face of a brute majority. It thus fell to the lot of the All India Hindu Mahasabha to organize public opinion against the Award and send a memorial of protest to the Secretary of State, the Marquis of Zetland in 1936. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 did not satisfy Indian nationalist aspirations for swaraj. Gandhi decided to give out his call for non-cooperation from Nagpur in 1920. The immediate provocation was the atrocities connected with the Jallianwala Bagh incident in Amritsar. Gandhi also tried to take advantage of the Muslim grievances at the Treaty of Sevres, which had forfeited the temporal possessions of the Sultan of Turkey, the Khalifa of the Muslims. The goodwill generated by the Lucknow Pact of 19161 brought the Khilafat Committee close to the Congress and scores of Muslims joined the Non-Cooperation movement. The sudden revocation of the Non-Cooperation movement on 5 February 1922 created great disappointment among the Muslims. Meanwhile, the Khilafat issue lost its relevance in September 1922, when Kemal Ataturk defeated the Sultan of Turkey and abolished the Khilafat. However, the propaganda related to the Khilafat, the use of religious imagery and the involvement of the maulavis and ulemas in political matters had resulted in rousing the masses to a communal frenzy. Attempts to seek the alleviation of long standing grievances by people in various localities sometimes took the form of communal clashes as during the rising of the Moplahs in Malabar in August 1921, the Multan riots of September 1922 during the Muharram processions, the Bakrid riots at Arrah and Ram Lila/Moharrum disturbances at Allahabad during the years from 1923 to 1926. The playing of music by Hindu religious processions, passing a mosque caused at least 31 of the serious riots between 1923 and 1928.2 While the Lucknow Pact had reconciled the Muslims in provinces where they had been in a minority, it could not fulfil the ambitions of the Muslims in provinces where they constituted a majority as in the Punjab and in Bengal. In the Punjab their majority of 56 per cent had been curbed to 50 per cent and Fazl-i-Husain, the leader of the Punjab National Unionist Party continued to vociferate against it in his correspondence to his cohorts.3 In Bengal the middle class Bengali

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Muslim leader Fazlul Huq, representing the Provincial Muslim League, was denounced as a traitor for having accepted only 40 per cent. Up country leaders like the Punjabi Habib Shah, Kalami from Madras and Fazlur Rahman from Bihar made their place among the composite Muslim population of Calcutta through the Central National Muhammadan Association and spearheaded the agitation which tarnished Calcutta with the three day riots beginning on 9 September 1918. League defectors like Golam Husain Ariff and Dr. Abdulla-alMamun Suhrawardy organized under the banner of Indian Moslem Association tried to whip up Muslim passions by referring to northern Indian disturbances. More influential was the Bengali landholder Nawab Khan Bahadur Saiyid Nawab Ali Chaudhuri, the Eastern Bengal representative in the Imperial Legislative Council, who tried to exploit the undercurrent of Muslim discontent at having been deprived of a just reflection of their majority.4 Congressmen led by Motilal Nehru, B.S. Moonje and Chittaranjan Das interpreted this unrest as an offshoot of the lull in political activity in the wake of the Non-Cooperation movement. They decided to enter the councils to be able to paralyse the working of the councils from within. Since they could not do this under the banner of the Congress, they formed the Congress Swaraj Party and became known as the pro-changers.5 Das understood that in Bengal he could not hope to make much progress without the willing cooperation of the majority of the population who were Muslims. His overtures to the Bengal Khilafatist leaders like Sir Abdur Rahim ultimately materialized in the Bengal Pact of 16 December 1923. It conceded all the major Muslim demands like representation in the Bengal Legislative Council on the basis of population through separate electorates. Muslims were also given a 60 per cent share of representation in the local bodies, 40 per cent being left for the Hindus. The Mahommedans’ right to 55 per cent of the government appointments in the province was also recognized. It was also resolved that no law affecting a community could be passed without the assent of 75 per cent of the elected members of the community.6 Das, however, was not unaware of the hazards in trying to give shape to the provisions of the Bengal Pact. While the Muslims would like to reap the fruits of this Pact immediately, it would antagonize

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Hindu opinion to the verge of revolt. The clause relating to 55 per cent job reservation for the Muslims hurt them most as the middle rung jobs like those of school teachers, clerks and deputy magistracies, monopolized by the Hindu middle class, were the main bone of contention between the two communities. The supporters of the Government in the Bengal Legislative Council tried to embarrass Das by instigating Khan Bahadur Musharraf Hussain to bring a motion for the immediate implementation of the Pact. This would imply a 80 per cent reservation of all future vacancies for the Muslims till their quota reached the magic mark of 55 per cent. Das could escape the danger through an adjournment motion sine die by arguing that the Pact was meant to come in vogue once swaraj became a reality. However, Calcutta Corporation got wind of this tilt in favour of Muslims when Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy succeeded in getting elected as Deputy Mayor and Muslims secured 25 of the 33 vacancies when Subhas Bose was the Chief Executive Officer.7 During their visit to Calcutta in 1918 Edwin Montagu and Chelmsford had expressed their disapproval of communal electorates where the Muslims were in a majority. Their joint report to the Parliament in July 1918 had spoken against it.8 As yet the British had not set their heart at totally undermining the Hindus in Bengal. They could still hold their own with the slight edge of 46 as against 39 Muslims in the Legislative Assembly brought into being by the Montford reforms. Das’ Swaraj Party could win over many but not all Congress Committees. The Burrabazar Congress Committee viewed Das’ encouragement to labour strikes with suspicion and eminent industrialists like G.D. Birla never wavered in their allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi. The Muslim practice of offering kurbani through cow slaughter was not viewed by the Marwaris with favour. In 1910 their attempt to stop this practice associated with Muslim religious sentiments saw a riot in Calcutta. In 1918 they tried once again to prevent the construction of a slaughter house in the city.9 Rich Marwaris like Kesoram Poddar had been lobbying the AICC during 1922-3 for imposing a restraint on cow slaughter in view of the deterioration of cattle in India and a Cow Preservation League had started working in Calcutta. It could win over many eminent and educated Hindus to its cause like Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice­

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Chancellor of Calcutta University.10 Men like Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malaviya, M.S. Aney, B.S. Moonje and Narsimha Chintaman Kelkar had also started murmuring against the sell out at the Lucknow Pact and the Bengal Pact. It is remarkable that after 1924 the joint sessions of the Congress and the Muslim League which had come into being since the Lucknow session of 1916, were no longer in vogue. In 1924 Lajpat Rai published 13 articles between 26 November and 17 December in the Tribune disapproving of communal electorates: Once you accept communal representation with separate electorates there is no chance of its being ever abolished, without a civil war. A civil war, will again, actually mean the supremacy of one of the communities over the other. . . . Communal representation with separate electorate is the most effective reply to the demand for swaraj and the surest way of Indians never getting it. . . . It provides for a complete division of India, as it is, into two sections: a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.11

Referring to the unwillingness of Muslims to grant weightage to non-Muslims in the Punjab he even hinted at a partition of the Punjab, and if necessary of Bengal and to establish a federation of autonomous Hindu and Muslim states: The Punjab occupies a unique position among the provinces of India. It is the home of a community who were the rulers of the province when the British took possession of it. That community is virile, strong and united. Will the community readily consent to occupy the entirely subservient position which this arrangement involves? … Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces, the West Punjab with a large Muslim majority, to be a Muslim governed province and the East Punjab with a Hindu Sikh majority, to be a non-Muslim governed province.… To me it is unimaginable that the rich and highly progressive and alive Hindus of Bengal will ever work out the Pact agreed to by Mr. Das. I will make the same suggestion in this case, but if Bengal is prepared to accept Mr. Das’ Pact I have nothing to say.12

Lala Lajpat Rai’s hunch did not go wrong. The benefits of the compromise worked out by C.R. Das did not outlast his death. The ideological vacuum was swept up by a fresh wave of communalism. Immigrant Muslim leaders like Y.C. Ariff and Abdullah Suhrawardy started organizing the upcountry Muslim millhands. The Nadia and Dinajpur Muslim artisans and merchants living in Calcutta also

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organized themselves in a Muslim Association. There was a virtual slander campaign in the various local newspapers controlled by both communities against each other and its impact had started spilling into the districts like Pabna and Dacca. The Hindus in their turn were patronizing Cow Protection Leagues to check the sale of cows in the city. Calcutta Marwaris with big business interests in the city concentrated on organizing defence parties to care for Hindu properties. The city also watched a series of Arya Samaj meetings from November 1925.13 The situation had become so explosive that it merely needed a spark to ignite the whole city. No wonder the recalcitrance of a single drummer in a 500 strong Arya Samaj procession on 2 April 1926 to stop the music before a mosque when the muezzin was to begin the azan threw the city in the grip of a series of riots which continued unabated first for two weeks, then again from 22 April to 9 May and then once again from 11 to 25 July over the same squabble to stop music before the mosque during Rath Yatra and a Raj Rajeshwari procession. There were heavy casualties on both sides, 24 Hindus and 18 Muslims being killed and 328 Hindus and 238 Muslims being injured in the first phase; the second phase saw 67 killed and 395 injured; and the third phase saw 28 killed and 226 injured.14 Malaviya happened to be present in Calcutta in the last week of April 1926 in connexion with some Hindu Mahasabha work. He wrote to the Governor of Bengal on 2 May 1926 seeking protection for the Hindus on the question of music before the mosque. The Bengal Government was, however, adamant. Even an appeal to the Viceroy did not alter the orders of the Government not to play music in front of important mosques like the Nakhoda mosque at any time. The Government of Bengal also issued a ban against the proposed visit of Malaviya and Moonje to Calcutta once again in August. Malaviya defied the ban and proceeded on his mission. He decided to take up the matter with the Viceroy in its all-India context.15 However, as matters stood, he saw little hope of Government cooperation in solving the sore points in Hindu-Muslim relations. He had a feeling that the Government was intent on placating the Muslims as a counterpoise to the Hindus in the ongoing struggle for the freedom of the country. He therefore decided to concentrate on developing the Hindu Mahasabha for the

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self-defence of the Hindus. Motilal Nehru would have liked the Hindu Mahasabha to come back to the Congress fold. But Malaviya decided to hold an independent session in Allahabad in 1926. Fazl-i-Hussain and Jinnah were the two distinguished members of the Punjab Provincial Muslim League who had demurred from joining the Non-Cooperation movement in the urgent meeting called for the purpose on 5 October 1920.16 At the all-India level the continued success of Fazl-i-Husain in the 1926 elections brought him to the forefront of Muslim politics, while it came a cropper for Jinnah’s Independent Party in the Central Assembly. Jinnah thus wanted to derive mileage by trying to effect a settlement with the Congress. The Congress was also under pressure due to the clamour of the Hindu Mahasabha for the revision of the partisan provisions of the Montford reforms. During an unity conference in Delhi on 20 March 1927 Jinnah thus put forward a proposal to the Congress President Srinivasa Iyenger agreeing to accept joint electorate on condition that Muslims were to have a 33 per cent reservation in the Central Legislature, Sind was to be recognized as a separate province and there should be reforms in the North-West Frontier Province. Seats for Muslims should be reserved in all the provinces and in Punjab and Bengal this reservation should be in proportion to the population.17 Jinnah’s offer did not reflect the mood of Muslim India at this point. But the inadvertent appointment of an all white commission under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon by the Government drowned all dissenting voices for the time being and Hindus and Muslims alike spoke against it. It gave Motilal one more chance to mend the broken fences.18 In the Nehru Report of 21 August 1928 Motilal tried to rectify the mistake of the Lucknow Pact and bring back joint electorates. Dominion Status was declared to be the eventual goal. The long standing demand of the Muslims for the statehood of Sind was conceded and the status of Frontier Province was also to be elevated. But the report conceived a powerful Central Legislature with defence, finance and relations with the states under its control. The GovernorGeneral was to be appointed by the Crown. He was to appoint a Prime Minister and six members of his cabinet according to his advice. The Governor-General would appoint the provincial Governors who

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in their turn would choose the Premier of the province and his cabinet colleagues according to his advice. Both the Central as well as the provincial governments would be answerable to their respective legislatures and the powers of the Governor-General and the provincial Governors would be a minimum. Jinnah’s demand for a 33 per cent reservation for the Muslims at the Centre could not be accommodated.19 Congress had hoped to carry the report through with the support of politically ineffective persons, sarcastically termed by Lord Irwin as ‘mugwamp politicians’20 like the Khilafatists Hasan Imam, Ali Imam or the Raja of Mahmudabad, the Congress Muslims and the Independents led by Jinnah. But the main resistance to the Nehru Report came from the Punjabi politician Fazl-i-Husain, who had understood that the Muslims could gain nothing from a strong centre, which was to be dominated by the Hindu majority. The Independence Resolution of the Lahore Congress in 1929 confronted them with the spectre of a Hindu Raj and Fazl-i-Husain concentrated his energies on working out certain safeguards for the Muslims against such contingencies. He launched a parallel organization to counteract the surrender by the All India Muslim League. He revived the All India Muslim Conference, raised funds from Hyderabad, Aga Khan and Muslims all over India. They organized propaganda through the press, pamphlets were published and circulated freely both in England and in India. Fazl-i-Husain could foresee that with constitutional progress and further devolution of power official blocs were to be removed from both central and provincial legislatures. This would leave the Muslims a helpless minority at the mercy of the Hindus. He organized Muslim opinion in Punjab and Bengal to keep different groups together. In Bengal his message was being promoted by Khwaja Nazimuddin. Members of local legislatures and prominent Muslim personalities were persuaded to publish joint statements to influence public opinion. ‘This is a very critical stage in the development of a community and the country,’ he wrote to Sikander Hyat Khan of the Punjab National Unionist Party on 12 January 1931, ‘and a false step taken will relegate the Punjab to the position of a backward province, tied to the chariot wheels of Hindu India’.21 The Labour Government which had come to power in England was known for its liberal propensities. Fazl-i-Husain was apprehensive

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that it would not advocate the retention of separate electorate for the Muslims. Irwin’s Delhi Pact with Gandhi (the Gandhi- Irwin Pact of March 1931) on the eve of the Second Round Table Conference (7 September-1 December 1931) at London to decide on the revision of the Montford reforms added to Fazl-i-Husain’s fears. At the behest of Fazl-i-Husain, Shaukat Ali, the President of the All Parties Moslem Conference at Karachi, presented Gandhi with Jinnah’s Fourteen Points on 5 April 1931. Among these Fourteen Points were the demands for separate electorate and provincial autonomy came foremost. These demands had been formulated in the Lahore session of the revived All India Muslim League in 1924. But in the meanwhile a compromise formula had been worked out at Bhopal which agreed upon joint electorate with adult suffrage at the end of ten years. There could be elections on the basis of separate electorate, but this would be open to referendum at the end of four years.22 But Fazl-i-Husain was not the kind of person to give up hope. He had been inducted to the Viceroy’s Council in 1930. He tried to gain the ears of the Viceroy through his Punjab friends, Geoffrey de Montmorency, who had become the Private Secretary to the Viceroy, and Malcolm Hailey, who had become the chief adviser of the Viceroy. But these two persons from the paternalist school of Punjab believed in tight government control at the centre. Nor did Irwin favour the idea of surrendering all power to the provinces as Fazl-i-Husain would have desired. Fazl-i-Husain thus tried to work through Sir James Crear, the Home Member of the Viceroy’s Council, who wanted the reforms to create autonomous provinces leaving federation for a later stage. Fazl-i-Husain could persuade Crear that it would be impossible to stop Muslims from going over to the Congress if they had nothing special to expect from the Government. Fazli’s letter of 5 January 1931 to the Allahabad Professor Shafaat Ahmed Khan reveals the way his mind was working: ‘Muslims have nothing to gain by siding with Government if Government pushes them to accept a position which the Congress offers them, for then they stand to gain by joining Congress and intensifying the struggle against Government.’23 The advent of the new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon on 18 April 1931 facilitated their work. The Crear-Fazli group found it easier to convince him of the mutual dependence of the British and the Muslims. The Muslims had no immediate urge to see the British giving up power

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to Indian hands as this could only mean majority domination for them. They would rest content with devolution of power in the provinces, which the British had already started with the MontaguChelmsford reforms of 1919. Even in the provinces the British were cautious about handing over the real control of the law and order, which might jeopardize the numerous European interests in plantation, mining and the like. This suited the Muslims too as they would strongly resent surrendering their cohorts in the minority provinces to the mercy of the Hindus. These were the calculations which had induced him to rebuff Gandhi’s call for non-cooperation in 1922. Fazli’s persuasions soon bore fruit. On 10 July 1932 Willingdon was writing to the Secretary of State Sir Samuel Hoare: ‘The Muslims, who, on the whole, have generally supported the Government, are at present on our side. But if you give them less…I am quite certain they will non-cooperate too.’24 Fazl-i-Husain knew that he had to drive a hard bargain with the Government for securing all his demands, i.e. separate electorate for the Muslims, weightage for them wherever they were in a minority (in the 6 provinces of Bombay, Bihar, UP, CP, Orissa and Assam) and reflection of their majorities in provinces where they were in the majority; and the linking up of their ratios in the legislature to appointments in government service. Separate electorate in the majority provinces, he argued, was justified by the educational and economic backwardness of the Muslims, which did not allow their majorities to be reflected in the voting register. Thus their numerical superiority did not always match their voting strength.25 Unlike the Congress, the Muslims had nothing to gain from a strong centre. It was in their interest to remain under British tutelage as long as they could not match the Hindus in wealth and education. The devolution of control at the Centre merely spelt the replacement of British control by Hindu domination. Here lay the crucial difference in the Muslim outlook from those of their Hindu counterparts. Fazl­ i-Husain had clearly underlined this point in a letter of 12 June 1933 to Shafaat Ahmad Khan, Indian Muslims know that it is not their voice which can be the determining factor in the grant or the withdrawal of central responsibility and therefore,

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they are satisfied that the only course for them to pursue is to be prepared to take the risk in case Parliament concedes responsibility and not to break their hearts in case it determines to withhold it.26

By the time the Round Table Conferences met in London (First Conference began on 12 November 1930) the adversities of the depression years must have taught the Labour Government in England to shed some of its liberal tenets and appreciate the benefits of retaining an Empire to be able to tap cheap food and raw materials for the benefit of the industrial workers at home and to keep the wheels of industry running with the prospect of a ready to hand market in the colonies. The Muslim demands provided them with a subterfuge to postpone the devolution of power at the Centre for which the nationalists in India had been pressing all the while. Aga Khan, the Muslim National Conference delegate to the Round Table Conference, was merely making a dry statement of facts when he told the Secretary of State Sir Samuel Hoare that the key to Muslim survival was not the Fourteen Points but the ‘permanence of the real authority of the Imperial Crown throughout India’.27 By the time of the Round Table Conferences in London since 1930 the British refused to accept the Congress claims to represent all Indians and confronted Gandhi with multiple communal interests like those of the Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and even the Scheduled Castes. Even Gandhi with all his wisdom could not reconcile the discordant claims of all these mutually antagonistic interests. The way was thus opened for the Government to come up with its own solution in the Ramsay MacDonald Award of 4 August 1932. In Bengal it sent shockwaves of indignation reversing the earlier provisions of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 with 46 seats for the Hindus as against a slender 39 for the Muslims in the provincial legislature. The Hindus were now given only 80 of the 250 seats as against 119 for the Muslims; out of those 80 seats 10 were reserved for the Scheduled Castes; the remaining 51 were distributed largely among European interests (Europeans 11, Anglo-Indians and Christians 4+2, industry, mining and plantation 19, labour 8 and others including landholders and university 7). This meant that only 32 per cent of the total seats were for the Hindus although they

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formed 43 per cent of the total population. The Award, as Bidyut Chakravarty has remarked, thus ‘shook the foundation of Hindu domination in Bengal’.28 Mahatma Gandhi took great umbrage at the decision to split up the Scheduled Castes and the caste Hindus. It was tantamount to a challenge to the concept of a monolithic Hindu nation. He demanded a reversal of this ‘statutory separation’ of the depressed classes from the general constituencies and resolved to go on a fast unto death from 20 September 1932 in the Yeravada jail in Poona. Rabindranath Tagore was informed by Gandhi of his decision in a letter seeking his blessings.29 Gandhi did not merely rest content with the moral impact, which his fast was expected to produce on the depressed community. He also sent overtures to M.C. Rajah, the leader of the All India Depressed Classes Association to be able to exploit the rift in the depressed camp between Rajah and Ambedkar. Rajah had already entered into a pact with the Hindu Mahasabha leader B.S. Moonje accepting a joint electorate. The Rajah-Moonje Pact had been ratified in an All India Depressed Classes Conference in Bombay in July 1932. Separate electorate did not appeal to many among the depressed classes as they feared that it would permanently segregate them from their caste Hindu compatriots. It would also close the avenues of moving up in the social ladder for the upwardly mobile groups. In Bengal, for instance, the Namasudra leader Jogendranath Mandal did not favour Gandhi’s use of the term ‘Harijan’ to designate the depressed classes. To him it seemed another way of accommodating the depressed people into a different category. Babasaheb Ambedkar finally saw reason. Fearing that the leadership of the Depressed Classes would slip away from his hands, he came to terms on 24 September and agreed not to have separate constituencies.30 The Poona Pact signed by Ambedkar along with Rao Bahadur Srinivasan, a member of the Legislative Council of the Madras Presidency, did away with separate electorates but it raised the number of reserved seats for the depressed classes from 71 to 148. In Bengal Gandhi’s compromise made a serious dent into the Hindu quota and 30 of the seats had to be reserved for the Scheduled Castes reducing upper caste Hindu representation to a mere 20 per cent. Gandhi’s settlement scandalized educated and politically conscious public opinion all over the province and Gandhi was found to have

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sacrificed Bengal at the altar of the all-India calculations of the Congress High Command. Ramanand Chatterjee, the editor of the Modern Review and a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore marveled at the favours shown to the Muslims inspite of their being the majority community in the province and compared their ‘minority’ status to that of caste status. Just as a Brahmin was once a Brahmin always a Brahmin similarly the Muslim got minority privileges even when they were actually in the majority.31 Aga Khan’s demand for a communal electorate in the Round Table Conference on behalf of the Muslim League was ridiculed by the Modern Review as a bakhsheesh or reward for having desisted from the national movement for freedom!32 Muslim League enthusiasm for splitting up the Hindu vote into ‘caste’ Hindu and Scheduled Caste votes was attributed to their desire to splinter the Hindus even further. The upliftment work of reformers of the Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj and the Theosophical Society was trying improve the status of the depressed classes, the editor argued, and their permanent relegation to Scheduled Caste status might act as a stigma for them.33 These developments landed the Indian National Congress in a soup. Open denunciation of the Communal Award would antagonize the Muslim members in the Congress and jeopardize the Congress claim to represent Hindus and Muslims alike. But refusal to dissociate itself from the Award threatened to erode its support base, which was composed mostly of Hindu elements. The Congress therefore adopted the strategy of ‘neither acceptance nor rejection’ towards the Award. Congress supporters were appalled at this sheer opportunism of the Congress and looked out for a more specific political stand. The High Command was bombarded with telegrams from various district committees from Dacca, Pabna, Barisal, Backergunge, Khulna and Jessore opposing its non-commital stand.34 Feelings ran high inside the Indian National Congress when Madan Mohan Malaviya, Aney and Moonje decided to break away from the High Command and form the Congress Nationalist Party in July 1934. Bidhan Chandra Roy in the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee could sense the danger affecting his flock and desperately pleaded with the High Command to allow an anti-Award agitation.35 A meeting of eminent people, presided over by Dr. Deva Prasad Sarvadhikari, the ViceChancellor of Calcutta University, was held in the Town Hall of

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Calcuuta on 4 September 1932 to condemn the attempt ‘to deepen the foundations of communalism and extend the principle in new directions contrary to all democratic ideas’.36 When the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which met in 1934, found that Congress did not make any protest about the Award, they assumed that there was no serious objection from the Hindus. This prompted them to go ahead with the Award and incorporate it in the India Act of 1935. This was the Act which enshrined the principle of provincial autonomy, which was to affect Bengal so badly in days to come. Thus ultimately it was the Congress policy of appeasement, which proved to be the undoing of good governance in the province.37 Tagore, who had earlier sent a cable to the Prime Minister to accept Mahatma Gandhi’s proposals without delay as he was seriously concerned about the Mahatma’s health, did not take much time to realize that ‘it was a mistake from the point of view of our country’s permanent interest.’38 This was particularly so as there was no res­ ponsible person to represent the province and representatives from other provinces were at best apathetic. In a press statement of 24 July 1933, sent through Nripendra Nath Sarkar, Member, Council of State, he declared: ‘Justice has certainly been sacrificed in the case of Bengal. Such an injustice will continue to cause mischief for all parties concerned, keeping alive the spirit of communal conflict in our province in an intense form and making peaceful government of the country perpetually difficult.’39 Soon after on 28 July 1933 he shot off a letter to Gandhi telling him point blank that if Gandhi’s settlement was accepted without modification ‘it will be a source of perpetual communal jealousy leading to constant disturbance of peace and a fatal break in the spirit of mutual cooperation in our province’.40 Although a poet and an idealist, Tagore had a very strong sense of political reality and could understand that Gandhi in his eagerness for a ‘speedy cutting of knots’ had inflicted a ‘serious injury upon the social and political life in Bengal’.41 Many attempts were made thereafter to come to an understanding with the Muslims through the unity conference in Allahabad and the Congress President Rajendra Prasad’s direct negotiations with Jinnah. Even Jinnah agreed that Gandhi’s Poona arrangement was unfair to the Bengali Hindus.

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Congress apathy to the plight of the Hindus had even shocked public opinion abroad. On 5 February 1934 Moonje enclosed a press clipping from a letter from a journalist to a newspaper published from England, where he had written: ‘What is the matter with Hindus? Few Hindus seem to be able to say any good of Hindus and Hinduism. If by any chance they can say anything against they do, both here and in India. How can a nation of men capable of such meanness expect to progress?’42 Close in its wake came Sir Muhammad Yakub’s statement in the Muslim League Conference of 1934 that ‘Hindus were born to be kicked and humiliated.’43 But Congress still remained restrained in its reactions. The Ranchi meeting of the Congress Swaraj Party passed without a word against the Communal Award. Even the Hindu and Sikh members did not utter a word. Moonje in his letter of 20 May 1934 to Ganpat Rai, interpreted the opportunistic Congress approach of ‘neither acceptance nor rejection’ as ‘clearly meant in its practical aspect its acceptance without a word of protest or rather in silence’.44 The time had now come for the Hindu Mahasabha to act. The Mahasabha sympathizers had been contemplating a challenge to the Congress policy of appeasement for some time. They passed a resolution against the White Paper in a Conference in 1934 in the presence of the Hindu and Sikh members of the Central Legislature. They knew that the Sikhs of the Punjab and the Bengali Hindus had been the worst sufferers from the discriminatory provisions of the Award. The New Delhi Hindu Sabha and the Punjabi Hindu Bhratri Sabha celebrated the Vir Banda Bairagi Day on 31 May 1936 to organize a joint Hindu-Sikh front.45 Moonje now proposed to hold the Working Committee meeting of the Mahasabha in Calcutta, where they expected the Bengali intelligentsia, who could well appreciate the pernicious impact of the Communal Award in its various ramifications, to respond overwhelmingly to its call for action.46 The Hindu Mahasabha tried to look into the complaints of the aggrieved Bengalis and the Sikhs where the Congress failed. They held an All India Anti-Communal Award Conference first in Bombay on 25 October 1934 under the Presidency of Ramananda Chatterjee, an editor of several English and vernacular journals in Bengal, and

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then in Delhi on 23 February 1935 and discussed various plans of agitating against the Award.47 Finally on 22 April 1936 Radha Kumud Mukherjee, the Vice-President of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, suggested that the Hindu minority of Bengal should approach the Marquis of Zetland, the Secretary of State and seek a revision of the Communal Award by His Majesty’s Order in Council in terms of Section 398(4) of the Government of India Act and three persons were to be sent to England for that purpose.48 This was followed up by circulating letters seeking signatures for sending a representation to the Crown.49 They tried to draw the attention of the Crown how the Hindu minority in Bengal, instead of being conceded the usual weightage due to all minorities, has been deprived of even their nominal strength in the total population and has been reduced to a permanent statutory minority in the Legislature. They mentioned the Lucknow Pact of 1916 as a point of reference in their argument for a just and mutually agreed upon basis of settlement between the two major communities in the country till it was replaced by any fresh agreement. Their claims were based on their enormously superior contributions to the ‘intellectual, the cultural, the political and the professional and the communal life of the province’ as well as to its revenues far in excess of their population strength. They constituted 64 per cent of the total literate population, more than 80 per cent of the school going population while their economic preponderance was equally manifest in the sphere of the independent profession and commercial careers making up 87 per cent of the legal, 80 per cent of the medical and 83 per cent of banking, insurance and exchange business.50 The memorial was signed by 126 eminent men from all walks of life like district magistrates, editors of newspapers, representatives of Hindu leaders and chairmen of municipalities. Rabindranath Tagore was the first to sign this document probably to atone for his earlier mis­ informed support to Gandhi. Tagore’s close association with the Hindu Sabha grew day by day through men like Radha Kumud Mukherjee, Ramananda Chatterjee, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Acharya Brajendra Nath Seal, Nil Ratan Sarkar and U.N. Brahmachari.51 The intellectual elite of the province began to be convinced that the communal problem of the country could not be tackled by the Congress policy of appeasement. Instead of soothing the Muslims,

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appeasement of this sort was going to whet the appetite of the communalists even further. Appeasement could merely mean a continuous and ignominious slide down the path of self-negation and self-deprivation which augured no good for the country’s future. Once Tagore was convinced of the righteousness of a particular course of action, he was ready to take a no holds barred plunge into it. A growing anxiety for the country took him out of his ‘accustomed seclusion’ despite old age and failing health. For him the Communal Award carried ‘the malediction of a separated political life’ and threatened to ‘wrench off one of the most sensitive roots of our growing national being’. The ‘novel political arithmetic’ by which minority Bengali Hindus had been singled out for a reduction of representation even below the natural population strength by weightage being cast against them appeared to him ‘to put a premium upon communal allegiance at the expense of national interest’. It made one community ‘permanently independent of the cooperation of the other while wielding the right to oppress it if it so chooses’. Tagore could also prophesy the fatal consequences of the Award for the unity of the people of the province in the not so distant future: ‘For a moment it may become possible to force people reduced to helplessness to swallow injustice but not so to force them to assimilate it. Sooner or later it is ejected in a poisoned mass of contamination.’52 The complicated political atmosphere of the 1930s left only one light at the end of the tunnel. This was the option offered by the Hindu Mahasabha, which came up with a full blooded support of the Hindu cause instead of the tongue in cheek approach of the Congress. Tagore had the large vision to appreciate this fact as early as the early 1930s and he threw his full weight behind the Hindu Mahasabha campaign against the Award. NOTES 1. Hugh F. Owen, ‘Negotiating the Lucknow Pact’, in The Journal of Asian Studies, XXXII, 1973, pp. 561-87. 2. Jagannath Prasad Misra, Madan Mohan Malaviya and the Indian Freedom Movement (New Delhi, ICHR, Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 183; Saradindu Mukherji, Caliphate Movement in India, 1919-1924 (India Policy Foundation, New Delhi, 2015).

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3. Fazl-i-Husain to Nawab Sir Ahmad Said Khan of Chhitari, 5 September 1931 and 2 November 1931 in Fazl-i-Husain Papers (microfilm) in the National Archives of India (henceforth NAI). 4. J.H. Broomfield, ‘The Forgotten Majority: The Bengal Muslims and September 1918’, in D.A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968), pp. 196-224. 5. R.J. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, 1917-1940 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 16-17. 6. Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937-47 (Kolkata, Viswakos Parishad, 2001), pp. 52-3. 7. Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927

(Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 321-2.

8. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 9. Suranjan Das, C ommunal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 62. 10. Ray, Social Conflict, op. cit., pp. 329-33. 11. V.C. Joshi (ed.), Lala Lajpat Rai: Writings and Speeches, vol. 2: 1920-1928

(Delhi, Jullundher, Universal Publishers, 1966), pp. 170-2.

12. Ibid. 13. Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, op. cit., pp. 78-81. 14. Misra, Madan Mohan Malaviya…, op. cit., pp. 183-4. 15. Ibid. pp. 187-92. 16. Azim Husain, Fazl-i-Husain: A Political Biography (Bombay, Longmans, Green and Co., 1946), pp. 97-107. 17. Ibid., pp. 194-5; also David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control 1920-1932 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 121. 18. Page, Prelude to Partition, op. cit., pp. 150-6. 19. Ibid., p. 156. 20. Ibid., pp. 150-74. 21. Fazl-i-Husain to Sikander Hyat Khan, 12 January 1931 in the Fazl-i-Husain Papers in NAI. 22. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, op. cit., pp. 188-90. 23. Fazl-i-Husain to Shafaat Ahmad Khan, 5 January 1931 in Fazl-i-Husain Papers in NAI. 24. Cited by David Page, Prelude to Partition, p. 257. 25. Husain, Fazl-i-Husain, op. cit., pp. 179-81. 26. Fazl-i-Husain to Shafaat Ahmad Khan, 12 June 1933 in Fazl-i-Husain Papers in the National Archives of India. 27. Page, Prelude to Partition, op. cit., p. 257. 28. Bidyut Chakravarty, ‘The Communal Award of 1932 and its Implications in Bengal’, in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 23, no. 3 (1989), pp. 493-523.

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29. Gandhi to Tagore, dated 20 September 1932 in his own hand censored and signed by illegible Major I.M.S. Superintendant, Yeravada Central Prison, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915-1941; pt. III, 1929-1933, Letter no. 4, p. 134 (NBT 1st edn. 1997; 3rd rpt. 2005), p. 134. 30. Christophe Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste (1st pub. 2005; Permanent Black paperback edition, Ranikhet, 3rd impression 2009) p. 56. 31. Editorial Notes in The Modern Review, November 1931. 32. Ibid., July 1932. 33. Ibid., November 1931. 34. AICC Papers, G24 of 1934-6 in Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. 35. John Gallagher, ‘Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930 to 1939’ in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1973), pp. 589-645. 36. Chakravarty, ‘The Communal Award of 1932 and its Implications in Bengal’, op. cit. 37. Ananda Bazar Patrika, B.Y. 15 Poush, 1346 (31 December 1939). 38. Tagore’s press statement of 24 July 1933 on ‘Bengal and the Poona Pact’, in Appendix 9 of S. Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet, pp. 199-200. 39. Ibid. 40. Tagore to Gandhi, 28 July 1933, in Bhattacharya (ed.), The Mahatma and the Poet, pp. 146-7. 41. Tagore to Gandhi, 8 August 1933 in ibid. 42. Press clipping in B.S. Moonje to Bhaiji, 5 February 1934 in Hindu Mahasabha Papers, 1933-4, File no. C/7 in Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (henceforth NMML). 43. B.S. Moonje to Ganpat Rai, 7 April 1934 in ibid. 44. Ibid., 20 May 1934 in ibid. 45. Hindu Mahasabha Papers, 1934-6 in NMML. 46. Ibid. 47. AICC Papers G 24 of 1934-6. 48. M.M. Malaviya to Members of the Bengal Legislative Council, 22 April 1936 in Hindu Mahasabha Papers, File C/7 in NMML. 49. R.K. Mukherji, Vice-President, All India Hindu Mahasabha, 26 May 1936 in Hindu Mahasabha Papers in NMML. 50. Memorial submitted to the Marquess of Zetland, Secretary of State for India in Hindu Mahasabha Papers in NMML. 51. Ibid. 52. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Communal Decision’, Presidential Address delivered at a conference held in Calcutta on 15 July 1936 in The Modern Review, August 1936, pp. 184-6.

CHAPTER 2

The Working of the Provincial

Autonomy in Bengal: The First Phase

FORMATION OF THE FIRST HUQ CABINET

the act of  set a seal on the system of communal representation, the main contours of which had been defined by the MacDonald Award. The elections in 1937 took place in accordance with the provisions of this Act. The new Act created an electorate in Bengal embracing six million seven thousand voters, which meant nearly 14 per cent of the total population of the province. It was a substantial increase over the 3 per cent conceded by the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919. Actually 40.5 per cent of the new voters exercised their franchise.1 Nirad Chaudhuri has shown how carefully the Act of 1935 had assigned the Legislative Assembly seats to different interest groups.2 The January 1937 elections voted 54 Congressmen, 40 Muslim Leaguers, 39 Krishak Praja Partymen and 42 Indepenents into the Bengal Legislative Assembly. Of the 54 Congressmen 43 were from the general constituencies, 6 came from the depressed classes and 5 won from seats reserved for Labour. As the largest single party Congress could have accepted some other party as its alliance partner and formed the government. However, the Congress High Command was also indecisive at this time. It was negotiating for a reversal of the overwhelming powers given to the Governor under the new Act.3 When finally the High Command decided to enter the Legislature it was avowedly to be able to wreck it from within and not acceptance of office.4 In Bengal the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee leader Sarat Chandra Bose had started negotiations with the Krishak Praja Party in February 1937. The KPP leader Abul Mansur Ahmad provides some details about these negotiations in his reminiscences Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhor. The priorities of the proposed combination

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were listed by Sarat Bose in the following order: (1) the demand for swaraj (2) the liberation of detenus (3) the Tenancy Act and (4) the Moneylenders’ Act. KPP leaders wanted to bring nos. 2 to 4. But this corrigendum was not to Sarat Bose’s liking. He suspected a sinister intention to relegate the issue of releasing the detenus to the back burner. The negotiations foundered on this ground. In the end KPP leaders decided to soften their stand. But before they could present their programme to Sarat Bose, the Muslim League communicated its acceptance of Fazlul Huq’s Premiership to alienate him from the Congress.5 Shila Sen claims to have learnt from Humayun Kabir that one reason why Sarat Bose rejected the KPP offer for an alliance was Fazlul Huq’s unwillingness to part company with his fund raiser, the renegade Congressman Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, who later got an important berth in the Huq Cabinet.6 The failure of Congress-KPP talks led to great despair in moderate circles in the province. ‘If the Congress High Command and the Bengal Congress had joined with Fazlul Huq in 1937,’ Syama Prasad later wrote in his diary, ‘Bengal would have been a different province altogether…. The province would have developed into a strong and healthy province with the common efforts of representative Hindus and Muslims.’7 The Muslim League had won 40 seats in the legislature in Bengal but it had secured only 27 per cent of the Muslim votes, compared to the KPP’s 31 per cent. Moreover its leader Khwaja Nazimuddin (although he later made his way to the legislature by winning a byelection from the 24-Parganas seat surrendered to him by Shaheed Suhrawardy, who had won two seats8) lost the election at Patuakhali in Barisal (lying within Nazimuddin’s own zamindari) to Fazlul Huq. The failure of the Congress-KPP talks therefore came as a god send to the Muslim League and they were happy to elect Huq as their Premier.9 Fazlul Huq was a son of the soil and as Abul Mansur Ahmad emphasized ‘a genuine Bengali and a genuine Muslim from his head to toes’. He symbolized Bengali Muslim nationalism in its true sense.10 He was a true representative of the rising educated Muslim middle class of Bengal. He was from a lawyer family of Barisal and came to Calcutta to study in the prestigious Presidency College. He started teaching in a college when he went back to Barisal with a MABL.

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Later he assisted his father in his legal profession. He subsequently got articled with the renowned High Court lawyer Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee. In the eyes of his own folk in Barisal he was nothing short of a hero for having been the first Muslim from the district to be a member of the English Bar.11 The Dacca Nawab used his services at the time of sending the Simla Deputation in 1906. For this Huq was given the post of Assistant Registrar of Rural Credit Societies. Later when Bengal was reunited, Huq was elected unopposed to the Dacca Muslim seat in the Legislative Council with the blessings of the Dacca Nawab. Huq’s educated middle class background made him acceptable to the Hindu Bengali politicians. He had represented the Bengal Muslim League during the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and had faced the wrath of Bengal Muslims for having slashed their majority in the province. But he had established his secular credentials among the moderate section of Leaguers by his role in the pacification of the 1918 and 1926 Hindu-Muslim riots.12 In 1935 Huq become Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation with Congress support. However, he did not hesitate to resign his post along with the 15 Muslim Councillors when the Hindu Councillors did not agree to reserve 25 per cent of the Corporation jobs for Muslims.13 Huq enjoyed the backing of the huge bulk of the Muslim peasantry in East Bengal, who had not yet been infected by the poison of communalism and who shared the life of the neighbouring Hindu peasantry in all their superstitions regarding the efficacy of minor goddesses like Sitala, Ban Bibi and Ola Devi to protect them from tigers, cholera and smallpox. Their Hindu neighbours also subscribed to their beliefs in the charisma of the Sufi Pirs and paid their respects to the dargahs. The reformist movements of the Wahhabis and the Faraizis tried to reclaim the Muslim peasants from the invasion of Hindu superstitions to some extent. But the divide had not become very sharp in spite of the successes of the Bengali Sufi Maulana Karamat Ali Jaunpuri.14 These peasants of Khulna, Jessore, Mymensingh and Faridpur united under the banner of the Nikhil Banga Praja Samity and wanted to wrest concessions from the Government as against the big landowners.15 Abul Mansur Ahmad called this ‘an anti-feudal movement’ although Congress leaders disparagingly called it the ‘Jotedar Party.’16

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The leadership of the Krishak Praja movement came from the young university graduates turned out by Dacca University, which had come into being since 1921. It symbolized the rise of an educated middle class among the Muslims and became the nucleus of a cultural regeneration among the Muslims. It liberated Muslim intellectual development from its subservience to Hindu cultural traditions and charted out a new path of development for Muslim literature and Muslim thinking based on Muslim cultural traditions. Typical of this new generation were the figures like Abul Mansur Ahmad, Shamsuddin Ahmed or Tamizuddin Khan, who tried to break loose of the influence of Hindu culture on the development of a distinctly Muslim Bengali culture. It was in a sense a reaction against the Hindu Bengali nor­ mative literary practice of trying to depict a Bengali renascence through the demolition of Muslim political dominance. Although rising from the heart of Bengal, yet this new cultural tradition had its moorings in typically Islamic values.17 Although not everyone of them had a landowning background, yet they could use their new education to work among the peasantry and teach them to take advantage of the Council reforms since 1919, whereby the rural Muslims could send their representatives to the Union Boards and develop vertical links with the Province through the local boards and the district boards.18 The strong resentment against the Communal Award of 1932 among Hindu Congressmen came as an eye-opener to many of these young educated men and persuaded them of the urgent need for having an organization of their own to push the agenda affecting their own community.19 Among the topmost priorities on the agenda of the Praja movement came the reduction of rent as well as some restraint on the zamindars’ power to impose abwabs or cesses like the Kali Puja mathot, which often exceeded the legal rent and a leash on interest rates and relief from indebtedness. Their demand to bring the landlord’s share on the proceeds of the sales of tenant lands to an end, stood for the rich peasants’ desire to have a free land market to be able to raise capital for the further expansion of their possessions. Improving fortunes from a successful participation in the benefits of the cultivation of cash crops20 awakened them to a new sense of selfrespect and they started demanding more honourable treatment by the zamindars’ naibs and gumasthas (employees) when they had to

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attend zamindar’s cutcheries.21 The price depression of the 1930s interrupted the rise in peasant fortunes and added a new dimension to the communal conflict.22 The leadership of this peasant movement fell on Huq, when Abdur Rahim quit the presidency of the Nikhil Banga Praja Samity in 1935. Huq accepted the challenge and transformed it into the Krishak Praja Party in 1936.23 The supporters of the League, on the other hand came from a very different background. Most of them were urban-based or very big landowners from the East Bengal countryside. They were mostly Urdu speaking up country people, having big business in Calcutta. The landowners were also Urdu speaking and of non-Bengali origin. The Dacca Nawab family, from which came the Nawab Habibullah and also the two brothers, Khwaja Nazimuddin and Shahabuddin, was of Kashmiri origin. They commanded large resources and had the backing of big Calcutta businessmen like Mirza Ahmad Ispahani, M.A.H. Ispahani, K. Nooruddin, Abdur Rahman Siddiqui, Aziz Ansari, Abdullah Gangee and S. Kander Dehlavi. The labour leader H.S. Suhrawardy commanded great respect among the immigrant Muslim workers of Calcutta, who had nothing but contempt for the ‘Hinduised’ peasant flock of Fazlul Huq.24 Fazlul Huq had shunned a pre-electoral alliance with the Muslim League since he had failed to agree to Jinnah’s nomination of up country Muslims to the Muslim League Parliamentary Board. He thought these persons were far removed from the Muslim masses of Bengal to know about their problems and aspirations. But the failure to work out an alliance with the Congress, following the elections in 1937, left him with no option but to patch up with his erstwhile electoral opponents of the Muslim League. He joined with a heavy heart but he knew from the very first day that the League would scuttle his radical agrarian programme. When negotiations with the Congress reached a dead end he had to let Nalini Ranjan Sarkar act as the go-between and bring about an understanding. The Communal Award formed the guiding principle of the Act of 1935 under which provincial autonomy was introduced with some special powers for the provincial Governors, who were to be the creatures of the central government headed by the Viceroy. Elections were held in 1937 in accordance with its provisions. A few wise

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Muslim politicians, however, understood that since the Muslims were already in a majority in the province the real effect of the Award was to cut down their majority. They had nothing to lose from a general electorate. Men like A.K. Ghuznavi, a member of the central Legislative Assembly and a former minister in the Government of Bengal under the Act of 1919, therefore negotiated a Pact with Hindus led by the Maharaja of Burdwan, President of the Bengal AntiCommunal Award Committee, for a 50/50 share in the ministry and in all government appointments. The Pact was not accepted by either the Congress or by Jinnah. But it appealed to Fazlul Huq for its intrinsic justice and pragmatism and he decided to go by it in the formation of his future ministry.25 ‘The moral effect upon the “independents” of the defeat by Fazlul Huq of Sir Nazimuddin was decisive,’ as Sir John Anderson, who was the Governor of Bengal during these fateful years, put it, ‘and made it clear that if there was to be a Muslim combination, Fazlul Huq must be the leader.’26 Huq was therefore invited by the Governor to submit his proposals for the formation of a ministry.27 Huq had fought against the combined forces of the United Muslim Party, which had merged with the Muslim League Parliamentary Board in ‘an attempt to embrace all Muslims of any importance in the province’.28 But after the rebuff from the Congress, he had no option but to yield to ‘the strength of feeling among Muslims that somehow or other their leaders must hold together’.29 Neither he nor the Muslim League was prepared to ‘face the responsibility in the eyes of their co­ religionists of throwing away the chances of a Muslim hegemony’.30 An immediate benefit resulting out of this alliance was the victory of Nazimuddin in a by-election in the 24-Parganas seat surrendered to him by Shaheed Suhrawardy.31 The Muslims were divided into so many groups that Fazlul Huq found it impossible to limit the number of Muslim ministers below 6. Labour was detached from Commerce Department and given to Suhrawardy, who had great interest in the trade unions. Nazimuddin had to be given Home. Khwaja Habibullah, the Nawab of Dacca, was given Agriculture and Industries. Nawab Musharraf Hussain, a zamindar and tea magnate of Jalpaiguri formed a bloc of 25 and claimed to represent the interest of North Bengal and secured Judiciary

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and Legislature. Although the settlement between the Muslim League Parliamentary Board and the KPP had laid down the acceptance of at least three persons to represent the latter, Huq could not secure more than one berth for his KPP associates. This went to Nausher Ali, in-charge of Public Health and Local Self Government. Fazlul Huq was compelled to sacrifice his ‘trusted lieutenant’ Shamsuddin Ahmad. The Governor could not deny that Shamsuddin was ‘a capable person of straight views’ and yet he was excluded from the cabinet in view of his want of experience in public service.32 The Governor seemed to be happy that the Congress High Command had decided against office acceptance and he could therefore quickly fill up the quota for the Hindus with representatives of the Nationalists, originally sponsored by B.C. Chatterjee, a Calcutta lawyer of ability and Western outlook, and later led by J.N. Basu, a Calcutta solicitor, and the bloc of 22 Scheduled Caste members which the Governor hoped ‘would at least not intensify the grievance under which the Hindus have been smarting ever since the Communal Award’.33 Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, who represented the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and was known to be the bête noire of Sarat Bose was given Finance; B.P. Singh Roy, an influential and big Rajput zamindar of Burdwan, whose ancestors had been brought to Bengal by the Mughals, and was a representative of the landowners in the province got Revenue; Maharaja Sris Chandra Nandy, who had a long experience in earlier Legislatures and commanded some respect was found good enough for Communication and Roads; Prasanna Dev Raikut, a landowner from an old family of North Bengal and had been returned to the Legislative Assembly on a Scheduled Caste ticket was given the Forests and Excise; the assignment of the Co­ operative Societies Department to Mukunda Behari Mallick, another Scheduled Caste person, remained a sore point for long with the Muslims, who wanted to keep the department in their own hands. But the Governor refused to ‘chop and change the structure of departments of Government to suit political convenience’.34 The Governor would have liked to include Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University.35 Fazlul Huq had marked the Education portfolio for him. But Mookerjee had earned the wrath

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of the Bengal Muslim Young Men League in January 1937 by the official decision to inaugurate the Calcutta University Foundation Day by singing Bande Mataram and saluting the University flag bearing the emblem sree and lotus, which was considered to be entirely against ‘Islamic ideals’.36 All these smacked of Hindu religious rituals in the perception of the Muslims and Raghib Ahsan, the Muslim student leader offered staunch resistance to Mookerjee’s appointment. Huq therefore had to keep education to himself.37 TROUNCING THE KPP PROGRAMME

Thus from the very beginning it was obvious that Fazlul Huq had become totally marginalized in his own cabinet. He was compelled to tone down the programme which the KPP had promised in its Election Manifesto. The repeal of repressive laws and release of political prisoners and detenus was qualified as to be ‘consistent with public safety’. Instead of being free, primary education was to be ‘without taxation of the poor, who are unable to bear the burden’, which was found to be ‘an ambiguous term’. A committee of enquiry was to look into the Permanent Settlement, which was to be axed immediately. A short shrift was also given to the KPP’s commitment to the reduction of the salary of the ministers.38 Although the ministry ran under the name of Fazlul Huq, yet to all intents and purposes its programme was that of the Muslim League. Crucial administrative decisions were taken by an inner coterie, dominated by Nazimuddin, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, B.P. Singh Roy and a few others. The administrative policies and legislation undertaken by it had an overwhelmingly communal content which provoked Sir Robert Reid, the Governor of Bengal to warn against the dangers of having men in power ‘bent on putting their community’s interests before that of the state’.39 Huq could sense the uneasiness in his own camp during the Bengal Praja Conference in Bogra in June 1937 when several radicals left the conference soon after his keynote speech. Some of them joined the Congress in conducting meetings against Fazlul Huq. Eight members even voted against the Government in the Assembly. When the Coalition Party threatened expulsion to discipline them, 21 members

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led by Shamsuddin Ahmed, the Secretary of the KPP and Deputy Leader in the Assembly announced their intention of voting independently and opposing the ministry on selected issues.40 Finally during a general meeting of the party at Gaibandha in September Huq was removed from the position of President of the Party and Shamsuddin Ahmed was directed to lead the Krishak Praja Assembly Party.41 At this point Huq secretly approached the Congress once more for a coalition. But the Congress High Command insisted on a merger of Huq’s KPP with the Congress, something similar to what they had suggested to Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman in the UP. But this was something unacceptable to Fazlul Huq.42 PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE TO

THE MUSLIM LEAGUE

This was an hour of crisis for the All India Muslim League too. This was the very year when Congress had won an overwhelming victory in all the six Hindu majority provinces and had succeeded in forming governments in 7 provinces (including the North-West Frontier Province). Congress’s good score at the hustings in 1937 prompted it to underestimate the Muslim League as a movement confined to a handful of intellectuals without deep roots in society at large. This led it to decline an understanding with the Muslim League during the formation of ministries after the elections. Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman’s offer for cooperation in the UP was interpreted as an attempt to relegate the Congress to the role of an advocate of Hindu interests only. The Congress was unwilling to abdicate its role of the champion of all Indians irrespective of their religion. ‘There were Muslims in the Congress,’ wrote Nehru in the Bombay Chronicle of 10 February 1937 ‘who could provide inspiration to a thousand Jinnahs.’43 Although the Muslim League had come victorious in 109 of the 482 Muslim seats for which it had put up candidates, even the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Bengal and North-West Frontier Province had slipped out of League hands when it came to the formation of ministries. The Congress had put up only 58 candidates for the 482 Muslim seats and did well in the NWFP. Nehru therefore hit upon the idea of trying to woo the Muslims with a programme

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of socio-economic upliftment by launching a campaign for Muslim mass contacts in a big way.44 The Muslim League was now fighting with its back to the wall. In desperation it resorted to a cry of ‘Islam in danger’ and began a thorough communalization of Muslim politics. The policy of the Congress Governments in the six Hindu majority provinces came under severe criticism from the Muslim League. The use of the Congress flag as the national flag, compulsory singing of the song Bande Mataram in public functions and educational institutions, the acceptance of Hindustani in the Devanagari script as the official language and the ban placed on cow slaughter in response to the demand from the majority – were interpreted by the Muslim League as instances of oppression on the minorities. Taking out pro­ cessions on religious occasions with music and its approach to the vicinity of mosques during prayer hours or the blowing of conch shells and the ringing of bells to consummate Hindu religious rites were interpreted as behaviour loaded with a communal intent. As Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah put it: ‘A hundred and one small pinpricks and irritation cropped up daily; unimportant in themselves they were like the proverbial leaf which indicated the way the wind was blowing towards Hindu imperialism and Hindu domination which would attempt to exterminate 800 years of Muslim influence and culture.’45 When Viceroy Linlithgow wrote to Jinnah that he could not find a specific instance of oppression in these matters Jinnah did not budge from his contention that ‘the Hindus had a subtle intention of undermining the Muslim position’.46 The Muslim League had even ordered two internal committees of enquiry – the Pirpur Committee headed by Raja Sayed Mohammed Mehdi of Pirpur and the Sharif Committee from Bihar.47 These happenings deeply moved Fazlul Huq and true to his emotional character he openly swore revenge in Bengal on the Hindus for every wrong done to the Muslims in the Congress provinces.48 He also advised the Muslims to keep the Congress at arm’s length for ‘none could be more selfish, deceptive, hypocritical and scheming than a Congressman’.49 It was on this occasion that Fazlul Huq earned the epithet – Sher-e-Bangla in view of the strong line taken by him.

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TROUBLE WITHIN THE COALITION

The more Huq inclined towards the Muslim League the more he began to neglect the affairs of the Krishak Praja Samity as he had not given up the leadership of the Samity. The League now started penetrating the east Bengal countryside riding on the crest of Huq’s popularity. It could improve its organizational network in the remote areas of east Bengal and opened new offices. The main wing of the Praja Samity which supported Huq became an auxiliary of the League to all intents and purposes. The left wingers, on the other hand, finding themselves isolated, tried to team up with the Congress.50 Congress intrigues with Praja Samity members induced successive rebellions in the ranks of the Samity during these months. On 15 March 1938 Tamizuddin Khan led a group of 13 in the Legislative Assembly and began to call themselves the Independent Praja Samity. They voted with the Congress against a Cabinet proposal to form a land revenue commission and study the land tenure of the province and make recommendations. They wanted a revision of the Permanent Settlement, a clear recognition of the rights of the tillers of the soil, reduction of their rents, arrangements to bring agricultural indebtedness to an end and a ban on the passing of agricultural lands in the hands of non-agriculturists. They also wanted regulation of the prices of all cash crops, including jute. Among their other demands was free primary education, steps for adult education, control of all communities in the administration of the Calcutta University, a Board of Secondary Education with representation for all communities and financial help for advancement of education among Muslims and SCs. They also wanted adequate representation of all communities in the public services including those under local bodies in proportion to their population.51 Shamsuddin’s group met Tamizuddin’s group and proposed to work together. But the alliance broke up over the leadership issue. Shamsuddin also met Gandhi when he came to Sarat Bose’s residence in March. Sarat Bose wanted Nalini Ranjan Sarkar to resign and the Coalition Government to fall. ‘The present Ministry is far more reactionary than its predecessors under the old Act,’ he wrote to the High Command, ‘and unless we are able to break it, the future of

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Bengal is doomed.’52 But Gandhi wanted Huq to continue as Sarat could not garner more than 82 supporters.53 SARAT BOSE’S ATTEMPTS TO

BREAK UP THE MINISTRY

Sarat began to work vigorously for bringing the Ministry down. A group of 12 Scheduled Caste MLAs led by Hem Chandra Nashkar and Rasik Lal Biswas defected from the Coalition and formed the Independent Scheduled Caste Assembly Party and started supporting the Congress openly.54 Bose also tried to widen the rift in the Coalition by paying money to the leading members of the All Bengal Muslim Students’ League through his agents Kazi Moizuddin Ahmed and Abdus Sattar and invited them to join the All Bengal Students’ Federation.55 At the grass-roots level in the districts there was developing a new kind of awakening in Krishak Samitis organized in villages through the collaboration of left wing of the Congress, the detenus and former terrorists released by the Huq government and some of the KPP supporters. Many of the former detenus had been swelling the ranks of the left wingers in the Congress. ‘Communist propagandists’ had taken hold of the new Krishak Samitis and new samitis spread to interior areas, hitherto lying outside the reach of political activism. The Krishak Samiti of Kurmun in the Burdwan district, where men like Osimuddin Ahmed, the MLA from Tippera, Muzzaffar Ahmad and Niharendu Datta Mazumder came to address the people was a case in point. Its efforts were crowned with the greatest success in Tippera. Efforts by League ministers and League workers to inoculate such areas from leftist influences were not very effective. But under cover of the alliance with the KPP, Muslim League workers were also continuing their parallel efforts to establish contact with the mass of Muslim cultivators through the organization of the Provincial Muslim Conference at Murshidabad. Their efforts met with the greatest success in Noakhali, where the cultivators remained staunch supporters of the Muslim League and resisted all efforts by the Congress to penetrate its ranks.56 Congress leaders also continued to agitate among industrial workers

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over a wide area such as Kharagpur, Andul, Burdwan, Dacca, Mymensingh and Kushtia. Strikes plagued the Kesoram Cotton Mills till the end of May; the strike of Bengal-Nagpur Railway workers ended only in February after lasting for sixty days; and there was ‘an epidemic of strikes’ specially in jute mills like Fort William, Ganges and Howrah (till 25 February 1937). A more serious strike began in the Budge Budge Mills, which spread quickly to 13 other mills on the opposite banks of the Hooghly. When one set of strikes were resolved in May, more started in November in Ludlow Jute Mill, two mills at Budge Budge and also in Naihati, the Northbrook and the Dalhousie Jute Mills. There was also a riot in Fort Gloster Mill on 8 April, where work had resumed three days back. There were also strikes in other industries like Britannia Biscuit Works, Corporation Water Works, Oriental Gas Works, the Gramophone Company, Dum Dum and the printing press trade. These incessant strikes led the Labour Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy to build up his network of contacts among the up country industrial workers, which allowed him to meet this great challenge of labour unrest to the working of the new Government.57 DISSENT OF NAUSHER ALI

Close in the wake of these troubles came the dissent of Nausher Ali, a close associate of Fazlul Huq and the only person who had been provided a ministerial berth from the KPP apart from the Chief Minister. He had been watching with great dismay how the League members in the coalition were cornering Fazlul Huq in the cabinet and obstructing all his efforts towards bringing about progressive legislations. Nausher Ali believed that Hindu-Muslim political co­ operation was a pre-requisite for the economic emancipation of the masses. He had proposed a reshuffling of the cabinet and the bringing in of the Congress in the Coalition; but Fazlul Huq rejected the idea as the move was ‘likely to bring him into great discredit with the Muslims all over India’.58 Nausher Ali then released the correspondence that had been going on for some time between himself and the Chief Minister in which he had been trying to draw the attention of the Chief Minister to the way the Coalition was gradually drifting further away from the declared aims of the Krishak Praja Samity:

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I cannot conceal my belief that most of the prominent Leaguers in Bengal are reactionary aristocrats who are solely subservient to British Imperialism and Bengal Landlordism and their sole object is, in the name of Islam and the Muslims to keep the poor in their hand, and to exploit the masses for their self-aggrandisement. Is not the cry of Islam in danger intended to keep separate the people with common interests so that British Imperialism and Bengal Landlordism may flourish at the expense of the country at large?59

Nausher Ali was accused of carrying an ‘endless intrigues against his fellow ministers, both with Congress and with the members of the Independent Proja Party and leakage of Cabinet secrets.’60 But instead of offering his resignation from the Cabinet, Nausher Ali made the entire Cabinet resign to regroup again without Nausher Ali on 22 June 1938.61 THE NO CONFIDENCE MOTION

All the dissenting elements finally combined together to bring a motion of no-confidence against the Coalition on 2 August 1938. Sir Robert Reid, in temporary charge of Bengal in addition to the Governorship of Assam, wrote to Lord Brabourne that there were ten no-confidence motions against ten ministers.62 KPP dissenters took part alongside the Congress, a few Scheduled Caste Independents and the Hindu Mahasabha in the no-confidence motion. The main allegation against the Government was for dabbling in communal practice. The extraordinary thing about the matter was that this accusation did not come from a non-Muslim. It came from a Muslim member, the KPP leader Tamizuddin Khan. The ministry was blamed for: ‘deliberately pursuing a policy that has already made the communal tension far worse than what it was when they assumed office. A false and insidious cry of religion in danger has been raised and this has poisoned the very atmosphere of the country.’63 Tamizuddin Khan’s complaint received confirmation from members of other communities and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee expressed concern about ‘the manner in which the rights and liberties of one particular community have been trampled underfoot’ and the ‘state of insecurity unparalleled in the history of Bengal’.64 Congress had sponsored agitation committees in districts to

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demand the resignation of the ministry. A joint demonstration of the Congress and the Trade Union Congress had been staged on 29 July as soon as the Assembly reopened for the autumn session. Money changed hands while approaching members of the Coalition for support; even the European members were requested to cast their lot with the opposition.65 The supporters of the ministry were also not lagging behind. They paraded the streets with lathis and bamboo sticks in hand. A rally in the Calcutta Maidan openly threatened ‘open conflict and clash’ leading to ‘riot and bloodshed’.66 The city branch of the Muslim League called for a hartal by Muslim shopkeepers.67 The rabble rousing talents of the Labour Minister were now called to action. Flouting all restrictions about crossing the gates of the Assembly Building, Suhrawardy had called his up country following in the Calcutta Khilafat Committee of which he was the President to assemble in the corridors of the Assembly to demonstrate with green flags.68 His purpose was in the first place to intimidate his opponents; if that did not work out something worse might happen. The Government won by 130 votes to 111; the European group had bailed them out. ‘The defeat of the first motion,’ as Sir Robert Reid reported, ‘was greeted with deafening sounds.’69 DEPARTURE OF SHAMSUDDIN

FROM THE MINISTRY

Though the Ministry had been saved, the close shave during the noconfidence motion had revealed the slender margin of support behind the ministry. Fazlul Huq therefore opened negotiations with his erstwhile colleagues and admitted Shamsuddin and Tamizuddin to the ministry on 17 November 1938 with a promise to fulfil their demands. However, when the ministry showed no initiative of meeting their objectives, Shamsuddin resigned his post on 27 February 1939. He underlined his frustration at the unrepresentative character of the ministry and deprecated the conservatism of its programme in course of his parting advice to the Government: The Bengal Government if it is to function as a government it must be a government in which Proja representatives should be in the majority and

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even if it be a government predominantly Muslim, it must run on strictly non-communal basis. The province where teeming millions steeped in abject poverty cannot have two meals a day, cannot think of having as its administrators, Knights, Nawabs and Rajas, who have nothing to their credit so far as the service of the nation is concerned.70 DANCING TO MUSLIM LEAGUE TUNES

Shamsuddin’s exit from the ministry left Huq totally isolated in the ministry. He was still considered ‘indispensable for his popularity value,’ remarked Sir J.A. Woodhead, the temporary Governor of Bengal, and ‘no Moslem party in Bengal could under the present conditions hold together without him.’71 Many of his colleagues in the Government thought that ‘but for his lack of stamina and reliability, they could have dealt much more firmly with the troublesome elements among their followers and could have strengthened their position in the face of “the Party” considerably.’72 His colleagues feared that he was bound to land the ministry in some ‘damaging scandal that it will not be possible to suppress or live down’.73 Totally isolated from his Krishak Praja moorings, Huq had to dance to the tunes of his Muslim League colleagues. In November 1938, B.P. Singh Roy announced the appointment of a Land Revenue Commission chaired by an European, Sir Francis Floud (although KPP members would have liked to see an Indian in his place) for enquiring into the working of the Permanent Settlement. The question of abolition of the zamindari system was thereby put into cold storage. The Muslim League now took all the credit for the grudgingly conceded Bengal Tenancy Act (1938), the Agricultural Debtors Act (1940) and Bengal Moneylenders’ Act (which could not be passed till 1944 when Nazimuddin formed the government) and enhanced its popularity among the Muslim cultivators in the countryside.74 TWO BLACK BILLS

Huq was now pressed into action for implementing the political

programme of the Muslim League. The Muslim League tried to make

up for their erstwhile exclusion from power, profit and government

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patronage by trying to grab the maximum that came their way all at once. Huq declared in the Sirajgunge Conference of the Muslim League in Pabna in 1939 that his government was ‘morally committed to undo the wrongs of history by bringing the Muslims in line with the advanced Hindus’.75 The educated Muslims were conscious that they had entered the race late and it was impossible for them to compete with the Hindus on equal terms. They wanted to get a favoured treatment in educational opportunities and appointments by trying to exploit the political power that had come to them through numerical superiority. That alone could explain the consecutive bills brought before the Bengal Legislative Assembly like the Secondary Education Bill or the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. In August 1940 Fazlul Huq, who had retained the control of the Education portfolio, put forward the Bengal Secondary Education Bill. It was the impression among the Muslims that the Muslims could not attain their deserved place in society and education unless they had their fair share of control in the determination of educational policy. Since the 1920s they had been denied any say whatever in educational matters as a result of the machinations both of the British as well as Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee. This had affected the literacy rate as well as the share of the Muslims in government employment.76 For many Muslims Calcutta University was a symbol of Hindu domination. The use of Sree and Lotus by Calcutta University as its crest had already been questioned by the Muslims as emblems of idolatry. The Muhammadan students of the University had boycotted the Foundation Day ceremonies to protest against it.77 Huq tried to redress the situation and free secondary education from the control of the Calcutta University and entrust it to the care of a Secondary Education Board. Huq wanted to bring the new Secondary Education Board under the thumb of the Government with the induction of a number of official nominees. The new board was expected to be more representative of Muslim interests and take measures to alleviate the backwardness of Muslims in education. But to the Hindus it appeared to be a sinister attempt to whittle down their erstwhile predominance in education and deprive them of their legitimate share in educational opportunities. Middle class Hindus could no longer live as rentiers on the income from land. Sub-infeudation for generations,

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indebtedness, disaffection of tenants and emergence of a new class of overmighty tenants (jotedars) through the cultivation of cash crops had diminished the income from land. Education and white collar employment was the only avenue of success open to them. The Secondary Education Bill threatened to close it for them. The bill was termed ‘a black bill’ by Syama Prasad Mookerjee78 and was referred to a Select Committee to prevent its immediate implementation. The Huq ministry could not meet the demand of the KPP leaders for free primary education for all without the burden of an educational cess. But in August 1941 the Bengal (Rural) Primary Education (Amendment), was published in the Gazette. This bill exposed the government’s desire to bring the entire system under its close control through the predominance of the official element. The Primary Education Board was to consist of ten members representing the five Divisions of the province. The District School Boards of each division was to elect two persons, one Hindu and the other Muslim. The Government would directly appoint five members taking two from the Scheduled Castes. The government reserved the right to nominate two members of the ten in the Primary School Board. One of these members may be appointed Secretary by the Government. The Director of Public Instruction would be the ex-officio Chairman of the Board. This attempt to keep a vital matter like primary education under the close control of the government excited vehement protest from the Opposition and the government was accused of too much reliance on the nominated element for enforcing its writ in the matter of primary education affecting the very foundations of nation building. The opposition interpreted it as yet another attempt to inject com­ munalism into national life from a very elementary level.79 Yet more obnoxious to the Hindus was the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, which tried to introduce separate electorate in the elections of Councillors in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. In 1921 Surendranath Banerjee had reserved a few seats in the Corporation for the Muslims. But election to these seats was to be through general electorate. But this implied that instead of representing only Muslim interests, the Muslim candidates should be amenable to the Hindus as well for securing their election through a general electorate. The proposed amendment was to reserve 22 per cent of the seats for the

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Muslims and election to these seats was to be through separate electorates. Hindus being the largest tax-payers in the city (65 per cent), with a voting strength of 85 per cent as against the only 10 per cent voting strength of the Muslims, paying 5 per cent of the municipal taxes (although the Muslims formed 25-6 per cent of the population of the city), Syama Prasad Mookerjee thought that the new Bill would go against all principles of fairness, equity and justice.80 Even Sir John Woodhead, the acting Governor of Bengal, felt that ‘by not giving the Calcutta Hindus a couple of more certain seats Government have made a mistake and have roused a great deal of quite genuine sentiment against the Bill without gaining any substantive compensatory advantage.’81 Many of the dissident Praja Party leaders like Syed Nausher Ali, Maulvi Abu Hosain Sarkar and A.M.A. Zaman also criticized the Bill. They argued that under the earlier dispensation Muslims of stature like Fazlul Huq or Maulvi Abdul Momin had no difficulty in attaining the position of Mayor in the Calcutta Corporation. Muslims could also secure 25 per cent of the jobs in the Calcutta Corporation. Separate electorate on the other hand, they feared, would lead to the appointment of Muslims, who had recently migrated to Calcutta from outside Bengal. Such were the Iranis, the Suhrawardys, the Adamjees, the Currimbhoys, the Siddiqis, the Ispahanis and the Suleimanis who were anxious to participate in its rising fortunes of the city. He mentioned the case of the Headmaster of a Muslim school in Punjab and the Principal of an Engineering school from the NWFP being brought to Bengal for service and the selection of Mr. Ispahani, the brother of the illustrious Mr. Ispahani, the businessman, as a District Judge as cases in point. As Maulavi Abu Hossain Sarkar put it: The Hindus from a long time boycotted foreign goods. But thanks to the activities of the Buriganga school of politicians who are also non-Bengali in origin for the last thirty years or so, the Mussalmans are not allowed to be conscious of the danger of foreign exploitation. They have also discovered that a strong religious feeling pervades the mass mind of Bengal. So (they) have invented the cry of ‘Islam in danger’ only for the purpose of exploiting Bengal politically and economically.…The Indo-Iranians, who still cast a longing lingering look beyond the Iranian mounts – whose forefathers came

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to exploit Bengal alone but seeing it now impossible to do so, have joined the Campbells and the Morgans, the representatives of European interests in Bengal…. Look at the markets of Ezra Street and Radhabazar, where mostly the country people of Mr. Jinnah carry on their depredations; you will not find a single Bengali Muslim in their establishments. Why then Bengal will tolerate their domination? These foreigners are rolling in wealth, while the mass of people are selling their ornaments, gold and silver, the only family reserve in lump in village markets like potatoes and other agricultural produce… Calcutta is the brain of Bengal and if by sheer majority of numbers they can strengthen their hold on it, the case of Bengali Muslims the true sons of Bengal, will be doomed.82

A.M.A. Zaman maintained that under joint electorate he could provide a good many Muslims with jobs in the Calcutta Corporation which would become difficult under a communal electorate. Rather under separate electorate there was a tendency to sell jobs to nonMuslims against large bribes. The provision for nomination of 10 persons was being introduced simply to provide for persons like K.C. Chowdhury and Latafat Hossain who had no popular support and could not hope to enter the Corporation through fair elections.83 The most strident criticism of the Bill came from the KPP leader Nausher Ali. Even a cursory glance at the Bill would show, as he pointed out, was to overcome its minority status in the city with European support. This was the same policy as that pursued by the Ministry, that is, to dominate in the province with European support. The present ministry was thus serving as the ‘first link in the chain of British Imperialism’. It is futile to hope for real backing from the Europeans, who could do no better than playing the ‘proverbial role of monkeys distributing the cake between two quarreling cats’. Separate electorate as Nausher Ali understood it was: A pernicious system that strikes at the very root of the growth of nationalism in India. It divides the people into water tight compartments setting one community and class against another to the advantage of British Imperialism and vested interest. It is a deadly poison injected into the body politic of India only to lengthen and strengthen foreign domination and exploitation and the life of vested interests in the country.84

The debate over this Bill revealed a sharp differentiation between Bengali peasant nationalists and big up country business interests like

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those of the Adamjis and Ispahanis who wanted to get elected as the Director of the Reserve Bank85 or to monopolize ‘the corporation services contracts and other amenities and patronage for themselves’.86 Meetings organized by the KPP in the Albert Hall and the Town Hall under the presidency of highly respected Muslims like Maulvi Abdul Amin were forcibly broken up through the intervention of notorious rowdies like Mollah Jan Muhammad of Peshawar, who had taken a leading role in organizing the Muslim National Guard. A.M.A. Zaman regretted on the floors of the Assembly how at least 50/60 chairs were still lying broken on those spots and several people languishing in hospitals due to the hooliganism practiced by the ministry’s agents.87 It revived the bitter memories of the Communal Award once again and provoked all Hindu owned newspapers into writing articles with sharp invectives. There was also a hartal on 16 April 1939. COMMUNAL RATIO IN SERVICES

The implementation of the communal ratio in the services created a fresh set of grievances. It was a setback to all considerations of efficiency in the services. This prompted one Nitish Chandra Ghose to write to his teacher, Sir William Hornell, who had left for London, that Bengal from this time onwards had passed under ‘Moslem British rule’.88 One of the Bengal Legislative Assembly’s first duty had been to reserve 50 per cent of the posts in Government services for the Muslims. Robert Reid, the Governor of Bengal, was scandalized by such unprecedented reservation on communal grounds by throwing all considerations of efficiency to the winds. Although appointments were made through the Public Service Commission yet the minister’s choice always prevailed. Reid mentioned the case of the appointment of one ophthalmic surgeon in the Calcutta Medical College as a case in point where a better qualified Hindu candidate was sacrificed for a ‘far inferior Muslim candidate’.89 The problem persisted, or had been aggravated in later years as Reid’s successor Lord Casey too wrote of Nazimuddin’s (who had succeeded Huq by 1943) attempt ‘to rectify imbalance in provincial public service by the appointment of Muslims whenever they had the opportunity, whether or not they were the best individuals’.90

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WAR, THE QUITTING OF OFFICE BY THE

CONGRESS MINISTRIES AND THE

CHANGED POWER EQUATIONS

September 1939 saw the onset of the Second World War and the Indian National Congress very strongly resented the way the Viceroy had declared India to be a belligerent country without thinking of the necessity ascertaining the opinion of the Indian people even when six elected governments were in office in the various provinces. It appeared to be an anomaly to them that while Britain was fighting the war ostensibly to defend democracy against fascist domination of the world it should continue to keep India in subordination. Therefore the Congress Working Committee at Wardha in September 1939 resolved against any association with this ‘Imperialist War’. This resolution was confirmed again by the AICC at Wardha on 9 and 10 October 1939, Congress Working Committee at Wardha (223 October), Allahabad (19-23 November) again twice at Wardha (18-22 December and 19-22 January 1940) and Patna (28 February1 March 1940). Congress leaders thought that ‘the fullest advantage must be taken of the war crisis to turn England’s difficulty into India’s opportunity’. 91 Rajendra Prasad was quite straightforward in pronouncing that the Congress goal was ‘independence, pure and simple’. While commenting on the Secretary of State’s interview in Sunday Times, February 1940 he said: ‘Britain cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim the war to be a fight for democracy and freedom and at the same time deny self-determination and independence to India….The great gulf between Britain and India cannot be bridged until India’s right to self-determination is conceded.’92 Even Dominion status of the Westminster variety would not be acceptable to Gandhi93 and in an article ‘Is It War?’ he clearly stated that he could not ‘conscientiously pray for the success of British arms if it means a further lease of life to India’s subjection to foreign domination’. Smarting under the recent two nation pronouncements of Jinnah, the Patna session of the CWC reiterated that Indian constitution should be based on ‘independence, democracy and national unity’. On 5 March Gandhi threatened that he never knew his ‘time table in advance’ and the call for direct action may come

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any time.94 Finally Maulana Azad after his election as Congress President warned that Civil Disobedience could not be postponed beyond the Ramgarh session.95 The decision of the Congress Working Committee in October 1939 to direct all Congress ministries in the provinces to tender their resignations (which they finally did on 10 November 1939) to register their non-involvement in the war effort led the Viceroy to look for new allies. This was Jinnah’s opportunity to stake his claim to be the sole spokesman for the Muslims once again after the rebuff of his earlier approach to Lord Brabourne.96 Linlithgow, who had succeeded Brabourne as Viceroy, decided to convey the message to all concerned that the British did not consider the Indian National Congress to be the representative of all sections of the people of India. On 18 September 1939 Linlithgow declared that in all future decisions regarding the constitutional changes in India the views of the Muslims would also carry an equal weight. Linlithgow had not specified the Muslim League in his declaration. But Jinnah seized on it as an opportunity ‘to demand outright parity with Congress on the grounds that it was a national and not a communal organization’.97 The Muslims emphasized that they were not a mere minority, but a majority in four provinces (excluding Baluchistan), which entitled them to a statutory parity with the seven Hindu provinces.98 The All India Muslim League Working Committee, which met at New Delhi from 3-6 February 1940 now tried to emphasize that parliamentary democracy, which necessarily entailed majority rule was not suited to a country like India which was the home of many nationalities. Jinnah now spoke of the Muslims as a separate nation and not merely a minority: Parliamentary system based on the majority principle must inevitably mean the rise of the major nation. British people consider religion as a private and personal matter. (But in) Hinduism and Islam … they govern not only his law and culture but every aspect of his social life and such religions essentially exclusive, completely preclude the merging of identity and unity of thought on which the Western democracy is based and inevitably bring about vertical rather than the horizontal divisions democracy envisages. Western democracy is totally unsuited for India and its imposition on India is the disease in the body politic.99

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Linlithgow now needed the Muslims to come up with some specific gesture to establish their claims to equal consideration with the Congress. To get armed with a veto to nullify the Congress claims for independence and a Constituent Assembly they needed to make a counter demonstration of their aims and objectives in clear terms. In his presidential address to the 21st session of the Muslim League in December 1930 Muhammad Iqbal had already put forward the necessity of relatively independent areas where the ‘life of Islam as a cultural force’ could be developed.100 Chaudhuri Rahamat Ali, the Cambridge student, had given it more concrete shape in 1933 by naming it ‘Pakistan’ using alphabets from the names of provinces he thought were likely to seek affiliation to this new entity.101 These plans slowly matured from a students’ scheme to a more concrete blue print through ‘the Outline of a scheme of Indian Federation’ presented by Sikander Hyat Khan, the Premier of Punjab, to Laithwaite, the Secretary to the Governor of the Punjab in June 1939 as news of Muslim dissatisfaction with Congress ministries in the provinces poured in.102 It required great political skill on the part of Jinnah to involve the Premiers of two Muslim majority provinces, although none of them had a purely Muslim League ministry, in proposing and seconding the much vaunted Lahore Resolution. Fazlul Huq had his own logic for taking the prominent part in the propelling of the so called ‘Pakistan Resolution’ during the All India Muslim League session. On the one hand it indicated his identifying himself more closely with the Muslim League programme and moving further away from his erstwhile colleagues in the KPP; but on the other he had succeeded in placing himself at the centre of the most crucial development in Muslim politics and opened up new horizons for the followers of the faith. Although the word ‘Pakistan’ did not immediately convey anything specific or had no definite territorial connotations, yet it created a mental barrier between those who wanted and those who opposed it. It served as a handy slogan to the supporters of the Muslim League to carry their movement forward and gave them an edge over their KPP rivals. And yet what did not become immediately obvious to its authors but which took time to germinate was the seed of a Bengali Muslim nationalism hidden in the regional formula laid down by Fazlul Huq. This was later

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understood by Jinnah and he utilized yet another Bengali, Shahid Huseyn Suhrawardy, to supersede the earlier resolution providing for the creation of a multiplicity of regions in 1946.103 COMMUNAL VIRUS IN POLICE

This was also the time since when the rot began to penetrate the police personnel. Mr. D. Pilditch, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau wrote in a secret note of 5 December 1940 that there was a growing feeling among the Hindus in the police force that the Muslim members of the force were favoured by the ministry. The Home Minister encouraged Gazetted Officers among Muslims to wait on him when they happened to visit Calcutta to promote their communal ends. The minister often intervened directly in the matter of transfers and postings of Muslim officers on communal considerations. The I.G. Police complained in his Annual Administration Report about the Home Minister’s insistence on the posting of Muslim officers in the Intelligence Branch without any apparent regard for the actual needs of the situation.104 CAUSES OF FRICTION

The playing of music while passing in front of mosques in the course of immersion processions of Hindu deities also gave rise to frequent communal clashes. There was a riot in Kulti in the Burdwan district, when a duly licensed Hindu procession was obstructed by Muslims and led to police firing to restore order.105 The trouble assumed more serious proportions in the eastern districts of Bengal, where there were more Muslims among the inhabitants. Faridpur and Murshidabad witnessed some trouble; but in the Sirajgunge subdivion of the Pabna district in the Rajshahi division it was worse. There were no fewer than 16 instances of Hindu images being desecrated in Sirajgunje. In some of these cases cow bones and papers inscribed ‘revenge for Bihar’ or some such words were tied to the desecrated images. There were picketing of Hindu shops and melas. On the Charak Puja day, a part of Hindus were actually attacked by the Muslims. The trouble continued for several months and extra police had to be posted in

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Pabna.106 The memoirs of Sir Robert Reid, the Governor of Bengal are also replete with other stories of the communally charged atmosphere of the province from this time onwards. The Chief Secretary Henry Twynam had a difficult time restraining the Chief Minister’s initiative in banning all Kali Puja processions from going past any mosque. His intention was to thrash it out with ‘those brutes of the Congress’ as his conversation with the Governor revealed. But the probable impact of such mood swings on the communal scene can well be imagined.107 There were also incidents in the various districts like Feni (Noakhali) and Burdwan on the occasion of Eid, Muharram and Holi festivals. The greatest trouble was in the mill areas of the Hooghly and 24Parganas. One person was killed during the Muharram in Hooghly and two people during the Holi celebration in the 24-Parganas.There was a very serious riot at Kamarhati in which as many as 158 persons were injured.108 The Chief Secretary’s reports to the Governor for the second half of May and the first half of June contained accounts of trouble in the Ranigunj and Burnpur areas. In Ranigunj there used to be processions displaying the word ‘Horibol’ (initially to advertise a brand of bidi) on a flag. The Muslims forbade the Hindus to use flags larger than a mutually agreed size. But Swami Satyanand of the Hindu Mission from Kolkata discovered certain religious motives in it and advised the Hindus to defy the earlier agreement and trouble ensued.109 ADVERSE IMPACT OF AGRARIAN LEGISLATION

The coming into force of certain new legislation like the Bengal Tenancy Act (1938), the Agricultural Debtors Act (1940) and Bengal Moneylenders’ Act (which could not be passed till 1944 when Nazimuddin formed the Government) and the way they were operated and enforced also gave rise to considerable bad blood. The Moneylenders’ Bill professedly tried ‘to overhaul the machinery of cooperative banks’ as Suhrawardy argued. It required all moneylenders to obtain trade license and register themselves with the Government of Bengal. The bill also fixed the minimum rate of interest for secured loans at 6 per cent and for unsecured loans at 8 per cent.110 But to

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many it appeared to be pointed towards Hindu capital and property, as most moneylenders in East Bengal were Hindus and very often Hindu zamindars were found to be combining the role of zamindars as well as moneylenders. Sarat Bose thought that it had not even made adequate efforts to address the problem of cheap credit for the peasants. The Bill merely seemed to be aimed at the polarization of the Muslims in the countryside for the benefit of the Muslim League.111 The Bengal Debt Conciliation Boards, which had come into being as a result of the Bengal Agricultural Debtors Act, tried to relieve the hardships of the cultivator to some extent. However, as the Congress MLA Shyama Prosad Burman pointed out in the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 24 March 1939, the members of the Debt Settlement Boards were often the same persons who were elected to the Union Boards. They were not having the requisite knowledge and legal training to decide and settle debts of an unlimited amount. They were often found to handle matters which even an experienced and senior munsiff was not empowered to adjudicate upon.112 Cultivators often interpreted these interventions as the total cancellation of their debt obligations and refused to pay altogether. Very often they did not possess the amount awarded by the Conciliation Boards to pay back the zamindar cum moneylender.113 In the long run it frightened capital out of the villages and as Shyama Prosad Burman put it, ‘not only destroyed rural credit of Bengal but it is going to demolish the very foundation of the economic structure of the village’. The Chairmen and members of the Union Boards and the clerks of the Boards were touring from village to village persuading cultivators not to pay the mahajans and zamindars. Thus the village mahajans, who had earlier acted as rural banks, supplying credit to the cultivators in times of need were wiped out of existence. The drying up of the usual sources of credit, as Rasik Lal Biswas pointed out, had left the cultivator with only one option for obtaining credit. This was to sell their land to the mahajan and submit an acknowledgement (kabuliyat) accepting the status of a bargadar or dependent cultivator. The situation was aggravated through market fluctuations since the slump in the prices of jute and paddy as a result of the world trade depression since 1930 as Asimuddin Ahmad pointed out. The plight of the Bengal cultivator was depicted by Maulvi Mafizuddin Ahmad in vivid terms:

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Improvident and thriftless as the Bengal agriculturists are, during the boom period the future loomed very large to them. They began to borrow recklessly and allowed themselves to be exploited most ruthlessly by the Shylock mahajans. They mostly spent the money on wanton pastimes like fighting bulls, race horse and also in marriage and circumcision ceremony and erection of tin huts etc….(during the slump), the blank stamps handed over to the mahajans after putting their thumb impressions or scribbling their names made their appearance in court with an alarmingly huge amount. … Agriculturists (were) on the verge of being converted into a landless laboring class.114

All these misdirected policies ultimately produced a sense of ani­ mosity and antagonism in the two communities which snowballed into the Dacca riots of 1941. NOTES 1. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1938), para 4 in IB Records, File 333/38 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata (henceforth WBSA). 2. (i) 48 seats in the general constituency (ii) 30 for the depressed enumerated in a schedule to the Act of 1935 (iii) 117 reserved for Muslims by the Muslim electorate (iv) 11 for Europeans, i.e. persons of British origin temporarily resident in Bengal elected by their own electorate (v) 3 Anglo-Indians chosen by their electorate (vi) 2 Indian Christians chosen by their electorate (vii) 19 for representatives of industries and commerce by their special electorate (viii) 8 chosen by a labour electorate (ix) 5 landowners chosen by their special electorate (x) 2 seats were reserved for universities (xi) 2 were for women in general (xii) 2 were reserved for Muslim women and (xiii) one for an AngloIndian woman. See Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch: India, 1921-1952 (Printed in Finland by Werner Soderstrom, OY; Time Books International, New Delhi, 1987), p. 459. 3. The Act of 1935 issued an Instrument of Instructions to the Governors assigning them some special responsibilities on the provincial heads. These included the ‘safeguarding of all the legitimate interests of minorities as requiring him to secure, in general, that those racial or religious communities for the members of which special representation is accorded in the Legislature, and those classes of the people committed to his charge who, whether on account of the smallness of their number or their lack of educational or material advantages or from any other cause, cannot as yet fully rely for their welfare upon joint political action in the Legislature, shall not suffer, or have reasonable cause to fear neglect or oppression.’ The Governor was also

110

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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required by the Instrument ‘to secure a due proportion of appointments in Our Services to the several communities.’ The Governor was authorized ‘to differ from his Ministers, if in his individual judgement their advice would have effects of the kind which it is the purpose of the said Chapter (III of Part V of the Act) to prevent, even though the advice so tendered to him is not in conflict with any specific provisions of the said Act.’ The power endowed on the Governor to set aside the advice of the Cabinet was found to be totally unacceptable to the Congress. Only an assurance from the Viceroy on 21st of June that the Governors would not ‘intervene at random in the affairs of the province’ brought round the CWC to pass a Resolution on the 7th of July permitting Congress to accept office. See K.K. Aziz, The Partition of India and Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publications, Delhi, 1990), pp. 76-7. The Congess argument was that acceptance of office ‘will necessarily lead to compromises involving serious watering down of Congress demands’. For an elaboration of the Congress stand on acceptance of office see Dr. Choithram Gidwani, ‘Congress and Office Acceptance’, in The Modern Review, August 1937, p. 165. Abul Mansur Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhor (Navroz Kitabistan, Dhaka, 3rd enlg. edn. August 1975), pp. 138-41. Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937-47, p. 93. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Calcutta, Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 37-8. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, H useyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography (Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1991). Ian Talbot, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement (Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 61. Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bacchar, op. cit., p. 177. Sir Robert Reid, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam (London, Ernest Benn, 1966), p. 120. J.H. Broomfield, ‘The Forgotten Majority’, in D.A. Low (ed.), Soundings…, op. cit. Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, op. cit., p. 13. Talbot, Provincial Politics, op. cit., pp. 60-1. Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Colonial State and Peasant Resistance in Bengal, 1920-1947’, in Past and Present, no. 110 (February 1986), pp. 169-204. Ahmad, Amar Dekha, op. cit., p. 182. Mahmud Husain, ‘Dacca University and the Pakistan Movement’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (Aberdeen, George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 369-73; Andrew Sartori, ‘Abul Mansur Ahmad and the Cultural Politics of Bengali Pakistanism’, in Dipesh Chakraborty, Rochona Majumder and

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Andrew Sartori (eds.), From the Colonial to the Post-Colonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007), pp. 119-36. 18. Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, op. cit., p. 13. 19. Star of India, 22 November 1933 cited in Neilesh Bose, Recasting the Region: Language, Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014), p. 162. 20. For a detail study on the rising fortunes of Bengal cultivators from jute cultivation in the first quarter of the twentieth century see Sugata Bose, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919-1947 (Cambridge South Asian Studies Series, 1986). 21. Ahmed, Amar Dekha…, op. cit., pp. 14-17, 22. 22. Sugata Bose, ‘The Roots of Communal Violence in Rural Bengal: A Study of Kishoreganj Riots, 1930’, in Modern Asian Studies, XVI (1982), pp. 462­ 92. 23. Talbot, Provincial Politics, op. cit., pp. 60-1. 24. Ibid.; also Shila Sen, Muslim Politics, pp. 76-7. 25. Bazlur Rahman Khan, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1927-1936 (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1987). 26. Anderson to Zetland, 9 March 1937 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 27. Ibid. 28. Anderson to Zetland, 3 December 1936 in R/3/2/16 in India Office Records, British Library. 29. Anderson to Zetland, 9 March 1937 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Private Secretary’s Office, Bengal to Viceroy, 7 April 1937 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 33. Anderson to Zetland, 25 March 1927 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 34. Private Secretary’s Office, Bengal to Viceroy, 7 April 1937 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 35. Ibid. 36. Star of India, 26 January 1937; 29 January 1937; 30 January 1937 mentioned by Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906-1947, p. 133. 37. Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh, op. cit., pp. 86-7. 38. Anderson to Zetland, 9 March 1937 in R/3/2/17 in India Office Records, British Library. 39. Reid, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam, op. cit., p. 131.

112 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

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Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943, op. cit., pp. 131-4. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 135. Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1: 1889-1947 (1st pub. in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1975; 1st pub. in India (Oxford University Press, 1975, 3rd Impression, 2012), p. 222. Anita Inder Singh, The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936-1947 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1st pub. 1987; 1st pub. as Oxford India Paperbacks, 1990; 4th Impression 1997), pp. 39-40. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, From Purdah to Parliament (The Crescent Press, London, 1963). Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1: 1889-1947 (1st pub. in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1975; 1st pub. in India (Oxford University Press, 1975, 3rd Impression, 2012), p. 239. Anita Inder Singh, The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936-1947, pp. 33-4. Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Longmans, Pakistan Branch, 1961). p. 171. Star of India, 16 October 1937 cited in Enayetur Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943, p. 135. Ahmed, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhor, op. cit., p. 164. Hindusthan Standard, 25.3.38. Sarat Bose to Nehru, 14 August 1937 in AICC Papers File No. P-5 cited in Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (Penguin, Viking, 1990), p. 362. Report of Sub-Inspector A. Rashid dated 20 March 1938 and Sub-Inspector S.C. Ahmad dated 8 April 1938 in KPM/SB/00099/05 in Kolkata Police Museum, West Bengal; Sarat Bose’s attempt to topple the Coalition Ministry through the resignation of N.R. Sarkar is also mentioned by Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Sarkar and Birla had travelled to Wardha to seek Gandhi’s approval which was not forthcoming. See Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch: India 1921-1952, pp. 478-87. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, August 1938 cited by Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, op. cit., p. 363. Ibid., p. 364. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1938) in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. Ibid. Brabourne to Linlithgow, 5 April 1938 in MSS Eur F 97, Brabourne Collection, in India Office Records in British Library. Nausher Ali to Fazlul Huq, 14 June 1938. Full text of all these correspondence was published in the Star of India, 25 June 1938.

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60. Note of J.D.Tyson, Secretary to the Governor of Bengal on Bengal Ministers, 29 June 1938 in MSS Eur F 97, Brabourne Collection, in India Office Records, British Library. 61. From Robert Reid, Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 4 July 1938 in MSS Eur F 97 Brabourne Collection, India Office Records, British Library. 62. From Robert Reid, Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 3 August 1938 in MSS Eur F 97, Brabourne Collection, India Office Records, British Library. 63. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, August 1938 cited by Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, op. cit., p. 363. 64. Ibid., p. 364. 65. Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943, op. cit., p. 145. 66. Star of India, 1 August 1938. 67. Star of India, 8 August 1938. 68. Mention by Abu Hossain Sarkar, KPP M.L.A. in the Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 20 February 1939 in vol. 54, no. 1. 69. Reid, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam, op. cit., p. 122; Also see mention by Abu Hossain Sarkar, KPP MLA in the Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 20 February 1939 in vol. 54, no. 1. 70. Statement of Shamsuddin Ahmed, 20 February 1939 in Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, vol. 54, 1-2. 71. Fortnightly letters to the Viceroy by temporary Governor of Bengal (Sir J.A. Woodhead), 20 July 1939 in Mss Eur E278 Reid Collection (microfilm) in British Library. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, H useyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1991), p. 38. 75. Cited by Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 (Routledge, London and New York, 2004), p. 114. 76. Z.H. Zaidi, ‘Aspects of the Development of Muslim League Policy, 1937­ 47’, in C.H. Philips and M.D. Wainright (eds.), The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (George Unwin, London, 1970), pp. 245-75. 77. Note by Mr. Pilditch, Director of Intelligence Bureau on the political situation in Bengal with reference to the police preparedness for any emergency that may arise. Dated 5 December 1940 in Home Poll (I) File No. 243/40-Poll(I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 78. Report from D. Pilditch, Director of Intelligence Bureau, 5 December 1940 in Home Poll (I) File No. 243/40-Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 79. Provincial Fortnightly Report, May 1939, First Half Home Poll 18 May 1939 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Province of Bengal during the year 1939 (Govt. of

114

80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97.

98.

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Bengal, Home Dept., Bengal Govt. Press, Alipur, 1941) in IB Records, File No. 333/38 in WBSA. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 27 February 1939 in vol. LIV, no. 1. Report on the Political Situation for the Second Half of July 1939 by Sir J.A.Woodhead, temporary Governor of Bengal in MSS Eur E278 Reid Collection, British Library. Maulvi Abu Hossain Sarkar on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. A.M.A. Zaman on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. Syed Nausher Ali on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. K. Nooruddin on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. M.A.H. Ispahani on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. A.M.A. Zaman on 27 February 1939 in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in ibid. Nitish Chandra Ghose to Sir William Hornell, K.T. CIE, National Bank of India Ltd., 26 Bishopgate, London, E.C.2, 7 May 1941 in KPM/ SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum, W.B. Reid, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam, op. cit., p. 131. Lord Casey, Personal Experience, 1939-1946 (Constable & Co., London, 1962). An Analysis of the Congress attitude towards the war and the Congress demand for political advancement by Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau (Home Department), 20 March 1940 in File No. 4/17/40 Home Poll (I) 1940 in the National Archives of India. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1st pub. 1985; Paperback edn. 1994), p. 45. Farzana Shaikh, ‘Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial India: The Making of Pakistan’, in Modern Asian Studies, 20 March 1986, pp. 539-57. Faisal Devji, ‘The Minority as Political Form’, in Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumder, Andrew Sartori (eds.), From the Colonial to the PostColonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Oxford University Press, New

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99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105. 106. 107.

108. 109.

110. 111.

112. 113. 114.

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Delhi, 2007); S.R. Mehrotra, ‘The Congress and the Partition of India’, in C.H. Philips and M.D.Wainwright (eds.), The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947 (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1970), pp. 188-221. Indian Annual Register, vol. I, 1940, p. 302. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, op. cit., p. 53. David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan, (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989), p. 176. ‘Sikander to Laithwaite, 29 June 1939’, in Lionel Carter (ed.) Punjab Politics, 1936-39 (Manohar, Delhi, 2006), pp. 425-33. Z.H. Zaidi, ‘Aspects of the Development of Muslim League Policy, 1937­ 47’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (George Unwin, London, 1970), pp. 245-5. Note by Mr. Pilditch, Director of Intelligence Bureau on the political situation in Bengal with reference to the police preparedness for any emergency that may arise. Dated 5 December 1940 in Home Poll (I) F. No. 243/40-Poll(I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Provincial Fortnightly Report, May 1939, Second Half, File No. Home Poll 18/5/1939 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, op. cit., pp. 369, 394. Criticism by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and B.C. Chatterjee in ‘How Hindus Suffer in Bengal: Policy of Curbing, Checking and Injuring Hindu Interests’, in Hindusthan Standard, 8 December 1939 in KPM/SB/02630/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum. BLAP, 24 March 1939, vol. 54, nos. 3-4. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1938) in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. Shyama Prosad Burman in Bengal Legislative Assembly on 24 March 1939 in BLAP, vol. 54, nos. 3-4. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1938) in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. Ibid. Proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 24 March 1939 in BLAP, vol. 54, nos. 3-4. Ibid.

CHAPTER 3

The Mounting of Tensions and the Dacca Riots

THE COMMUNAL SCENE 193741 The Muslim Mass Contact Campaign of the Congress

 was a period of crisis in Bengal politics. The communal atmosphere in the province had been deteriorating for some time. Ever since Mahatma Gandhi had invoked religion into politics by trying to enlist Muslim grievances over the Khilafat issue in his call for non-cooperation in 1920, religious personages (ulama) had come to dominate the political scene. The Muslim mass contact campaign of the Congress in 1937-8 also tried to use this short cut to the heart of the Muslim masses. H.T. Lambrick, an ICS serving in India during the critical years from 1927 to 1947 deprecated the Congress attempt to try to cajole the Muslims into its fold through methods which ‘are not at all happy … they bribe religious leaders and the unprincipled rag-tag and bobtail’. Lambrick frankly blamed the rallying of the Muslims to the banner of the Crescent and the Star and the cry of ‘Islam in danger’ going up in the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1937 as ‘the inevitable result of Congress’ inconsiderate and pig-headed tactics’. Muslims were bitter against the Congress as ‘the Congress Muslim Mass Contact movement was mainly bribery and because they had secured Muslim religious leaders by the same means’.1 The author Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri, Secretary to Sarat Bose at this time, has also mentioned his having witnessed: a procession of Muslim divines trooping into Sarat Babu’s house. I was quite familiar with the modern Muslim dress, but had no idea that these learned Muslims wore different clothes. They did, for they had green gowns on and big turbans on their heads. Even the most Westernized people around Mohammad Riza Shah Pahlavi were aware of the Ayatollahs. We the educated

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and urban Bengali Hindus, with not a fraction of their Westernization in our manner of living, did not even imagine that such persons existed in Bengal. I with my knowledge of Islamic painting could only assume when I saw them that they were crude incarnation of the Muslim divines I had seen portrayed in Persian or Mughal miniatures. Their faces were grave, and even stern. One face struck me very forcibly. It was pinched and peevish, but of an incredible ferocity. The eyes were large, black and burning, and in that emaciated face they looked even blacker and larger. His parrot-green gown, too, was more resplendent than those of the others, but being very cheap satin looked garish. He looked like an ill-dressed Robespierre, the sea-green Incorruptible.2

Attempts of ex-detenus and left wingers in the Congress to win over the Muslim masses by trying to stand by them against the zamindars through the Krishak Samitis were few and far between. They succeeded only in a few fringe areas like Tippera through the help of a few Muslim left wingers like Maulavi Ashrafuddin Chaudhry.3 CAMPAIGN BY MUSLIM LEAGUE MINISTERS

These peripheral attempts to create a peasant consciousness on class lines were soon swept up by the Muslim League’s attempt to steal a march over their Congress counterparts by playing the religious card. Muslim League ministers themselves began to tour the East Bengal countryside campaigning about the injustice meted out to the Muslims in the provinces ruled by the Congress. Fazlul Huq, who had threatened to take two lives in Bengal for each life lost in communal clashes in these provinces, issued a pamphlet Muslim Sufferings Under Congress Rule soon after the resignation of the Congress ministries in the provinces on 10 November to rouse Muslims to a frenzy: Mother cow must be protected … Muslims must not be allowed to eat beef…. The religion of Muslims must be humbled, because was not this the land of the Hindus? Hence the forbidding of azan, attacks on worshippers in mosques, the insistence on the triumphant passage of noisy processions before mosques at prayer times. The use of beef by Muslims was prohibited in areas where it had the sanction of tradition and custom. If a Muslim had as much as killed a cow for sacrifice, Muslims were killed, their houses were burnt, and their women and children assaulted. Muslim butchers were assaulted. Pigs were thrown

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into mosques. Muslims were prevented from using village wells. Official intervention was always biased in favour of the Hindus. On many occasions peace was restored by means of a so-called ‘compromise which was in fact a pro-Hindu settlement imposed by the weight of authority on a helpless minority.4

Congress oppression in the provinces under their rule became a recurring theme in the Muslim League propaganda in the interior villages of Eastern Bengal. The speakers and the President chose it as a common theme in their propaganda against the Congress and the Hindus as in Saratoll, police station Ullapara in Pabna district.5 In their desperation to recover lost ground from the KPP as well as the Congress propagandists, the Bengal Muslim League leaders resorted to employing the maulavis to carry on propaganda from the mosques in their favour. The League workers spread to the remote corners of the province and tried to approach the local populace through their religious leaders. The Bengal Police abstracts abound in accounts of many such League meetings presided over by the local maulavis. It was easy to find a large gathering of Muslims during Friday congregations in mosques in villages. It was therefore a common practice for local politicians to address them during these religious gatherings. In Bhadoria in Backergunge 300 persons had pledged to start a local branch of the Muslim League during a religious meeting. This branch came into being with Obaidur Rahman, son of Abdul Karim of Mamdashahi as president on 12 November 1939.6 Amiruzzaman, son of Sultan Mir addressed 400 Muslims at Charfassion mosque explaining the necessity of starting a Muslim League branch and requested the audience to subscribe towards the League fund.7 Abdul Huq of Bapta under police station Bhola in Backergunge addressed a crowd of 400 in the Lalmohan Mosque to exhort them to start a branch office of the Muslim League.8 Similarly an appeal to religious sentiments paid in industrial areas too. 3,000 persons held a meeting in an Idgah under Titagurh police station in the 24-Parganas on 16 September 1939 where Abdullah Rauf of Dinapuri explained the necessity of joining the Muslim League. Mulla Jan Muhammad Peshawari, a well known labour leader from Calcutta accused Khan Bahadur Fazlul Khan, the Labour Officer

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of Titagurh Paper Mills, for trying to divide the League followers into two different groups.9 At the Bibigram Masjid in the English Bazar police station in Malda Zahur Ahmed Chaudhuri addressed a meeting after the Jumma prayer on 1 September 1939 urging Muslims to unite against all kinds of Hindu oppression. The only possible way out of the economic exploitation by Hindu moneylenders and grain dealers was to impose an economic boycott on them. Muslims were therefore advised to open their own shops so that they would not require to buy anything from the Hindus. Abdul Gani had another meeting in the same place on the same night and the purpose of the meeting was also similar.10 Maulavi Abdul Wadud, Special Officer in the Debt Settlement Department along with Sarafat Ali, the sub-inspector of Schools and Dr. Mohinuddin Ahmed, medical officer of Baranadi, had led a meeting of the leading Muhammadans organized by the Kachia Jubak Samiti under Bhola police station in the same district in the house of the zamindar, Kutba Mia on 1 October 1939. The meeting had resolved not to pay rent to the Hindu zamindars and to boycott Hindu bazaars.11 Daudkandi in the Tippera district saw the beginning of a long line of boycott of Hindu shops by Muslims to put an end to the attempt by Hindu shopkeepers to take advantage of wartime scarcities to raise prices and exploit the local populace. Maulavis from outside the district were suspected to have a hand in the organization of these economic boycotts.12 In Pabna Abdur Rashid presided over a meeting of Mohammedans at Saratoll under police station Ullapara where the highhandedness of zamindars over tenants was criticized.13 Muslims in Serajgunge were incited to stop cultivating the land of Hindu jotedars. 14 In Sripur police station in Jessore there was a riot over the harvesting of aus paddy.15 Thus in many places class conflict was overlapping communal clashes. League politicians took special care to create a rift among the two communities by trying to prevent participation of Muslims in Hindu social and cultural events. A committee was formed in Dacca to persuade Muslims to stay away from Hindu melas and festivals and volunteers were sent out on two occasions at Baniajuri and Manikgunge to dissuade the Muslims from participating in melas.16 Pamphlets

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authored by Ismail Husain were published to stop Muslim participation in melas during Rathjatra on 19 June arguing that such practice went against the tenets of Islam.17 Melas often became targets of attack and group of Hindus were attacked during Charak Puja celebrations in Burdwan. Hindu shops were also targeted for attack.18 Meetings like the 400 strong one in the Charfassion Mosque compound or in the Lalmohan Mosque in Bapta under Bhola police station in the Backergunge district on 1 December 1939 were very effective when large scale demonstrations for causes like the Bengal Government’s pledge of support for the British war efforts were needed.19 The Muslim League National Guard was also organized under the supervision of competent persons like Molla Jan Mohammad Peshwari and spread its wings in various districts like Noakhali, Rangpur, Pabna and Dinajpur. Kadu Bakhsh, MLA, Dinajpur took out a long procession of 500 volunteers of the Muslim National Guard carrying the Muslim League flag on the occasion of the Shab-i-barat festival and explained the necessity of having a Muslim National Guard.20 A hundred Muslims led by Abdullah al Mahmood MLA and Kosimuddin Ahmad, an eminent Mukhtear of Sirajgunge, assembled in the Jame Masjid at Serajgunge in Pabna to discuss how a Hindu Sabha meeting scheduled for 30 August for which the Secretary Hindu Sabha had circulated handbills, could be disturbed by calling a Muhammadan meeting on the same day.21 The Muslim League National Guard had a meeting at Rangpur on 4 September to discuss how Hindus at various demonstrations had shouted Muslim League National Guard dhangsho hauk to record their disapproval of the way the Muslim League National Guard had shown respect to the Governor of Bengal.22 In Midnapore bands of Muslim League National Guard volunteers armed with lathis paraded on the streets.23 Propaganda and mobilizations of such kind were bound to have their inevitable effect on inter-communal relations. Even minor frictions were given communal twists wherever two different communities were involved. Communal complaints topped the list in most districts like Mymensingh, Dacca, Chittagong, Kurigram in Rangpur, Kushtia, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan including Asansol, Hatiya and Sandwip islands in Noakhali. In Howrah a dispute over

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trade union leadership took a communal turn. In Burdwan there were attempts to discredit the ministry though the Revenue Minister Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy represented that district. In Rajshahi a college had to be closed for quite some time due to a dispute over accom­ modation in college hostels; more trouble ensued over the location of a cinema house in the vicinity of a mosque.24 COMMUNAL FRICTIONS

Music in Hindu processions passing mosques created serious tensions in Pirojpur in Bakergunj and Saidpur in Rangpur.25 In Faridpur Muslims objected to music in passing Hindu processions before mosques. Sirajgunge in Pabna continued to witness numerous (at least 16 were recorded) cases of desecration of images. In some cases miscreants tied cow bones or papers inscribed ‘revenge for Bihar’ to the desecrated images.26 There was trouble in Edward College in Pabna during Saraswati Puja once again in 1941.27 Saraswati Puja processions by Hindu students of the Campbell Medical College in Calcutta also caused resentment among Muslim students.28 The Noakhali situation was explained at length in a letter from Jogesh Chandra Banerjee, Pleader and Landholder from the Sengirt island of Sandwip to N.C. Chatterjee, Secretary, Bengal Hindu Sabha. Frictions arose for the first time in Bengali year 1333 over the question of music before mosque during the Durga Puja immersion. A settlement between the leading men of the two communities had been arrived at in the presence of the SDO Mr. A.Z. Khan on 19 May 1937. It had been agreed that processions would not be restricted except during times of the five congregational prayers. But there was trouble again during Rathajatra and the Muslims refused to be bound by the earlier agreement. They made no secret of the reasons for this stand either. They argued that the composition of the ministry had changed since then and the Muslim League element had become predominant. They were, therefore, under no obligation to compromise. There was trouble once again during Durga Puja, when the image was broken in Maitbhanga. Puja could be performed only when the sub-deputy magistrate intervened. But immersion with music was not possible as the SP, the Circle Inspector, the OC and the sub­

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deputy magistrate – all pleaded helplessness. Scores of Muslims blocked all main thoroughfares on the Dussehra day and there was no room for the immersion procession to proceed.29 Tehatta and Ranaghat in the Nadia district reported some trouble over cow killing and beef-eating. In Tehatta the Muslims had killed a ‘Brahmin bull’ which led to great anger among Hindus leading to an outburst of protest. In Ranaghat, on the other hand, a Scheduled Caste man presented a petition to the municipality demanding the establishment of stalls in the market for selling beef leading to great consternation among Hindu members.30 At Raninagar in Rajshahi, a Marwari had dismissed some of his Muslim employees for slaughter­ ing a cow near his house but he agreed to take them back on the intervention of some influential Muslims. The shaving of the head and beard of the erring servants had been suggested as a punishment but when the Marwari actually insisted on this, there was trouble and the Marwari was made to apologize for it.31 Grazing of cows also became a source of friction between Hindu goalas and local Muslim inhabitants in Suti police station in Murshidabad and also Bahadurpur in Nadia and dispute could be stopped only through the intervention of the local officers and the appointment of 10 special constables from each community.32 At Hili in Dinajpur and Jamalpur in Mymensingh there was tension following the discovery of torn pages of the Holy Quran and local officers suspected an organized vandalism against mosques.33 In Asansol there were some frictions over an old established Pirsthan and a newly emerging Mahabirsthan nearby.34 Communal clashes became the order of the day during Eid, Muharram and Holi festivals. There was trouble at Feni in Noakhali and Burdwan during Holi. The worst trouble occurred around the mill areas in Hooghli and the 24-Parganas. In Hooghli one person was killed during Muharram and two were killed during Holi celebrations in the 24-Parganas. Kamarhati was witness to a very serious riot in which 158 persons suffered injuries.35 In Burdwan petty disputes between Domes and low caste Muslims took a communal turn.36 In Barisal (Bakarganj) stones were thrown on the Muharram procession, seven persons were injured in the ensuing tumult and shop windows were broken before order could be restored.37

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In Calcutta the Muharram in February 1941 threw civic life totally out of gear, when a procession demanded that tramway wires would have to be removed to make passage for their banners. They refused to lower their banners as those before them had done. Nor would they make room for those behind them to avoid a traffic halt. Ultimately wires had to be cut to give them passage. The fierce countenance of the processionists portended an incident of firing on the part of the police. But firing would compound the problem instead of solving it as abandoned tazias on the road would nevertheless continue to impose a traffic hurdle. There was also the fear of sporadic rioting as a sequel. But on the following day the police cordoned off the area from which the offending processionists had come, arrested and took almost 60-70 persons, to the police station and released them on bail. This incident created great furore in the locality, large crowds collected on the roads, tramways employees and tram cars in depots were pelted with stones and the police station was besieged. The Premier, the Home Minister and the Finance Minister all visited the place and even then the riotous mob could not be pacified. Finally a mild lathi charge accompanied with the use of 6 tear gas cartridges could bring the situation under control. In the ensuing fracas 17 rioters, 18 tramway employees, one ARP warden and 25 policemen including one constable sustained injuries and had to be admitted to the hospital.38 There were also some other incidents in Calcutta to show that communalism was spreading its tentacles in the lower rungs of society as well. For instance, a Hindu methor (sweeper) in the Dunlop Rubber Factory in Hooghly protested against the chanting at night during Milad Sharif by the Muslims. When they complained again in the morning the Muslims drove them off forcibly. But later these Hindus returned in large numbers and attacked the Muslims. Many were injured and had to be sent to the hospital and police could bring the situation under control with great difficulty.39 CENSUS OF 1941

The decennial census of the province, which was scheduled for 1941

also provided a cause célèbre for friction. The 1931 census which had

served as the basis of the Communal Award had caused a lot of

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heartburn among non-Muslims. N.C. Chatterjee, the Hindu Mahasabha leader had become the President of the All Bengal Census Board.40 The Star of India ridiculed the ‘Herculean efforts of the Hindu communalists of this province with the magic of statistics to turn the minority community into a majority community and thus upset the Communal Award and the whole fabric of the India Act so far as it is applicable to the province.’41 As Sanat K. Roy Chowdhury pointed out in a meeting on 2 February 1941 it was the Communal Award which formed the basis of the representation in the legislature and in the public services. If a demand had to be made for the modification of the Award then the basis for this modification should be absolutely accurate and representative of the true situation. Dutt claimed that since the last census the Hindus had increased from 10 to 11 per cent as Scheduled Castes and tribals have been included among the Hindus. Narendra Nath Das pointed to the separation of Sind as a Muslim province from Bombay and the ‘murder, loot and rapine’ which followed in its wake. He expressed a fear that the same kind of demand may be raised for separating some areas of the state for the creation of a new Muslim province unless census figures were modified.42 There was a rumour that the population of Calcutta had increased from 12 to 25 lakhs. Savarkar wanted to celebrate the first week of February as Census Week and wanted Hindu boys to enroll themselves in large numbers among the enumerators.43 The Muslims too did not lag behind the Hindus in making their own preparations and the Star of India warned: With all the emphasis at our command we warn the Muslims of Bengal today that their very existence in this province is at stake as the inflation of the Hindus spells as sure as the rising sun, the annihilation of Muslims of Bengal. The Census is the one and only matter which should be engaging the attention of the leaders of the elected representatives in the Legislatures and every branch of the Muslim League in the province at the present moment.44

Fazlul Huq accused lawyers, scientists, professors, lecturers, landlords, merchants, Brahmins and non-Brahmins and all the myriad castes and sub-castes of deliberately combining to tell lies and make false statements in order to inflate the figures. This statement from the chair of the Chief Minister created a great controversy and both

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sides started trading charges against each other.45 A meeting was held by Maulana Akram Khan in the Town Hall where the Hindus came under fire.46 Hindus of Dacca were gripped with a fear of being left out of the enumeration process as enumeration slips were not available in the Hindu localities of Gandaria, Swamibagh and Nawabpur.47 The urge for adding to the numbers of the rival communities also got linked up with the question of abduction and rape of Namasudra women in Khulna. As widow remarriage was not much in vogue among the Hindus, Namasudra widows sometimes eloped with Muslims. But in order to get married according to Muslim religious rites they had to seek conversion to Islam. It was impossible to ascertain whether these were cases of forcible or willing conversion. At a time when Hindu caste leaders were anxious to protect their boundaries these invasions on their numbers excited even greater resentment. The fortnightly report from the Chief Secretary to the Governor for the second half of February 1941 reported a case of abduction and rape of a Namasudra widow by three Muslims in Khulna.48 There was tension in Asansol when a Hindu widow left home in September 1941.49 In Chandpur students of a Girls’ English school went on strike against their Arabic teacher who had allegedly abducted and converted a Hindu girl. Later the teacher started a case against a defamatory article on the subject.50 There were also squabbles over relief for cyclone in Noakhali and Chandpur in Comilla and both leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League traded charges of partiality and favouritism on communal considerations against each other.51 Throughout the period from 1939 to 1941 the province was being agitated about the Communal Award, the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, the Bengal Moneylenders’ Bill, reservation of quota for Muslims in government services and interference in education. The Star of India published a report under the signature of Messrs. Md. Isharatullah, Md. Basiruddin, Jasimuddin Ahmad, Sk. Md. Shafi, Md. Yashin Ali, Md. Alimuddin, Md. Fazu Mandal and a number of others on how on the occasion of the Saraswati Puja the Hindu students and Hindu public of Rajshahi town brought out a huge procession of 14 to 15 thousand men on 2 February at 9.30 p.m. with 104 idols (although permission was for 66 only). They assembled

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at the gates of the Rajshahi New Hostel (a non-denominational hostel open for all communities) and proceeded towards the Shaheb Bazar Jame Masjid. They halted near the mosque for almost one hour and a half playing music as loudly as possible and raised a slogan ‘down with mosque’ in chorus. At the centre of the crowd a bullock cart carried a number of goats and dogs and there were placards fastened on the necks of these animals bearing the words: ‘Progress of education will be so rapid that even dogs and goats will receive education due to the passing of the Secondary Education Bill.’ The processionists carried some sticks with flags on its upper side and very sharp and deadly nails at the lower side. The SDO showed it to the DM, Police Superintendent, Sadar Second Officer and Amir Ali, the MLA. The walls of the mosque were damaged with these instruments. A group of 1,000 Santhals armed with bows and arrows alighted from a boat and entered the town. They stopped near the Students’ Home at Barakuthi and passed the mosques and made provocative gestures. The Muslims near the Saheb Bazar mosque became agitated but were held in check by MLA Amir Ali.52 In a word the entire country was like a powder keg waiting to be ignited. THE KHULNA AND DACCA RIOTS

The determination of the Muslims for doing something drastic was evident in the Star of India’s vociferation against the Hindus against their tireless efforts to reverse the verdict of the Communal Award by trying to correct the Census figures and stop the progress of the Secondary Education Bill, the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, the communal ratio in the services, the Bengal Moneylenders’ Bill and the discriminatory working of the Debt Conciliation Boards: The time has come for the little rats to know that the lion is not dead, only sleeping; the challenge is to be accepted, the enemy is to be met on its own ground; Mussalmans cannot resort to meanness and trickeries which characterize their political enemies; the Hindus will see to whom Bengal belongs; they shall be taught the lesson they need.53

The spark came from Khulna, where several Namasudras were burnt alive in a place called Mollahat and all the houses in two entire villages were burnt. The matter was raised in the Bengal Legislative

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Assembly by a KPP member Jalaluddin Hashmi, who demanded an adjournment motion over the matter.54 Village Gangchar in Mollahat police station in Bagerhat subdivision of Khulna saw a Hindu-Muslim riot on 14 March as a sequel to the spearing of a Namasudra tiller by a Muslim. A Mahommedan of Kalitola had taken a bundle of jute from a Namasudra but the payment had been kept pending for a long time. Failing all means of realizing his dues, the seller complained about it to the Mohammedan village headman. When the seller found the buyer tilling his adjacent field he reminded the person of his dues. An altercation followed and scores of Muslims assembled and struck the Namasudra with a spear. It was rumoured before the evening that the bullocks taken by Muslims were going to be killed. Next morning the two sides were drawn in battle lines. Muslims assembled in thousands from nearby villages and Namasudra houses were set fire to and looted. Regular fight continued from 8.30 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Altogether 167 Namasudra houses were gutted and there was a casualty of 200.55 But peace did not return to Mollahat. The women and children were evacuated. Both sides, the Namasudras as well as the Muslims reinforced themselves by 5,000 from neighbouring villages or even from Barisal or Faridpur districts. Among them were professional lathials, men armed with spears and shields. They continued for the whole day with unrestricted loots, attacks and counter attacks with lathis and spears, inhuman violence and acts of retaliation on panic stricken villagers. There was arson in Gangacharan and Kalatala. Helped by strong winds fire raged for hours and two villages were reduced to ashes. One Namasudra of Gangacharan was tied to a tree and burned to death. The trouble spread to Bhola, Santikhali and neighbouring villages. Finally the intervention of the SP led to the melting away of foreign elements.56 This was followed by an incident in Bhola in Barisal during the Holi. The local Muslims got enraged when some holi water was sprinkled on a Muslim. In retaliation the Muslims slaughtered a cow and sprayed its blood on the Hindus. The tumultuous crowd went berserk and even the ASP Sri Anath Ganguly could not escape from this assault with cow blood. The DM of Bhola had also confirmed this incident.57

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There is a controversy regarding the origins of the trouble in Dacca. According to the Amrita Bazar Patrika the trouble started on Sunday (16 March 1941) night in Sankharibazar road when a few women returning on foot from a temple after offering pujas were pushed by a few Mohammedans. On hearing the screams of the women, men from the Sankharibazar collected in large numbers and demanded an explanation of their behaviour from the Muslims. Thereafter a fight ensued.58 The Associated Press, however, gives a different version. According to that version the quarrel between Hindu Sankharis and Muslims began in a toddy shop and from there it spread elsewhere. As a result 8 Hindus and 7 Muslims had to be admitted to Mitford hospital. There were also attempts at arson. Shops and bazaars opened in the morning. But again there were stray assaults at midday. Things took a bad turn when 7 persons including a sixty year old man were removed to hospital with stab wounds. Trouble became widespread with several localities like Naya Sarak, Tanti Bazar, Malitola, Islampore, Rai Saheb Bazar and Babur Bazar being affected. There were 3 casualties including a woman and a child.59 On the night of Monday (17 March) at about 10.30 when a few Hindus were passing the Raisaheb’s Bazar they were attacked by the local Mohammedans. A nearby Mohammedan tea shop was burnt as a sequel and injured persons from both communities were admitted to the Mitford hospital. On Tuesday (18 March) the courts and offices remained deserted in apprehension. At about 5.30, after the DM Mr. J.George had left the criminal court premises, a group of Mohammedans came out of Kaltabazar, a locality thickly populated by Mohammedan ruffians, to the Johnson road. They were armed with bamboo sticks to attack Hindu passersby. Having failed to come across any, they attacked a tea shop, where a few people were having tea. A bicycle was taken from there and thrown at a nearby tank. The rowdyism spread elsewhere, when the DM went round dangerous localities and posted armed pickets in danger zones. Armed constables started patrolling the danger zones.60 The number of casualties had mounted to 14 and 91 had been reported injured when the police had to open fire.61 On Wednesday (19 March) the situation took a turn for the worse

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and curfew order had to be promulgated and the military called out. There were lootings of big cloth shops and rice stores. Boats in the river were also set fire to. Early at 8 a.m. the Muslims residing on the south of the Nawabpur Bridge complained of gunshot wounds said to have been caused from the red house on the north of the Dolai Khal. Sergeant Eden at south end of the Nawabpur Bridge was coming out of the lane on the south bank of the Dolai Khal, when there was renewed firing from the red house and some people had pellet wounds. But when DM George crossed the Dolai Khal and went to find out the source of firing, he found Babu Manoranjan Halder and a servant clearing out and no gun could be traced.62 There was also a confrontation of the two rival communities at Victoria Park, the Muslims crowding on the north at the mouth of Kaltabazar and the Hindus on the south in the mouth of Digbazar. A Muslim mukhtear was trying to control the north and Subodh Chandra Mukherjee and Sris Chandra Chatterjee were trying to pacify the south. The DM’s arrival put a stop to the brickbats. Portions of the library of Khan Bahadur K.A. Rashid, MLC were also burnt. A few residential houses at Karcoonbari Lane were looted. Some Eastern Frontier Rifles men were brought by the SP from the nearby post office and posted on both sides of the park.63 Three important mosques at Malitola, Puran Paltan and Rai Saheb’s Bazar were attacked by rioters. According to the DM’s evidence the Malitola Mosque was damaged by brickbats externally. They had come from rooftops. The balustrade in the roof of one of the nearby houses was broken and bricks were lying in the roadway below. A Muslim youth with a stab wound, by what appeared to be a pen knife, in the buttocks, was found inside the mosque.64 Police firing on the Naya Sarak killed 4 persons and injured 2. The ADM Ranjit Roy, ICS opened fire at Muslim looters at Babur Bazar whereby 9 persons were injured. The biggest cloth shop of Ganga Sagar Saha and Company at Chakbazar was looted and completely burnt. Several sweetmeat shops were also set fire to.65 The DM Mr. George later admitted in his testimony before the Enquiry Committee led by Justice McNair that he saw a few Mohammedans pouring kerosene on the flames.66 Fire was reported from different parts of

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the town. A loss of Rs. 30,000 was estimated for the destruction of a big rice shop near Babur Bazar. The Wari pavilion was also set on fire and partly damaged. Some shops in Maulavibazar were also gutted. A timber godown belonging to a Hindu in Islampur was burnt and two shops in Raisaheb’s Bazar and Nayabaazar. A few shops were also burnt at Manohar Khash Bazar, where some men were seriously assaulted. Even boats on the Buriganga were not spared and green boats were set on fire. The goods shed of the Joint Steamer Company at Badamtala Ghat was also set fire to.67 A Hindu gentleman was stabbed at Fulberia crossing, where 200 Mohammedans armed with lathis and daggers had collected. The hue and cry attracted the attention of the Hindu youth and a few of them rushed out with sticks. The injured person was rescued by a Sergeant of Railway Police and Station Master Mr. Mennahar. R.C. Mazumder, the Vice-Chancellor of Dacca University and Captain Hassan took the youth to their residence.68 At 2 p.m. 300 Mohammedans, armed with lathis gathered at the north-east gate of Government House. Apprehending an attack, the Hindus collected on the roadside in large numbers. At the sight of them the crowd melted away.69 Shops, banks, commercial concerns and educational institutions were closed. Hackney carriages were difficult to come by. The telegraph personnel could not attend duty. The delivery of telegrams was made impossible by the presence of the riotous mob on the road. A medical student died in hospital. A.W. Lucas, an Armenian jute merchant of Narayanganj was in hospital, injured in brickbats in Kaltabazar. A number of women took shelter in Criminal Court premises. Five deaths, all of Muslims were reported. As things were going out of hands, curfew was clamped from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. There was Section 144 of IPC all over the town. The military started patrolling the streets.70 The riot could not be controlled even on the next day. Sventeen persons had died and 102 had been injured. Arson and looting continued in Maulavi Bazar, Moghultuli, Chakbazar, Banglabazar and Patuatuli. Hindu houses in Luxmi Bazar were tried to be attacked. The Patharhatta Kali temple was damaged on the night before. Hindus from Captainbazar repulsed an attack on yet another Kali temple

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facing the Government House. A mosque in Puran Paltan was attacked.71 In spite of the curfew a large number of Mohammedans gathered on the roads and lanes in South Maisandi. The petrol pump and motor accessories shop of Messrs. R.N. Das and Sons was attacked. Doors of the shop were broken but the timely intervention of the proprietor prevented looting.72 The Nawab Bahadur of Dacca held a meeting at Ahsan Manzil and persuaded men to go and establish peace. But no one except Khan Bahadur K.M. Ismail and Pankaj Kumar Ghose agreed. The Chief Minister A.K. Fazlul Huq came along with the Chief Whip K. Shahabuddin by air and visited the Tatheri Bazar mosque desecrated on the day.73 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee also arrived in a private aircraft flown by a Marwari friend Lohia in the evening and put up with Dr. Ramesh Chandra Majumder, the Vice-Chancellor of Dacca University. The Commissioner initially refused him permission to go round the city on the plea that it might escalate the tension. Dr. Mookerjee immediately demanded the formation of an Enquiry Committee and a thorough inquiry into the incidents. Khagendranath Roy, the OC, Satrapur, reported trouble at Swamibagh. A Mohammedan was lying with a gunshot wound. Sergeant McChime held off 211 people with a drawn revolver. A gun case with name P.C. Bal on it was found with 6/7 Hindu youth hiding in the house in a loft. ‘The presence of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’ according to the evidence of the D.M., ‘provoked a menacing attitude among the Mohammedan crowd’.74 Syama Prasad, however, kept his cool even in the midst of a crisis of the magnitude that Dacca was facing and tried to chart a path acceptable to both the communities. He later recounted his experience in the Bengal Assembly on 9 April 1941: Whatever attempts may be made by interested persons to distort my speeches and utterances, in none of the speeches that I have delivered I have attacked the Muslim community as such. Important meetings which I have addressed in different parts of the province were attended by thousands of persons, and in almost every meeting there have been hundreds and thousands of Mussalmans, who after the termination of the meeting came to me and said that the point of view which I have given expression to was certainly

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something which they were entitled to listen to. It was not a question of attacking the Muslim community as such, but it was a question of exposing the policy of the present Ministry which, I consider, has been deliberately aimed at in the last three years at crippling the legitimate rights and liberties of the Hindus.75

On 21 March the SDO P. Nag was stabbed while on duty in Islampur road.76 The riots spread to Keraniganj on the next day and there were stray assaults in Sadarghat, Raisaheb Bazar, Hoshnidalan and other quarters.77 Sarat Bose arrived on 21 March and he was to be taken round the town by SI K.N. Ray. The riot continued at its own pace and a sixty year old man, Ramesh Chandra Chatterjee, succumbed to stab wounds in Narindia. On the same day the Chief Minister along with Shahabuddin went to visit the Nawabpur mosque, which had been attacked and even the fan blades were found twisted.78 From 23 March a ban was imposed on the publication of Dainik Basumati, which had come out with a leader announcing sampradaik danga (communal riots). In a notification issued under the Defence of India Act on 23 March the Government of Bengal put restrictions on the publication of news and comments regarding the Dacca riots and provided for the scrutiny of these by a special Adviser. But as the riots went on unabated for days some papers commented on the gravity of the situation and inadequacy of the measures taken by the government. The Press Adviser complained to the Provincial Press Advisory Committee about it. But the Committee passed a Resolution urging the government not to take exceptions to such comments and modify the order immediately.79 An adjournment motion was brought in the Bengal Legislative Assembly by Sarat Chandra Bose on 2 April. The MLA Premhari Burman accused the government of ‘using the Defence of India Rule to stabilize Muslim rule in Bengal’. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee contrasted the leniency of the government towards the Azad of the same date (23 March) which had published a far more offensive item reporting that in certain portions of Dacca there have been cases where the Hindus have attacked Muslim women, have torn their hair and have also reduced them to a state of nudity. The Star of India too had written very objectionably that Muslim riot victims were not

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getting proper treatment in hospitals manned by Hindu doctors. Atul Chandra Sen summed up the government’s policy as a ‘gangster method of administration in dealing with the press of the province’.80 The riots continued sporadically in the city in a vicious circle of defilement of temples and mosques and the repeated stabbing of men of both communities. In a letter of 10 May 1941 to Sarat Chandra Bose, Surjya Kumar Bose of Dhakeswari Cotton Mills had alleged: Authorities arrested even respectable Hindus before enquiry and set free disreputable Moslems even after an FIR is lodged. Local officials were inclined to blame the Hindus and even threaten the Hindu members of the peace committee with military rule in Hindu areas. Piece goods, stationery, seeds, rice and other commodities valued at several lakhs of rupees have been looted and stored in different Moslem localities in the towns and suburbs, but inspite of definite information supplied to them, the authorities have done nothing to recover the goods.81

The diary of crimes kept by the Bengal Police exhibited a monotonous repetition of the same crimes all over the city. On 20 April 1941, the thakurghar in Sankharibazar was defiled by a Muslim SI. The conch bangle of a Hindu lady was broken and a baby snatched away from the arms of his mother and thrown on the floor of the house by another Muslim police officer. The next day (21 April) a cow’s head was found in Gopal’s temple at South Maisandi in the morning. A Moslem wearing double lungis with a dao in hand was arrested near the house of Prof. Haridas Bhattacharya at Ramna by the driver of Dr. Suresh Chandra Mitra, Chief Medical Officer, Dacca University. On 29 April the dry head of a cow was found inside a Siva temple adjoining the house of Police Inspector Sasadhar Biswas at South Maisandi. Next day (30 April) a cow’s head was thrown into Kali Ghose’s house at Swamibagh. Three Muslims were arrested in that connection. Close in its wake came the news that Gopal’s temple at Maisandi had been set on fire.82 Crimes other than temple defilements were also abounding. A Muslim boy was kidnapped from Gandaria by one Habib and four other Muslims with the intention to murder the boy and pass the blame on to the Hindus. The boy was subsequently recovered (22 April). On Akshya Tritiya Day Hindu shops had opened to celebrate

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hal khata (new years’ day) but the murder of a grocer created panic and they had to close down.83 On 2 May it was the turn of mosque defilements. While a pig’s head was found in Nawabpura mosque. The body of the pig was later traced in the Purana Paltan mosque.84 Close in its wake came incidents of stabbing. One Namasudra was stabbed by a Muslim in Santoshbabu’s house at 10 o’clock in the night of 2 May. He died subsequently in the hospital. At 10 a.m. on 4 May a Muslim was stabbed near North Brook Hall at Farashganj and died. At 11 a.m. another Muslim was stabbed at Ekrampur. He too expired. In connexion with that 216 Hindus had been arrested. The same day 1 Hindu (Guha) was stabbed in the afternoon near the wooden bridge of Naya Sarak. He died in the hospital on the next day. But only 18 men were arrested in this connection.85 On the morning of 4 May a Muslim had been injured in his arm on Toynbee Circular Road. There were no arrests at that time. Later a Muslim with a torn shirt on English Road complained that there were attempts to stab him and pointed to Babu Kedareshwar Sengupta’s house. Kedarbabu, his brother Sushilbabu and cousin Kishtababu were all arrested under DIR. On the morning of 5 May an up country Hindu was stabbed in the morning near the European Club at Ramna by a Muslim, who was caught immediately. A Muslim was stabbed north side of Railway level crossing near Priyanath HE School not far from the Guest House. One Hindu was stabbed at Char Raghumullahpur under Keraniganj police station on the other side of the river Buriganga at about 2 p.m. and removed to Mitford hospital.86 Finally the military had to be called once again after 6 May. There were stabbings once again on 12th, 13th and 14th of May. Local officers tried to shift the blame to the Hindus for their failure to bring back normalcy. Honourable Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy visited Dacca and intervened that shops should open on 16 May to apply economic pressure. A second European ICS was sent to Dacca as ADM to ensure efficient and impartial administration.87 In a confidential communication to Mahatma Gandhi regarding the situation in Dacca, the Congress President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, quoted one letter from a gentleman posted in the Dacca office:

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Dacca situation continues to remain regrettable. The seriousness of this may be realized when I say that my armed guard in office cannot come to my residence to make over letters to me or telegrams. I have to send my car with armed guards to carry my letters, telegrams or newspapers from office. But the car may any time be stormed and the driver killed. A few cases of murder or stabbing are of daily occurrence but even these reports cannot be obtained as nobody moves out except in properly guarded cars. There have been 6 cases of stabbing and murder yesterday and we do not know how many will find accommodation in Hospital today or be taken for post mortem. Hindus have mohallas of their own and the Muslims theirs. No member of a contending community dares (or is allowed by the mohalla people) to enter the quarter of the other community. If this is violated by any dare devil or unwary person he pays the penalty immediately with his life. Cases of arson and loot are few and far between these days but human lives are cheap and the assailants have a merrytime as they go undetected. Both the communities appear to be equally determined and every threat of dagger is retaliated.88

The Special Branch file contained another intercepted letter from a housewife (she signs as sejobou) in Dacca to her brother-in-law (she addresses the person as thakurpo) in Calcutta dated 15 April 1941 which corroborates the information provided in the above letter: Trouble has ceased a little, but stabbing continued indiscriminately. From day before yesterday the riot broke out anew. The college students and Mussalman students had a clash amongst them and as a result 2/3 places have been set fire to. A batch of Mussalman goondas came from Calcutta. They have been moving in buses with Gurkha dresses on. The Hindu students have taken down their bus number and have circulated to every Hindu house. Movement of people in main thoroughfares and lanes have been suspended. They have to go to offices in buses. They have beaten some Hindus by coming into Hindu locality in Hindu dress and having sacred thread on. They have been handed over to the police.89

The lady’s letter drew attention to a novel strategy in the planning of assault by Muslims – this new strategy was impersonation by Muslims as Hindus. This was sometimes done to mislead Hindus into believing that they had been approached by persons of their own community and trusting the impersonator to the safety of their homes, where they could be attacked at leisure as in the case of the Muslims

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from Calcutta dressed up as Gurkhas mentioned by the lady; it might be also to commit some crime in the dress of a Hindu so that the blame would go to the rival community; it could even be to mislead Hindus to commit a crime, which they otherwise would not have ventured into. One A.B. Guha in a letter to Sarat Chandra Bose provided an example of the second kind of impersonation. In the midnight of 11 April a mosque in Farasgunge was set on fire by a number of persons of whom four were caught by armed pickets on duty and 8 others were also arrested. It was ultimately discovered that all the 12 were Moslems dressed as Hindu bhadralok youth. Nobody knew what happened to these people afterwards.90 Anil Chandra Roy of Buxebazar wrote of another kind of fraud to harass the Hindus. The Mohammedans living in Joynagar Road in the midst of a Hindu locality reported to the police that the dead body of a Muslim had been kept concealed by the Hindus in a drain nearby. When police came and failed to find anything they were not satisfied. They returned with a large number of Muslims in motorbus in a short while and raided all Hindu houses in the Khajidewana locality.91 Instances of such harassments were abounding in many letters received by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee from helpless and harassed Hindus. One such letter intercepted by postal censor was that of S.K. Bose of Dhakeswari Cotton Mills dated 20 April 1941 written from his Rankin Street residence. A Mohammedan in Hindu dress had been stabbed at about 7 p.m. in the junction of Madan Mohan Basak and the Nawabpur roads. 115 people were arrested in connection with that incident. Late in the night the police broke open the gates and doors of the houses in the neighbourhood, focused torchlight on the faces of respectable ladies in their beds by raising the curtain. Even they touched their persons, seized their ornaments and kicked several of them on the floor and broke their boxes and took away their valuables. The male members, who had secured bails of Rs. 200 the next day, were not released as the bails were cancelled by order of higher authorities.92 Again, a Mohammedan was admitted into Mitford Hospital with a slight stabbing wound on 18 April 1941. The police cordoned off the entire Dayaganj locality for 2 hours. They left at 1 p.m. but came back again at 5 p.m. and rounded up and

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arrested a number of persons. The next day the police came for the third time and arrested 28 Hindus of the locality of whom 13 were employees of Sakti Ousadhalaya factory.93 Incidents of that kind persuaded Atul Chandra Sen to write to Sarat Chandra Bose that ‘we are not in the twentieth century but in some black ages when there was no government whatever.’94 On the night of the 14th of April a few houses of dhobis were looted in Narindia but no arrests were made. The house of Dacca University Librarian Manoranjan Ray was set on fire by Muslims and the darwans and bearers could bring the fire under control with great difficulty. Students of Fazlul Haq Hall and Salimullah Hall of Dacca University hostel falsely blamed the stabbing of an unknown person on students of the Jagannath Hall and got them arrested and jailed by the police.95 ESCALATION TO VILLAGES

By April the riot had crossed the boundaries of the city and spilled over to the adjoining villages. The railway station master in Narayanganj cabled on 1 April reporting that a rioting was taking place about a mile and a half away and he feared that his station might be attacked.96 ‘Exaggerated accounts of what had happened in Dacca, specially the desecration of mosques,’ as the Chief Minister Huq stated in the Bengal Legislative Assembly during a forced discussion on 7 April ‘have reached the villages throughout the district and there was tense excitement throughout the Muslim community.’97 The conflagration might have been an expression of that sense of outrage. The country near about Narsinghdi and Bhairab was not properly linked with modern means of communication and the offenders could easily go into hiding after committing the outrages and take the cover of the jungle. The trouble broke out on the 1st and 2nd of April in the Raipura and Shibpur police station area and there was arson and looting in the area north-east of Narsingdi and south-west of Bhairab Bazar. Jogesh Chandra Gupta narrated in the Bengal Legislative Assembly how Radhanagar Bazar, Baherchar and Bhairab Bazar were looted. On 2 April village after village was raided and the following villages namely Hairmara, Nobarchar, Shahebnagar, Noadia,

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Chandpasha, Latterbow, Amirabad and Saripur were looted and burnt. On Thursday (3rd of March) villages Methikandi, Srirampur, Monoharpur, Haripur, Meratali, Raipur, Radhapur, Hashimpur, Kurerpar, Shapmara, Pirijkandi, Srinidhi, Pirpur, Raipura, Paharpur, Muchapur, Chanderkandi, Radhanagar and Rahimabad were looted and burnt. Pucca buildings owned by Mahesh Chandra Pal of Raipur, Murari Mohan Roy of Raipur, Ishwar Chandra Roy of Raipur, Mahim Chandra Roy of Raipur, Mukunda Chandra Chakravarty of Methiakandi, Jagat Chandra Choudhury of Hashimpur, Raj Kumar Pal Chowdhury of Radhanagar, Hari Krishna Pal Chowdhury of Hashimpur and Sachindra Chandra Das of Shapmara.98 These acts of loot and arson were not merely impulsive acts, committed in a frenzied mood of avenging the wrongs done to mosques or to people of one’s own community in Dacca city. There was a method in the ‘madness’ of the rioters, as J.C. Gupta suggested. In Chak Bazar, for instance, Hindu shops were merely looted but not burnt as the shops were placed in close juxtaposition and setting fire to the Hindu shops would inevitably affect the Muslims shops as well.99 This was corroborated by Bimalananda Dasgupta of the Central Bank after a journey into the riot torn areas that it was easy to make out a Hindu house from a Muslim one by the fact that the houses which bore the ravages of arson were all Hindu houses the Muslim houses being religiously spared the acts of incendiarism.100 Many suspected a hand of outsiders in exciting the mob. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee put forward his own ideas of what had happened in his speech in the Assembly on 9 March 1941: This was an attack of a definitely organized character. Outsiders came belonging to the Khaksar Party. They came in small numbers leading a small batch of about 250 on the first day and the riot in the village started. They were working in groups, one group preceding the others. The first group came for the purpose of exciting the mobs, alleging stories of oppression on Muslim women by Hindus (reading extract from Azad of 23 March) and reports of desecration of mosques and also the fact that Pakistan has come to stay and calling upon the Hindus to surrender to this policy. They were followed by others, by bigger crowds and these men carried with them axes, daggers and ramdaos and they also carried petrol with them, petrol which had been carried to the villages by boats.101

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The involvement of the Khaksar element also received confirmation from the report of a secret agent engaged by J.V.B. Janvrin, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, which he duly communicated to E.N. Blandy, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, M.O. Carter, Secretary to the Governor of Bengal and R.E.A. Ray, Deputy Inspector of Police on 16 April 1941. The source of the secret agent was the gossip made by Chitta Chatterjee alias Dudhi, son of Srish Chatterjee of Dacca, who visited Calcutta around that time to collect funds for riot victims. According to this report: The looting and arson in Raipura, Narsinghdi and other villages has been deliberately organized by the interested persons with the help of the Khaksars who, while continuing their pillages wore black shirts and shorts and tied handkerchiefs on their heads. They spoke Urdu and evidently had been drafted to these villages from Calcutta and other places for the looting purposes. In attacking a Hindu house they first came 3 or 4 in uniform, asked the inmates to become Moslems and to deliver their valuables as Pakistan has been established in Bengal and as there was no British Raj in Bengal. In failing to get acquiescence to the proposal, the leader of the party gave a blast, a second batch of 5 or 6 would come, pour petrol or kerosene on the houses and set fire to it. The females of each of these houses were molested in various ways and tortured. After looting 13 or 14 villages these marauders had taken away about 200 Hindu females between ages 16 to 26 of whom there were no trace. The Anushilan Party had come to a finding that these ravages were organized by Mr. Sahabuddin, Chief Whip of the Coalition Party in the Bengal Legislative Assembly on being inspired by the Moslem ministers of Bengal.102

Secret S.B. reports on the deliberations within Congress circles also revealed that: influential members of Bengal Government were involved in the riots. …After the meeting at Bhairab when Sir Nazimuddin presided the Muslim propagandists were bold enough to preach that Pakisthan has been established and that only Muslims should reside in Pakisthan and that the Hindus who would be converted may be allowed to live in Pakisthan.103

This was corroborated by the letter of the Congress leader Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s letter to Gandhi on 16 April 1941: Besides Dacca town, 40 other villages also had been the victim of loot and

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murder. According to them the Mahomedans used to go in groups. They used to say to the Hindus that there was Pakistan in India. If you want to live peacefully then be Mahommedan or go out of your houses. Those who would not leave their houses were attacked and assaulted. In this way about 20/25 thousand people have become homeless. About 10/12 thousand people have taken shelter in village Agartala of Tripura Raj. They are being fed by the Raj and also by the public.104

Confronted by charges of Khaksar involvement with the complicity of members of the Bengal Government, Chief Minister Huq lost his calm in the Bengal Legislative Assembly. He tried to turn the tables on the opposition by trying to paint a lurid picture of the humiliation and torture of a Mohammedan during the Holi which sparked off the trouble: It is not the 17th of March that is of much importance. The real trouble in Dacca began on the evening of the 14 March in a lane near the old Dacca College when some Hindu youths sprinkled coloured water on some Muslim boys. An old man who was passing by protested. He was caught by the beard, his whole body was sprinkled with coloured water and blows were given on his head and he was removed to hospital. I have seen that man and talked to him. I recorded his statement. I had been to the hospital and I have seen the hospital diary. Immediately after the 14th for two days, the 15th and 16th the whole of Dacca was tense with excitement, but although stabbing was going on and Muslims were being stabbed, not one Hindu was stabbed in retaliation by the Muslim. It was on the 17th that mosques began to be attacked, first the Nawabpur mosque and then the two mosques in Malitolla were burned and demolished. The Holy Quran was torn to pieces. I went to a mosque and found that the mosque was still burning; the leaves of the Quran were strewn on the floor and shoes were placed on the leaves of the quran and it occurred in an area inhabited not by goondas but by bhadralogs, perhaps graduates of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s University.105

Regarding the extension of the disturbances to the villages his explanation was even more ludicrous: I have been getting definite evidence that immediately after this Hindu youth dressed in lungis and with red caps on went to various villages in the district of Dacca inciting the Muslim to rise and attack the Hindus. They said that mosques have been demolished, that mosques have been burnt to ruin, it is now the turn of the Muslims to retaliate. It is part of a preconceived

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policy. It is part of a preconceived policy. Hindus knew that if once Muslim passion was aroused, they would go to excesses and the Hindus knew how to retaliate afterwards.106

The ADM Hatch Barnwell himself followed the police force and as he could not anticipate the ferocity of the mob he was injured while trying to induce him to disperse. The mob assaulted him with lathis, inflicting severe injuries on the head and other parts of the body. Later he had to be admitted to Mitford Hospital. The Officer in Charge of Raipur police station was also wounded on the same day. Police had to fire twice and use tear gas on one occasion at Chikandi police station. The DIG police, Mymensingh Range, the officers of the Eastern Frontier Rifles and the Subdivisional Officer of Narayangunge with a large armed force were subsequently posted on the scene of occurrence.107 Dr. Beni Bose, who had been sent to Raipura to make a survey, found that 6 to 7 thousand houses were looted and 5 thousand houses were burnt in 72 villages. Scheduled Caste houses were kept untouched probably with the object to retain their sympathy.108 ‘The places of prosperous villages are no better than wastes,’ wrote a person to one Mrityunjoybabu, an acquaintance of the Congress leader Dr. Rajendra Prasad, ‘and what greets one’s eyes are scenes of devastation.’ ‘In a very short time the area was virtually cleared of Hindus, many thousands of whom fled, in many cases out of fear and before there was any danger to their safety, across the Meghna River into the Tripura State and the Tippera district.’109 One correspondent wrote to Sarat Chandra Bose that Churchill had described the Germans as ‘Huns’, but the deliberate brutality of the ‘Huns of Bengal’ pales into insignificance to that of the Germans.110 The trading centre of Narayanganj had a number of Hindu taluqdars, jotedars and moneylenders of substance like Mahesh Chandra Saha, Pratap Chandra Saha, Ram Chandra Saha, Shib Chandra Nath and Anath Bandhu Goswami. Most of the wealth of the locality was concentrated in this area. The houses of these persons were all looted and burnt and C.I. sheds taken away.111 The DM did not take any action even when he had been warned many times. The ADM did not have sufficient police force to help him. Military help was called only on 6 April.112

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The IG Police arrived in Dacca on 5th of April and made an aerial reconnaissance of the disturbed area on the 6th. He could not see much except that there was arson in several villages as the area was surrounded by jungles. He could make out that two Hindu villages were burnt down along with a few more paras. The Police Commissioner too could notice columns of smoke in course of his journey on the train when it approached the Raipura Shibpur villages. Three platoons of Eastern Frontier Rifles had to be posted to the north-east and one company of Mahrattas to the south west to prevent the escalation of the riots to other districts.113 The Government of Bengal was unwilling to admit that there were any cases of forcible conversion.114 However, secret records in the files of the Special Branch of Police point to the contrary. According to the testimony of the members of a relief committee in villages Chasiridia, Noadia Darpan, Brahmandia, Noadia Dakshinpara and Brahmandi under Shibpur police station inhabited by Namasudras and some Moslems, the Namasudras were asked to become Muslims on pain of their houses being burnt. As the Namasudras failed to oblige, their houses were set on fire. The maulavis tore their tulsi mala, put on tupis and lungis and compelled over 50 Namasudras to say namaz along with other 100 Muslims at Beltala Idgah. The wives of Muslims came to the females and asked them to break their conch shell bangles, wear Muslim sari and adopt Muslim customs. Marriages of two Namasudra girls were arranged in Muslim families and two Muslim girls were also given in marriage to two Namasudras. FIR to that effect had been lodged in the police station.115 The Hindu lady of Dacca writing to her brother-in-law had also mentioned about the rescue of thirty-two ladies by Gurkha soldiers from Muslim houses.116 The anonymous correspondent of Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s acquaintance Mrityunjoybabu had also mentioned forced coversions, ‘although the converts do not in all cases admit them as forced in fear’ he had regretted.117 The visit of the Bengal Governor to the riot affected areas in the first half of May 1941118 did not tame the tide of the riot. Stabbing incidents continued with a ruthless monotony from 3-6 May. The military had to be requisitioned again. There were stabbing incidents again on 12, 13, 15, 18 and 27 May. A second European ADM was

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sent to Dacca to ensure impartiality of administration. The last two cases of stabbing took place during the Home Minister’s visit to Dacca.119 RIOTS ENTER A NEW PHASE

A new phase in the Dacca riots seemed to have started from 26 June during the day of the Rathajatra (a Hindu religious festival involving large processions with images of God on a chariot or Ratha). There was great jostling in the crowd in the Dacca city in the course of this procession; in the process one Muslim was manhandled. There was also an assault on yet another Muslim suspected of picking pockets. This was followed by the stabbing of a Muslim idiot.120 Now it was the turn of the Muslims to play the aggressor. There were assaults on the Hindus and a Muslim raid on a Hindu house when six inmates were injured. This again deteriorated in a riotous situation requiring police firing and use of tear smoke to disperse the riotous mob on several occasions. The upshot of it was the loss of life by eleven Hindus and eight Muslims and the suffering of injury by 33 Hindus and 27 Muslims. There was an unprecedented incident of a woman being hurt during the raid by a riotous mob on the house of her daughter, who was a medical practitioner. Over 300 persons from the two communities were also arrested during this phase of the disturbances.121 To boost up the strength of the administration the Government had already posted three ADMs in Dacca; three more Superintendents of Police were also drafted to add to the number of sanctioned officers. The police force was also reinforced by 12 sergeants from Calcutta and the armed police was strengthened by the addition of 200 more. The military was called out for duty in two areas on 27 June. The atmosphere was so tense that the Dacca Riots Enquiry Committee deferred its sessions.122 The month of July ushered a spate of crimes on the police personnel itself. On 30 June a musket was seized by a group of Muslim youth from a constable, who had apparently been stealing a nap during duty in the night. On the 3rd of July another Muslim constable in uniform was stabbed to death. His body was later discovered from a

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well. Incidents of such kind continued till the 7th of July. The next day saw the murder of one Hindu. Since then there were a number of defilement of religious places.123 The Bengali daily Ananda Bazar Patrika was very critical of this fresh bout of communal outbursts: There is hardly any explanation to offer for this dire incapacity in checking organized hooliganism, looting and arson within the last five days. Apart from the burning down of the Bus Syndicate’s office, which is indeed an alarming news, it is graver still to hear that a rifle was snatched away from a police constable on sentry duty at Dayaganj Road. It is curious to think how the rioters could gather up this courage and daring not only to ignore the armed policemen but also to snatch away weapons and cripple them. It is a matter for thought and enquiry how this could be possible in Dacca.124

In the meanwhile the Punar Jatra of the chariot festival was completed in a restricted manner on 4 July. No unpleasant incident was allowed to happen and the authorities controlled the celebrations with a strong hand with only a symbolic procession.125 A renewed spate of trouble occurred during the night of the 5th of October and from the 21st the situation once again appered to be grim. On the day of the Eid procession big crowds of both Hindus and Muslims assembled on both sides of the Nawabpur Bridge.The procession carried bamboo sticks and raised slogans like ‘hindusthan dhangsho hauk, Pakistan jay hauk, Hindu Sabha dhangsho hauk, Congress dhangsho hauk, Hindu dhangsho hauk, Hindur rakto chai (Down with Hindustan, Glory to Pakistan, Down with Hindu Sabha, Down with Congress, Down with Hindus, We want the blood of Hindus). They tried to break into Hindu houses by battering on the doors. Shrieks of women could be heard from inside. They could be kept at bay through brickbats.126 They proceeded up to Bengal Central Bank Buildings and started looting on the way. Before crossing the Nawabpur Bridge they broke a showcase of the Mukul Theatre. Crossing over the Nawabpur Bridge they attacked the sweetmeat shop of Maranchand Gope, who had been a victim of the rioters’ rage in the earlier phase of the trouble before. Thereafter they looted a rice shop and two Muslims were arrested with two bags of rice. The door of a cloth shop was broken.

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As they reached Lal Chand Mokim’s Lane, the local people had a difficult time dispersing them with brickbats.127 When the procession reached the Bangshall Court junction they began to batter the door of shops and could be dispersed by brickbats from housetops. Two Hindu shops were looted at Bangshall Street and a timber shop set on fire. The ADM Mr. Stratchey had to rush to the place.128 The Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, at its meeting of 2 November presided over by Sir Manmatha Nath Mookerjee, condemned the granting of permission for Eid procession in Dacca, which marched through localities inhabited by Hindus, broke open and looted Hindu shops, attacked Hindu houses and shouted provocative anti-Hindu slogans.129 The murder of a Muslim at Ticatully led the Chief Secretary, Mr. Blandy, to blame the Hindus for this renewed spate of violence. A continuous curfew of 72 hours was imposed on Hindu localities, resulting in indescribable hardship. Infants were deprived of food and the sick and the invalid of medical aid. Examinations had started after the re-opening of schools and colleges after the Puja vacation and they had to go to examination centres with police escorts. Hindu localities were fenced by barbed wires and Hindus were prevented access to the public street. Khaksars could be seen roaming in the Chowk and the Lalbagh area. Leaders of Hindus cooperated with local authorities and made efforts for the restoration of peace and order in spite of grave personal risks. They were not given any opportunity to explain the real situation or to put forward their suggestions for the maintenance of law and order.130 The introduction of motorized patrols and frequent bicycle patrols added considerably to the improvement of the situation. Since 5 November the only act of sacrilege was the hanging of tortoise shells on a mosque. Peace Committees could now work with greater impact.131 A new ordinance entitled the Bengal Turbulent Areas Ordinance was promulgated by the Governor of Bengal under Section 88 of the Government of India Act on 4 November declaring the intention to impose collective fines and to award compensation from its proceeds to the riot victims in the Dacca city. This put a rein on

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the spate of violence. There was a communique that both movable as well as immovable property would be attached. A Bill was planned to give legal shape to the ordinance.132 FAILURE OF THE BENGAL GOVERNMENT

TO ADDRESS THE EMERGENCY

The local administration was confronted with the question again and again as to why their intelligence system failed to provide them with alerts about the impending trouble in Dacca and why they failed to address the crisis even when it had actually erupted. There was not much difference of opinion among the Indian National Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha regarding the ‘abject surrender of the local authorities to the rioters’.133 ‘Local officials at Dacca,’ Sarat Chandra Bose openly asserted in the Assembly chamber, ‘were guilty of the grossest neglect and the grossest default in carrying on the administration, the normal administration and it is on account of their negligence that the riot at Dacca assumed the proportions that it did assume.’134 Mr. Akhilbandhu Guha and Surjya Kumar Bose of Dhakeswari Cotton Mills, Bimalananda Dasgupta of Central Bank and Girish Chandra Das, a well known advocate knew where the looted properties were kept. If the DM had tried to trace them, he could in the process have succeeded in tracking the persons guilty of causing the disturbance to public peace. ‘Many unfortunate persons were taken into custody, while most of the goondas are still at large.’ Mr. Atul Chandra Sen had taken down the number of the motor bus in which the looted properties were taken and handed it over to the DM. But the DM, instead of trying to trace the motor bus, claimed to have lost the piece of paper on which the number of the bus had been written.135 The posting of armed pickets was an eye wash and when actually assaults, murder and arson were committed in the presence of police and armed guards they refused help and maintained that they had no instructions to do anything.136 Many local gentlemen of stature had warned the Magistrate that the riots were going to escalate to the villages very soon. Yet he did not listen to their warnings. The ADM was allowed to go into the scene of affrays without sufficient police force. Even his injury did

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not open the eyes of the DM. He was probably acting at the behest of persons like Shahabuddin, Nasrullah and Salim, whom he was seen taking round the affected areas. Sarat Chandra Bose almost suggested a link between these persons and the persons responsible for the riots. But as that was difficult to substantiate, he merely charged the Government with allowing ‘incompetent district officials and incompetent police officers, who are not fair, who are not independent, who are not impartial, to preside over the destinies of Dacca and Narayanganj’.137 The Home Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin’s press conference could not pacify the press. Promode Kumar Sen, member, Bengal Provincial Press Advisory Committee, Hindusthan Standard wrote: The crux of the problem is that the riots are the result of the wave of com­ munalism which swept over Bengal in recent months and a large number of people hold that some of the ministers are indirectly responsible for it. Naturally the ministry is very sensitive about criticism of its policy and actions. That is why the handy weapon of the Defence of India Act is being used against the Press even in relation to the riotous situation.138

The Advance was more critical of the Government’s failure to rise to the occasion and directed its invectives against the Home Minister: The constitution does not allow him to tell Mr. George the DM of Dacca that for his continued failure to restore order he will be sacked. The constitution does not allow him to tell the fat salaried officers of the Imperial Police Services posted at Dacca that if they fail to restore order within twenty four hours they will be summarily dismissed.139

The scribe took the opportunity to take a dig at the imperial govern­ ment too, throwing some of the responsibility at their door: The terrible loss of life and property at Dacca (or Bombay or Ahmedabad) has not apparently caused any flutter in India Office or Whitehall. But if Nazimuddin were to take even the mildest departmental action against the European members of the Celestial Services whose criminal inefficiency has brought untold sufferings to law abiding citizens of Dacca, he would be setting the Thames on fire. Efficiency must not be demanded of the members of the ICS or the IPS. They are to draw princely salaries and sumptuous allowances and the starving millions of India must ungrudgingly bear the burden.140

The unholy alliance between the imperial masters and their Muslim

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League stooges in Bengal to seal the fate of all the well-intentioned people of Bengal was spelled out more explicitly by the Ananda Bazar Patrika leader: We can firmly assert from our day to day experiences that the thoughtless and short sighted policy of the present Bengal Ministry is chiefly responsible for the communal unrest in the province. They have displayed their abject incompetence by failing to adopt drastic measures to quell the riots….But thanks to the extraordinary Award of Mr. MacDonald the standard bearers of Islam have obtained complete advantage to foster group politics in the legislature. Besides they have their friends of Clive Street in peril. So long as they remain, there is no hope to bring the Ministry to their senses by sponsoring a motion of no confidence in them.141

The question put forward by the KPP leader Shamsuddin on the floors of the Bengal Legislative Assembly was the common query intriguing all parties concerned: I cannot understand when Hitler conquered the whole of Poland in 15 or 17 days, when Great Britain is still ruling the country…when the British army and Indian troops can go to Benghazi within a few days, how Indian Ministers and British troops here could not stop the disturbances which have been going on for the last 23 days…. I am warning you all that if you do not stop these riots now, a day is sure to come sooner or later when the whole of India will be in flames.142 IMPACT ON NEIGHBOURING DISTRICTS

The events of Dacca had its repercussions in the other districts of East Bengal as well. Feni in Noakhali witnessed a number of temple desecrations and image breaking in April. Several Hindu houses in Feni were also set on fire. There were also cases of temple defilements in the Tippera district and instances of arson in Ujanchar in Tippera. In Patuakhali (Bakarganj) an idol made its appearance in a mosque. Retaliation came swift and a cow’s skull and bones were soon discovered in a temple.143 In Bankura and Chikandi (Faridpur) there were talks of trying to avenge Dacca.144 A case of a fire in a jute godown at Bhagyakul (Dacca district) was suspected to be a case of arson. Similarly the snapping of telegraphic wires due to some natural causes were rumoured to be the work of saboteurs.145

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Relations between the two communities were tense in Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Malda districts. Immersion of Hindu idols was resisted in Dinajpur, Mymensingh and Budge Budge.146 Such processions were banned by executive or police orders. The Hindu community resented this encroachment on their traditional rights. Fazlul Huq said that the ancient custom related to such processions needed to be examined. Sir Manmatha Nath Mookerjee wrote to the Home Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin about the matter. But instead of offering any redress, Nazimuddin was heard to have sent a confidential circular to the local officials, which went against the spirit of the formula arrived at in 1926 and violated the national rights of the Hindus. In desperation the President of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha approached the Bengal Governor for his intervention in the matter, an act which appeared to the Editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika as ‘an appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.’ The Governor’s intervention in the ministry’s action might lead to a constitutional crisis.147 The Dacca riots left its odium on the relationship of the two communities that had little hopes of being repaired in the near future. The earlier relations of mutual dependence and symbiotic cooperation had suffered a permanent setback. Distrust and suspicion had taken the place of friendship and goodwill. They had also arrayed the local entities into mutually warring groups. Fazlul Huq had been reduced to the position of a mere puppet in the hands of the Muslim League and he was always found to parrot their views in the Assembly chamber. The country was desperately in need of some change in the approach to the administration. The Muslim League had been trying to bulldoze its way into the countryside by riding on the horse of the KPP. When men like Nausher Ali and Shamsuddin stood in the way, they thought of vitiating the communal atmosphere to bring in communal pol­ arization to make a dent into the east Bengal countryside. What the KPP had achieved through years of sympathy and support the Muslim League tried to achieve at the bat of an eyelid. They tried to direct their appeal to blind religious fanaticism by throwing all rational considerations to the wind. Behind them, of course, was the larger shield of the Raj, which was trying to hang on to the straw of divisive politics. All the Governor’s reports, Chief Secretary’s reports smack of this intention to play off one community against the other. The

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upshot of all this, however, was an unfortunate phase of communal orgies in the province swelling up to some greater crisis in the not so distant future. NOTES 1. H.T. Lambrick, ‘Prospects for a United India after the Cessation of British Rule as these Appeared in Sind 1930-46’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright (eds.), The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 504-16. 2. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch: India 1921-1952 (Time Books International, New Delhi, 1987). 3. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, 1938), para 4 in IB Records, File 333/38 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 4. Cited in K.K. Aziz, The Partition of India and the Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publications, Delhi, 1990), p. 96. 5. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 3465 in File No. 116/39 in WBSA 6. Miscellaneous I.B. Report, No. 3411 in ibid. 7. Miscellaneous I.B. Report No. 3712 in ibid. 8. Miscellaneous I.B. Report No. 3636 in ibid. 9. Miscellaneous I.B. Report No. 3667 in ibid. 10. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 2852 in ibid. 11. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 3285 in ibid. 12. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, 1938), in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. 13. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 3465 in File No. 116/39 in WBSA. 14. PFR Second Half of February 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/2/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 15. PFR First Half of August 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/8/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 16. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 2334 in File No. 116/39 in WBSA. 17. Miscellaneous I.B. Reports No. 2187 in ibid. 18. Provincial Fortnightly Report (henceforth PFR) Second Half of April 1939. and First Half of May 1939 in Home Poll 18/4/1939 and 18/5/1939 n the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 19. Miscellaneous IB Reports No. 3712 and 3636 in File No. 116/39 in WBSA. 20. Miscellaneous IB Reports No. 3180 in ibid. 21. Miscellaneous IB Reports No. 2928 in ibid. 22. Miscellaneous IB Reports No. 2929 in ibid. 23. Provincial Fortnightly Report Second Half of June 1939 in Home Poll 18/6/1939 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi.

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24. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Presidency of Bengal during the Year 1937 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1938) in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. 25. Ibid. 26. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Province of Bengal during the Year 1939 (Govt. of Bengal, Home Dept. Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1941) para 21 in IB Records, File 333/38 in WBSA. 27. PFR for Second Half of January 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/1/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 28. PFR Second Half of February 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/2/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 29. Letter of Jogesh Ch. Banerjee, Pleader and Landholder to N.C. Chatterjee, Secretary, Bengal Hindu Sabha, 23.10.39 in KPM/SB/02629/05 of 1939. 30. PFR Second Half of February 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/2/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 31. PFR First Half of August 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/8/41 in the NAI, New Delhi 32. PFR First Half of May 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/5/41 and Second Half of July 1941 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 33. PFR Second Half of July 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/7/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 34. PFR First Half of May 1941 in Home Poll (I) in 18/5/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 35. A Brief Summary of Political Events in the Province of Bengal during the Year 1939 (Bengal Govt. Press, Alipore, Bengal, 1941) para 21 in IB Records, File 333/38 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 36. PFR First Half May 1939 in Home Poll 18/5/39 in NAI, New Delhi, 37. PFR First Half of February 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/2/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 38. Ibid. 39. PFR Second Half of January 1941 in Home Poll (I) in NAI, New Delhi. 40. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 March 1941 in National Library, Kolkata. 41. Star of India, 7 February 1941 in microfilm in National Library, Kolkata. 42. Ibid. 43. Star of India, 11 February 1941 in microfilm in National Library, Kolkata. 44. Star of India, 7 February 1941 in microfilm in National Library, Kolkata. 45. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 March 1941 in National Library, Kolkata; Sir John. Herbert, the Governor of Bengal to Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, 7 March 1941 in MSS Eur India Office Records, F125/41 in British Library, London. 46. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9 March 1941 in National Library, Kolkata. 47. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1 March 1941 in National Library, Kolkata.

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48. PFR Second Half of February 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/2/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 49. PFR Second Half of September 1941 in Home Poll (i) 18/9/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 50. PFR Second Half of July 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/7/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 51. PFR Second Half of July 1941 and First Half of August 1941 in Home Poll (I) 18/7/41 and 18/8/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 52. Star of India, 10 February 1941 in microfilm in National Library, Kolkata. 53. Star of India, 4 March 1941 quoted by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in his address to the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941 in Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. 54. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 March 1941 in National Library, Kolkata. 55. Ibid. 56. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 21 March 1941. 57. Narendranath Dasgupta and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 2 April 1941, Tenth Session in BLAP, vol. 59. 58. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19 March 1941 in the National Library, Kolkata. 59. Associated Press version published in ibid. 60. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19 March 1941 in the National Library. 61. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 March 1941. 62. Evidence of Mr. George, D.M. cross-examined by standing counsel J.N. Majumder before Dacca Enquiry Committee in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1941. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 March 1941. 66. Evidence of Mr. George, D.M. in Dacca Enquiry Committee, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1941. 67. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 March 1941. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 21 March 1941. 72. Ibid. 73. Evidence of DM in the Dacca Enquiry Committee in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1941. 74. Ibid. 75. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 9 April 1941. 76. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 March 1941. 77. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 March 1941.

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78. Evidence of DM in Dacca Enquiry Committee in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1941. 79. Intercepted letter of Promode Kumar Sen, Member Bengal Provincial Press Advisory Committee, Hindusthan Standard to Sriyut J.N. Sahni, editor, The National Call, Delhi, dated 11.4.41 in KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 80. Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 2 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. 81. Report addressed to Sarat Bose by Surjya Kumar Bose of Dhakeswari Cotton Mills, 10.5.41 in KPM/SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 82. S.B. Diary of Crimes 20 April to 5 May 1941 in File No. KPM/ SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid. 87. Provincial Fortnightly Report First Half of May 1941 in Home Poll (I) File No. 18/5/41 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 88. Enclosure in letter of Dr. Rajendra Prasad from Sadaqiat Ashram, Dighaghat, Patna, to Gandhi, 16.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 89. Letter of Sejobou to Thakurpo, 22 Jaykali Mandir Road, Dacca, 15 April 1941. Intercepted according to DC S.B. Khan Bahadur S. Dahar’s order of 1.5.41 to all Superintendents and Additional Superintendents of DIB in File no. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 90. Intercepted letter from A.B. Guha to Sarat Chandra Bose, 11.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 91. File No. KPM/SB/01557 in Kolkata Police Museum. 92. Intercepted letter of S.K. Bose to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Rankin Street, 20.4.41 in KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 93. Ibid. 94. Intercepted letter of A. Ch. Sen to S.C. Bose, Rankin Street, Wari, 12.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 95. A.H. Guha to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 24.4.41 in File No. KPM/ SB/01557 in Kolkata Police Museum. 96. Provincial Fortnightly Report, First Half of April 1941 in Home Poll (I) File No. 18/4/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. 97. Statement of C.M. Fazlul Huq in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 7 April 1941, in BLAP, vol. 59. 98. Extracts from the Speech of Jogesh Chandra Gupta in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. 99. Ibid. 100. Intercepted letter of Bimalendu Dasgupta of Bengal Central Bank, Dacca

154

101. 102. 103.

104.

105. 106. 107. 108.

109.

110. 111. 112.

113.

114. 115. 116.

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to Sarat Chandra Bose dated 15.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Speech of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. Report of a secret agent dated 16.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Secret statement of C196 dated 19.6.41 on ‘Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and Dacca Riots’ in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Intercepted letter of Dr. Rajendra Prasad from Sadaqiat Ashram, Dighaghat, Patna to Gandhi, 15.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Chief Minister Fazlul Huq in the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 9 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. Ibid. Associated Press news of 3 April quoted by Rai Harendranath Chaudhuri in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. Intercepted letter of Akhilbandhu Gupta and others to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 8.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Intercepted letter of Dr. Rajendra Prasad from Sadaqiat Ashram, Dighaghat, Patna to Gandhi, 15.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Provincial Fortnightly Report First Half of April 1941 in Home Poll (I) File No. 18/4/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. Intercepted letter of A.C. Sen to S.C. Bose, 12.4.41 in File no. KPM/ SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Report of destruction by J.C. Gupta, Bar-at-Law, MLA, S.K. Bose, Managing Director Dhakeswari Cotton Mills Ltd. and Member of Relief Committee, Dacca and Srish Ch. Chatterjee, Senior Pleader, Dacca after inspection of affected area within police station Shibpur within Narayanganj in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. From E.N. Blandy, Secretary to Governor of Bengal to the Secretary to the Govt. of India, Calcutta, 10 May 1941 in Home Poll (I) File No. 21/4/41 in NAI, New Delhi. Telegram of Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 7 April 1941 in File No. 5/8/41 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. Povincial Fortnightly Report First Half of April 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/4/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. Report of destruction by J.C. Gupta, Bar-at-Law, MLA, S.K. Bose, Managing Director, Dhakeswari Cotton Mills Ltd. and Member of Relief Committee, Dacca and Srish Chandra Chatterjee, Senior Pleader, Dacca

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after inspection of affected area within police station Shibpur within Narayanganj in File No. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 117. Intercepted letter of Sejobou to Thakurpo, 15.4.41 in File no. KPM/ SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 118. Intercepted letter of Dr. Rajendra Prasad from Sadaqiat Ashram, Dighaghat, Patna to Gandhi, 15.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 119. PFR, First Half of May 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/5/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 120. PFR Second Half of May 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/5/41 in NAI, New Delhi; Bengal Governor to the Viceroy, 28 June 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 5/8/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 121. PFR Second Half of June 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/6/41 in NAI, New Delhi; Bengal Governor to the Viceroy, 1 July 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 5/8/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid. 124. Leader in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1 July 1941 (English translation by S.B. personnel) in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum 125. PFR First Half of July 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/7/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 126. Ibid. 127. Report by Bimalananda Dasgupta, Manager Bengal Central Bank and Member Central Peace Committee, Dacca dated 24.10.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 128. Intercepted letter of Dhirendra Chandra Dasgupta, Pleader to N.C. Chatterjee in File No. KPM/SB/01557/O5 in Kolkata Police Museum. 129. Amrita BazarPatrika, 5 November 1941. 130. Ibid. 131. PFR, First Half of November 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/11/41 in NAI, New Delhi. 132. Ibid. 133. Secret S.B. report on ‘BPCC and Dacca Riots’ Statement of C196 dated 19.6.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 134. Sarat Chandra Bose in Bengal Legislative Council on 9 April 1941 in BLAP, vol. 59. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid. 137. Ibid. 138. Pramode Kumar Sen, Member, Bengal Provincial Press Advisory Committee to Sj. J.N. Sahni, editor, The National Call, dated 11.7.41 in KPM/ SB/01557/05 in Kolkata Police Museum.

156 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.

147.

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Advance, 3 July 1941 in ibid. Ibid. Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1.7.41 in ibid. Proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941. PFR First and Second half of April 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/4/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. PFR Second Half of July 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/7/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. PFR First Half of April 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/4/41 in the NAI, New Delhi. PFR Second Half of April 1941 and Second Half of July 1941 in File Home Poll (i) 18/4/41 and 18/7/41 in the NAI, New Delhi; editorial in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 November 1941. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 November 1941.

CHAPTER 4

The Hindu Mahasabha and its

Works in Bengal, 1939-1941

THE HINDU REACTION

 was the year when the Hindu Mahasabha seriously began to take interest in the affairs of the province of Bengal. The year saw the onset of a sterile period in the politics of the province. This was also the time when the Bose brothers were expelled from the Indian National Congress for refusing to abide by the diktats from Wardha. The split in the Congress camp lowered its prestige in the public eye.1 It also left Hindu interests undefended in the political arena of Bengal. In October 1939 all the Congress Ministries in the various provinces of the country were ordered to tender their resignations. This was in protest against the unilateral declaration of the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow of India as a belligerent country in the Second World War. Congressmen resented not having been consulted by the Viceroy before taking such a crucial decision. As they were the elected representatives of the people they thought they had a right to be consulted. The Viceroy’s declaration was tantamount to a denial of their democratic right to be consulted in any decision about the involvement of the country in the war. Savarkar, the President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha interpreted this as an abdication of responsibility by the Indian National Congress towards the people of the country.2 Savarkar also made it clear at the very outset whom the Hindu Sabha would regard as a Hindu. According to their definition ‘everyone who recognizes this Bharatbarsa as his or her fatherland or holy land was a Hindu’. The working committee of the Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay insisted that since the Congress would not speak on behalf of the Hindus, the Government should give a definite undertaking that no pact entered into by the Congress and Muslims between themselves, to which the Hindu Sabha has not been made a party and which was

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not sanctioned by it could bind the Hindus as a whole.3 At no point in its history did the Congress come out in a full-blooded support for the Hindus since it had its pretensions of representing all communities alike. It had its nationalist Muslim wing to take care of, however, peripheral and insignificant it might be. Thus it was left for the Hindu Mahasabha alone to take up the cause of the Hindus. It was from 1939 that the Hindu Mahasabha began the work of organizing the Hindus in Bengal with great ardour and devotion. Savarkar (1883-1966), the President of the Hindu Mahasabha had visited Bengal early in February 1939 to preside over the Khulna Provincial Hindu Mahasabha session. He felt it his ardent duty to organize the Bengali Hindus in defence of their rights, which were being trampled under the Muslim League regime under the dispensation of the Communal Award. The Congress was trying to befriend the Muslims at the expense of the Hindus. Their equivocations concerning the Communal Award of 1932, which they summed up as ‘neither acceptance nor rejection’ prevented the organization of an effective national movement against the measure. Savarkar criticized the way Fazlul Huq was trying to establish a ‘Muslim Raj’ in Bengal by bringing about a 60 per cent reservation in the services for the Muslims and the domination of the Calcutta University and the Calcutta Corporation by the Muslims through the Secondary Education Bill and Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. He questioned the inability of the ministry to prevent the breaking of Hindu images or attack on processions. The religion, culture, education and even the life property and honour of the Hindus were in danger. He therefore called upon all the Hindus to offer united resistance. Savarkar emphasized that caste was not an important thing in public life and welcomed the scheduled castes back to the Hindu fold. The Hindu Sangathan was to start working with a view to awakrning the consciousness of solidarity among different sections and sub-sections of the Hindus as a nation, especially in Bengal. The Dharm Sabha was to arrange the celebration of sarbojanin pujas especially Durga Puja, Doljatra, Janmashtami and Sivaratri. All sections of people should participate in the celebrations irrespective of their caste. All Hindus were to be allowed access to temples. He

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wanted social reforms like intermarriage among castes, widow remarriage and the eradication of dowry and child marriage. Above all, Savarkar stressed the necessity of shuddhi or reconversion of Hindus, who had been forcibly converted. Savarkar also wanted the Sangathanists to try to awaken a sense of pride and glory in the minds of the Hindus by introducing annual celebrations in memory of our great men, religious reformers and natural heroes all over the country. There should be prayers, singing of hymns, chanting of religious ballads, kathakata and kirtan and readings from the Vedas, Upanishads, Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharat, Granth Sahib, Tripitak and other religious books regularly. The Mahasabha did not believe in defeatism and inertia. It wanted every village to have a gymnasium to train boys in lathis and dagger play.4 Savarkar had further explained his ideals of developing a common Hindu front in a letter to N.C. Chatterjee written on 20 October 1939: The realization by the Hindus of Bengal that the first and foremost duty of the Hindus consist in being true to their national existence as Hindus, bound together by the strongest affinities of a common culture, of a common past, of a common ancestral heritage and above all, of a common fatherland and holy land – the realization of being a nation by themselves – constitutes in itself a giant’s step firmly set on the path which is bound to lead, if but devotedly and dauntlessly followed, up to a mighty and glorious destiny. Henceforth let the Bengal Hindus never divide; let them view every question whether religious, social and above all political, through the Hindu point of view alone. Let the false gods set up by territorial nationality be dethroned once for all.5

Savarkar laid down very clearly that the course of action being planned by the Hindu Mahasabha was going to be very different from that which had hitherto been followed by the Congress: The Congress Resolution at Wardha to distance itself from Hindu Mahasabha has made it clear that Congress ideology is not only incapable of, but positively antagonistic to any effort on the part of the Hindus to form themselves into a mighty nation amongst the nations of the world…. The path to the renaissance of Hindudom is neither identical with nor parallel to the path the Congress treads and is bound to tread.6

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The Hindu Mahasabha was to carry on its fight as a separate, if not totally opposed, entity, pursuing a completely different agenda. REORGANIZATION OF THE

HINDU MAHASABHA IN BENGAL

By July 1939 the Hindu Mahasabha had largely come out of its isolation in Bengal. First of all it was decided to merge the two different Sabhas operating in Bengal – the Bengal Provincial Hindu Sabha working from Hriday Sarkar Lane, Calcutta under Sir Manmatha Nath Mukherjee and the All India Hindu Mahasabha. The work was done in 205 Cornwallis Street, Calcutta in the presence of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee.7 The Bengal countryside was dotted with new branches of the Hindu Mahasabha. Offices were opened in Puran Bharenga, Bhangabari, Khoksabari, Nelchia and Atgharia in the Pabna district; Maheshwardi in Dacca; Kalighat and Kotulpur in Bankura; Narottamnagar in Noakhali; Shashidal, Galiara and Telikona in Tippera; Meherpur in Jessore; Salehpur in Hooghly; Alambazar in 24-Parganas; and Sainthia in Birbhum where the Secretary Shyamapada Ghosh expected 400 members to be enrolled.8 This was also the time when several talented and gifted men were in a quandary regarding the future of the province. They were pained at the way Hindu interests were being trampled underfoot. The Congress was neither able nor willing to offer a strong leadership against the Muslim despotism as they were worried about the few Muslim members in their own camp. This ambivalence confused many at this time. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was also one of them. He had come to the Bengal Legislative Assembly as a Congress nominee to the special constituency meant for the university. His primary concern was to look after the academic interests of the province. He had surrendered his seat when the Congress decided to withdraw from all offices in protest against the arbitrary action of the Viceroy in involving the country into the Second World War without caring to consult the elected representatives of the people. At this juncture Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee came under the influence of Savarkar, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha. He was deeply impressed by Savarkar’s call to the Hindus never to divide and to

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‘view every question whether religious, social and above all political, through the Hindu point of view alone’. Syama Prasad now decided to join the Hindu Mahasabha to be able to serve the country better.9 Savarkar was the heir to a long line of revolutionary tradition in Maharashtra taken forward by Vishnushastri Krushnashastri Chiplunkur, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and S.M. Paranjape. He was born in a Chitpavan Brahmin family of Nasik and displayed his talents as a leader of men very early in life. There were communal riots all over India between 1893 and 1895 and young Savarkar was moved to form a Council of Action to prevent the desecration of temples. He used to spend hours sitting at the feet of his family deity Durga looking for solutions. These were tumultuous years in the history of Maharashtra when the whole country was swayed with a nationalist fervour with the Sivaji celebrations and the Ganapati festivals. Murders of a few officials like Walter Charles Rand, the British Plague Commissioner of Pune responsible for the maladministration of the plague districts of Poona led the authorities to come down on Maharashtra with a strict hand and the Chapekar Brothers Damodar Hari Chapekar (1870-98), Balkrishna Hari or Bapurao Chapekar (1873-99) and Vasudeo Hari Chapekar (1879-99) and Mahadev Vinayak Ranade were hanged in the Yeravada jail. Young Savarkar organized the secret society mitra mela (Society of Friends) in school and a number of recruits were collected through his magnetic personality to swell the society’s ranks. He went to study law in Bombay and participated in the swadeshi agitation of 1905-8. He was called to the Bar in London and stayed in the India House of Shyamaji Krishnavarma and came in contact with many revolutionaries like Lala Har Dyal, Virendra Chattopadhyay and Madame Cama and wrote the celebrated history of the revolt of 1857 The First War of Indian Independence in 1910. The book was immediately banned within the British Empire and was secretly published from France. Shyamaji Krishnavarma of the India House in London was an admirer of Dayanand Saraswati, the author of Satyarth Prakash. The Arya Samaj movement in the Punjab had derived its origins from Dayanand’s ideas. Savarkar must have come into contact with those ideas in London. Soon after he got involved in the Curzon Wyllie murder conspiracy and was put to jail in 1910. He was kept in jail for

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27 long years till 1937. He made a first hand acquaintance of Khilafatists in the Ratnagiri jail. The aggressive temper of the Khilafatists and the way they set political matters within a religious context led him to think of the helplessness of the Hindu position vis-à-vis this jihadi ideology. This inspired him to write the book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu.10 NETWORK OF HINDU ORGANIZATIONS

While Savarkar had merely dealt with the realm of ideas it was left to another son of Maharashtra, Dr. Keshorao or Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940) to give practical shape to his ideas. Hedgewar is said to have visited Savarkar in jail and created an organization for the defence of the Hindus. This was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS), which was founded in Nagpur in 1925. In 1927 Dr. B.S. Moonje reorganized the corps in the four Maratha speaking districts of the Central Provinces. This volunteer organization tried to spread its branches (shakhas) into the farthest districts and villages through its pracharaks (preachers) and train up young boys into the arts of self defence.11 The year 1939 also saw several other similar organizations akin to the Hindu Mahasabha operating from Calcutta like the Hindu Mission, Bharat Sevashram Sangha and the volunteer corps of the Swayamsevak Sanghas. Keshorao Hedgewar of Nagpur opened a branch of the RSS at Calcutta. It was located at the Silpa Mahavidyalaya of Birla at Harrison Road and Amherst Street crossing. Vithal Rao Patki, a cricketer, was given charge of the branch and 30 volunteers were recruited to make a beginning.12 The purpose of Hedgewar’s organization, as explicated in a letter of R.L. Tankiwaly, Pleader, Wardha was ‘the sole ideal of uplift of Hindudom’. It was meant ‘to organize Hindus without any distinction of caste and creed and no class character’. And also: The Sangh believes in Hindu Nationhood under the hegemony of Hindus and Hindutva as Rashtriyata and has the Bhagwa Dhwaj as its national flag. It is the aim of the RSS to systematize and strengthen the Hindu society to make it self sufficient in all respects to protect the Hindu religion, culture and civilization against all invasion, present and future. The organization

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firmly believes that this aim cannot be fully achieved without inculcating martial spirit among the Hindus and with this idea the imparting of military training and the giving of intellectual discourses are the main items of its activities. The RSS with this ideology stands for emancipation of Hindus from bondage.13

The extent of the preparations being undertaken by the RSS for its branches can be gauged from another Marathi letter written by V.R. Patki of 1 Sarkar Lane, Calcutta to R.V. Kelkar of 42 Oakland Road, Acton, London, W.3 informing him that recruits to the volunteer corps were already being trained in fire arms. The Officer Training Corps (OTC) had already been dispatched to various important cities like Bhagalpur, Monghyr, Pabna, Calcutta, Madras, Waltair, Jhansi, Gwalior and Indore. He was requisitioning more aiming rest, aiming stand, aiming disc, books on bayonet fighting and such equipments.14 Swami Satyananda proposed a Defence Militia in the Hindu Mission meeting on 8 July 193914 while in the Bharat Sevashram Sangha meeting at Nahar Hall on 1 July 1939 Charu Chatterjee proposed the raising of a volunteer corps of 2,000 for the defence of Hindus.15 REACHING OUT TO THE PEOPLE

In order to rouse the Hindus of Bengal from defeatism and fear psychosis the Hindu Mahasabha decided to celebrate 28 October 1939 as the ‘Hindu Nation Day’. Flags were to fly atop every Hindu house and Savarkar wanted every Hindu to tie rakhi around the wrist of 5 other Hindus.16 However, when the proposal was sent to the Commissioner of Police in Calcutta on 16 October 1939 he refused to grant permission. When it was brought to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s notice in Madhupur, he understood that ‘the authorities are determined to crush our movement’.17 N.C. Chatterjee, who was touring Assam at this time was very disappointed and requested Datta to arrange for at least the rakhibandhan and some processions or meetings.18 In some of the districts, however, the day passed in great celebration. In Barisal the flag was hoisted by Manoranjan Mukherjee accompanied by a chanting of Bande Mataram. Lakshmi Kanta

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Sengupta recounted the past glories of Bengal and the front ranking role of the province in heralding new ideas of political and social reform. Pandit Narendra Nath Das exhorted people to draw inspiration only from the ‘broad and catholic spirit of Hindu philosophy and culture’ instead of borrowing ideas from the West. He also dwelt on the significance of Vijay Dashami for killing all evil forces symbolized by Madhu Kaitava, Shumbha Nishumbha and Mahishasura.19 Throughout 1939 the province was constantly agitated about the Communal Award, the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, the Bengal Moneylenders’ Bill, reservation of quota for Muslims in government services and interference in education. On 21 July 1939 the Bengal Provincial Hindu Sabha submitted a memorial to the Governor signed by more than 50,000 ratepayers of Calcutta against the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill and the Primary Education Bill.20 Hindus of Bengal had their sympathizers outside the province and leaflets with the swastika, an old Aryan religious symbol, printed at the top and brought from Ahmedabad were circulated by Ashutosh Lahiri at a meeting of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Sabha at Albert Hall on 28 June 1939. The meeting was presided over by Sailendranath Banerjee, Bar-at-Law and Pramatha Nath Banerjee, Minto Professor, Calcutta University. The Communal Award, the Money Lenders’ Bill, the distribution of legislative power by the Government of India Act, the Corporation Bill, the communal ratio in government services and the interference in education were criticized as the weapons employed by the Government to repress the Hindus of Bengal. The communal reservation in Government services was a device to secure employment for many incompetent Mohammedans it was felt. The meeting condemned the anti-Hindu policy of the Bengal ministry and resented the measures crippling them politically, economically and culturally. The meeting viewed with great concern the growing insecurity of life and property of the Bengal Hindus and forcible interference with their religious observances. It called upon the Hindus to organize themselves in defence of their rights and privileges. In this meeting Narendra Nath Das drew attention to the fact how the police was attacked by the Muslims on the day of the Holi. No action was taken

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against the Muslim leaders who organized a procession against Savarkar during the Khulna Conference. This was possible because the Muslims were assured of full protection from their British masters against all nefarious actions. ‘The Muslims were like jackdaws strutting in borrowed plumes,’ as Das put it, and it was ‘up to the Hindu youths who had bearded the British lion, to pluck those feathers from the jackdaws.’ He also wanted that just as Ireland paralysed the British Government, similarly they should paralyse the Muslim Government of Bengal. Swami Satyanand wanted a full fledged defence plan for the Hindus.21 There was another meeting organized by the Bhawanipur United Club House on 1 July 1939 against the opportunist Congress stand of ‘neither acceptance nor rejection’ regarding the Communal Award of 1932.22 Mahasabha stalwarts tried to bring about an allIndia consciousness among the Hindus and evolve a united Hindu front by addressing a meeting of about 75 up country Hindus assembled in the Girish Park in north Calcutta, where Swami Satyanand spoke against the oppression of Hindus in the North-West Frontier Province.23 In the meeting organized under the banner of the Hindu Mission on 7 July 1939 at 32 B Harish Chatterjee Street under the presidency of Pramathanath Tarkabhushan, Swami Satyanand stressed the need for having a common religion, a national song, a party, a leader and a programme of work for all Hindus. The common programme could embrace both political and economic work as well as the organization of a common defence.24 In the Bharat Sevashram Sangha meeting at Nahar Hall on 1 July 1939 Swami Vedananda spoke against oppression of Hindus in Pabna. Sanat Kumar Roy Chowdhury urged that the Hindus must stand up in defence of their rights and drive out the criminal elements by force.25 The Communal Award of 1932 was universally believed to be responsible for all the miseries of the Hindus. Calcutta hosted the fourth session of the All India Anti-Communal Award Conference on 27 August 1939. The meeting was held at the University Institute Hall under the presidency of M.S. Aney and was inaugurated by the noted scientist Sir P.C. Ray. Sir Manmatha Nath Mookerjee, former acting Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, condemned the

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opportunist Congress stand of ‘neither accept nor reject,’ which virtually bartered away the birth right of a community for the benefit of separatists and communalists: It is not an ingradient of true nationalism to agree to measures inherently unsound and unfair to one or more communities in order to purchase the temporary goodwill of the communities unduly favoured by those measures. If the decision has wronged any community the Government cannot say that the last word has been said. For though wrongs done to individuals may remain unremedied history does not give us any instance of a wrong done to a community remaining eternally unredressed. We have today legislative and administrative measures frankly conceived in the interests of the majority population; nay more, for the purpose of humiliating and crushing the minority, which is admittedly more intellectual, more politically minded and constitutes a very much more proportionate amount to the public funds. Indeed so far as my Province is concerned, the attempt is frankly to rob Peter to pay Paul.26

Sir P.C. Ray blamed authorities in Delhi and Whitehall for not doing their duties to India in respect to the disease in the body politic – the hated communal decision. ‘A national system of government’ he pronounced his judgement, ‘could not be built on separate electorates.’27 M.S. Aney, in his Presidential Address maintained that forces opposed to democracy and nationalism should be opposed tooth and nail. Provincial autonomy without a strong centre was an evil; provincial power in the hands of representatives returned on communal tickets was the antithesis of nationalism and democracy. The Communal Award was an injustice to the Hindus and Sikhs. It was an insult to the Hindus to be told that the special privileges of the minority outweigh the rights of the Hindus. The Poona Pact had added insult to injury and further weakened the Bengali Hindus. He regretted the damages that sometimes result out of Gandhi’s responses to his ‘inner voice’. The formation of Congress ministries in several provinces could not redress the situation.28 A new recruit to the Mahasabha platform was the Finance Minister, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. In his speech he expressed an unequivocal opposition to the Communal Award. The non-committal ‘neither accept nor reject’ stand of the Congress could spring from an inability to understand the plight of the Bengalis under its impact. The

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pernicious effect of the Award was not as obvious in the other provinces as in Bengal. The High Command, therefore, failed to appreciate the predicaments of the Bengal Congress. ‘The Bengal Congress has therefore become helpless. The High Command will have to be made to appreciate Bengal’s problems. Let not a single vote in the next Assembly elections be cast in favour of “neither accept nor reject” formula.’ Hindu opinion should be consolidated and that alone would bring about fresh legislation. Mere speeches, processions and boycotts of schools and colleges were not enough anymore. The artificial barrier between SCS and non-SCS should be made to disappear.29 DR. SYAMA PRASAD MOOKERJEE’S

TOUR OF EAST BENGAL

Inspired by Savarkar, from September 1939 Syama Prasad undertook a tour of the East Bengal districts, where the Hindus were in a minority and had been suffering great oppression in the hands of the majority community. The purpose of this tour was to promote unity among the Hindus and consolidate them in a solid bloc, conscious about their own rights and prepared to defend them against hostile forces. At Mymensingh Syama Prasad outlined the programme that the Hindu Consolidation had in mind. These were to work for the rejection of the Communal Award and the introduction of joint electorate with adult franchise and to see that the next census be carried out properly to prevent tampering with accurate population statistics. The abolition of untouchability and the redistribution of Bengal’s boundaries on a linguistic basis also figured significantly among his agenda.30 He was greeted with a very ‘spontaneous and sympathetic response’ in Khulna, Barisal, Chandpur, Comilla, Brahmanbaria, Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Sherpur and Pabna. Syama Prasad’s approach was straight forward and unbiased. He never couched his addresses in communal verbiage: We did not take our stand on any narrow communal plane, nor did we plead for any special favour for the Hindus. . . . For the sake of nationalism itself the Hindus of Bengal must consolidate and guard by all effective means against the present attack on their rights, political, economic, cultural and social.31

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And again at Barisal: ‘The movement for Hindu consolidation was meant principally to stamp out the spirit of defeatism which has come upon the Hindus. We do not want to preach hatred against any person or country.’32 Syama Prasad made special efforts to reach out to the depressed classes and the Gour Nitai temple at Chandpur and Raghunath Jiu temple at Sherpur were thrown open to all in course of his tour in these places.33 Syama Prasad had to face some disturbances in Barisal, where a few boys were instigated to create trouble. But the situation could be diplomatically handled. At Comilla there was an unprovoked attack on the Hindu Mahasabha leaders, when they were entering the gates of the Victoria College at the invitation of the staff and students of the college. Bimal Chatterjee and a few local students were wounded. Mahasabha leaders failed to organize any meeting in Noakhali and Serajgunge in Pabna as local leaders complained of rowdy local Muslim elements which were left unchecked by the authorities.34 The desperate situation of the Hindus in the East Bengal districts like Pabna, Noakhali, Rajshahi and Bogra compelled Hindu Mahasabha leaders to think of sending a memorial to His Majesty the King with copies to the Viceroy, the Secretary of State, Col. Wedgewood Benn and Major Attlee.35 Sanat Ray Chowdhury was assigned the responsibility of preparing the draft and submit it to Manindra Nath Datta, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Ashutosh Lahiri and B.S. Moonje for approval.36 Dr. Mookerjee and B.C. Chatterjee came out with their findings in the context of this demand for an enquiry in the situation of the province in a joint statement.37 ‘Moslem Raj in Bengal’ according to them, ‘has helped to create in the province a situation unparalleled in British India by fomenting communal passion and class hatred.’ They accused the ministry of deliberately pursuing a policy ‘to curb, check and injure in every vital respect the interest and claims of the Hindu community’ on the plea of advancing the interest of the Muslim community. They drew attention to the ‘systematic campaign to cripple the Hindus’.38 In course of their visits to different parts of the district and their

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protracted interactions with local representatives, Dr. Mookerjee and B.C. Chatterjee had discovered that ‘Hindus in certain parts of the province are living today in an atmosphere of panic and terror’. A violent anti-Hindu propaganda was being carried on by the supporters of the ministry and sometimes the ministers themselves, with a view to widening the gulf between the two communities.39 Dr. Mookerjee and B.C. Chatterjee found the legislative measures like the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act aimed at hitting the Hindus ‘in a most arbitrary fashion’. The Bengal Moneylenders’ Act and the administration of the Bengal Agricultural Debt Act, they argued, had ‘hit at Hindu capital and property’ and dislocated ‘the whole economic life of the Hindu middle class throughout the province’ in the name of alleviating peasant hardships.40 Attention was drawn particularly to the educational budget to point out the discrimination practiced with regard to the students of the two communities. Though the student population consisted mainly of the Hindus yet scholarships were distributed in a manner so that Hindu candidates could not avail of them. A Rs. 2,000 grant was earmarked only for the Muslim students of Comilla College. It was the Comilla College students, who had hit the headlines for staging an attack on visiting Hindu Mahasabha leaders and injuring a few of them. The matter was of particular significance as those who had been attacked had not been given a hearing by the concerned ministry. Then Dacca University was gifted with the Fazlul Huq Hall for Muslim students regardless of the need for accommodation for thousands of Hindu students. Since the assumption of office by the Coalition ministry the educational grants had neglected the technical, commercial and agricultural streams as there were few takers among the Muslim students for these streams. There were lavish grants for the Islamia College to the utter neglect of institutions under private Hindu management with slender funds. Facilities for Sanskrit education, on the other hand, were gradually drying up.41 The drive for a thorough Islamization was most noticeable in the branch of primary education. While in places where the Muslims were in a minority, maulavis were given appointments to teach them and Muslim textbooks were also provided, books intended for maktabs

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were being forced on Hindu boys and girls living in Muslim majority areas. Hindu students were often compelled to attend classes in Muslim religious instruction.42 The Joint Report of the Hindu Mahasabha leaders also objected to the contents of the textbooks, authored by Muslim writers. These were written in a language, which was interspersed with Urdu and Persian words as opposed to the standardized Bengali, which drew more on Sanskrit words. This language was disparagingly called musalmani Bangla and was thoroughly disapproved by the authors of the Joint Report.43 They attributed it to the lack of Hindu representation in District Educational Boards. All 11 sub-inspectors of schools at Noakhali were Muslims. Primary schools were to be relocated from Hindu to Muslim quarters. Ninety per cent of the administrators were Muslims, who failed to protect the Hindus of these regions.44 Appointment, transfer and retirement in government service was also influenced by communal considerations. The report mentioned the pathetic case of a Hindu science graduate who had joined a government college when no Muslim candidate could be found. But later he was made to vacate the post when a Muslim turned up. There were confidential circulars in many departments prohibiting appointment of Hindus for years to come to stabilize the HinduMuslim ratio.45 The report also drew attention to the attempt to capture all District Board Chairmanships through government nominations. Muslim Chairmen often tried to manipulate important decisions in favour of their own community. The delimitation proposals of the Malda district Board Chairman was a case in point. Attempts were going on to redefine ward areas to reduce Hindus to a minority in wards and thereby gain control of the Union Boards. The authors of the Joint Report emphasized the importance of the next Census from the point of view of correct recording of the population ratio and demanded joint enumerators (one Hindu and another Muslim).46 They expressed concern regarding anti-Hindu propaganda through manipulations of the media and a government subsidy of Rs. 30,000 for one such subservient newspaper while Hindu newspapers were often muzzled.47

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The Joint Report also deprecated the general deterioration of inter­ communal relations, which in its turn led to the desecration of temples, abduction of women and forced conversions. In Noakhali, Serajgunge, Malda and Pabna the main thrust of Muslim wrath against the Hindus was economic. There was an attempt to cover up the incompetence of the Coalition ministry to solve the problem of inflation, wartime scarcities, hoarding, black marketeering and speculation in daily necessities and direct the grievances against Hindu shopkeepers. Thus there were comments from the Muslim MLAs like ‘Hindus should be reduced to the position of prisoners of war without ration’ through economic boycott; Marwaris as a community had become their bête noire for their attempts to reap quick profits at the cost of public woes. Comments like ‘wherever Marwaris are found they should be driven out after being beaten with shoes’ freely did the rounds. Emotions were worked up to a fever pitch with propaganda like ‘nothing is to be bought from Hindu shops; rather the shops should be closed’ and ‘we shall kill the Hindus not by hands but by starving them’. Hindu capital was practically driven out of these districts and the backbone of the politically conscious middle class was broken. Properties of Hindus were forcibly occupied in Lamchar, Jagatpur, Karpara and Ramnagar. Hindu haats at Raipur, Dattapara, Nandigram and Karpara were looted, destroyed and labourers were asked not to work.48 Propaganda was sometimes aimed at belittling the Hindus and Hindu culture in the eyes of their Muslim compatriots. Among such were the religiously offensive statements like ‘Hindu goddesses were prostitutes’. Attempts were made to provoke Muslim wrath for being neglected by Hindu teachers by propaganda verging on indecency like ‘Hindu teachers were to be beaten with shoes’. Muslim peasants were incited to assert their position in an aggressive manner which assumed a quite threatening tone: ‘In Mr. Huq’s Bengal Hindus must stay as subordinates. Muslim rule has been restored after 250 years and Hindus must surrender completely if they want to keep their existence.’ Some of the comments were not only provocative, they also reflected the poor taste and cultural deficiency of the propagandists. Among them may be quoted one: ‘formerly Hindus used to deck up

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their mothers and sisters and send them to the Muslim rulers to satisfy them. Present day Muslims must have sunk to a low level than their former compatriots that they no longer get such presents.’49 THE CALCUTTA SESSION OF THE

HINDU MAHASABHA, 1939

Notwithstanding the Defence of India Ordinance in Bengal, it was decided to hold the Hindu Mahasabha Session of 1939 in Calcutta during the closing days of December. The decision showed the important place occupied by the Muslim majority province of Bengal in the political calculations of the Hindu Mahasabha. Men like Ashutosh Lahiri had their doubts if it would be feasible in view of the tense atmosphere of the province.50 But after much speculation, permission was obtained, at last, by the Reception Committee to use the Deshbandhu Park for the purpose for a month from 15 December 1939 to 15 January 1940. Relics of Sivaji and other heroes were to be brought down to Calcutta for exhibition to rouse a pride about the glorious past of the Hindu nation. All the Hindu sabhas in the state were to be in touch with the reception committee.51 The Hindu community in Bengal made an unique display of solidarity among people from all parts of the country. There were huge donations for the events from all sections of the people, Bengali as well as non-Bengali, revealing the strong support for the Mahasabha among all levels of the Calcutta gentry. There were donations from big business houses like Jugal Kishore Birla, Seth Ramkumar Bangur, Sri Badridas Goenka, Radhakissen Kanodia, Messrs. Khaitan and Company, Rai Bahadur Mangilal Taperia, Jwala Prosad Bhartia, Ramsahaimall Merc, Messrs. P.D. Himmatsingka and Company, Karanchand Thapar, G. Bagaria, M.G. Poddar and B.K. Rohtagi. The sympathy of big businessmen to Hindu mobilization was not unknown. Most of these people had their business transactions in the Burrabazar area of the city, in the vicinity of mosques. These areas had witnessed communal unrest in the 1920s and suffered losses on account of the outbreak. The domination of Bengal politics by the Mohammedans was not at all to their liking. The Poddars had already been associated with the cow protection leagues in Calcutta and had

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pre-existing links with the Arya Samaj.52 Since 1932 the establishment of a separate Muslim Chamber of Commerce and the reservation of a seat in the provincial legislature for a Muslim commercial association had added to the worry of the Hindu businessmen in Calcutta. With the onset of the world trade depression, competition in business intensified, with an attempt to clinch whatever small gains came one’s way. G.D. Birla had close links with Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and had supported his opposition to the Communal Award. Calcutta Marwaris suspected that the Muslim government might take measures which might run counter to their interests. As Marwari businessmen began to grow at the expense of wartime withdrawal of British business interests in India, they increasingly began to resent Muslim competition and control.53 The declining landowning gentry was already at the receiving end of all populist legislation of the Muslim League Government like Agricultural Debtors’ Bill, Bengal Moneylenders’ Bill, the communal ratio in the services and the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. So it was not unusual that all the big Bengali landowners, lawyers and eminent gentlemen of Calcutta would be also equally generous. The names of Kumar Promothonath Roy, Lord Sinha of Raipur, S.N. Banerjee, S.M. Bose, the late Advocate General of India, Jiban Krishna Mitter, Kumar Jitendra Mullick and Kumar Dinendra Mullick, Maharaj of Mymensingh, P.C. Ghosh, solicitor, Kumar Birendranath Roy, Kumar Madan Mohan Mallick, Rai Ramratan Banerjee Bahadur, Rai Jatindranath Chaudhuri, Rai Bahadur Surendra Narayan Sinha, Rai Bahadur Satish Chandra Roy Chowdhury.54 Ananda Bazar Patrika went into raptures regarding the response received by the proposed Mahasabha session from all corners of Bengal. Mymensingh, Barisal and Dacca sent the largest number of delegates. Bihar sent 400, Bhagalpur alone contributing a hundred; Maharashtra as well as the Central Provinces sent an equal number. UP sent 250, Assam 250, which is pretty large a figure, compared to the smallness of Hindu population in the province. Punjab, Gujarat and other provinces sent 50 each. The total number of delegates came to nearly 6,000 altogether. There were distinguished people among the visitors like Dr. Moonje, Bhai Parmanand, Dr. Gokul Chand Narang, Raja Raghunandan Prosad Singh, Kumar Gangananda Singh,

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Babu Gulab Chand Hira Chand of Karachi, Dr. Pranjpe, Mr. Chitnavis, Prof. Gokul Chand of Nepal, Raja Narainlal Bansilal of Bombay, Dr. Abhayankar, Saint Panchlegaonkar Maharaj, a renowned saint of Maharashtra, Mr. Bhopatkar, Dr. Vardarajulu Naidu and Dr. Hedgewar, the President of the RSS.55 On 17 December there was a rally of 430 volunteers in 8 platoons under different platoon commanders and under the supervision of Jyotsna Sarkar and Dr. Santosh Kumar Mukherjee in Deshbandhu Park. About 2,500 persons were present to watch the programme. Three band parties including male and female participants presented their performances. Howrah volunteers’ badges bore the inscription Om. The Mahasabha leaders inspected the volunteers and they were garlanded. B.C. Chatterjee said it was the beginning of the march to independence. He declared that swaraj was to be won by the Hindus alone, who formed three-fourths of the country’s population. Large donations of Rs. 500, 750 and 1,000 were received from G. Bagaria, Attorney at Law, M.G. Poddar, Attorney at Law, Ashutosh Ganguly, Sushil Mukherji, Sailen Sen, S.K. Ghosh, H.K. Ghosh, N.C. Mandal, J.N. Basu, Messrs. P.D. Himmatsingka and Company, Chadhia and Chadhia and A.N. Chaudhuri.56 The presidential procession made a triumphal journey from the Howrah station where the President Vinayak Damodar Savarkar alighted from the train. All sections of Hindus, including Marwaris, Arya Samajists, Sikhs, Buddhists, Oriyas, Chowduries, Akhrawallas and Nepalis mobilized their full forces on that day. The procession assembled at Howrah Maidan and passed along Buckland Bridge, Howrah Bridge, Strand Road, Harrison Road, College Street and Wellington Street and terminated at the Wellington Square. The Sikh community provided the mounted guard for the President’s protection.57 While passing the Jaluatoli mosque on the Harrison Road the procession shouted Hindustan kis ka hai – Hinduon ka hai (To whom does India belong? It belongs to the Indians) much to the chagrin of Raghib Ahsan, the General Secretary of the Calcutta Muslim League.58 The session was to commemorate the Revolt of 1857 with an exhibition. On the suggestions of Mama Dixit from Dixit Ashram, Poona, a pillar was set up in memory of the ‘martyrs of Hindustan’,

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who died between 1857 and 1939. One big board displayed the names of political prisoners and another board was put up in memory of all known and unknown political exiles.59 The opening day, that is, 27 December was devoted to the foundation stone laying ceremony for Lala Lajpat Rai Library in Maheshtala, Kidderpore on 6 cottahs of land gifted by the Calcutta Corporation. While Savarkar was on his way, Moonje delivered a lecture calling Lajpat Rai ‘the Lion of Punjab’. Moonje called upon the people who were opening the library to behave like lions. ‘Lion could die of hunger but would not eat grass. He would rule in hell rather than be a slave in heaven. He preferred to live in forest rather than be a rich man in bondage.’60 The Hindus should live in Hindustan independent as lions. There should be Hindu Raj in Hindustan. Jinnah had insulted the Hindus by celebrating the resignation of the Congress ministries as a ‘Deliverence Day’ and the Hindus should wreak vengeance.61 Savarkar, in his speech, called Bengal the land of dreams, where the dream of swaraj was first dreamt and the whole of India was waiting anxiously to see the dream fulfilled. He insisted that Hindustan must belong to the Hindus and be ruled by the Hindus. Hindus had so long received all with open arms – Turkish, European, German, whoever they might be. But these foreigners turned the tables on the Hindus and tried to become masters instead of remaining guests.62 Linlithgow’s ‘August Offer’ of 1940 to set up a representative body after the war with Dominion Status as the goal was questioned by Savarkar as it had been laid down that the British Government ‘could not contemplate transfer of their present responsibilities for the peace and welfare of India to any system of government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life.’63 In the opinion of the Hindu Mahasabha the existence of minorities was a common problem in every country; they might get citizenship. But in India they stood in the way of freedom. Savarkar did not approve of the way it was demanded that a settlement with the minorities should be arrived at to begin the work of formulating a constitution for independent India.64 The Working Committee of the Hindu Mahasabha met in the house of N.C. Chatterjee and prepared a draft of the resolutions to

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be adopted during the Mahasabha session. First of all the Hindu Mahasabha offered full cooperation during the war subject to the fulfilment of certain demands by His Majesty’s Government. These were (i) the introduction of responsible government at the centre; (ii) the redressal of the grievous wrong done to the Hindus by the Communal Award, both at the centre and in the provinces – particularly in Bengal and Punjab where the Hindus have been reduced to the position of fixed statutory minority contrary to all principles of democracy with their representation in the legislature reduced far below what they are entitled to even on the basis of their population strength; (iii) in order to inspire the people of India to feel that the Indian army is the national army of the people of India and not an army of occupation of the British, to remove all artificial distinction between the so-called ‘listed’ and ‘non-listed classes and martial and non-martial races and to accomplish the complete Indianization of the Indian army as early as possible; (iv) the setting up of an organization for the defence of civil rights, to look after the religion and honour of Hindus throughout India, arrange for religious instruction for the Hindus, to allow the unhampered progress of Hindu Sangathan and Shuddhi movement, the restoration of Hindu temples and the redressal of the riotous situation in the NWFP and Sukkur. The second demand of the Hindu Mahasabha was for independence and Dominion Status after the war. They wanted that a Constituent Assembly be formed on the basis of joint electorates in order to frame a constitution suited to the needs of India. They registered their protest against the recent pronouncement of the Viceroy and the Secretary of State to the effect that the further constitutional progress of India must depend upon a solution of its communal and minority problems, since they flagrantly violate the fundamental principles of a democratic constitution resting ultimately upon the vote of the political party commanding a majority and not subjected to the veto of minorities. The resolution about the Bengal ministry recorded strong protest against the ‘openly communal and reactionary policy of the present Ministry in Bengal’, as evidenced by its various legal enactments and administrative measures calculated to curb the rights and liberties of

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the Hindus of Bengal and cripple their economic strength and cultural life. As instance of the above policy of the ministry are cited the passing of the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act, introduction of communal ratio in public services, recruitment to public service in defiance of the recommendation of the Public Service Commission or without reference to them, discriminatory treatment to Hindu officers in Government Services, discrimination against Hindus in the matter of education grants and distribution of stipends and scholarships.65 On the third day of the session Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee prepared a resolution that the Hindus were to unite and organize for the defence of their rights, liberties and culture under the banner of the Hindu Mahasabha. He invited the Hindus of India to stand by the Hindus of Bengal to resist the injustice and discrimination against them on the following counts: (i) The Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act with the introduction of separate electorate in the Calcutta corporation; (ii) introduction of communal ratio in the public services in favour of Muslims not even excluding the specialized and judicial services; (iii) undue preference to Mohammedans in the recruitment to public services in defiance of the recommendations of the Public Service Commission or without reference to them; (iv) discriminatory treatment against government officers in Government Services; (v) the posting, transferring and promoting of officers on communal considerations; (vi) packing particular districts with Moslem officers, negligence in taking any effective step in cases of dereliction of duty of officers, thereby making the Muslim masses to believe that Muslim Raj has been established, which is likely to encourage them to commit acts of violence against Hindus; (vii) moslemization of certain services especially of Educational Services; (viii) discrimination against Hindus in the matter of educational grants and distribution of stipends and scholarships and locat­ ion of schools;

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(ix) discrimination against the Hindus in the matter of nomination to local bodies and boards of management of educational institutions; (x) lowering of the standard of efficiency and integrity of admin­ istration by introduction of the principle of minimum qualification; (xi) discrimination against Hindus in the matter of grants from the public exchequer for purposes of relief and in respect of agricultural and industrial loans; (xii) discrimination in granting licenses and contracts; (xiii) attempts to corrupt the Bengali language and undermine the foundation of Hindu culture, e.g. by selection of textbooks in the primary and secondary schools subversive of Hindu religion, nationalism and culture, as also of textbooks in history containing perverted and untrue accounts of historical events; (xiv) persistent negligence in the matter of checking widespread destruction and desecration of the Hindu temples, idols and places of worship; (xv) unwarranted interference with the peaceful performance of Hindu religious rites and ceremonies in private and public festivals; (xvi) interference with the liberty of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of association of the Hindus while condoning violent anti-Hindu speeches and propaganda by supporters of the ministry; (xvii) subsidizing Muslim newspapers out of public funds for purposes of communal propaganda; (xviii) failure to take effective steps for prevention of crime against Hindu women and for the protection of Hindu property against organized Mohammedan aggression. The Calcutta session of the Hindu Mahasabha passed all these resolutions.66 A great shocker came for the Coalition ministry in Bengal when in December 1939 the Finance Minister Nalini Ranjan Sarkar resigned from the ministry. The Congress now lifted the ban on him. The Mahasabha too tried to win him over.67

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THE WORK OF HINDU SANGATHAN

Savarkar had repeatedly stressed the necessity of trying to extend the boundaries of Hinduism to embrace all sections of the Indian people, who would accept India as their motherland and holy land. On 22 January 1940 N.C. Chatterjee addressed a huge meeting of 40,000 Santhals in Dumka and welcomed Santhals, Sikhs and Arya Samajists to the fold of Hinduism. He recommended proselytization as a very useful method of bringing back people, who had strayed from the path of Hinduism. The Hindu Mission had started its work on those lines. Proselytization according to him was an old practice, introduced by the Buddhists, who carried the message of their religion to most countries of Asia. This was most necessary in view of the importance of numbers in a democratic, constitutional set up as political power in a democracy rested in the people. He warned the caste Hindus of the dangers of looking down on some as untouchables; such an attitude might persuade some people to incline towards Islam or Christianity, which had no room for such discriminations. Hinduism was under attack from adverse forces. The inclusion of Santhals could add to the strength of Hinduism.68 CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PAKISTAN RESOLUTION

The Muslim League sprang a surprise during its Lahore session on 23 March 1940 by moving a resolution in favour of ‘independent states’ in Muslim majority areas. This was the Pakistan scheme. The Congress did not utter a syllable against it. The Bengal Congress went a step ahead. Subhas Chandra Bose negotiated a pact with the Muslim League for an understanding during corporation elections of 1940. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had initially tried to work out an understanding with Subhas. There was no quarrel about 31 seats and 4 seats reserved for Anglo-Indians. For the rest of the 12 seats Subhas and Sarat wanted a free hand without reference to the Hindu Mahasabha leaders. That gave rise to some misunderstanding.69 But Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was not ready to compromise on the issue of opposing the Pakistan scheme. Any kind of understanding with the League was therefore an anathema to him. But Bidhu Sarkar of his party had accepted Mr. Ispahani’s condition that 2 of the 5

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Aldermen would be Muslims and Mr. Siddiqi would be mayor for the first year. On these conditions Subhas had worked out a pact with the Muslim League. One faction of the Hindu Mahasabha also opted to remain with the League-Congress alliance. This turned Dr. S.P. Mookerjee against the alliance with Subhas and he snapped all ties with him.70 The Working Committee of the Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay also condemned the League-Congress Pact under conditions which were considered to be highly detrimental to Hindu solidarity and interests in Bengal.71 Thereafter the main plank of the Hindu Mahasabha’s attack on the Congress was the Pakistan issue. The condemnation of the Pakistan Resolution by the Hindu League session in Lucknow on 27-8 July 1940 strengthened their stand.72 On 21 March 1940 the Hindu Mahasabha published its statement of objects in the Calcutta Corporation elections. These were (i) em­ ployment in the Corporation for sons and dependents of ratepayers (ii) Corporation grant to known and competent social service organizations (iii) redress was also to be sought for Hindu grievances against the erection of dargahs (commemorative tombs for holy men held in great respect) for the assassin of Bholanath Sen, mosques and Pirs’ tombs in the municipal market and the dissection of Hindu corpses in Corporation aided hospitals.73 In a meeting at Serampore hosted by Rai Bahadur Krishnamohan Bhattacharya and attended by 10,000 people (exaggeration of the number by the newspaper is not ruled out) Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee appealed for Hindu unity. He refuted the suggestion made in some quarters that theirs was a communal concern. He assured the audience that the Hindu Mahasabha was not an anti-Muslim organization. If a Muslim or a person from any other community accepted India as the fatherland they were willing to join hands and accept them as brothers of the same community. Padmaraj Jain a Hindu Mahasabha leader said that it was the Congress, which was communal.74 In a meeting of 24 March 1940 in Harish Park Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee promptly seized the issue of the Pakistan Resolution that had been passed in the Lahore session of the Muslim League the day before. He raised the bogey of Muslim domination before his audience

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and asked them if they would like to see Bengal as an independent Muslim state. He promised to bring a motion of no confidence against the Muslim ministry in Bengal for abusing political autonomy. Justice Manmatha Nath Mookerjee narrated the story of the oppression of Hindus in Pabna, Bogra, Noakhali and Chittagong.75 In another meeting on Pratapaditya Road, Justice Mookerjee spoke of how the Holi procession was brought to a halt in Faridpur.76 In the Hazra Park meeting of May 1940 N.C. Chatterjee declared that Hindustan was the land of the Hindus and Pakistan would never be tolerated in this country. It was a product of British diplomacy, Jinnah helping to keep India under perpetual subjection. He spoke of the Muslim oppression in Pabna, Serajgunge and Noakhali and wanted all councilors to organize Hindu militia and gymnasiums in all wards of the city. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee said that the sword in the Mahasabha flag represented resistance to aggression. Referring to the inertia in the Congress, Dhiresh Mukherjee said that the Hindu Mahasabha should be regarded as the Congress of Bengal as the latter had become insolvent.77 Savarkar had urged the raising of a national militia throughout India on a voluntary basis without distinction of caste or creed, which should be equipped in an up to date manner both on land and air and which should serve as a force for Indian defence.78 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee spoke on the same lines in a meeting at Sham Square on 20 March 1940 that the communal decision was crushing the Hindus and they had no voice in legislation. Laws were passed through brute majority of Muslims and European representatives combined together. Unemployment had hit Hindu homes hard. He appealed to the Hindu youth for organizing a Hindu Militia and said that ‘it was glorious to live dangerously’. He asserted that a clash with the British was inevitable sooner or later over the question of the Communal Award. Unless the Hindus were organized, they would be shaken to the very foundation and blotted out.79 The same theme was repeated by him in another meeting at Blacquire Square. Swami Satyanand said that wrongs committed on Hindu women were to be resisted by sharp edged swords.80 At Harish Park in Bhowanipore, Kolkata he said that the Mahasabha stood for protecting Hindu

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interests and aimed at creating a mentality of resistance against aggression.81 The theme of necessity of military training for the Indian youth came up again in B.C. Chatterjee’s speech at Shraddhanand Park. He deprecated Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of non-violence as an obstacle in the way of achieving independence. Provash Kumar Das, ex-serviceman of the Bengali regiment spoke of the volunteer corps of 600 youths in Pabna he had organized for imparting military training to them. Akhil Bharat Hindu Yuva Sabha was already taking shape under Bhai Parmanand’s leadership. It had already demonstrated its skill in the Deshabandhu Park on the eve of the Calcutta session of the Hindu Mahasabha.82 The All India Hindu Yuva Sabha wanted to launch an agitation for the repeal of the Arms Act and the introduction of compulsory military training in schools and colleges. The Joint Secretary in a letter to the General Secretary, Dr. Santosh K. Mukherjee added that the lead should come from Bengal, which had given birth to such heroes as Kanailal, Satyendra and Sri Aurobindo. They coined a slogan too – ‘struggle, struggle to be free’. He spoke of the need of a strong Yuva Sabha in Rangpur.83 In a meeting at Hare Krishna Seth Lane in Calcutta Padma Raj Jain said that the mothers, daughters and wives of Hindus were unsafe under the Muslim regime. He wanted that Hindus should be given military training to be able to defend their womenfolk. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee wanted the organization of volunteer corps at every ward and training of Hindu girls in the art of self defence.84 A new volunteer corps was also organized under the Arya Samaj and met with Jatindra Roy Chowdhury of Tollygunge as its President.85 Swami Pranabananda of the Bharat Sevasram Sangha had invited persons aged between 15 and 50 for membership of the Bangiya Milan Mandir for the defence of rights of Bengali Hindu masses, Hindu women, temples, idols and worship on 31 December 1939 during the annual session of the Hindu Mahasabha.86 The Raksha Dal was organized by him at Madaripur Sevasram where Swami Pranabananda offered puja to Lord Krishna with a discus in his hand and tried to rally all classes of Hindus as they felt threatened both from within and without.87 Rana Pratap day was also observed in June 1940 under the auspices of the

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Mahasabha.88 In a letter of 22 August 1940 V.G. Deshpande of the National Militia Branch, with its central office in Nagpur and an office in Delhi, wrote to Ashutosh Lahiri to organize a branch of the Ram Sena in Bengal. He recommended one M.S. Bakshi of 95 Hazra Road to be appointed for organizing the Sena. Hindus between the age of 20 to 50 were to be eligible for enrolment in the Sena. Its uniform was to be khaki shorts, shirts, orange cap and a spear with a small orange Hindu Mahasabha flag.89 The Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill came under attack in most of these meetings. Ramananda Chatterjee called it an antinational, anti-democratic Bill in a meeting in the Albert Hall on 9 July and attacked the attempts by non-Bengalee Muslims to control the finance of the Corporation in the Town Hall meeting of 25 July. He incited the Hindus to start a grim fight against those non-Bengalee Muslims, who were dubbed ‘traitors, infidels and demons’. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee also criticized the Secondary Education Bill and the Bengal Agricultural Debtors’ Amendment Bill and said that these were nothing but war against the Hindus by the Bengal ministry, which was a plaything in the hands of the British Government. He identified the Communal Award as the crux of the problem, which was created by the British to suppress the Hindus. He asked the Hindus to start a movement ‘legal or illegal’ to get rid of the Award. He wanted Hindus to observe the 1st day of August as the All Bengal Protest Day by holding meetings and demonstrations in defiance of the Defence of India Ordinance.90 Justice Manmatha Nath Mookerjee also held a meeting at Shraddhanand Park to condemn the Secondary Education Bill and Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill.91 Many of these meetings were being broken by the supporters of Subhas Chandra Bose. About 30 up country people armed with lathis about a yard long entered the hall.92 In the scuffle that ensued in the Town Hall meeting presided over by Ramananda Chatterjee in early May, N.C. Chatterjee got hurt in his left foot by the hurling of a chair. Nepal Chandra Roy had to be admitted to a hospital with bleeding wounds.93 Next day Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee again condemned Bose’s pact with the League in a meeting at Dudhwalla Park and invited him to join the Hindu Mahasabha.94

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THE SUKKUR AND NWFP RIOTS

The Hindu Mahasabha also took up the case of the Hindu riot victims of Sukkur in Sind. They published a pamphlet Tales of Torment of the Hindu Minority Community in Sind. The administration of Khairpur was taken over by the Government of Sind in 1927 because of the maladministration of the Mir Chiefs. The Hindus were put to various hardships in religious, social and economic matters. A policy of consistent racial discrimination was followed against the Hindus.95 In November 1939 B.S. Moonje organised the Sind Provincial Hindu Conference at Sukkur under his Presidency and condemned the policy of state authorities. A resolution was adopted against the state authorities of Sind during the Calcutta session of the Hindu Mahasabha in December.96 Enquiry revealed that on 20 November 1939 an agitated Muslim mob brought 4 Muslim dead bodies to the city police station alleged to have been fired at and killed by a Sikh police constable. The mob got infuriated when they were told that the injuries were from stabbing and not from gun shots. They started attacking a lorry with 7 passengers. 155 Hindus were put to death, property worth Rs. 200 million was destroyed and 40 villages were plundered during a week. Hindus started staging a satyagraha in protest at Manzilgarh. On the morning of 19 November they were dispersed by the police through lathi charge and tear gas.97 Rai Bahadur Belliram Dhawan, the Hindu Mahasabha leader of the NWFP was murdered.98 When Mahatma Gandhi came to know of this he advised the Sukkur Hindus to leave the province. The Hindu Mahasabha took great umbrage at this. In his Presidential Address in the Bhagalpur Hindu Conference on 4 February 1940 B.S. Moonje pointed out that Mahatma Gandhi’s backing of Khilafat increased the importance of 7 crores of Muslims in India. Gandhi behaved as if no swaraj was possible without Hindu-Muslim unity. The Moplah riots of 1921 were seen as a direct consequence of this fraternizing. Again, while Gandhi advised 27 per cent of Hindus in Sukkur to leave Sind he thought a mere 12 per cent of Muslims should live safely in Bihar. A similar situation could develop in Punjab and Bengal too. Moonje therefore sought that the Hindus of Bihar should rise to the defence of the Hindu minority in Bengal.99 Sanat Kumar Ray Chowdhury,

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General Secretary of Bengal Hindu Sabha appealed for observing the Sukkur Diwas for condemning the torture on Hindus in Sukkur and for contributing generously for a Sukkur Relief Fund.100 ANTICOMMUNAL AWARD DAY, 17 AUGUST 1940

To register its strong protest against the Pakistan Scheme the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha decided to celebrate an Anti-Communal Award Day in August 1940. There were meetings arranged by the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha and presided over by B.C. Chatterjee at the Indian Association Hall at Bowbazar Street, by the Bengal Pradesh Hindu Mahasabha at Shraddhanand Park presided over by Narendra Kumar Basu, Advocate and at Hazra Park by N.C. Chatterjee. The meetings arranged under its auspices were attended by large crowds of nearly 2,000 persons. The Bengal Congress Nationalist Party also held a meeting at the Calcutta University Institute under the presidency of Harendra Kumar Mukherjee. The lines of distinction between the nationalist section of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha became very thin and Bengali Hindu opinion was slowly crystallizing against the measures taken by the Muslim League Ministry under the dispensation of the Communal Award.101 The dominant theme of these meetings was Hindu-Muslim unity in the face of an imperialist conspiracy using the Muslim League as a tool. At the University Institute Hall Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Pramatha Nath Banerjee and Muhammad Rezaul Karim observed that the British Government had introduced the Award with the deliberate intention of creating a cleavage between the sister communities in this country and place Dominion Status beyond the reach of the people. H.K. Mukherji complained that Communal Award had broken the communal unity which had been achieved by the sufferings and sacrifices of thousands of Indian men and women. The Pakistan Scheme also came under attack. At the Indian Association Hall B.C. Chatterjee too spoke of Hindu-Muslim unity as the only solution and praised Subhas Bose for his positive steps towards the goal.102 In Hazra Park Swami Satyanand said that the Government was conspiring against the Indians by dividing them. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee threatened

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to allow no peace in the province until the Award was annulled and said that 20,000 lives may go in the struggle. N.C. Chatterjee condemned the efforts of the Musim League to grab Rs. 2 crores and 75 lakhs contributed to the Corporation by the city’s ratepayers. He exhorted all Bengal Hindus and Bengali Muslims to defeat this attempt to exclude them from the control of their city. Hindus would rather turn Calcutta into Moscow (in an obvious reference to the burning of Moscow before the Napoleonic invasion) rather than let any communal Napoleon to desecrate the city. Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee remarked that he would call this Government ‘a Satanic Government’ for creating dissensions among the people by the Award.103 At the Shraddhanand Park meeting Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee said that the Hindus were not committed to the cult of non-violence. Indians wanted to equip themselves for the defence of their country. Indranarayan Sengupta drew attention to the gravity of the problem as the British themselves had been fighting with their back to the wall and was in no position to defend India.104 The most important meeting was held at the University Institute Hall on 28 August 1941. Pramatha Nath Banerjee read the speech of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy before a rapt audience. The Acharya rightly pointed out that the Award was thrust on the people of Bengal to crush the agitation for Indian independence for the benefit of Britishers. The obnoxious bills like the Municipal Amendment Bill or the Secondary Education Bill were born out of the Award. On the plea of minority interests the whole country had been subjected to slavery. Hemendra Prasad Ghosh pointed out that the British was only keen on protecting the Muslim minority on political grounds and when it came to the question of other minorities like the Sikhs in the Punjab the Montagu Report had very cleverly decided to dodge the issue. Akhil Chandra Dutt pointed out that Hindu-Muslim rift has increased since the Communal Award came into force. Hindu Muslim unity alone can defeat it. Domestic quarrel was suicidal for both Hindus as well as Muslims. Hindu Muslim unity was the need of the hour. He wanted the two neighbours, Hindu and Muslim, to jointly reject the Pakistan scheme.

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N.C. Chatterjee reminded the people how Shafi Ahmed had told the British during the Round Table Conference that they had come to London to negotiate independence and not to seek arbitration between themselves. MacDonald was not willing to sign the Award, but for the sake of retaining India he was compelled to sign it. The Award had broken the unity so that the nation might not rise again. All the curses like separate electorate, the Muslim ministry, the Pakistan scheme and finally the Dacca riots were all by products of the Award. During Dacca riots Muslims moved from village to village singing songs rejoicing the destruction of the Hindus. The Enquiry Committee evidence revealed all these. Communal Fascism, in his opinion, was no less sinister than Hitler’s Fascism. If Hitler was a ‘Robber Chief ’, so were the British, as they too, had robbed India of her independence. He hoped that both Muslims as well as Hindus would resist Pakistan. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee pointed out that the Pakistan scheme would not have come but for the Award. It was the policy of appeasement followed by the Congress which allowed the Communal Award to stay and bring the Pakistan scheme in its wake. The claim for minority status did not emanate from the Muslims. They were encouraged by the British to make such a demand. As the minority in Bengal, Hindus should have been offered the option between joint or separate electorate. But the British were out to crush the Hindus to stifle the cry for independence. While it was common practice in the world to put a premium on intelligence and culture while framing a constitution, here in India the British broke the convention and made religious considerations the basis of the constitution. The Award was a means to keep India under subjection for ever. ‘The minority bogey was the creation of the British. They created the disease them­ selves by injecting the poison and then declared that the condition of the patient was alarming and the disease was incurable. Independence, he maintained, would not come through begging. It was to be snatched. The Mahasabha wanted a cordial relationship among all communities. But this would not be allowed to happen by the British and the reactionary Muslims. Dr. Mookerjee, therefore, wanted the twenty crore Hindus to unite and achieve freedom for the country.105 The South Calcutta District Hindu Sabha distributed a leaflet

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among the Hindus to unite against the Award, Pakistan Scheme, Moslem League and Khaksars.106 MADURA SESSION OF ALL INDIA HINDU MAHASABHA, 28, 29, 30 DECEMBER 1940

By 1940 the British had understood that they would not be able to keep the country under control during wartime stress merely by conciliating the minority. It was important for them to keep the Hindu Mahasabha in good humour. Both the Secretary of State as well as the Viceroy had appreciated this fact. This perspective of the Government was revealed in a secret note of the Intelligence Chief R. Tottenham, Additional Secretary to DIB, who was happy that the spread of Mahasabha influence in Maharashtra acted as a deterrant to Congress strength in that province.107 The Madura Session of the Hindu Mahasabha was a turning point in the annals of the Mahasabha in that, in contrast with the Congress intention to withdraw cooperation during the war, the Mahasabha offered its full cooperation to the Government during the war. They were satisfied with Dominion Status of the Westminster variety after the war, but wanted the Government to make an immediate declaration to the effect.108 The Mahasabha declared its willingness to work out the war schemes of the Government for the general militarization of the country. The Mahasabha saw an opportunity for the recruitment of the Hindu youth in large numbers to tilt the scales against the large number of Muslims who were being recruited during the war. They wanted the government to make military training compulsory for Indian youths in schools, colleges and universities and supply them with necessary arms and ammunitions. Repeal of the Arms Act and bringing it at par with the practice in England was also sought.109 The Mahasabha also saw an opening for heavy industries in the wartime contingency of the Government and called upon them to encourage and promote the establishment of factories in India with Indian capital and under Indian control where all implements of war like aero engines, aeroplanes, motor engines, tanks, modern armaments and equipments will be manufactured and also to provide for and assist in shipbuilding in India without further delay.110

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The session once again brought up the question of Indian constitutional progress being linked up by the Viceroy as well as the British Government with the settlement of the minority problem. That was tantamount to investing the minority with a power to dictate to the majority and veto progress. It was found to be ‘preposterous, undemocratic in theory and … most detrimental to the legitimate Hindu interests in practice’.111 Above all, the Government was requested to make a clear announcement that the scheme of Pakistan will not be entertained and tolerated by the Government.112 The session also drew attention to the communal lines on which the administration of Bengal was being run and the way Hindu interests were being trampled down. It was therefore desired that the constitution of that province be suspended and the communal ministry be got rid of. Otherwise Bengal would also go the Sind way. N.C. Chatterjee from the Bengal delegation moved a resolution for Direct Action. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee said that demands placed before the Viceroy and the Government of Bengal went unheeded. In Bengal we have roused public opinion to such an extent that with a full sense of responsibility I can say that if any direct action movement is started by the Hindu Mahasabha, the Bengal Hindus will contribute their share irrespective of any consequence whatever. Do not look upon Bengal, Punjab and Sind as particular problems relating to particular province, but look upon them as part and parcel of Hindu nation.113

Dr. Mookerjee did not believe in the barren policy of non-co­ operation. He believed in the policy of responsive cooperation propounded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak which was to capture power wherever power existed for the purpose of utilizing that power to bring more power from unwilling hands. Where cooperation was desirable it would be given; but in spheres where that cooperation was not responded to, but on the other hand, was met with definite hostility, they should have to strengthen themselves to such an extent as to meet hostility with hostility. They were not ashamed to say, Mr. Mookerjee declared, that Hindustan belonged to the Hindus and their political aim was the establishment of a free Hindu Rashtra in India. At the same time they recognized that there was room in the country for persons

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belonging to other communities but that was on only one condition namely, that they regarded the country as their own and identified themselves with the sons of the soil. On the other hand if they were to treat this country as a dharamshala and remain here for their own purposes then we shall treat them as enemies of Hindustan. It was up to the sons and daughters of Madras, the Central Provinces and other provinces, where Hindus were in a majority to declare in one voice that if things were not improved in the Punjab, Bengal and Sind, it would be necessary for them to resort to retaliation. This would have to be said not for the purpose of threatening people but only as a weapon of defence. They did not want to terrorise anybody, nor tread on the legitimate interests of any country. We are unarmed and defenceless. If you really consider that Hitler is such a bad fellow, then train us up and we shall help you and strengthen ourselves for the purpose of defending our motherland. We do not want to look up to anybody, however mighty and powerful, for the purpose of defence of our own country. Cooperation was possible not as between a master and a servant but only as between equals. It was only possible when the old British imperialistic policy was dead and gone.114

DACCA RIOTS AND THE HINDU MAHASABHA

News of the terrible happenings of the Dacca riots began to filter in from March 1941. While there were heated debates in the Bengal Legislative Assembly trying to accuse each other for the calamity, sympathy poured in from Hindus of other provinces of India. The Nagar Hindu Sabha, Lucknow, held a meeting of Hindus on 11 May 1941. They passed a resolution urging upon the Viceroy of India and His Excellency the Governor of Bengal to forthwith suspend the constitution and assume the responsibility for the administration of the province as the Muslim ministry had completely failed to protect the lives and property of the Hindus of Bengal.115 Savarkar, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha, cabled to the Secretary of State for India on 8 April 1941: Anti-Hindu Moslem riots bloodshed arson rampant in Bengal. Dacca city sacked in flames. Villages burnt. Ten thousand Hindu women and children

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homeless starving. Moslem Ministry partially unwilling totally incapable to afford Hindu minority protection. Please order Governor to dismiss Ministy and resume Government in exercize responsibility … for protection of minority.116

R. Tottenham, the Additional Secretary, wanted to send it to the Secetary of State. But the Bengal Government detained it as object­ ionable.117 The Hindu Sabha was making its modest efforts to teach resistance to the Hindus as much as possible. The nature of these preparations can be guessed from a leaflet sent by a housewife, the wife of Ananta Kumar Sengupta of 22, Jaikali Mandir Road, Dacca to her brother­ in-law Amrita Lal Sengupta in Convent Road, Intally, Kolkata and intercepted by the postal censor. The title of the leaflet was Hindu i Hinduke raksha koribe (the Hindu alone will protect the Hindu): Awake oh! the workers, peasants, rich and poor masses of the Hindu community. Take revenge on the infidel Muslim community, which in carrying on the inhuman oppression on the Hindus of the villages in East Bengal by the Shek community. The Hindu houses in the thousands of unprotected villages are being burnt down by the shek people. They are looting the properties of Hindus and are taking away their lives after having severed their limbs. They are coercing them to embrace Islam having placed beef and the Koran in their hands – on their refusal they are being killed. They are ravishing the Hindu women. They are polluting the Hindu temple by throwing beef therein. All the Muslim sub-inspectors and constables are oppressing the Hindus but they are taking no step against the Sheks. Ministry are sending hired Peshwari goondas to Dacca.… Does not your blood boil even at the sight of these oppressions? Kick at the British lion and seize the scepter of justice in your own hands. Stab your assailant and drink the blood of his heart. Unite all Hindus and attack on the Muslim localities in an organized way from all directions and annihilate them. And afterwards make a drive towards the villages and destroy the Muslims wholly. (i) First of all kill the Muslim constable and sub-inspectors. Stab the Muslim assailant and annihilate the Shek community in Hindusthan. (ii) Destroy the mosques and build temples thereon. (iii) Boycott Muslim masses and hackney carriages belonging to Muslims. (iv) Import Hindu masons from Calcutta and other places and introduce Hindu hackney carriage drivers.

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(v) We appeal to the Hindu richmen to import notorious Hindu goondas in Dacca as done by the Huq Ministry.118 MAHARASHTRA FUND FOR RELIEF

News of the Dacca riots could not be suppressed in spite of the gag on the press and it sparked off acts of retaliation in Ahmedabad and Bombay. Savarkar informed Sir Manmatha Nath Mookerjee, President of the Bengal Pradesh Hindu Mahasabha, about a Maharashtra Fund for the relief of the riot victims of Dacca. The Fund was intended, on behalf of thousands of Maharashtrian Hindu Sangathanists, men and women, to ‘express the pan-Hindu consciousness which Hindus must develop to animate in every Hindu heart a sense of duty that every Hindu, wherever he happens to be, must feel for a Hindu’.119 OPEN SESSION OF ALL INDIA HINDU MAHASABHA,

CALCUTTA, JUNE 1941

The creation of the Relief Fund was followed up by an open session of the All India Hindu Mahasabha in the Ashutosh Hall, on 1415 June 1941 in Calcutta under the presidency of Savarkar. On the first day about 50 uniformed civic guards of Tollygunge area under Haro Prasad Mukherji, Group Commander, presented a guard of honour to Savarkar. On the second day about 50 volunteers in ochre coloured caps were in attendance. The anguish of the working committee at the gory incidents at Dacca was uncontrollable. Many favoured violence against the Muslims. Naran Chakravarty urged the organization of a volunteer corps of life sacrificing youth while Padam Raj Jain favoured the preaching of the creed of violence among Hindu youth. The session opened on 14th with Savarkar in the chair. Sanat Kumar Ray Chowdhury hit upon the idea of an economic retaliation by withdrawing all 3 crores of Hindu money from Government banks. V.G. Deshpande of Central Provinces also condemned the way the DIR had been used to crush the Hindus and molest their women. He wanted to organize volunteer corps to resist such atrocities and threatened to resort to arms if constitutional methods failed. Indra

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Prakash of Delhi probably took a cue from Fazlul Huq’s 1937 statement in the Lucknow session of the Muslim League that he was going to take it out on two Hindus in Bengal if one Muslim was wronged in a Congress ruled province; he declared that for every Hindu who would come to any harm by Muslims revenge would be taken on two Muslims in the Hindu dominated areas. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee too emphasized the need for adequate preparations by organization of volunteer corps for launching direct action in trouble torn places like Ahmedabad or Bengal. In Bengal Bills such as the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill or the Secondary Education Bill and the restraint placed on immersion processions during day time in front of mosques were provocative enough to signal the launching of direct action measures. N.C. Chatterjee too advocated the consolidation of Hindu forces before launching direct action. On 15 June V.D. Savarkar addressed about 2,000 Hindus on ‘Hindu Militarisation’ at the Ashutosh College. He reminded them of the strength of Hindus in spite of the Muslim invasion and harked back to the glorious days of the Sepoy Mutiny. The plight of the same Hindus under British domination was regretted. The British was determined to demilitarize the Hindus and Gandhi’s creed of non­ violence killed what little martial spirit was left in them. He spoke highly of the daring deeds of the Hindu revolutionaries and a group of Sikhs to liberate India during the last war. He wanted Hindus to take advantage of the present war to enlist in large numbers in the army, navy and air force to militarize themselves. He condemned the Pakistan scheme and declared that a conspiracy was being hatched to bring a Moslem ruler from abroad to rule over India. A demonstration of lathi, dagger and sword play was given by the Hindu Sakti Sangha and display of physical feats was also given by some students of the Ashutosh College.120 MORE BENGAL PROVINCIAL HINDU SABHA MEETINGS

The Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha continued to organize meetings against the anti-Hindu Bills of the ministry at all well known venues in the city like Shraddhanand Park (20 July 1941), Beadon

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Square (5 July 1941), Sham Square (20 July 1941) and Wellington Square (24 July). At Shraddhanand Park N.C. Chatterjee observed that Calcutta is an international city and the provincial legislators should not be allowed to interfere in its civic administration. Sanat Kumar Ray Chowdhury recoiled at the idea that Ispahani should rule the Calcutta Corporation. Jyotirmay Ghosal compared the ministry to a pet dog running after the British for a piece of meat and said that all its evil measures sprang from the Communal Award. He denounced Pakistan and wanted Akhanda Bangla (undivided Bengal). The Hindus had forgotten the force of the preachings of Sri Krishna and the worship of Siva, the God of destruction. He reminded how the Goddess Kali had demanded of Rana Sanga ‘I am hungry, give me blood’. This made the Hindus lose power and strength. He appealed to them to rise up and revive their old glory. N.C. Chatterjee too said that the demons of Communal Award, Pakistan Scheme and anti-Hindu policy of Bengal ministry could not be subdued by the doctrine of non-violence. So they must adopt the new doctrine of resistance. He harked back to the days of martyrs and said that Bengalis would sacrifice their lives in thousands to oppose the Pakistan scheme.121 The student leaders Snehomoy Das and Arijit Basu Mallik addressing students under the banner of North Calcutta Hindu Students’ Federation at Cornwallis Square on 9 September 1941 asked them to view the Pakistan scheme against the Congress policy of placating the Muslims, the British policy of ‘divide and rule’ and the defeatist mentality of the Hindus. Their ochre coloured flag displayed swastika and emblem ‘discipline, struggle, independence’. The meeting went to College Square on the second day and raised slogans like Hindu Jati ki Jai, Akhand Hindustan ki Jai, Hindu Sanskriti ki Jai.122 As the Dacca riots entered a new phase of murder and lootings in the city since the Ratha Jatra day, the condemnation of the Muslim League and the Coalition ministry assumed a more strident note in the Hindu Mahasabha meetings. Jyotirmay Ghosal after his recent visit to Dacca addressed a meeting in Tollygunge Rashbati on 21 July and propagated active resistance. He repudiated Mahatma Gandhi’s policy in unequivocal terms, ridiculing him as the Gauranga from

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Gurjar (the Chaitanya of Gujarat, the allusion being to Sri Chaitanya or Gauranga Mahaprabhu’s famous dictum that ‘wont I give you love simply because you have hit me with a claypot splinter?’). He reminded Bengalis of Lord Krishna in his menacing shape or how Mother Kali had expressed her thirst for blood to Bhim Singha. The Muslims were inebriated with the liquor of the Communal Award. If they cannot be brought to their senses by a draught of cold water, they needed to be struck on their heads by a club. The education system worked out by Sir Ashutosh should not be allowed to go down under. The Corporation should be put on fire or sunk into the sea rather than allowing the Corporation Bill to become law.123 In Beadon Square Ghosal invited the Bengali Muslims to join Hindu Bengalis in their drive against the Siddiquis and Ispahanis from outside the province. He declared that the Mahasabhaites were not communal. They simply opposed Pakistan and wanted an undivided country, an undivided Bengal, where the Hindu and the Muslim would live together in peace. Anybody, who regarded Mother Bengal as his own, whether he be Hindu, Muslim or Christian, was welcome in Bengal. He ended with a stanza from Nazrul, which meant ‘the stricter your grasp, we escape free; the more you glare at us, the more we see’ (Toder shikal jatoi shakto habe, moder shikal tutbe; Toder ankhi jatoi rakto habe moder ankhi phutbe).124 In Hazra Park several speakers like Charu Chatterjee, Swami Satyananda, Jyotirmoy Ghosal and Ganapati Chakravarty spoke. They wondered how the two communities, who had been living together for generations in peace, can suddenly go berserk and suspected the foreign hand behind it. The British had been trying to cling to power by exploiting the differences between the two communities. The Muslim ministry was merely a puppet in their hands. Swami Satyanand said that all officers from Churchill down to the SDO came under one category in this respect. Jyotirmoy Ghosal compared the policy of appeasement to nurturing a poisonous snake. Ganapati Chakravarty said that Hindus must acquire the strength to kill demons and asuras. Swami Satyanand reminded the ministry that Hindus were a minority in Bengal and if minority bashing was not stopped, repercussions would follow in provinces where Muslims were in a

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minority. Charu Chatterjee was prosecuted for his protest against orders against immersion of images by the district authorities of Dinajpur, Mymensingh and Budge Budge.125 A huge meeting of a thousand people was held on 26 August at Kalakar Street under the auspices of the Tarun Jain Sangha, with Justice Charu Biswas in the Chair. Mr. K.M. Munshi, speaking on the subject of ahimsa said that ahimsa did not always mean non-killing and that violence within limits and discretion applied in self defence and in the performance of duty did not come under the category of himsa. Gandhiji’s doctrine of ahimsa was peculiar and unintelligible to the ordinary men. Non-violence commanded great moral strength, but non-violence which taught cowardice could never be encouraged.126 Durga Puja in Calcutta provided an occasion to the Hindu leaders to remind people of what the puja signified and exhort them to fight for the right cause. In the Kumartuli Sarbojonin Club on 1 October 1941 N.C. Chatterjee accused the Hindus of Raipura of gross cowardice as they could have used the firearms in their possession on the assailants rather than leaving their home. The Dinajpur magistrate’s order against immersion of images was described as illegal and an invasion of Hindu rights. He urged Bengalis to be true worshippers of Durga and fight against the attempt to convert Bengal into Pakistan.127 Thus the Mahasabha continued to rouse the people against the evil of communalism and its pernicious impact on the fortunes of both the sister communities in the province in the long run. It continued to hold meetings, teach the people about the implications of new Bills and new rules and started the work of organizing them against state-sponsored oppression. A new unity was coming among the Hindus and they understood the value of preparing themselves for fighting organized violence. Self defence and not helpless surrender became the watchword. Instead of drifting with the tide as heretofore, the Hindus now started learning the techniques of turning the tables on the assailant. They understood that non-violence in this situation might appear to be cowardice. Once the wrongdoer is challenged, he himself would recoil and take to the heels. From 1937 to 1941 it was a tale of unrelieved oppression. But by July 1941 cracks began to appear in Muslim solidarity. Hopes began to appear that the province

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might see better days. The new dawn in the province’s history was ushered in by the working out of a programme of constructive co­ operation between the two sister communities. NOTES 1. John Gallagher, ‘Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930-39’, in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, 1973, pp. 589-645. 2. ‘The Congress Working Committee’s Resolution…while it urges the British Government to recognize the independence of India, it does so in so far as only an announcement to that effect is concerned. A national government of present elected legislator members, not by independent India, but most inconsistently enough, by the sanction of that very British Government, the immediate cessation of which, it demands. Thus heroic beggars cannot long hide their begging bowl.’ This was Savarkar’s caustic remark during his Presidential Address in the Bombay Session of the All India Hindu Mahasabha. Clipping from Ananda Bazar Patrika, 13.7.40 in File No. KPM/ SB/02674/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 3. Ananda Bazar Patrika, 19.5.40 (paper clipping) in File No. KPM/ SB/02674/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 4. The Bengal Hindu Mahasabha Conference, eighth session, Khulna, 1718 February 1939, in N.N. Mitra, The Indian Annual Register, vol. I, 1939, pp. 383-85. 5. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 August 1939 in File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 6. Ibid. 7. O.R.21745 OF 14.7.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum; Fortnightly Letters to the Viceroy by temporary Governor of Bengal (Sir J.A.Woodhead), August 1939, First Half in MSS Eur E278/3 in Reid Collection in India Office Records, British Library, London. 8. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 29.6.39; Hindusthan Standard, 2.10.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 9. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1993), p. 12. 10. ‘Calcutta Greets Veer Savarkar Tomorrow’, Report published in Hindusthan Standard, 26.12.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02631/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 11. Note on RSSS by P.E.S. Finney, Deputy Director (A) 19.6.46 in Home Poll (I) File No. 5/12/46 in NAI, New Delhi; Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2007), pp. 14-17, 85-7. 12. Report submitted by Sengupta of Detective Department, S.B. to the

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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Commissioner of Police, 23.8.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Translation of intercepted Hindi letter of R.L.Tankiwaly, Pleader, Wardha to V.R. Patki, 2.7.39 copy of which was sent to N.C. Chatterjee in ibid. Report by H.R. Chaturvedi, ASI about intercepted letter in Marathi 19.3.39 in ibid. O.R. 20961 of 8.7.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. O.R. 20210 of 3.7.39 in ibid. Intercepted letter of Manindra Nath Datta, Acting General Secretary, Bengal Hindu Mahasabha to Satish Chandra Guha, Secretary, Hindu Sabha, Bogra. 15.10.39 in ibid. Intercepted letter of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Madhupur to Manindra Nath Datta, Hindu Mahasabha Office, dated 24.10.39 in ibid. Intelligence Report 35084 and 35086 of 30.10.39 in ibid. Hindu National Day Celebration, 29.10.39 in KPM/SB/02630/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. On 21.7.39 a memorial was signed at Albert Hall and later presented to the Governor. See File No. KPM/SB/02628/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Meeting of 500 at Albert Hall on 28.6.39 Ananda Bazar Patrika, 5.7.39 in ibid. OR 20961 of 8.7.39 in ibid. Ibid. O.R. 20210 of 3.7.39 in ibid. Indian Annual Register, vol. II, 1939. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Hindusthan Standard, 29 September 1939 in KPM/SB/02628/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3.10.39 in ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Intelligence Report 35118 of 30.10.39 in ibid. Ibid. Hindusthan Standard, 8.12.39 ‘How Hindus Suffer in Bengal: Provocative and Communal Utterances of Mr. Huq: Policy of Curbing, Checking and Injuring Hindu Interests; Moslemisation of Educational Services in Bengal. Demand for Enquiry in the General Interest of the Whole Province: Joint Statement of B.C. Chatterjee and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’, in File No. in KPM/SB/02630/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum

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39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

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Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. To know more about the evolution of a Musalmani Bangla see Neilesh Bose, Recasting the Region: Language, Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014), pp. 7-8. Enquiries by Sanat K. Raychowdhury from Noakhali and Mymensingh Sabhas for information on primary school text books had revealed that they contained objectionable sentences like ‘beef is sweet.’ In Intelligence Report 33592/33593 of 10.11.39 in File no. KPM/SB/02629/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum. Joint Statement of B.C. Chatterjee and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in File No. KPM/SB/02630/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Intercepted letter of Ashutosh Lahiri to Savarkar, 22.11.39 in File No. KPM/ SB/02630/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28.10.39. Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1984), pp. 329-33. Claude Markovits, ‘Businessmen and the Partition of India’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000), pp. 236-58. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25.12.39. Ananda Bazar Patrika, 24.12.39. C.R.42176 of 18.12.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02632/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. File No. KPM/SB/02632/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Hindusthan Standard, 28.12.39. Intelligence Report 43023 of 20.12.39 in File No. KPM/SB/02632/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Advance, 28.12.39. Intelligence Report No. 43247 in File No. KPM/SB/02632/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, 1994), pp. 62-3. Advance, 28.12.39.

200 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

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Ibid. Ibid. Hindusthan Standard, 30.12.39. Hindusthan Standard, 22.1.40. File No. KPM/SB/02632/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Advance, 19.3.40. Statement of B.C. Chatterjee in Hindusthan Standard, 22.5.40. ‘This conference views with horror and condemns the Pakistan Scheme’ as an entirely anti-Indian and suicidal and trusts that all those who look upon India as their motherland and wish to preserve its culture and integrity will make every sacrifice and offer the stoutest opposition to the scheme of partitioning India into communal blocks. The League is definitely of opinion that the scheme, if given effect to, would be destruction of Indian nationalism and effectively present India’s evolution into a free state in all its fullness and calls upon the Congress including the Forward Bloc, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Liberal Federation and other political bodies to face this serious peril by united counsel and action.’ Meeting of the First Session of the Hindu National League, Lucknow, 27-8 July 1940 in Home Poll (I) File No. 143/40 of 1940 in National Archives of India. I.R. 12450 of 21.3.40 in KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Advance, 3.3.40. I.R. 12654 of 21.2.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02633/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Ibid. Paper clipping from Ananda Bazar Patrika, 19.5.40 in File No. KPM/ SB/02674/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. M.R. 12795 of 22.3.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02633/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Ibid. Ibid. Clipping from Hindusthan Standard, 19.1.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02633/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Intelligence Report 20972 of 14.5.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Clipping from Advance, 18.3.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02634 in Kolkata Police Museum. M.R. 25594 of 14.6.40 in KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Clipping from Hindusthan Standard, 19.1.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02634/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 13.7.40. M.R. 14777 of 9.6.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum.

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88. I.R. 39909 of 29.8.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02674/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 89. M.R. 29851 of 9.7.40 and M.R.33751 of 30.7.40 in File No. KPM/ SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 90. I.R.39191 of 25.8.40 Joint Meeting by Hindu Mahasabha and Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee in ibid. 91. Miscellaneous Report 20179 of 9.5.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 92. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9.5.40. 93. M.R. 20179 of 10.5.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02635/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 94. O.R.1510 of 18.1.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02633/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 95. Hindusthan Standard, 25.5.40. 96. Hindusthan Standard, 19.1.40. 97. Ibid. 98. O.R. 1510 of 18.1.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02633/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 99. Clipping from Bharat, 25.2.40 and Hindusthan Standard, 24.2.40 in File No. KPM/SB/02634/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 100. Misc 20.8.40 in File No. KPM/SB/01483/05 in Kolkata Police Museum 101. MR 37783 of 19.8.40 and MR 37788 of 19.8.40 in Ibid. 102. M.R. 37787 of 19.8.40 in Ibid. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Secret Note by R.Tottenham of 23.4.41 in File No. 138/1941 in Home Poll (i) in NAI, New Delhi. 106. B.S. Moonje to his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 2 January 1941 in File No. 130/41 Home Poll (I) in NAI, New Delhi. 107. V.D. Savarkar, President of Hindu Mahasabha to Viceroy, 7 January 1941 in File No. 138/1941 Home Poll(i) in NAI, New Delhi. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. B.S. Moonje to his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 2 January 1941 in File No. 130/41 Home Poll (I) in NAI, New Delhi. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Speech of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the Madura Session of the Hindu Mahasabha in the Indian Annual Register, vol II, 1940. 114. Ibid. 115. File No. 5/8/41 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 116. In ibid.

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117. In ibid. 118. In File no. KPM/SB/01556/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 119. Savarkar to Sir Manmatha Nath Mookerjee, President, Bengal Pradesh Hindu Mahasabha, 27 May 1941 in File No. KPM/SB/01483/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 120. File No. KPM/SB/01483/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 121. File No. KPM/SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 122. File No. KPM/SB/01483/05 IN Kolkata Police Museum. 123. File No. KPM/SB/02638/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid. 126. M.R. 32568 of 26.8.41 in File No. KPM/SB/02672/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 127. O.R. 38647 of 1.10.41 in ibid.

CHAPTER 5

Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Non-Communal Alternative: The Progressive Coalition Ministry

VOICES OF DEMUR

the dacca riots had created a spontaneous feeling of abhorrence not only among the Hindus but also among the sensible section of the Muslims for the Coalition ministry and they could anticipate the disastrous consequences of this politics of retribution for the fortunes of the province. In a meeting of the Bengal Krishak O Praja Party held at Shraddhanand Park on 5 April 1941 presided over by Maulavi Syed Habibur Rahman the speakers (Maulavi Syed Habibur Rahman, M.A. Zaman (MLA), Maulavi Abdul Malek, Abdur Rouff, Bokai Nagari (MLA), Hatem Ali and Abdul Gani) stressed the necessity for Hindu-Muslim unity, condemned communal riots and blamed the Chief Minister for provoking the Muslim mob against the Hindus. They wanted to revert to joint electorate and get rid of non-Bengali Muslim intrusion in Bengal politics and Calcutta Corporation. Maulavi Hatem Ali directed his attack towards British Imperialism, which had kept both Hindus and Muslims in bondage. He wanted them to rise against British Imperialism as one man as Russia had risen against its imperial masters under the leadership of Lenin. Maulavi Abdul Gani observed that the British had killed the spirit of nationalism in the Hindus and Muslims by setting them against each other. They wanted to continue war against Hitler through the exploitation of Indian resources. The communal problem would never be resolved till India could get rid of the common enemy (the British).1 The non-Bengali vs. Bengali issue in Calcutta Corporation service

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continued to agitate a section of the Muslims all this while and there were meetings against the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill in the Calcutta University Institute Hall on 13 July under the presidency of Syed Jalal-ud-din Hashemy and in the Bengali Muslim Association on 29 July 1941. Both meetings berated the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill and wanted to go back to joint electorate to be able to tackle the non-Bengali intrusion issue. They thought that the Bengal ministry was showing undue favours to the non-Bengali element. Phanindranath Brahma drew attention to the fact how the Government ruined many zamindars by realizing revenue during times of distress. Bankim Chandra Bhattacharya and Maulavi Abdul Jalil Ahmed both attacked the Communal Award for keeping HinduMuslim rift alive and coming in the way of nationalism. In the Bengali Muslim Association Hall N.C. Chatterjee pointed out how the British pursued different policies on either side of the Suez. They called Hitler and Mussolini a robber and a thief in Europe; but they did not mind joining the Muslims in trying to rob the Calcutta Corporation of the ratepayers’ money. If the Bengali Hindu youth woke up and gather strength and spirit they could wipe out a thousand Fazlul Huqs. Abdul Jalil Ahmad brought the charge that in the past Hindus had crippled Muslim interests in education, culture, trade and industry but hoped that the cloud had disappeared. Both communities could now trust each other and become equal partners in nationalist goals. Imamuddin Ahmed saw a non-Bengali Muslim hand behind the Dacca riots. He saw a close connection between Nazimuddin’s speech at Bhairab while inaugurating a ‘Pakistan Park’ and the beginning of the Dacca riots. The riots were obviously worked up by big men for their own ends. He suspected a deep conspiracy to keep Hindus and Muslims disunited. He regretted Suhrawardy’s description of Bengali Muslims as Jola (weavers) or persons of lowly station.2 HUQ’S RIFT WITH THE MUSLIM LEAGUE

Although as the Chief Minister Fazlul Huq was the focal point of all attacks both by the Mahasabha leaders as well as his erstwhile partisans in the Krishak Praja Party on the Bengal ministry, inwardly he had also been feeling restive about what was happening in his province.

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As a loyal member of the League he was the prisoner of his position and had no right to protest against the goings on in the province. As the head of the government he was even called upon to defend the Muslim League position in the Dacca riots. But some ennui and exasperation must have been building up in his mind at the unrelieved acts of tyranny and torture. The future of the province too might have haunted his nightmares. It struck a responsive chord in his mind when his once KPP colleague Shamsuddin Ahmed lamented in the Assembly: We dreamt of better days with our erstwhile leader, the present Chief Minister, the Hon’ble Mr. A.K. Fazlul Huq. We hoped and we dreamt that under his leadership a non-communal Government would function in this province and that he as Leader and Chief of the Government would create an atmosphere in this country. . . . But unfortunately we find that after Mr. Fazlul Huq became the Chief Minister he was drawn to the side of the League. . . . Riots had taken place in pre-autonomy days. . . . But I never expected that in these days of provincial autonomy a disorder of the kind that had broken out at the present moment would be allowed to go on. Muslim rule, Pakisthan rule, Hindusthan rule – all these tall talks have been thrown to the winds. At present the goonda rule has taken place. . . . Muslims feel that mosques, desecrated, Koran damaged, Muslim houses burnt, Muslims killed. Hindus feel financially they are the losers, they are thinking of areas where Hindu houses have been burnt and Hindu lives have been lost. There are persons amongst the Mussalmans who are aspiring to become the leaders of the Muslim community by raising the false cry of ‘Islam in danger’; . . . By raising the cry of ‘Islam in danger’ they simply try to create a situation in the country by which they may either secure votes for themselves or establish a position for themselves by which they will be acclaimed as the leaders of the Muslim community. Jute problem and various taxation measures of the Government have developed a situation in the country resulting in the intense Krishak Proja agitation. To side track the issue ‘Islam in danger’ is encouraged by Europeans.3

An idea of the storm that was brewing behind the scenes can be made from a secret S.B. report about the meeting on 27 May 1941 at the residence of Fazlul Huq of several MLAs, who wanted to form a new party to safeguard the interests of the Bengal Muslims.4 The Bengal Muslims were an evanescent category standing as a symbol of

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rural agrarian Bengal. Islam did not come to them through a formal process of conversion. Rather it seeped into their consciousness over several centuries of a process of colonization of newly emerging delta land, wet rice cultivation and expansion through the agency of their mentors, the Chishti sufis. They were allowed to retain much of their tribal and rural culture and assimilate it to their new belief system. It had much in common with their rural neighbours some of whom did not care to slide into the faith of their sufi mentors. Together they had inhabited the villages and shared each other’s lives for hundreds of years without subscribing to the upper caste ideologies of exclusivism and hatred for their rural brethren.5 If they were the objects of contempt for their upper caste Hindu zamindar6 nor were they welcomed by their ashraf co-religionists from northern India who spoke Urdu or Persian and boasted of a noble lineage from Iran or Central Asia.7 Men like Fazlul Huq, Shamsuddin Ahmed or Tamizuddin came exactly from such a peasant background. They had taken advantage of the new affluence which the cultivation of jute had conferred on the Bengal peasantry and acquired some Western education which enabled them to shine in later life and share the political stage with big men like the Dacca Nawab, Khwaja Nazimuddin or Shaheed Suhrawardy. Jinnah could rope in the last category into his typically urban Muslim League which still had no roots in the Bengal countryside. Rural Bengal had more faith in its own sons of the soil, who had proliferated into the Krishak Praja Party.8 They decided to call their new outfit ‘Bengal Progressive Muslim League’. Although the proposed League was to be a communal organization, it was pledged to try their best to maintain communal harmony. Shamsuddin Ahmad at first had opposed its formation saying that the KPP was sufficient to look after Muslim interests. But he was informed that the KPP was not a purely Muslim organization. The League was to have its office at the residence of the Nawab of Dacca. The Chief Minister Fazlul Huq was to be its President, the Nawab of Dacca, Hashem Ali and 2/3 others were to be Vice-Presidents, Syed Badruddoza was to be the General Secretary, Fuzlur Rahman was to be the Assistant Secretary, A.M.A. Zaman was to be the Organisational Secretary and Nawabzada Kasem Ali Mirza was to be

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the Treasurer. The birth of this new formation, however, was kept a secret from public eyes.9 The cracks in the ruling coalition came to the surface with the frictions between the League President and Chief Minister Fazlul Huq. In July the Governor informed the CM that the Viceroy had invited him to join the National Defence Council. Huq had already been actively engaged in collecting huge contributions for the war efforts and had also toured the country to motivate the Muslim people to sympathize heart and soul with the war aims of the British Government. He saw nothing wrong in responding positively. But the real issue was more complicated than it appeared to the uninformed public. The year before the Viceroy had planned an expanded War Council composed of Indian states and the representatives of the various political parties of India. But the new council merely consisted of the representatives of the various provinces. So Huq, as the Premier of the province, saw nothing wrong in consenting to participate.10 Before sending any official confirmation of the matter to Huq, on 20 July 1941 Sir Roger Lumely, the Governor of Bombay wrote a letter to Jinnah conveying to him a message from the Viceroy to the effect that with the approval of His Majesty’s Government, a National Defence Council was being established with 30 members, 9 of whom would be drawn from the states. ‘The Viceroy regards it as essential’, the letter went on, ‘that the great Muslim community should be represented on the Council by persons of the highest prominence and capacity. He has accordingly invited the premiers of Assam, Bengal, Punjab, Sind to serve as members’. On 21 July a White Paper announced the formation of the National Defence Council.11 Jinnah was in Hyderabad at this time. He did not approve of the manner in which the premiers of Muslim provinces were invited without his prior consent and immediately on 20 July he announced his decision to take disciplinary action against them. This statement was made ‘prematurely’ by Jinnah without consulting the League Working Committee or allowing the premiers to explain the considerations behind their decision. It gave ‘a wrong lead to the Muslim public opinion’, and there was an outcry calling upon the premiers to resign the membership of the National Defence Council.12

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The Calcutta District Muslim League condemned Huq for the acceptance of membership of the ‘Savarkar-Linlithgow unholy alliance’. They thought that the Defence Council over represented the bania elements and bracketed the Muslims with Sikhs in respect of representation. The Muslim government nominees would have no role to play in the Council except remaining present as two ‘dummy members’.13 Soon after Huq resigned his membership of the Defence Council through the Bengal Governor Sir John Herbert.14 But he was in no mood to suffer the humiliation quietly. In a letter to Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan, Secretary of the All India Muslim League, he immediately made his displeasure known to the League leadership at his having to submit the resignation ‘which militates against my judgement’. He resigned from the Muslim League Working Committee and the Muslim League Council as well to register his protest. The behaviour of the President was found by him to be ‘unconstitutional in the highest degree’. ‘The principles of democracy and autonomy,’ he went on his tirade, ‘are being subordinated to the caprice of a single individual, who seeks to rule as omnipotent authority over 33 millions of Muslims.’15 Huq’s statement against Jinnah created a great consternation in Muslim circles. The cracks in the Bengal Muslim polity now came openly to the surface. On 13 September the Bengal Provincial League Working Committee condemned the statement and affirmed confidence in Jinnah. The KPP and the All Bengal Muslim Association as well as certain independent Muslims on the other hand stood by Fazlul Huq.16 On 14 September an ugly demonstration was organized against Huq by the supporters of Suhrawardy on the Calcutta Maidan. Some independent Muslims also took part in it. An unseemly caricature of Fazlul Huq during the demonstration added to the bitterness of the relations between the opposing camps. There were counterdemonstrations staged by Huq’s followers as well and the police had a difficult time preventing the demonstration from degenerating to a disturbance. The Huq camp retaliated by tabling six consecutive no confidence motions consecutively against Suhrawardy in the Legislative Assembly. The identity of the persons who brought these no confidence motions

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might offer a glimpse of how the Muslim mind was affected by the Huq-Jinnah rift. These no confidence motions were moved by Muslims only; three of them were members of the Coalition Party; two were from the KPP; another was a Muslim Labour Member from the Bose party. The Deputy Speaker adjourned the House and did not allow business. The no confidence motion against Suhrawardy was affirmed by 125 to 3 in an informal meeting. It was decided by a meeting of the party leaders in the Government House on 17 September to keep the Assembly prorogued till November.17 Before being prorogued a resolution was passed by ‘Ministerial Back benchers’ that the constitutional issue should be settled with the least possible delay after the war on the basis of agreement between the principal parties and that the constitution of India should be framed on lines indicated in the ‘Pakistan Resolution’ of the All India Muslim League.18 This was followed up by the opponents of Fazlul Huq by organizing an All Bengal Muslim Students’ Pakistan Conference on 19 and 20 September at the Town Hall and the Muslim Institute Hall. The first day’s meeting was attended by 5,000 persons and Suhrawardy must have exerted all his influence among the up country Muslim workers to ensure that. On the second day this crowd thinned to a modest 800. The meetings were presided over by Maulana Akram Khan, MLC and Aftab Hossain MLA Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, the MLA from UP, who had turned bitter against Hindus from the rebuff that he received from Nehru for his proposed understanding between the League and the Congress after the elections of 1937, from his experience of the Congress mass contact programme and from his knowledge of the worst features of Hindu majority rule in his home province, had been invited to inaugurate the Conference. The flag was hoisted by H.S. Suhrawardy. The Conference reaffirmed its faith in the Pakistan Scheme and Jinnah’s leadership. Mir Jafar’s act of selling Bengal was recalled in the context of Huq’s letter to the League and was dubbed as equally reprehensible. The meeting also decided upon a Pakistan programme for the Muslim students. They were to organize Pakistan units throughout the province for intense propaganda; political and social training centres were to be opened for Muslim workers; they were to work out a comprehensive

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programme of Islamic study circles on a mass basis; social works were to be undertaken for the reconstruction of Muslim society; efforts were also to be made for the spread of knowledge and practices of true religion of Islam.19 Jinnah also tried to organize black flag demonstrations against Fazlul Huq when he made a trip to Simla to have a personal meeting with the Viceroy. Some of Huq’s colleagues telephoned to Jinnah about the trip. Jinnah asked the Secretary of the Muslim League to send telegrams to all principal stations to stage black flag demonstrations against Huq. There was not much impact except a feeble attempt by ‘a few goondas’ at Cawnpore. More serious was the one at Delhi: A large number of hooligans appeared before my compartment and began yelling and shouting with black flags in their hands. They did this for more than an hour. They were extremely violent in their attitude and used abusive and filthy language.There were demands that I should apologise to Jinnah. There was no question of Muslim solidarity but I found that the head and front of my offence was my reference to Jinnah.20 A CABINET CRISIS

Relations between the two groups in the Coalition Party had become so embittered that there was a cabinet crisis in Bengal. ‘I do not know how I can work with the group,’ Huq wrote to the Governor, ‘who are now opposed to me viz. the four persons who are supposed to be League representatives.’21 But the outcome of the no confidence motions revealed Huq’s tremendous popularity among the members of the Legislative Assembly. Thus the opponents of Huq understood the futility of a ‘titanic constitutional fight on the floor of Bengal Legislative Assembly, which can be equalled in intensity to the historic fight at Patuakhali’.22 Huq feared that Nazimuddin would make it a League issue and want to resign. If the no confidence motion was carried, he would insist on the whole cabinet resigning. The League members would then go to the East Bengal countryside and accuse Huq of breaking Muslim solidarity.23 When the Legislative Assembly met again in early November after the prorogation, the Secretary of the Progressive Party issued a series of statements insisting upon a reshuffling of the Cabinet by the

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elimination of reactionary ministers. There were two fresh motions of no-confidence against Home and Finance Ministers from the Muslim members of the Praja Party. The Assembly was then adjourned till 8 December and no one wanted to force the issue.24 The impending split in the Coalition ministry was viewed with great satisfaction by Hindu legislators. Many of them had supported the motions of no-confidence to add to the woes of the Muslim League. An article of 16 September in the Amrita Bazar Patrika predicted that Huq would need Hindu support if he wanted to part company with the Muslim League. It even advised a dissolution of the Assembly and fresh elections. These speculations by the press unnerved the Muslim legislators, who had counted on Huq’s discomfiture to reap more benefits for themselves. In the mofussil Huq still commanded a lot of sympathy and support. But even the Muslims opposed to the League feared an alliance with the Hindus; they were apprehensive of the Hindu domination, which it might involve.25 Huq showed himself capable of great political sagacity at this moment of crisis. He measured his steps very carefully so that the onus of creating divisions in Muslim solidarity could not be fixed on him. He sent a letter to Jinnah through Nazimuddin. The contents of this letter were expected to be conciliatory. It was to be considered by the League Working Committee at its meeting of 16 November.26 The outcome of this meeting took Huq by surprise. The meeting elected Khan Bahadur Abdul Momin as the Joint Secretary of the League. Khan Bahadur was the main person who had taken a leading part against Huq during the Calcutta Maidan demonstrations.27 THE PROGRESSIVE COALITION PARTY

The Progressive Coalition Party formally declared its existence on 28 November. Fazlul Huq had formed a 28 point party programme to attract left wing political opinion. They started a new organ Nabayuga as their mouthpiece. Kazi Nazrul Islam assumed the editorship of this newspaper. On 28 November the Progressive Coalition Party met in the house of Yusuf Mirza and formally declared its existence under the leadership of Fazlul Huq. They requested a separate bloc in the Assembly for them to sit. Three groups of MLAs

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had come under the umbrella of this new party, the Bose Congress group, the Krishak Praja Party and the Scheduled Caste members, who were in the opposition and also one who had been a member of the Coalition. The Kiran Shankar Roy group of the Congress and the ‘Independent Nationalists’ (Scheduled Castes) had not expressed any opinion about what they wanted. It looked as if a small break away from the Coalition would turn the scales against them even if the European group still chose to stick to them.28 The most remarkable thing of the day was the secession of Khwaja Nawab Habibullah Bahadur of Dacca from Muslim League and his teaming up with Huq. He was disappointed at not being selected as the leader of the Muslim League. Nazimuddin got the position. The Dacca Nawab therefore crossed over. He did not carry a substantial number of MLAs with him but the moral impact of the secession was considerable.29 Fazlul Huq, however, had become cautious. He held a cabinet meeting immediately after the existence of the Progressive Coalition Party was known and issued a statement denying the report that he had assumed the leadership of the new group. He reaffirmed his desire to maintain the solidarity of the Coalition as well as of the ministry and to ensure the acceptance of the party decisions by all members alike. He denied that some of his colleagues were not wanted in the Cabinet and he was trying to get rid of them.30 Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote an interesting editorial on the formation of the new party and Fazlul Huq’s stewardship of it: There is nothing in the statement, on the face of it, except that there is nothing doing. And yet the prophets are at work, soldiers of the salvation army think in terms of the blitzkrieg and builders sharpen their engineering skill. The progressives speak the accent of revolt. The progressives behind the screen, a motley crowd of revolutionaries, reformers and unattached soldiers upon the Front, indulge in whispers of cabinet reconstruction and social regeneration. In any scheme of reconstruction there is no great difficulty in finding the basis for agreement provided there is no confusion as regards the end in view.31

The Bengal Provincial Hindu Conference of 29 and 30 November

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which met in Burdwan welcomed ‘the progressive elements in all other communities which would lead to a happier and prouder Bengal’. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee deprecated the way the seeds of discord were planted among the two communities, which had grown into the demand for Pakistan. The Government had laid down agree­ ment between communities as a precondition for any constitut­ ional advance. But while passing the Act of 1919, of 1935 and the Communal Award the question of agreement by both communities was never considered. As Mookerjee insisted: The Mahasabha believes that Hindu Muslim unity will come, not by one placating the other in an irrational manner, not by dominating over the other in a wicked way, but by an open recognition of the fact that both occupy the position of India’s children, and though there are some important spheres of their lives where differences may be manifest, there is a fundamental unity between both, and by the maintenance of their combined welfare will India’s lasting prosperity be achieved. The differences that exist between them are to be mutually respected so that neither party may have any reasonable cause of suspicion against the other. But joint action is possible only on the acceptance by all parties of Indian indivisibility and on their readiness to admit the due share to the country that the Hindus justly claim for themselves, primarily responsible as they are for their country’s welfare and prosperity.32

Nazimuddin, in the meanwhile, was arraying his forces. He had obtained 62 signatures from League members and counted on the support of the European group, 11 Scheduled Caste members and 4 others. He informed the Governor that if he secured a call from the Governor to form a Government he would be able to gain the support of 20 waverers from the Proja Party. He also started negotiations with opposition Congress bloc and try to make them abstain during test of floor strength.33 With these calculations in mind, all the cabinet members resigned on the 1st of December and called a meeting of the Coalition Party on the 4th of December.34 But the Cabinet did not stand dissolved merely by the resignation of the members unless the Chief Minister resigned. The Governor could not fly in the face of this constitutional norm. He was duty bound to ask the Premier to reconstruct his Cabinet. Jinnah accused Huq of treachery for forming a coalition with opposition without

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League approval.35 On 11 December Jinnah expelled Huq from membership of the Working Committee and the Council of the Muslim League and Provincial, District and Primary Leagues of Bengal and ordered that Huq should not be eligible for membership of the Muslim League organizations.36 The Governor, however, kept on dragging his feet. The main problem of the British Government was Sarat Bose. Brother Subhas had escaped from his Elgin Road residence on 26 January 1941, defying all police vigilance to Germany and was sometimes addressing his countrymen from Berlin Radio. Japan had also declared war in early December 1941. The British anticipated high security risks from Sarat Bose’s entry into the Cabinet.37 The prominent role taken by Sarat Bose in creating the new alignments in the Assembly was not unknown to the Government. So they feared that Huq might propose a portfolio for him. The Governor wrote to the Viceroy expressing apprehensions regarding the release of security prisoners. He decided to demand an assurance from Huq that the Home portfolio would not be offered to Bose and he should declare his support for the war effort.38 The Viceroy expressed great apprehension regarding his Axis and Anushilan Party connections.39 He wrote to Amery, the Secretary of State calling Sarat Bose ‘a fifth columnist’ acting through his connections with the Japanese Consulate.40 The Governor asked Syama Prasad to dissuade Sarat Bose from joining the ministry. But as the principal architect of the new combination, Sarat Bose wanted to enter the Cabinet and take part in the formulation of policies himself. If Home was not given, he would have Finance. The Government then decided to arrest him on 11 December. Bose named Santosh Bose and Pramatha Nath Banerjee as his successors. Upendranath Barman was the Scheduled Caste representative. Khan Bahadur Abul Kashim, Khan Bahadur Hasheem Ali Khan, Shamsuddin Ahmed and Abdul Karim from the Upper Chamber were included among Muslim members of the ministry. Finance came to Syama Prasad. Both Muslims as well as Hindus were pledged to support the ministry, along with Anglo-Indians and Indian Christians.41 The new ministry was a great relief for the province after the

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chequered history of communal unrest and rivalry of the last few years. Fazlul Huq could boast of having made possible as near an approach to a National Cabinet as could be in the circumstances. . . . It was for the first time that Muslims belonging to various points of view, Hindus belonging to the Congress and of other schools of thought, together with various small groups and S.C. groups all combined to co-operate in the administration on purely national and patriotic lines.42

Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee also knew that ‘the present Cabinet consists of representatives of different groups in the Legislature which did not exactly see eye to eye with each other on many vital political questions’. But he was confident that ‘the new ministry would work for the maintenance of communal harmony based on a policy of just administration affecting all communities, and also lend its whole­ hearted support for the purpose of winning the war’. What was yet more important and more relevant to the context was that, as Dr. Mookerjee emphasized was that ‘we on our part have been able to demonstrate that Hindu and Muslim representatives can work together in a spirit of common understanding, in spite of grave provocations coming from within and without’.43 The formation of this composite government immensely pleased Savarkar and he immediately planned an anti-Pakistan Day in Calcutta on 10 May 1942 to commemorate the united Hindu-Muslim Meerut uprising on the same date in 1857. Fazlul Huq issued an order that no police clearance would be required for this programme. The martyrs of 1857, who were called traitors by the British, were remembered for their fight for swarajya and Savarkar reminded the people that the same battle with imperialism was continuing, though the methods were constitutional. According to Savarkar the same unity between the Hindus and Muslims was possible once again if the Hindus became as strong as Nanasaheb Peshwa, Laxmibai of Jhansi, Tatiya Tope and others. Pampering Muslims made them swollen headed and unity was disturbed. The principle of self-determination would not do any good if it was carried too far. If someone demanded self-determination for Wales he would be shot at. Similar was the case of Pakistan. India is greater than the Congress. Congress is only of recent origin, whereas India has passed through thousands of years. . . . India is not a house which

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can be divided. . . . Here is a question of national determination and not of self-determination. Who are the foreigners to settle this question? Hindus alone have the right to shape the destiny of India.44 THE PROGRESSIVE COALITION

MINISTRY AT WORK

The new ministry started working under several constraints. The Chief Minister Fazlul Huq was the only leader ‘who had a real mass appeal’45 and was genuinely eager for promoting communal harmony. But as Syama Prasad soon discovered, ‘he could not always be trusted and had to be guarded every moment’. There were people who took advantage of their proximity to Fazlul Huq and either involved him in improper transactions or used his name for their own dealings. ‘Still, his ability was undoubted,’ Syama Prasad could not help admitting, ‘and he could yet rise equal to a great and momentous occasion.’46 The other problem was that the Governor and the bureaucracy were not cooperating with the Ministry, as Syama Prasad felt (which Fazlul Huq was also to corroborate a year later), in any matter ‘affecting the welfare of the people, economic and political’.47 One section of permanent officials took a dislike to the ministry from the very beginning. One reason for it might have been the fact that the new combination included persons who had earlier opposed many administrative fiats. An yet more likely reason, which occurred to Syama Prasad, was that the very existence of the new ministry was a negation of Viceroy Linlithgow’s policy of propping up the Muslim League as a counterweight to the Congress. The dislike of the Government for the new ministry therefore intensified in the same proportion that the ministry weakened the Muslim League. ‘The success of this experiment naturally would give a lie direct to the plea of communal disharmony standing in the way of India’s political advancement. It would be therefore the interest of diehard officials to see that this experiment proved a failure.’48 The Governor was always worried that the Muslim League was being bypassed, although League members numbered a handful of 40 among a total number of 123 Muslim members. The Governor

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always sent copies of his secret dispatches and circulars to Suhrawardy as soon as they went out of the Secretariat.49 Strengthened by the Governor’s backing the League made up for its small numbers and offered a determined opposition to the Ministry’s policies. The 30 European members ‘manufactured by the dishonest Communal Award of Ramsay MacDonald’ constituted a solid bloc and tried to concentrate all powers in its own hands by dividing the Hindus and Muslims. The Kiran Shankar Roy group was neutral, except for some obstacles created by its Chief Whip.50 The Progressive Coalition Party was 150 members strong and was quite comfortable in the Legislative Assembly. There was no voice of dissidence in the ministry. In all their negotiations with the Governor they could always present a solid front. However, the Muslim League mocked the ministry as the ‘Syama-Huq Ministry’ and continued a ‘virulent propaganda’ against the ministry. Fazlul Huq ‘lacked the courage of his convictions’ and failed to organize all Bengal Muslims solidly under his banner.51 Yet the ministry set about quickly to redress the communal situation as much as possible. The year 1942 promised to be a quiet year and both the Muharram and the Sripanchami passed peacefully. In Mymensingh the Durga images which had been waiting to be immersed since the pujas in autumn could all be immersed along with images of Goddess Saraswati in January but in Dinajpur and Malda the going was tough.52 There it was decided that the two questions of kurbani and music before mosque should be settled together, making some concessions here for some exemptions there.53 In the end it was decided that immersions in Dinajpur should be completed when it was not prayer time at any mosque. It was laid down that nothing hurtful to Muslim sentiments should be done. In Joypurhat in Bogra an alleged case of temple defilement could be settled amicably by the parties concerned.54 But things were not going very smoothly everywhere. Encouraged probably by Muslim League activists, the Muslim population began to defy government orders. Nor was the administration very co­ operative and helpful. The bureaucracy was hostile everywhere and the top bosses were always willing to oblige the Muslim League even if they were no longer in power. Immersion processions were postponed in Jangipur in Murshidabad in protest against certain

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restrictions in force. In Saidpur (Rangpur) immersion processions gave rise to a clash while passing a mosque. The matter could, however, be sorted out later. In Maheshgunge in Nadia immersion processions passing a mosque were attacked by Muslims. The processionists retaliated by defacing the walls of the mosque with coloured water. The property of the mosque was also damaged. In Kishoreganj in Mymensingh, the DM had ordered that processions should pass mosques only when there were no prayers. But even then obstructions were put up by the local Muslims compelling the SDO to open fire. As a result two Muslims were killed and 14 injured.55 In Dacca also Dr. Mookerjee visited the riot affected area along with the Premier and the Nawab Bahadur of Dacca, the Minister for Agriculture and Industries on 23 April 1942. In a meeting of 30,000 Hindus and Muslims at Srirampur presided over by the Premier, Fazlul Huq promised a withdrawal of cases only if there was a change of heart: ‘If Hindus and Muslims were prepared to forgive and forget and to bring back an atmosphere of goodwill and fellow feeling he (Huq) was sure that that would not only make the recurrence of such incidents impossible but would bring back real prosperity and welfare to the countryside.’ Dr. Mookerjee asked his audience to cultivate respect for each other’s religions as the basic teaching of all religions was to have respect for other religions. Communal harmony was a prerequisite for the country’s prosperity. It was the duty of the Hindus to protect mosques from miscreants and the duty of Muslims to look after Hindu places of religious worship from damages by persons irrespective of their communal affiliations. A better Bengal could be born if both com­ munities could sink their differences and develop respect for each other’s culture. In an atmosphere of goodwill and cooperation differences and diversities could lead to mutual enrichment. He said he would go further than the Premier and say that security could not be guaranteed unless people cooperated. The only condition of peace and prosperity was mutual goodwill among different communities. It was for peace that he had accepted Huq’s leadership and he hoped to lay the foundations of goodwill and harmony in cooperation with the Premier.56

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This goodwill visit was followed by the withdrawal of all Dacca communal cases. R.S.T. John, the Additional DM was asked to settle the joint compromise petitions. All the accused concerned were also released at this time. Most of these persons were Hindus as the Muslim League Coalition ministry had been harsher with the Hindus and softer with the Muslims. Action against Muslims was slow and rare, while Hindus were arrested arbitrarily and involved in false cases in scores. Thus many innocent persons got relief under this measure.57 FRESH TROUBLE IN DACCA

But before the ink was dry on these joint compromises, trouble broke out afresh in Dacca on 18 June over a trifling matter. A man knifed a Muslim football player during a football match for having cuffed a small boy for taking possession of a ball. On 21st a Muslim was stabbed by two bhadralok youth and this case was followed by others reaching a total of 13 cases.58 Three persons were killed on the following day (22.6.42) near the District Court on the next morning and a municipal employee was stabbed near the gate of the Municipal Office later in the day. A pleader was also assaulted in the evening, but his injuries were not serious. A retired teacher was removed to the local hospital with stab wounds. Altogether 5 were killed and 26 injured.59 In the morning at 9 a Muslim was stabbed near Government House and shortly after dusk stabbing and assault started at Malitola and on Johnson Road between Nawabpur Bridge and Victoria tank. Shops were soon closed and streets were deserted.60 The Defence Scheme was immediately put into operation by the DM J. Llewellyn; an order under Section 144 Cr.P.C. was promulgated enforcing curfew from 6.30 p.m. to 7 a.m. By another order he prohibited the assembly of more than 5 persons in public places and thoroughfares and also the carrying of lathis and other weapons and articles which can be used as weapons. By another order all excise shops, tea shops and restaurants were also closed. The DM met prominent Hindus and sought their cooperation in restoring peace.61 Civic guards were also posted and bad characters were ‘pulled in’. As the police force was not adequate the local military commander was

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asked to take over the control of the south-east part of the city. Altogether 11 Hindus and 6 Muslims died in the disturbances and 11 Hindus and 27 Muslims were injured.62 But as soon as the military was withdrawn, curfew order was modified and shops reopened, the situation deteriorated once again. Again on 4 July a Muslim coolie was stabbed at Chamartuli near Farasgunj by two Hindu bhadralok youth. Retaliation followed by stabbing two Hindu carpenters at Bangshall. On 6 July there was yet another assault on a Muslim by three Hindu bhadralok youth. Long hours of curfew were promptly reimposed.63 An idea can be made of the punitive nature of the curfew from a letter of Dhirendra Chandra Dasgupta to the Mahasabha leader N.C. Chatterjee. The curfew continued for 72 hours and 85 arrests were made from the cordoned areas. No milk or medicine could be procured during this period.64 The Turbulent Areas Ordinance was brought back (after a lapse since January) and collective fines were imposed on the two areas where these incidents had occurred. But since then the situation was brought under control.65 Contemporary observers were at pains to trace the reasons for the recurrence of the disturbances in Dacca immediately in the wake of the appeal for peace and harmony by the non-communal ministry. There were economic hardships like rising prices or an actual or threatened shortage of commodities due to the rising tide of evacuees. It gave rise to a great apprehension and uneasiness among an indisciplined population which burst into crimes. Local officials ascribed the outbreak to the activities of the members of revolutionary groups like the Forward Bloc which had been penetrated by the goonda elements in the Dacca population. But the most likely cause was the vigorous attempt of the Muslim League leaders to frustrate the good will and peace generated by the efforts of the Progressive Coalition Government. They tried their best to undo the good that was going to result from the sympathetic gestures of the new Government for all alike, Muslim or Hindu. If Dacca could be pushed once again into the abyss of lawlessness and communal rivalry, the Muslim League would be able to achieve the twin purpose of leading to the break up of the non-communal alternative as well as their own return to power. To that end they had directed all their energies. The

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economic crisis and new burdens on the economy was a God sent to them. They just continued to fish in the troubled waters, circumstances merely aiding their cause.66 DEFENCE AGAINST JAPANESE ATTACK

While the communal cauldron was still simmering, the distant clouds of war, which had so long been hovering on the horizon, started knocking at the gates of Bengal. On 7 December 1941 the Japanese embarked on an advance into the Pacific, beginning with the bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. The myth of the invincibility of the British navy was served a lethal blow with the sinking of two battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales which the British had placed to guard the waters of Singapore. They had provided for protection on the waters, but had not thought of protection from aerial bombing. On 1 February Moulmein was occupied and on 8 February Japanese soldiers entered Singapore through the seemingly impregnable jungles on the northern side. Singapore fell on 15 February and Rangoon on 11 March. The Bay of Bengal was now open to the Japanese navy and the long eastern coastline of India lay exposed to depredations. Evacuees from Malaya and Burma entered Bengal in tens and thousands. Subhas Chandra Bose could be heard from Free Hindustan Radio broadcast from Germany talking about liberating India with Axis collaboration. There were rumours that the Japanese would simultaneously attack Chittagong, Calcutta and Madras.67 India at this hour, however, was singularly unprepared for such an attack. All the well trained Indian troops had been taken out of India to fight in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran. General Claude Auchinlek who had preceded Wavell had requested the War Cabinet for tanks to prepare at least one well equipped armoured division in India. But Churchill vetoed the idea saying, ‘But General, how do you know that they wouldn’t turn and fire the wrong way?’68 Their constant fear was that, taking advantage of British preoccupations in various theatres of war spread across the globe, nationalist sparks might flare up among the Indian troops in a repeat performance of 1857 and might loosen their iron grip on the colony earlier than any foreign invasion might bring it. As additional divisions had to be sent to the west, the Prime

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Minister warned the Secretary of State Leopold Amery that ‘the fact that we are somewhat reducing the quality of our British garrisons (in India) makes it all the more desirable that a larger number of Indian troops should also be employed outside India’. Thus India was denuded of combat troops to defend her eastern borders.69 MOOKERJEE’S LETTER DEMANDING

A BENGALI HOME ARMY

The serious implications of keeping the elected representatives of the Indian people in the dark regarding the defence arrangements of the country in the face of an anticipated Japanese attack were highlighted by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in a letter to the Governor of Bengal Sir John Herbert on 7 March 1942. The Government had for long justified the large expenditure incurred from the Indian exchequer on the deployment of the Indian army for guarding the outer walls of the Empire in Iran, Iraq and Egypt in the west and Burma and Singapore on the east. While the policing of these extended ‘frontiers’ were done successfully the people of India did not question imperial policy. But now that these distant walls of security had collapsed and the enemy was knocking on the gates of India the people certainly had the right to demand a voice in the measures taken by the imperial government for the security of the country.70 In yet another letter of 26 July 1942 Mookerjee gave vent to his suspicion that as in the case of Burma the Government was planning to throw Bengal to the wolves and withdraw from its responsibility. It was only amazing that when enemy planes came to Bengal and bombed Chittagong, there was no attempt to chase them away from the frontiers of India. It was well known that enemy planes were flying over large tracts of land in eastern Bengal and Assam, but hardly any attack was launched on them. The effect of this policy is disastrous on public morale. After the fall of Singapore, Malaya and Burma, it is generally felt that there is no desire to put up a real and stubborn fight and Bengal may suffer the same fate as Burma has done.71

Dr. Mookerjee was worried that the Government was talking of ‘scorched earth’ as a means of combating the enemy as the country had been denuded of all competent and trained army personnel to fight the battles westward. In Russia such a policy was tried by the

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national government of the country. But in India the people were kept totally in the dark regarding the military policy of the Government although talks of granting Dominion Status to India at the close were in the air. Dr. Mookerjee wanted to raise a Home Army manned by at least two lakh Bengali soldiers to defend Bengal with the limited arms at the country’s disposal with efforts to produce more arms to equip it better. In his letter of 26 July 1942 to the Governor he urged that only children of the soil committed to the welfare of the land can successfully defend the land: The present war cannot be fought to a finish by an army, however, well-paid and well-equipped, unless the army is imbued with a religious fervor so that it will rather face death than retreat or surrender an inch of the sacred land that it is called upon to defend. That feeling of sacredness is attached to one’s own motherland and comes spontaneously, not from a hired or meagerly paid army, but from an army that consists of the children of the soil.72

Syama Prasad feared that the people might have to get involved in a guerilla warfare with the Japanese for a long time and wanted to prepare for that. His real question actually was: ‘Are you prepared to trust us even today? The verdict of history will be against you if you deny us the elementary right of raising our Army according to our needs.’73 The Government’s want of trust plagued the ministry from the very first day. Syama Prasad could have the bitter taste of it early in January 1942 in course of the advice of Raisman, the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Council that the expenses incurred by the Bengal Finance Ministry on emergent accounts like the ARP, hospitals and aerodromes were to be approved by his own Secretary Walker. Syama Prasad was indignant at the idea of having to seek the approval of his subordinate and at last it was decided that it would be done by the Accountant General. This incident was an eye opener. It revealed the Government’s unwillingness to trust Indians with any state business of serious import.74 THE CRIPPS OFFER

Even if Churchill had no desire to grant self government to the

colonies, under pressure from his ally Roosevelt he had to make a

pretence of bringing India the blessings of self rule. In March 1942

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he had to send Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord of Privy Seal, to India with a mission to work out a formula for granting self government to India in conformity with the ‘August Offer’ earlier made by Linlithgow in 1940. Jinnah stayed away from the existing Central Government and the Central Legislature as both were based on the principle of a united India. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru’s proposals cabled to Churchill on behalf of a non-party conference for the formation of a national government responsible to the country at large were similarly unacceptable to Jinnah as it implied Hindu majority rule. Cripps, therefore, was entrusted with the impossible task of working out a compromise formula acceptable to all, including Jinnah. He offered an elected body (which would also represent the States by their rulers) entrusted with the task of making a new constitution for India as soon as the war would end. But he riddled it with a right for unwilling provinces not to accede to the new constitution. And in the two provinces of Punjab and Bengal, where the Muslim majority had been compromised by the grant of weightage to Hindus, accession will not be possible without a 60 per cent positive vote in the Legislature. Failing that there would be a plebiscite to determine the opinion of the minorities.75 The Cripps offer could not please any of the parties concerned. Jinnah demurred as there was no explicit reference to Pakistan. The Congress Working Committee raised the complicated issue of the ‘substantial groups’ residing within the separatist territorial area, who might be wishing to stay with the union. The Hindu Mahasabha with its commitment to ‘one and indivisible India’ was yet more indignant. No less alarmed were the Sikhs at the prospect of a revival of Muslim ascendancy.76 A secret report dated 2 April 1942 from R. Tottenham, Additional Secretary, Home Department, revealed that before formally expressing its opinion the Patel group in the Congress had a consultation with Mahasabha leaders like Savarkar, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, B.S. Moonje and Bhai Parmanand to ascertain their views. They feared losing influence with the Hindu masses if the Mahasabha alone rejected the proposals. Therefore the Patel group was keeping in close touch with both the Sikhs and the Mahasabha.77 Savarkar was anxious to know about the reactions of Fazlul Huq to the Cripps scheme as he suspected that Huq might be secretly

PLATE 1: S Y A M A P R A S A D M O O K E R J E E

PLATE 2: JINNAH, 1945

PLATE 3: A.K. FAZLUL HUQ

PLATE 4: CALCUTTA 1946 RIOT

PLATE 5: GANDHIJI AT PRAYER MEETING IN CALCUTTA

PLATE 6: JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

PLATE 7: NIRMAL CHATTERJEE

PLATE 8: KHAWAJA NAZIMUDDIN

PLATE 9: SARDAR PATEL

PLATE 10: H.S. SUHRAWARDY

PLATE 11: THE STATESMAN, 21 AUGUST 1946

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conspiring with Sir Sikander Hyat Khan for working out a scheme for a Bangistan, a variation of the 1905 scheme for the partition of Bengal. Even if the Sikhs might contemplate a partition of Punjab to separate Muslim majority areas from the rest of the Punjab, the new province (Sikhistan) must owe allegiance to the Indian Union. The Hindus would never be a willing party to any English proposal for the dismemberment of the country. It might only be effected at the point of English sword. It would then have to be undone by the Sikh kirpan if not in the present generation then in the next. Instead of leaving it for the future he wanted it to be done today. Savarkar wrote a letter to N.C. Chatterjee on 13 June 1942 with this message and sent a copy to Master Tara Singh.78 The Hindu Mahasabha’s formal resolution against the Cripps proposals harked back to ideas of the integral unity of India over ages. It spoke of Hindu religious texts containing reference to the mother country extending from Kashmir to the Cape. Emperors like Ashoka and Akbar had actually achieved its unification as a single unit. It was the noblest work of England in India. Cripps’ proposal meant the destruction of this national heritage. Therefore the recognition of India as an indivisible, inviolable and integral unity should be the starting point of any reform scheme. The diverse nationalities present in India should have cultural autonomy as had been enshrined in the Turkish constitution. Abraham Lincoln led a war in the US to prevent its dismemberment. Nor did the USSR allow secession for the sake of race or religion.79 However, the Hindu Mahasabha’s rejection of the Cripps’ Offer did not mean a retreat from the ‘policy of responsive cooperation’ with the British as was clarified in a press statement issued by Savarkar at Bombay on 9 April 1942. Savarkar reaffirmed the necessity of the joining of the Government military forces by the Hindus. Army, Navy, Air Force, ARP, civic guards, ordnance factories – Savarkar wanted Hindus to join all such institutions. It would not only help Hindus in defending their homes from the ravages of war but also help them fight all internal anti-Hindu anarchy as well. Even after the war the martial mentality and skills acquired in military duties would serve as an asset to national strength.80 Syama Prasad, however, personally had other ideas about the Cripps

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offer. He thought it would have given a chance to share power and prevent many catastrophes: We would have been on the saddle and many matters would have been shaped by us according to the nation’s need. Who knows, with the constitutional machinery working in full order, we might have prevented the catastrophic famine. We could do all, however, only if the Congress as the largest and most well-organised political party in India had agreed to come to terms with the HMG – not otherwise.81

The Congress had probably interpreted Cripps’ offer to negotiate as a desperate attempt of the British to have a collaborating India in the midst of the setbacks in the international theatre. In the Harijan of 10 May Gandhi wrote: ‘The presence of the British in India is an invitation to Japan to invade India. Their withdrawal would remove the bait. Assume, however, that it does not, free India would be better able to cope with the invasion. Unadulterated non-cooperation would then have full sway.’82 This was followed by the Civil Disobedience Resolution in Bombay on 8 August 1942. The Government reacted sharply by putting the entire Working Committee into jail. Deprived of their leadership the followers interpreted Gandhi’s teachings in their own ways. Sarvepalli Gopal described their actions as a manifestation of ‘the depth of natural will’.81 They uprooted the railway tracks, snapped the tele­ phone wires and seriously disturbed military communications. In August and September 1942 57½ battalions had to be employed in combating the disturbances. In the opinion of David Anthony Low it was considered ‘the most serious threat to the raj since the revolt of 1858’.83 ‘SCORCHED EARTH’ AND ‘DENIAL’

The ‘Quit India’ call in the midst of the threat from Japan hit the British when it hurt most. Already on 14 November 1941 Churchill had decided that they would follow the ‘scorched earth’ policy wherever they were compelled to surrender any territory. Amery cabled on 27 March advising destruction of all resources which might assist enemy operations in eastern India. The Viceroy understood that scorched earth along the vast coastline of India would deprive millions of their means of livelihood and saddle the Government with the

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responsibility of feeding them. Ultimately it was curtailed and decided to keep it limited to coastal Bengal. The sufferings that would ensue to the local populace could be lightly dismissed as well-deserved as Bengal was considered to be the den of all the ‘fifth columnists’ and seditious elements.84 The ICS officer Ashok Mitra, who had been in charge of East Bengal districts at this time, had also understood that Japan’s primary concern at this time was to eliminate Chiang Kai Shek’s forces from the Chinese mainland. She had taken Malay, Singapore and Burma to keep her supply lines clear. Early in April 1942 Calcutta experienced a bomb attack and Chittagong airport was bombed on 8 and 9 May. But beyond these stray incidents they exhibited no enthusiasm for a full fledged invasion of India immediately. But in spite of having been aware of these realities, the Government proceeded with its plans of destroying all boats, bicycles and bullock carts so that the enemy would not find it possible to move into Bengal on water or land routes. Although ostensibly aimed against the Japanese scare, these measures actually had the ulterior motive of bringing the recalcitrant people of these coastal districts to heel.85 Madhusree Mukherjee has written how boats were an indispensable part of the life of riverine Bengal as ferries for common people for accessing the market, reaching agricultural holdings into the various islands lying at the mouth of the delta in the Bay of Bengal and taking fishermen to the sea. Destruction of boats meant killing the livelihood of the people of these regions. Leonard George Pinnell, the Viceroy’s Secretary, who was sent personally to oversee the work of demolition confessed to having destroyed 66,500 boats in the Denial area. Only a third of the total number of boats were still plying to transport the jute from the countryside as gunny bags were extremely necessary for carrying sands for the war. Thousands of fishermen thus lost their means of living and made up the vast number of famine victims that eventually flocked to the cities, begging for gruel and in the end died by scores on the footpaths of Calcutta.86 RICE DENIAL

Another aspect of ‘denial’ was the destruction of stocks of rice for

fear that they might fall into the hands of the invading Japanese army.

As soon as the order came from the Central Government in April Sir

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John Herbert, the Governor of Bengal ordered Kripalani, the Joint Secretary, Commerce and Labour Department, to remove the excess rice from three districts within 24 hours. Since the Bengal Government did not have the local infrastructure to implement such an emergency order, the firm of Ispahanis acting through a benamdar was entrusted with the task of siphoning off the surplus rice and paddy from the far flung districts.87 The other reasons for the shortage of rice in the most fertile districts of Bengal were the failure of the aus crop of 1941, stoppage of imports of pegu rice on which deficit districts like Chittagong were solely dependent, panic purchase of grain by the Government often at a higher price than that which it had fixed itself, purchase by all the major industrial concerns to feed their labour and what was totally indefensible, license to the government of Ceylon to purchase 38,000 tonnes of rice per month from the market of Bengal. These factors gradually snowballed into the famine of 1943. As a peasant leader Huq had the discerning eyes to see that no surplus was being left from the harvest of 1942. The Government’s Rice Controlling Officer Mr. McInnes made no attempt to stop the rice exports from Bengal although the Viceroy had assured the Government of Bengal that exports would be discontinued.88 DENIAL AND CONGRESS MOVEMENT

Denial, however, could not be achieved without resistance from the people of the concerned districts. There were evasions in the Chittagong district for long. Delays were reported from Bakarganj where the steamer companies took time to work out alternative supply routes. In Noakhali where boats alone had been the only means of connecting chars or islands, local inhabitants did not give in without clashes with the military in which one villager lost his life. In the Barasat sub­ division three soldiers of the Mahratta battalion were injured, one villager was killed and several were injured when they opened fire. In Noakhali and Khulna boats would rather be sunk than handing them over to the Government.89 In Tamluk and Contai in Midnapore particularly, resistance to denial assumed a serious form under the leadership of the Congress.

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The villagers of Donipur near Tamluk stopped a steamerload of rice bound for Calcutta under the care of the Ispahani and Co. At night time the people of southern Midnapore dug up road surfaces, fell large trees on the road to block movement of military trucks and telephone and telegraph poles were uprooted. In the morning three processions converged on Tamluk town and attacked the police station. The military had also arrived and the soldiers fired killing three. As roads were blocked on the north-west reinforcements could not arrive so authorities had to resort to aerial bombing. After the arrival of reinforcements the police personel themselves turned to looting and arson of these villages. They carried on their rampage for several days and raped the womenfolk of the rebel villages in a brutal manner. Later they forcibly brought Muslims from neighbouring villages and ordered them to join in the loot. Their motive was to lend a communal colour to these incidents and thus cover up their own misdemeanor.90 CYCLONE IN MIDNAPORE

To add to the woes of the people of Midnapore on the morning of 16 October it started raining fiercely and there was a cyclone and big tidal waves swept the shores. The magnitude of the crisis could be guessed from the description of S.G. Taylor, who was the DIG of the Burdwan Range: The storm which occurred was of such ferocity that it drove the sea water from the Bay of Bengal inland over an area spreading 100 miles along the coast and 20 miles deep. It devastated everything in its path; dwelling houses and other buildings were utterly demolished. Human beings, animals of every description and birds were completely wiped out in the area. The task of disposing of the dead was monumental. There could be no discrimination and the bodies of Hindus, Mahomedans and all kinds of animals were buried in the same pits.91

It later transpired that the storm alert had deliberately been withheld by the Magistrate N.M. Khan to punish the Congress rebels of Midnapore. Even on the night of the calamity the SDO refused to relax the curfew in the town so that people might seek shelter there nor did he release boats to rescue people stranded on rooftops or in trees. Even relief from Calcutta was not allowed to reach in compliance

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to the Governor’s orders. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee later discovered a confidential report to the Secretariat stating that the best way to teach a lesson to the people of Midnapore was to postpone relief by a few weeks.92 The cyclone was hardly a secret and Japanese radio was repeatedly broadcasting that 1,00,000 persons were killed in its first hour. Even then the Government immediately gagged the press so that the Government atrocities could be kept away from domestic and international exposure. The first notice came on 3 November 1942 in the Statesman reporting the death of 11,000. Actually the figures were something approaching 30,000. Against the backdrop of this natural calamity was set up the Mahabharata Yuktarashtra: Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar (Independent Government of India in Medinapur) on 17 December 1942, which could carry on its existence till August 1944. It could even launch its own mouthpiece, the Biplabi, which later became an important source of information for the ravages of the famine aided by the repressive machinery of the state. The absence of the zamindar-peasant conflict in the agrarian structure of Midnapore and the jotedars and the small peasants and bargadars all hailing from the same Mahishya caste could make its smooth functioning possible.93 EVACUATION

While protest against rice denial and boat denial merged into the Congress Civil Disobedience movement, there was yet another kind of measure taken at this time in coastal districts to facilitate military camping and movements. Noakhali was probably the worst hit among the affected districts. Here the military preparations seemed to far surpass those in other areas. There was evacuation of the population at a very short notice without any arrangement for rehabilitation or adequate compensation. Stray letters, intercepted by postal censor, from the inhabitants of Noakhali to Hindu Mahasabha leaders seeking redress provide a glimpse into the extent of oppression that was go­ ing on. One Kshetramohan Roy of Feni from Noakhali wrote to Manoranjan Chowdhury, the Secretary of the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha on 13 August 1942 that police help was being sought by the SDO for forcibly evacuating the inhabitants of Sultanpur and Dharampur

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who had not evacuated up till then. About twenty families had already been evacuated with police help. He thought that if compensation had been paid according to the revised rule of the Government then force would not have been required.94 Rajendralal Roychowdhury, a reputed pleader from Noakhali, wrote to Syama Prasad Mookerjee on 6 June 1942 seeking settlement of lands for the people of char Lakshmi, char Budu Dass and char Patnis after the cyclone. In yet another letter of 17 July 1942 he informed Dr. Mookerjee that even bhadralok households and some lawyers had been affected by the economic distress.95 The pleader Satish Chadra Bardhan, the Secretary, Hindu Mahasabha of Feni suggested in a letter of 18 June 1942 to Manoranjan Chowdhury, Secretary Bengal Hindu Mahasabha that payment of the cost of evacuation, cost of building huts and compensation for the land acquired should be the minimum before a family would move out. Since all boats had been taken into military custody, the fishermen, whose only means of livelihood was catching fish, were starving. Potters who depend on boats to sell their earthen pots had become idle. Resumption of communications was also not an unmixed blessing as this was followed by the draining out of all grains from the districts and prices increased as a result.96 Bardhan’s letter of 18 June also mentioned another kind of nuisance. Temples and places of worship in the evacuated areas were desecrated and images were defiled or destroyed.97 Soldiers sometimes tried to use local women for the gratification of their carnal desires. One such attempt and its gory consequences were described in a letter of Brojesh Chandra Chakrabarty Thakur of Sonachakia to the Hindu Mahasabha leader N.C. Chatterjee on 4 June 1942. When three or four Punjabi soldiers tried to rape a Hindu woman in Feni, the woman used a sharp weapon in self defence. As a result one of the soldiers died instantly and another was lying in the hospital in a precarious condition.98 The Deputy Collector, who also happened to be Additional Subdivisional Officer sent a telegram to the DM informing him of the matter. As this became a piece of evidence against the guilty persons local officials advised the Chief Secretary to transfer the Deputy Collector. They also tried to prevent the Chief Minister from inspecting the place. All the officials of the Chittagong Division gathered at Feni to persuade the CM. The Governor’s Secretary called

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up the Commissioner of the Division to stop Huq from going. The incident was a sad reminder of how the eastern coast of Bengal had been abandoned to military despotism and how even the Chief Minister ‘had to be kept out of the way because he could not perhaps be trusted to fall in line with the official line’.99 News of such terrible military and police atrocities left Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee distraught and pushed to the end of his tether. Firing and rape on the famished people of Midnapore, who later swelled the ranks of the Civil Disobedience activists alarmed him as a slur on the administration of which he was also a part and parcel. Narendra Narayan Chakravarty moved the Bengal Legislative Assembly to tears calling the outbreak a food riot and not a Congress movement or a political movement. This is the fire of hunger, the craving for life. The quest for life is driving the nation to death. That is why the villages are on fire – starved people are robbling stores and shops. Where is Congress there? It is not a Congress move­ ment. It is not a political movement. It is hunger burning as a naked truth.100

All Bengali hearts melted at the happenings at Noakhali and Midnapore. The Progressive Coalition Party had passed a resolution demanding the release of Congress prisoners, the acceptance of their demands and the declaration of freedom in a meeting in the second half of July. This was reiterated at the end of September by the Nikhil Banga Bengali Muslim Samiti under the chairmanship of the Muslim Party Whip.101 PROTEST FROM SYAMA PRASAD

Syama Prasad had already advised moderation to Herbert in his dealing with the Congress movement in his letter of 26 July 1942: The administration of the province should be carried out in such a manner that, in spite of the best efforts of the Congress, this movement will fail to take root in the province. It should be possible for us, specially responsible ministers, to be able to tell the public that the freedom for which the Congress has started the movement, already belongs to the representatives of the people. In some spheres it might be limited during the emergency.102

‘The most unfortunate decision on the part of the British Government’, he wrote in a letter of 12 August 1942 to the Viceroy,

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‘was its refusal to negotiate with Mahatma Gandhi, even after he gave his emphatic assurance that the movement would not start until all avenues for an honourable settlement had been explored.’ Repression as an answer to the real demand of the people would be a greater disaster. He then put forward a demand for a formal recognition of India’s freedom and the formation of a National Government including representatives of all important parties or groups. The India Office was to be abolished. Minority rights could be dealt by a treaty between India and Britain, disputes being referred to an international tribunal. In due course a Constituent Assembly was to be formed. The National Government could then join the British to fight the Axis Powers. He also demanded a seat for India in the Allied War Councils. Dr. Mookerjee did not want to be a party to a repressive regime. Continuing in office would mean sharing the responsibility for all that was happening in the name of the Government. Mookerjee therefore wanted to be relieved in case his demands were not accepted.103 CRITICISM BY THE MUSLIM LEAGUE IN THE

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

The Bengal Legislative Assembly met in September 1942 to pass the Budget after an interval of five months and the ministry was immediately assailed by the members of the opposition on several counts. Although numerically small, the opposition was backed up by the European Group. Moreover, the protective hand of the Governor was always propping them up from behind. The Progressive Coalition Ministry had shelved the discussion of all matters like the Seconary Education Bill, the Calcutta Municipal Amedment Bill and the recommendations of the Land Revenue Commission on the plea that they were controversial. ‘In fact everything is controversial,’ as Suhrawardy caustically remarked, ‘unless it can damage the Muslim cause.’ Thereafter pressure was mounted for convening a meeting of the Select Committee on the Secondary Education Bill, which had been postponed after a brief three day discussion in July. An all-party meeting of the party leaders to discuss the Land Revenue Commission recommendations was also demanded. This was followed up by a

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demand for implementing the reforms in the Calcutta Corporation. The Rural Primary Education (Amendment) Bill, on the other hand, came under heavy fire from the Muslim League MLA for trying to take primary education and the district school boards out of the hands of the Muslims.104 Suhrawardy next took up the case of control price shops and complained of persons without any previous experience becoming distributors of controlled commodities like salt, sugar and rice. Among those who were patronized Suhrawardy named the Secretary, Bhowanipur Hindu Mahasabha, Subodh Chandra Kundu, a hardware merchant close to the Finance Minister and Kalipada Bose, known to be close to the Chief Minister. Among them Subodh Kundu had been arrested for profiteering by Bhowanipore thana, but later the prosecution was dropped through the intervention of the C.M. Of the 50 Government controlled rice shops that Mr. Pinnell approved Muslims could not get more than 7 although Muslim localities needed Muslim shops. Although Muslims were the biggest rice merchants of Calcutta, officers could not locate any more Muslims. Suhrawardy ended with his familiar refrain: ‘After all is not this a Hindu Mahasabha Ministry with a show boy as its puppet hand?’105 The irrational enforcement of the permit system on a district to district basis contributed further to artificial scarcities in surplus districts and increased the prices. Nisith Nath Kundu pointed out in the Legislative Assembly how Dinajpur had been a surplus district in sugar production. And yet when the Setabgunj Sugar Mill owned by Surajmull Nagarmull of Calcutta got a permit for sugar, prices increased as sugar was taken out of the district to be sold where prices were much dearer. Premahari Burman corroborated Kundu’s state­ ment.106 But the most serious criticism of the ministry was the violation of the communal ratio in recruitment to the ARP. When the Chief Minister’s organ, the Bengal Weekly claimed that there was no communal ratio in the ARP, the Secretary of the Progressive Muslim Party formed a committee of Enquiry to ascertain the facts. Nazimuddin pointed out that he had learnt on the authority of the ARP Controller, Mr. A.S. Hands that although a sufficient number of Muslim candidates were available, minimum qualifications were prescribed

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in a manner whereby the provision about communal ratio could be sidetracked. Mr. David Hendry pointed out that there was even an instruction to Mr. Hands, which later had to be withdrawn, that no Muslim should be appointed as Captain of ARP Nazimuddin demanded that persons appointed in ARP in excess of the communal ratio should be dismissed and in their places Muslims and SCs were to be appointed.107 Suhrawardy came armed with statistics how Muslim interests were being trampled down in all categories of appointments in Government services. Of the 27 posts carrying a salary of Rs. 200 Muslims got only 6. Of the 231 posts of Post Wardens carrying a pay of Rs. 75, only 32 went to Muslims. Of the total number of 3,164 appointments to the post of Section Wardens carrying a salary of Rs. 30 only 411 were given to Muslims.108 The Progressive Coalition Party at its meeting of 27 May 1942 had decided to organize Home Guards. Recruitment of volunteers was to be strictly in proportion to the communal ratio and recruitment of the training and organizing personnel was to be through committees composed of local members of the Legislature.109 But the Muslim MLAs did not like the way all gun licencees were asked either to surrender their weapons or to join the Home Guard.110 Tamizuddin took it as an open challenge from the Progress Coalition Ministry to the Muslim National Guard and retorted that the latter had been created to protect all sections of people.111 TENSION OVER TORTURE OF

CONGRESS ACTIVISTS

Syama Prasad had gathered from Fazlul Huq that some secret instructions had reached the Governor from the Viceroy. They wanted the Governor to place it before the ministry. But the letter could not be found. Soon after a virtual Reign of Terror was launched in the province.112 There were police firings on student demonstration in the Wellington Square in spite of Dr. Mookerjee’s explicit instructions to the Police Commissioner to the contrary. M.O. Carter, Secretary to the Governor, said that the students had set fire to an ambulance car. But the Commissioner of Police could produce no evidence to that effect.

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There were questions in the Assembly. But orders came everyday directly from the Governor without any reference to the Chief Minister, who had retained the Home portfolio. Everywhere outside Calcutta also the bureaucracy reigned supreme. Heavy collective fines were imposed and it was on Hindus only. Reports of police atrocities in Berhampore and Dacca jails were also filtering in.113 The All India Hindu Mahasabha, which met in Delhi, debated if the Mahasabha should join the movement. Since all Congress leaders were behind bars it was not really a Congress movement any more. It was ‘a sort of uprising similar to what had happened in 1857, and a revolt in which Hindus participated much more than others’. But Savarkar thought that it would merely strengthen the Muslim League if Hindu leaders were put behind bars and Hindu interests would remain undefended. Congress had not responded favouably to Savarkar’s appeal for an undivided India issued from Poona just before August 1942. This gave him a feeling that Congress was unwilling to commit.114 The Hindu Sabha made a committee with three members, Maheswar Dayal Seth, Meher Chand Khanna and Syama Prasad to mobilize public opinion to pressurize the HMG for stopping the acts of repression, release the leaders from jail and call them to the negotiation table. Fazlul Huq from Bengal, Allah Bux from Sind and Master Tara Singh from Punjab were with them. But Sikander Hyat Khan informed them that the Government had closed its mind against negotiations and decided to recognize Jinnah as the sole representative of Muslim interests. Syama Prasad was refused permission to meet Gandhi. A visit to the Viceroy confirmed what he had learnt from Sikander. But Syama Prasad had demonstrated that a Hindu-Muslim rapproachment was still possible only if the Government would not stand in the way. Syama Prasad also tried to open a dialogue with Jinnah but Jinnah had already derived more oxygen from the Cripps’ offer. He had understood that the time was on his side and ignored the olive branch from Syama Prasad.115 Syama Prasad had a feeling that the Progressive Coalition experiment had run aground. One reason might have been the failure of Fazlul Huq to retain his place in Muslim politics. He had failed in his venture of snatching back Muslim sympathy from the League and could not

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stifle the voices of dissent within his own party. He spent most of his energy in keeping support for his leadership among the members of the Assembly intact. But he failed to cash in on his popularity in the countryside. He did not do much to organize his KPP in the countryside which had brought him to power when he had promised a square meal (dal bhat) for every mouth. He failed to fix a minimum price for jute, which disillusioned the countryside about the reliability of his promise. His tie-up with the Hindu Mahasabha came as a handy weapon in the hands of the Muslim League, who kept on campaigning that he had betrayed the Muslim community. He on his part could not launch a counter campaign to counter the false propaganda or to familiarize the East Bengal Muslims about the actual programme of the Progressive Coalition. His opponents represented it as a ‘sell out’ to the Hindu fundamentalist forces. The Muslim League, on the other hand, could fast spread its organization in the countryside. In course of seven months Suhrawardy, Nazimuddin and Tamizuddin held from 500 to 800 meetings all over East Bengal. The League Working Committee began to hold its meetings in the district headquarters and tried to spread the message of Pakistan to every household. A special drive was also made to enroll more members for the Provincial Muslim League and Jinnah himself came to preside over the Bengal Provincial Muslim League Conference in Sirajgunge in 1942. They could thus hit Huq on his home turf and when finally Huq decided to go for an East Bengal tour everywhere he was attacked as a traitor or gaddar.116 News of these developments began to alarm Huq’s Muslim Assembly colleagues too. The differences came to the surface during a meeting at the residence of Fazlul Huq on 13 and 14 August 1942 attended by about 100 members of the Progressive Coalition Party like Abdul Hamid Shah, Abdul Wahid Baqai Nagari, Abdul Hakim, Hasan Ali Chaudhury, Jalaluddin Hashmi, Baddrudozza and Mozammel Haque. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee did not attend. Santosh Kumar Bose was present for a few minutes. Some of the Muslim MLAs criticized Syama Prasad and Santosh Kumar Bose for favouritism towards Hindus in the appointment of ARP and civic guards and other services and contracts. Some of them also threatened to go over to the Muslim League. The reckless police firing on the

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students in Calcutta regardless of the disapproval by the ministry had created a panic among them regarding the fate of the ministry. Congress and Hindu Mahasabha ministers were being pressed hard by their supporters to resign. The Muslim MLAs were all very anxious to know how the ministry was going to react to the incident and what would be their own position in the event of any new development.117 RESIGNATION OF SYAMA PRASAD

Syama Prasad was waiting for a ‘grand gesture’ from the Viceroy after his letter of 12 August 1942. But the Government’s handling of the Midnapore cyclone victims was too much for him. On 16 November 1942 he submitted his formal resignation from the cabinet through the Chief Minister. This letter of resignation was an indictment of the policies of the Government towards a subject country and the unwillingness of the Government to come to a settlement with the political parties of the country. ‘Lack of political unity is a false plea,’ as Syama Prasad argued, as ‘no political advance in the past was made conditional upon complete unity within India.’ The real problem lay in the Government’s unwillingness to transfer power to Indians. He complained about how the provincial autonomy had been reduced to a sham by constant interference from the Governor. Instead of seeking the advice of the ministry the Governor formulated his own policies with the help of the permanent officials and implemented them. The most tragic case was the handling of the Midnapore cyclone. In Midnapore repression has been carried on in a manner which resembles the activities of Germans in occupied territories as advertised by British agencies. Hundreds of houses have been burnt down by the police and the armed forces. Reports of outrages on women have reached us. Muslims have been instigated to loot and plunder Hindu houses.

Syama Prasad’s account of the administration’s handling of the cyclone victims was appalling: The suppression of news of the havoc by Government, and even of appeals for help for more than a fortnight, was criminal. In the presence of the District Magistrate, complaints were received that boats were not made

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available on that fateful evening or even later to save the lives of people who were perilously resting for a brief while on the roofs of their houses.

And again: One officer’s report in writing to Government was that relief, whether organized by Government or by any private agency, should be withheld for a month and thereby people taught a permanent lesson. Relief measures adopted by local officers were utterly inadequate. Even bona fide private relief workers from Calcutta though they produced their credentials, found themselves in jail under the Defence of India Rules.

Dr. Mookerjee also tried to draw attention to a new jizia, the collective fines, which Hindus alone would pay.118 The reasons pointed out by Syama Prasad for his resignation in his letter to the Governor sent the whole administration aflutter. The Viceroy was anxious to prevent its circulation lest the news of the barbaric repression reach the British Parliament or the American President on whose help in the war the British were banking so much in the hour of the German blitzkrieg. They were quite aware that civilized opinion nowhere in the world was going to countenance such inhuman behaviour. The Viceroy therefore advised the Governor to stop the circulation of the letter through press censorship.119 But Syama Prasad wanted to bring the goings on in the province to public notice all over the world. He had already posted the copies of his letters to many newspapers outside the province and there started a catch me if you can game over these letters. Eleven of those letters could be intercepted though postal censor.120 The Home Department of the Central Government was to write to all Home Departments of provinces not to allow the letter to get published. Syama Prasad later tried to publish them in the form of a book called A Phase of the Indian Struggle. In another letter of 2 December 1942 the Viceroy called it ‘a mean, objectionable document, which can only be published with press advice’.121 Instructions were sent to the Press Adviser in Calcutta to impose a heavy censorship.122 The effectiveness with which Syama Prasad had exposed the tyranny of British imperialism on the helpless people of Bengal became evident from the opinion offered by the Press Adviser: ‘The letter, if published, will give publicity nay will harden the spirit of resistance to the forces

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of law and order and encourage continuance of the commission of acts of lawlessness unless the demands for free political status are conceded with the means of DIR 1-4(7) read with DIR 34 (6) (K) and (p).’ These facts concerning the policy of the British Government in dealing with the present situation, allegations of alleged unwarranted interference with the work of the ministry and of unsympathetic and inconsiderate treatment by the Governor and officials of Government could not have been known to Syama Prasad unless he was an insider of the administration as the Press Adviser pointed out. The Press Adviser also pointed out to the criticism with regard to the action taken by the Governor with regard to the original instructions from the Government of India for dealing with the threatened Congress movement without prior consultation of the cabinet. This policy was continued regardless of the advice that an honourable and peaceful settlement was to be sought. The way in which there were indiscriminate arrests in spite of ministerial efforts and innocent persons shot at in Midnapore were ‘discreditable in a civilized government’ and the ‘reign of repression (carried on) for past few months ... can be a model for a totalitarian government’ as he found it.123 The gravity of the allegations alarmed the Viceroy and he lent a ready ear to the Governor’s allegation that it was Congress intransigence which actually was preventing a return to normalcy. He had the presence of a large number of American journalists to think of. He therefore wanted the Governor to publish and circulate ‘a telling communiqué shifting the entire blame on the Congress’. This was expected to cause the Congress agitation much harm and it would also have had some value as offsetting those distorted allegations of Mukherjee’s which are bound to attract the attention of these numerous American correspondents here who will see in them good copy and who will certainly be disposed to take them as proven if nothing comes on the other side.124

The Tottenham broadside ‘Congress Responsibility’ was a product of this brainwave.125 Syama Prasad, however, was undaunted. In yet another speech in the Bengal Legislative Assembly stating the reasons for his resignation he emphatically declared that he was unable to compromise with the

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British Government’s policy of holding down Indians under the heels. Indian ministers were nothing but ‘Mr. Amery’s showboys’ to prove Britain’s commitment to the principles of democracy to the world. But the real powers were concentrated in the Governor and a section of the bureaucracy. These officials obstructed the release of political prisoners, the formation of a Home Guard to kill the possibility of a people’s army and the formation of a national militia from a deep distrust of the Bengalis. The Midnapore incident was reiterated once again to bring out the bestiality of the whole episode. The most authentic proof of the Hitlerite attitude of regime was its treatment of Syama Prasad resignation letter, which had gone to swell the ranks of proscribed literature.126 But Syama Prasad’s speech could not move the imperial machinery. Churchill, Amery and Linlithgow – all were welded together in a single resolve – this was the resolve not to loosen the iron grip over India. As a fertile source of food, war ammunitions and a large and well trained army – this colony was indispensable in their scheme of things. They had already identified Jinnah as their handmaiden for the purpose as Sikander Hyat Khan had informed Syama Prasad of their plans. Fazlul Huq now remained the only obstruction on their path and they were determined to get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. The politicians of Bengal, however, were blissfully ignorant of these high level considerations. When Syama Prasad resigned they did not want immediately to follow suit. Santosh Kumar Basu did not want to leave the field free for the Muslim League yet. He thought that if they resigned, the oppression which was still held under some check would be perpetrated with more impunity. The bonds of HinduMuslim unity which had then been worked out would also be snapped beyond recovery. 127 Meanwhile, the opposition in the Assembly from the Muslim League grew very fierce. One or two Progressives among Muslims and SCs started drifting towards the Muslim League. Sensing the weakness of Fazlul Huq the Congress members became more demanding. The Governor started talking about a national government in view of the famine which had revealed its fangs. He pressed Huq to accept the Muslim League into the cabinet. Huq himself had

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written twice on 21 and 26 March proposing a national government, provided the League would accept him as their leader. Herbert gave him an assurance and deceived him into putting his signature in a resignation letter on 28 March 1943 to facilitate the exit of the Progressive Coalition Ministry and the coming to power of the new. Meanwhile, Nazimuddin was waiting in the wings. He took oath as Chief Minister on 24 April 1943.128 Thus ended the experiment of a non-communal alternative in the Communal Award ridden province of Bengal. It did not have to go for want of popular enthusiasm for it. Its end was forced by the Governor’s deceitful dealings. Huq’s ambition to become the Chief Minister made him blind to the ruse of the Governor. The Progressive Coalition had to quit. It had, however, made its point that Hindu-Muslim cooperation was still possible in Bengal if the imperialist intervention would not stand in the way. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

Misc. 8.4.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. Misc. 14.7.41 and 29.7.41 in ibid. Proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, 9 April 1941. Misc. Report of 2.6.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01576/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 5. Richard M. Eaton, ‘Who are the Bengal Muslims? Conversion and Islamisation in Bengal’, in Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001), pp. 26-51. 6. Abul Mansur Ahmad, A mar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhor (Naoroz Kitabistan, Dhaka, 3rd enlg. edn. 1975), pp. 14-17, 22. 7. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, From Purdah to Parliament (London, The Cresset Press, 1963), pp. 9, 5; Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001) Introduction, pp. 1-25. 8. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971, Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1992, 3rd end., 2007) pp. 195- 219; Rajat and Ratna Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, in Sugata Bose, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919-47 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986). 9. Misc. Report of 2.6.41 in File No. KPM/SB/01576/05 in Kolkata Police Museum.

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10. Fazlul Huq to Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan, Secretary, All India Muslim League, 8 September 1941 in File No. R/3/2/18 in India Office Records, London. 11. K.K. Aziz, The Partition of India and Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publications, Delhi, 1990), p. 169. 12. Huq to Liaqat Ali Khan, 8 September 1941, op. cit. 13. File No. KPM/SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 14. Herbert to Linlithgow, 10.9.41 in File No. R/3/2/18 in India Office Records, London. 15. Huq to Liaqat Ali Khan, 8 September 1941, op. cit. 16. Provincial Fortnightly report for the First Half of 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/9/41 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 17. Ibid. 18. Provincial Fortnightly report for the Second Half of 1941 in File No. Home Poll (I) 18/9/41 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 19. File No. KPM/SB/01482/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 20. Fazlul Huq to Sir John Herbert, 23 September 1941 in File No. R/3/2/18 India Office Records, London. 21. Ibid. 22. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 November 1941. 23. Huq to Herbert, 23 September 1941 in File R/3/2/18 India Office Records, London. 24. Provincial Fortnightly Report, First Half of November 1941 in File No. 18/11/41 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 25. Provincial Fortnightly Report, First Half of September 1941, op. cit. 26. Ibid. 27. Amrita Bazar Patrika, Editorial of 2 November 1941. 28. Ibid. 29. Telegram of Governor of Bengal to Viceroy, 7 December 1941 in File No. R/3/2/18 India Office Records, London. 30. PFR, Second Half of November 1941, op. cit. 31. Editorial in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 November 1941. 32. Indian Annual Register, 1942, Second Half, pp. 246-8. 33. Telegram of Governor of Bengal to Viceroy, 7 December 1941 in File No. R/3/2/18 India Office Records, London. 34. PFR Second Half of 1941 November, op. cit. 35. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9 December 1941. 36. Indian Annual Register, 1942, Second Half, p. 43. 37. Telegram Governor to Viceroy, 7 December 1941 in File No. R/3/2/18 India Office Records, London. 38. Ibid. 39. Viceroy to Governor, 6 December 1941, op. cit.

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40. Viceroy to M.O. Carter, Secretary to the Governor, 15 August 1941, op. cit. 41. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1993), pp. 49-51; Indian Annual Register, 1941, Second Half, p. 44. 42. A.K. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today (Gupta, Rahman and Gupta, Calcutta, 1944), p. 6. 43. Dr. S.P. Mookerjee to His Excellency Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, 26 July 1942 in A Phase of the Indian Struggle in Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, First Instalment, Printed Books in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 44. Anti Pakistan Day in Calcutta, 10 May 1942 in File No. 222/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 45. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, op. cit., p. 46. 46. Ibid. p. 54. 47. Dr. S.P. Mookerjee to His Excellency Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, 26 July 1942, op. cit. 48. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, op. cit. p.56 49. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, op. cit., p. 209. 50. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, op. cit., p. 56. 51. Ibid. 52. Provincial Fortnightly Report First and Second Half of January 1942 in File No. 18/1/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 53. PFR Second Half of February 1942 in File No. 18/2/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 54. PFR Second Half of June 1942 in File No. 18/6/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 55. PFR, Second Half of October 1942 in File No. 18/10/1942 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 56. File No. KPM/SB/01559/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 57. Paper clipping from Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9 May 1942. 58. Provincial Fortnightly Report, Second Half of June 1942 in File No. 18/6/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 June 1942. 59. Hindusthan Standard, 23 June 1942. 60. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 June 1942. 61. Hindusthan Standard, 23 June 1942. 62. PFR Second Half of June 1942 in File No. 18/6/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 63. PFR First Half of July 1942 in File No. 18/7/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi; Hindusthan Standard, 6 July 1942.

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64. Intercepted letter of Dhirendra Chandra Dasgupta to N.C. Chatterjee, dated 9.7.42 in KPM/SB/01559/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 65. Hindusthan Standard, 6 July 1942. 66. PFR First Half of July 1942 in File No. 18/7/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 67. PFR First Half of March 1942 in File No. 18/3/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 68. Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (1st published in India in Tranquebar Press for Westland Ltd., Chennai, 2010), p. 59. 69. Ibid., p. 4. 70. Letter of Dr. S.P. Mookerjee to John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, 26 July 1942 in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, A Phase of the Indian Struggle(1942) in the Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Ist Instalment, Printed Books in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 71. Ibid. 72. Letter of Dr. S.P. Mookerjee to John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, 7 March 1942 in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, A Phase of the Indian Struggle(1942) in the Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Ist Instalment, Printed Books in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 73. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, op. cit. pp. 58-60. 74. R. Coupland, The Cripps Mission (Humphrey Miford, Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 20. 75. Ibid., pp. 36-40. 76. Secret report from Governor-General to the Secretary of State, 4 March 1942 in File No. 222/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 77. I.R. 23061 of 17.6.42 in File No. KPM/SB/02676/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 78. Secret Report from Governor General to the Secretary of State, 4 March 1942 in File No. 222/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 79. Governor-General to Secretary of State, 10 April 1942 in File No. 222/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in NAI, New Delhi. 80. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, op. cit., p. 65. 81. Cited in R. Coupland, The Cripps Mission, p. 63. 82. Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I , 1889-1947 (1st published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1975; 1st pub. in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1975), p. 300. 83. D.A. Low, Lion Rampant (London, 1973), p. 164. 84. Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War, op. cit., pp. 64-5. 85. Ashok Mitra, Tin Kuri Dash, pt. II: Swadhinatar Pathe, 1940-1947 (Dey’s Publishing, Kolkata, Baisakh 1403). 86. Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War, op. cit., pp. 66-7.

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87. Ibid., pp. 67-8. 88. Fazlul Haque, Bengal Today, op. cit., pp. 12, 20-1, 51; Speech of Narendra Nath Dasgupta, 18 September 1942 in BLAP, vol. 63, no. 1. 89. Provincial Fortnightly Report, Second Half of May 1942 and First Half of June 1942 in Files No. 18/5/42 and 18/6/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the NAI, New Delhi. 90. Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War, op. cit. 91. S.G. Taylor Papers in Centre for South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 92. Ibid. pp. 91-3; Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 83. 93. Bidyut Chakrabarty, ‘Political Mobilisation in the Localities: The Quit India Movement in Midnapur’, Modern Asian Studies 26, no. 4, 1992, pp. 791-814; Srimanjari, Through War and Famine: Bengal, 1939-45 (Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2009), pp. 113-14. 94. Intercepted letter of Kshetramohan Roy of Feni to Manoranjan Chowdhury, Secretary, Bengal Hindu Mahasabha, dated 13 August 1942 in KPM/ SB/02785/05. 95. Rajendra Lal Roychowdhury to Shyama Prasad Mookerjee dated 6 June 1942 and 17 July 1942 in ibid. 96. Intercepted letter of Satish Chandra Bardhan, Secretary, Hindu Mahasabha, Feni to Manoranjan Chowdhury, Secretary, Bengal Hindu Mahasabha, dated 18 June 1942 in ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Intercepted letter of Brojesh Chandra Chakravarty Thakur, P.O. Sonachaka to N.C. Chatterjee, dated 4 June 1942 in ibid. 99. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today, op. cit., pp. 15-16. 100. Speech of Narendra Narayan Chakravarty, 18 September 1942 in BLAP, vol. 63, no. 1. 101. Provincial Fortnightly Reports, Second Half of July 1942 and Second Half of October 1942 in File No. 18/7/42 and 18/10/42 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 102. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee to Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal, 26 July 1942 in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, A Phase of the Indian Struggle (1942) in the Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, 1st instalment, Printed Books in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 103. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee to Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy and Governor General of India, 12 August 1942, ibid. 104. BLAP, 22 September 1942, vol. 63, no. 1. 105. Speech of Suhrawardy in BLAP, 21 September 1942, vol. 63, no. 1. 106. Speech of Nisith Nath Kundu, 18 September 1942 and Premahari Burman, 21 September 1942 in BLAP, vol. 63, no. 1. 107. Speech of Suhrawardy and Nazimuddin in BLAP, 22 and 23 September 1942, vol. 63, no. 1.

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108. Speech of Suhrawardy in BLAP, 21 September 1942, vol. 63, no.1. 109. Provincial Fortnightly Report, Second Half of May 1942 in File No. 18/5/42 in Home Poll (I) 1942 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 110. Speech of Suhrawardy, 21 September 1942 in BLAP, vol. 63, pt. 1. 111. Speech of Tamizuddin, 21 September 1942 in ibid. 112. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, pp. 71-2. 113. Ibid. pp. 74-5. 114. Ibid. pp. 76-7. 115. Ibid. pp. 77-8. 116. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, op. cit., pp. 207-8. 117. Report of a Special Branch Secret Agent dated 14 August 1942 in File No. KPM/SB/01576/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 118. File No. R/3/2/41, 1942-43 File No. 31, Collection No. 2 in India Office Records, London. 119. Viceroy to the Governor, 23 November 1942 in ibid. 120. Governor to Viceroy, 20 November 1942 in ibid. 121. Viceroy to the Governor of Bengal, 2 December 1942 in ibid. 122. Fredrico, New Delhi to Porter, Press Adviser, Writers’ Buildings, Calcutta in ibid. 123. File R/3/2/41, 1942-43 File 13, Collection 2 in IOR, London 124. Viceroy to Governor General, 20 November 1942 in ibid. 125. Chakrabarty, ‘Political Mobilisation in the Localities: The Quit India Movement in Midnapur’, op. cit., pp. 791-814. 126. Statement of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee before the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 12 February 1943 in ibid. 127. Report of Secret Agent (C. 103) dated 17 August 1941 in File No. KPM/ SB/01576/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 128. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today, op. cit., p. 30.

CHAPTER 6

The Blighted Province:

Communalism, Famine and

Steps towards Decolonization

COMMUNALISM RAMPANT

the failure of the non-communal alternative saw the quick descent of the province into stark communalism. The Progressive Coalition Ministry was succeeded by a Muslim League Government in Bengal led by Nazimuddin. It continued in office from April 1943 to 28 March 1945. The Governor’s blessings for the new government was made obvious by the head start of the Nazimuddin ministry with 13 Cabinet Ministers and 13 Parliamentary Secretaries and 4 additional Government whips at an additional annual cost of nearly Rs. 2 lakh to the public revenues. This was in stark contrast with the Governor’s refusal to allow more than one Parliamentary Secretary to Fazlul Huq and his spanner on the accommodation of a few more Scheduled Caste members through an expansion of the cabinet.1 Nazimuddin’s position in the Legislative Assembly had also been strengthened by the crossing over of several independent Muslims from Huq’s side to the Muslim League, raising League strength in the Assembly from 40 to 79. The European bloc was solidly behind him. He had also succeeded in winning over the Anglo-Indians and several Scheduled Caste members. Nazimuddin retained Home and Defence for himself, Suhrawardy was given Civil Supplies, Tamizuddin got Education, Khan Bahadur Syed Moazzemuddin Hossain (Agriculture and Rural Development), Nawab Mosharraf Hossain (Judiciary and Administration), Khan Bahadur Jalaluddin Ahmad (Public Health and Local Self Government) were also taken in. Khwaja Shahabuddin, notorious for his abetment to the Dacca riots of 1941, was made a minister and given the Commerce, Labour and Industries portfolio.

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Nazimuddin accommodated several Hindu ministers in his cabinet like Taraknath Mukherjee (Revenue and Relief ), Premahari Barman (Forest and Excise), Baroda Prasanna Pain (Works and Transport), Pulin Bihari Mallick (Publicity) and Jogendranath Mandal (Cooperative, Credit and Rural Indebtedness).2 The Muslim League’s return to power immediately plunged the province into rank communalism. ‘By unceasing propaganda and clever distortion of facts,’ as Fazlul Huq put it, ‘they managed to rouse the passions of the Muslim multitude against the Congress and as a next step against the Hindu community.’3 Once popular passions had been roused, they saw the Muslim League as their only saviour against Hindu domination. This trend was also to the liking of British Imperialists as they could prolong their hold on India and justify their rule as the arbiter between the two communities by trying to play off the Muslim League against the Congress. Immediately after coming to power the new ministry tried to take up the Secondary Education Bill and get it cleared in the Legislative Assembly. Fierce resistance from the opposition Congress and Hindu Sabha members did not allow it to happen. But the Muslim League kept on agitating about it. Meetings were held in prominent venues like the one at Muhammad Ali Park by the Calcutta District Committee on 27 June 1944 attended by a large gathering of 2,000 persons to campaign against the obscurantist policy of the opposition. The Calcutta District Muslim League urged the Bengal Provincial Muslim League to organize the Muslim masses to support the Bill by holding meetings and issuing leaflets. They gave a call for observing an All Bengal Secondary Education Week. A Committee of Action was also to be formed.4 Muslim opinion also became intolerant about conventions like orders against the sale of meat on a particular day every week which went by the name of ‘meatless day’ and they appealed to the Governor to abolish it.5 There were also other such incidents exuding of Muslim disregard for the other community’s feelings as in the case of the Ordnance Clothing Factory at Hide Road in Garden Reach, where the Hindu ARP firemen began to clamour against the washing of beef in the common water tank.6 It also came to notice from a letter of 11 September 1944 addressed

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to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who was soon going to be selected as the President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha in December 1944, that the Hindu students of Edward College Hindu Hostel in Pabna were prevented from chanting the name of God (Hari Samkirtan) in the hostel. Since chanting in a particular room was objected to by Muslim students, the Superintendent asked the Hindu boys to continue their ritual in another room. But since that also created trouble, the Principal threatened to close the college unless the students stopped. The authorities’ wrath fell on the Superintendent for not being able to persuade the students to stop the chanting and the Magistrate called the Superintendent ‘a mischievous knave.’7 The staging of the dramas Durgeshnandini and Sitaram at Star and Rangmahal, two popular theatre halls of Calcutta was also not liked by the All Bengal Muslim Students’ League. They did not approve of the way Muslim characters were portrayed in these plays and they wanted to stop the shows. It was resolved in the Azad office on 29 April 1944 that propaganda should be carried on to stop the shows. Students were to go in batches of 50 or 60 to create disturbances.8 In the meanwhile the members of the Hindu community in the East Bengal districts were sorely oppressed. There was a riot at Mollahat in the Khulna district and the Namasudra community was attacked by the Muslims. Villages under the Girishnagar police station were looted and Namasudra women were abducted. Birat Chandra Mandal, the local MLA testified in a meeting of the Scheduled Caste Organization at the Buddhist Hall in Calcutta on 25 June 1944 that these crimes were committed under the very nose of the district officials. Narendranath Mandal said that he and other Hindus had approached the DM and the SP to help them but it was to no avail. The Magistrate and the SP could easily have prevented the crime. But evidently they had no desire to move a finger as was quite obvious from what Rajendra Nath Mallick said. According to Mallick, the DM and the SP, when entreated for help, had said that they were tired and could not proceed till they could have some coconut water. The sequence of events would prove that the local officials were in League with the rioters. Havildar Major D.N. Ray testified that on the 17th that police came to the house of Janardan Das along with some Muslims and started arresting persons. Hindus fled the villages

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and the Muslims, who had accompanied the police entered and looted the Hindu houses. When Janardan Das went to the police station to lodge a complaint, his house was looted and his widowed sister-in-law was forcibly carried away and she was still untraced. The police force in that place consisted entirely of Muslims and they paid no attention to the appeal from the Hindu victims. Manoranjan Chowdhury alleged that though the district officers Mr. H. Halim and Mr. Ismail knew that the disturbance would take place they took no preventive action. Hindus only were arrested and not a single Muslim was taken into custody. Prafulla Chandra Majumder charged Pulin Behari Mallick of keeping back information. The two cabinet ministers, Pulin Behari Mallick and Mukunda Behari Mallik were called useless members of the community.9 ANTIPAKISTAN PROPAGANDA OF THE

HINDU MAHASABHA

The Hindu Mahasabha had a really difficult time in these years trying to organize the Hindus in the face of government resistance at every step. They had to fight back Muslim oppression on the one hand and official apathy on the other. There was no redress to be found anywhere. As Fazlul Huq could anticipate: Ministers will not hesitate to accept a policy which would harm the province if Mr. Jinnah approves of it on the recommendation of the British. The ministers are working the machine of Provincial Autonomy, not according to the wishes of the people or even the guidance of the Governor, but according to the dictates of a Dictator utterly ignorant of the real feelings of the people10.

Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee now embarked upon a vigorous effort to garner support for his anti-Pakistan drive in the provinces. A three day conference met in Lyallpur in the Canal Colonies of the Punjab from 30 April to 3 May 1943, where the Sikhs were as arduously committed to an opposition of Pakistan as the Hindus of East Bengal. A map of Akhand Hindusthan was displayed in the front gate of the conference venue.11 Syama Prasad spelt out very clearly in his address that:

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A division of India is no solution of the communal problem. Financially, it is unworkable. Economically, it is disastrous. Politically it is ruinous for India as a whole. In Pakisthan area Hindus will continue to live and in Hindusthan area Moslems will remain as they are. We have yet to know how the differences between the two communities are proposed to be solved within each such area. . . . It offers no solution for lasting communal peace and understanding.

Syama Prasad found that in their obsession with their own minority rights the proponents of Pakistan had forgotten the problem of nonMuslim minorities within Muslim majority areas. The principle of self-determination was not suitable for a country like India, where the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lay so mingled together. The privileges that the largest minority community will claim cannot obviously remain in force in those provincial spheres where they happen to be in the majority. There protection, if any, is to be granted to the minority community in the same manner as safeguards may be demanded by Moslems in other provinces where they are in a minority or in the sphere of central administration. . . . Self determination for Moslems only, living in areas where several crores of Hindus, though a minority, will continue to live, is a queer political demand, seriously made by the League.

The bitter experience of Muslim rule backed by British Imperialism in Bengal, in Sind and in the North-West Frontier Province had made him wary and prompted him to throw the blunt question on the face of the protagonists of Pakistan: ‘The Hindus in provinces where they are in a minority have every right to ask for a full and frank statement from the protagonists of Pakistan explaining the manner in which Hindu rights and privileges will be protected. Will they live as free men or as serfs?’ Syama Prasad suggested some territorial readjustment as an alternative to Pakistan, so that the vivisection of the motherland did not have to be contemplated: ‘Let the provinces, with their boundaries redistributed by agreement, if necessary, retain fullest possible autonomy; let Muslims develop themselves and their culture in their own zones, subject to full and equal rights of citizenship enjoyed by minorities residing therein.’ But he would not compromise on the question of a strong central government, controlling defence, foreign relations, customs, currency,

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communications and army. The central government would impartially think of the problems of all, not only of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Parsees, but of India as a whole. Syama Prasad pointed out to the basic unity of India’s inhabitants ‘a commonness of aim, of thought and outlook, strengthened by economic interdependence and by time honoured cultural contacts’ in spite of some diversities peculiar to India. Syama Prasad wanted to protect this spirit of unity from ‘the growth of an undefined Pakistan outlook which, if not counteracted, is bound to inflame more and more the minds of masses and their leaders with a dream of Moslem Raj in India.’ Everything that Hindus hold sacred, no matter to what sect they may belong, is confined within the geographical limits of India, held by the snow capped Himalayas on the north and by vast waters of the sea on the east, the west and the south. It is this unity amidst diversity that has to be nurtured, kept alive and made ever lasting, if India is to be saved from the hands of her enemy.

He disapproved of the course of appeasement which the Congress had so far pursued, ‘that did not lead to communal unity but weakened national resistance.’ ‘A temporary combination, born of pacts and compromises based on a policy of appeasement,’ as he saw it, ‘will never usher in an era of permanent unity.’ He strongly emphasized the need of preparations to face all kinds of opposition from both imperialists and communalists as: ‘Freedom will not come as a boon from above. It will have to be taken from unwilling hands as a result of active and vigorous preparation.’12 THE FAMINE OF 1943

Syama Prasad repeated the same theme in the All India Hindu Mahasabha meeting in Amritsar on 26 December 1943, where he had to take the Chair of the President for the first time due to the indisposition of Savarkar. Here Syama Prasad also tried to bring into focus how Bengal was passing through a phase of mass genocide caused by famine. The famine did not happen due to any natural calamity. It was ‘the product of maladministration and misrule’. Even

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a one-thousandth fraction of the misery that took place in Bengal was enough to shake the very foundation of a civilized government.13 As an aftermath of the stringent application of ‘scorched earth’, boat denial and rice denial the population of the coastal regions of Bengal had already been hit hard in their livelihood. Evacuation made destitutes of them too. However, the bumper aus and aman crops of the autumn and spring of 1943-4 filled peasant hearts with hopes of being able to tide over the crisis. But at this point human greed came to play its part in bringing the cycle of misery to a full circle. Nishith Nath Kundu the MLA from Dinajpur testified in the Bengal Legislative Assembly that in February paddy was sold in the local Haripur market at Rs. 4/8 and 5/8 and rice at a price of 9/8 to 10/8. In Fakirganj market it was even cheaper – paddy between Rs. 4 and 5 and rice at a price between Rs. 8/12 to 9/8. In the Dinajpur town also prices hovered around Rs. 6/10 for paddy and 11/14 for rice. But government agents suddenly swooped down on the countryside and intimidated the peasants to part with their paddy and rice. Peasants were threatened that if they did not sell there and then later on they would not be allowed to sell them to anyone else. Thus the innocent cultivators sold everything under duress. Enquiries revealed that the stocks were requisitioned under Rule 75 (a) of the Defence of India Rules below market price at Rs. 2 to 3 per maund and no compensation was paid to the peasants either. Government agents later handed over these stocks to one Mirza Ali Akbar. This rice was sold to the government at Rs. 32 per maund. These informations came out through a Mandamus writ of the High Court when some Man Singh from Harrison Road petitioned the High Court. This Mirza Ali Akbar was probably a subsidiary of the favourite rice merchant Ispahani and Co.14 Favouritism to the Muslim community had reached such glaring proportions that one Government agent was taken to task by Suhrawardy, the Minister for Civil Supplies, for not having maintained the communal ratio in engaging sub-agents. This uncalled for interference from the minister offended the rice merchant. He gave up the contract and complained to the Governor Mr. Casey about it. The Governor, however, was unable to come to his succor. But the story leaked to the Bengali Press.15

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False assurances on the part of the Minister for Civil Supplies of the kind like the one offered to a query from the Congress representative Dr. Nalinakshya Sanyal were noticed many times between July 1943 and early 1944: But I do recognize at the same time that there must be a large section of our people that are not able to buy foodgrains unless the prices fall to a very low level – to such a level as we cannot allow the prices to fall. For them something will have to be done, and we are considering the question of providing cheap grains for them as soon as the grains become available to us.16

The scandal became more odious and indefensible as the names of several ministers got involved with it. A large number of the members of the Dacca Nawab family reaped large profits from human misery. Khwaja Shahabuddin set up the firm of Shalimar and Co. Contracts were given even in the name of wives of ministers.17 By July 1943 starvation deaths began to be reported from the mofussils. Many people came to Calcutta in search of food and died on the footpaths asking for gruel. Military personnel had to be requisitioned for keeping Calcutta streets free from corpses. Epidemics soon invaded the emaciated famine victims and dieases like malaria, cholera, dysentery and diarrhoea killed people by thousands. Deaths from starvation and related diseases vastly outnumbered deaths from Second World War. While about 30,000 died in the war, the famine death toll reached 3 million or more.18 Communalism, however, did not stop taking its toll even in the dark days of famine. Hindusthan reported on 3 November 1943 that when several Bagdi famine victims went to the free kitchen at Kandi for gruel they were asked to get converted first. Thus nineteen persons underwent conversion to Islam.19 Early in 1944 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee came out with a slashing criticism of government policies in his broadside Panchaser Manwantar (Famine of the Bengali Year 1350). The first edition of the book was exhausted within three weeks of its publication. He rightly pointed out that: In the present crisis Government’s rules and measures have completely failed. The Ministry has shown their inability in the performance of their duties

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and thus forfeited the respect of the people and the government (p. 99) … (That). Government cannot maintain the controlled prices in spite of rice being plentiful in this month of January shows the flaw in the system of administration and the maximum inefficiency of the Ministry (p.104)…. A particular party ministry guided by communal mentality can never earn the confidence of the masses in general. Those against whom lies a serious charge of deviating from justice can never be allowed to play with the lives of lacs of people (p. 106).

The ultimate resposibility for the calamity, however, lay with the British Government which had foisted the Nazimuddin ministry on the province for implementing its own imperialist programme. Syama Prasad did not spare anyone from top to bottom in the administration from his searching criticism: Inefficiency, maladministration and corruption of the officials lay at the root of the endless misery of Bengal in 1943. Much effort has been made on behalf of the Government to conceal the truth. Mr. Amery is unrivalled in the art of distorting actual events (p. 102)…. Representatives of British Government who are holding the powers in their grip could not give up repressive policy even in the terrible crisis; they cannot trust the people. Shame for British and also UN. (p. 99)20

Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru, President of the Servants of Indian Society hailed the book for drawing unprecedented sympathy in Bengal. Ramesh Ghoshal, the Publishing and Literary Agent to Pandit Kunzru wrote a letter to Kunzru pointing out certain important factors responsible for the unprecedented calamity. He too could understand that the famine could not have reached the terrible proportions but for the apathy of the powers that be. ‘Twentieth century science has inter related the entire world. Even now how many children died in the arms of their mothers for want of milk. Men fought with animals at the dust bins and ate morsels of food. We have seen with our own eyes these scenes month after month.’ Among the reasons for the price rise the most important was the currency inflation, which had happened in the wake of the release of a large quantity of paper notes by the Government. This became essential for making war time purchases. The province, moreover, had become overcrowded with soldiers from inside the country and abroad, enemy prisoners and industrial personnel and all of them had to be

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fed. The Government was ‘the biggest purchaser and the biggest hoarder’ of the rice and the paddy that was drained from the countryside. This sent the prices of rice sky rocketing and pushed it beyond the reach of the commoners. Ghoshal also mentioned Suhrawardy’s unwillingness to approach neighbouring Bihar and Orissa for helping him out of the food crisis. This was because these two states were opposed to Pakistan and com­ munal considerations prevented Suhrawardy from seeking their help.21 The Governor began to see red as Syama Prasad’s tract A Phase of the Indian Struggle containing vivid accounts of the Bengal Famine of 1943 (Bengali year 1350) in the section Panchasher Manwantar was sold out in three weeks. He immediately banned its further publication, sale and distribution as containing prejudicial matter of the nation described in sub rule (7) of Rule 34 of the Defence of India Rules and the order remained valid till 7 January 1946.22 The famine of 1943 was also very carefully veiled from the people of England and they had no idea that people were dying by thousands on the streets of Calcutta nor of Churchill’s vindictive policy during the cyclone in Midnapur.23 During debates on famine in the House of Commons the Secretary of State Leopold Amery resorted to a ‘numerical rhetoric’ to argue that the ratio of population increase in India had vastly outstripped that of the increase in food production. This was responsible for the drastic fall in per capita availability of food. While population in the past 12 years had increased by about 60 millions, the annual production of rice per head had fallen from 384 to 283 lb in the last 30 years. Thus in spite of its best efforts the government was finding it impossible to avert the ‘Malthusian catastrophe’. Churchill was yet brusquer and attributed the famine to the habit of the people to ‘breed like rabbits’.24 The corrupt practices of the Nazimuddin ministry and his blatant favouritism to the Muslim community alienated the Hindu supporters of the Government and they crossed over to the opposition. Nazimuddin’s strength in the Assembly was reduced to 97 as against the opposition’s 106. Thus steeped in the mire of corruption it had to go on 28 March 1945.25 When Wavell came to India in October 1943 to succeed Linlithgow

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he was shocked to discover that the British Government’s attitude to India was ‘negligent, hostile and contemptuous to a degree I had not anticipated’.26 At his request Lord Mountbatten, who was in command in South East Asia, lent 10 per cent of the shipping for helping in the import of foodstuffs for India. To Churchill it looked like ‘appeasement’ of the Congress. He not only vetoed this, but reduced his shipping strength by 10 per cent. Mountbatten had to do with this reduced shipping but nevertheless he did not stop the food imports.27 Even at this hour of crisis the government did not stop its food exports to Ceylon; offers of Canadian and American wheat were turned down. Australian wheat was diverted to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to be used later in post-war Britain.28 THE CHAKRAVARTI RAJAGOPALACHARI FORMULA

The year 1944 did not promise to be a very successful one for Jinnah. Neither of the two core provinces of Jinnah’s future Pakistan was fully within Jinnah’s grasp. In Bengal the Nazimuddin ministry was floundering in the sea of corruption; in Punjab the Unionist ministry refused to call itself the Muslim League Coalition Ministry and Khizr defied Jinnah’s expulsion orders from the Muslim League as Huq had done three years back.29 But things suddenly seemed to look up for Jinnah when Gandhi came out of jail and knocked on his doors for a one to one talk. The very fact that Gandhi, who was the leader of the greatest national party in the country and whose position had become hallowed further by his two years’ austerities in the British jail, was seeking to talk to Jinnah raised Jinnah’s position in the world’s eyes to an immeasurable degree. The press published long notices of this new development and Jinnah was acknowledged as the ‘sole spokesman’ of the Muslims, although this was the only concession which Gandhiji would never agree to make while he was alive. But Gandhi had his own compulsions. He had been released in May 1944 but his Working Committee was still in jail. It was impossible for him to breathe the free air while his compatriots were languishing in jail. So he tried to send a few missives to Jinnah from within the prison to propose talks. Initially Jinnah was suspicious.

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He thought it was some ploy of Gandhi’s to inveigle him in a treasonable plot. The jail authorities also did not permit the communication. But once released from prison, Gandhi offered a new formula for compromise. This was the formula once proposed by Rajagopalachari of the ‘sporting offer’ fame. Rajagopalachari was one of those Congressmen who believed that indepenedence would arrive on the fast track only if the communal knot could be cut. He had proposed that India could choose a Muslim as Prime Minister if the League would agree to stay in a single union with a strong central government. Nobody had taken him seriously. But his support for self-determination for provinces during the Allahabad Session of the AICC in July 1942 had been viewed more seriously and brought the forfeiture of his primary membership of the Congress. The Jagat Narain Lal Resolution had decided never to consider such a possi­ bility of the dismemberment of the country. In November 1943 Rajagopalachari once again came up with a small pamphlet The Way Out, airing his views on the solution of the communal problem. It suggested that areas on the north-west and east of India might demand a plebiscite by a 60 per cent vote in the Legislature (on the basis of adult male suffrage) whereby these areas might decide on non-accession to Hindustan.30 Gandhi now proposed that this would be the formula on which the discussion would proceed. Jinnah consented on 19 August 1944. Congress anxiety to come to terms with the Muslim League was also obvious in Bhulabhai Desai’s offer to Liaqat Ali Khan to have parity in the union government. Although Desai was known for his closeness to Gandhi, the latter denied any knowledge of this so-called ‘pact’ later. The Viceroy thought that Gandhi thereby expected to send a joint petition with Jinnah for the release of the detenus as only the Working Committee members could ratify the agreement.31 The meeting with Jinnah continued within closed doors in Bombay from 9 to 27 September. Gandhi agreed to accept Pakistan as the Lahore Resolution had proposed. But he wanted matters like defence, finance, commerce, foreign policy to be settled in common. He would not accept that Muslims could decide these matters independently or they formed a separate nation. Gandhi also wanted self-determination for all minorities, for Muslims as well as non-Muslims in Muslim

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majority provinces. Jinnah would not accept it under any circumstances as it would leave him only the ‘husk’.32 Thus nothing came from the talks. Surprisingly, the Communists at this time supported Gandhi’s initiative to concede Pakistan. Gangadhar Adhikari in a booklet Pakistan and Indian National Unity (Bombay, 1942) put forward the view that the communal problem was in fact a problem of the rising consciousness of one of the many nationalities in India coming to the fore with the progress of bourgeois development. They viewed the demand for Pakistan as a liberal democratic urge.33 REACTIONS OF THE HINDU MAHASABHA

Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, however, could immediately grasp the deadly implications of Gandhi’s acceptance of the C.R. formula. He thought this was Gandhi’s greatest faux pas. Acceptance of this formula would imply the acceptance of the principle of Pakistan once for all. Rajaji’s formula was as reprehensible in 1944 as it had been in 1942. But Gandhi’s acceptance of it would enshrine the formula among one of the various political options available for the solution of the communal tangle. It would further fan the flame of the Pakistan movement. Mookerjee parodied it as the ‘Break India’ (Bharat Bhango) movement as against the Mahatma’s ‘Quit India’ movement. Communist Party support for Pakistan was also found to be odious by Syama Prasad. Communists had neither made any sacrifice for the country nor did they have any connection with the freedom movement of India. Their ideology had no link with the culture and traditions of the country. Unlike other parties they also never uttered Bande Mataram revealing their dissociation with national ideologies. Their slender support base was also made obvious by their failure to draw more than seven persons in a procession. Jinnah’s Pakistan scheme was unacceptable to a large section of the Muslims. The Momins, Jamait-ul-Ulema-i-Hind, the Ahrars, the Shias, the Krishak Praja Party in Bengal, the Muslim Majlis and even the very strong Khaksars were not attaching any importance to the Pakistan idea. But Gandhi made no effort to establish contact with these groups or consolidate groups for opposing Pakistan. Mookerjee

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wondered that while great international personages waited for days in his ashram just to have a glimpse of the Mahatma, the same Gandhi had been beseeching Jinnah for days for a meeting! The anti-partition movement in Bengal in 1905 was the signal for nationalist consolidation all over India. Tilak had declared: Partition? Partition of what? There are beautiful words in the Bhagawad Geeta that the soul cannot be partitioned by the sword. If India has a soul she will not be partitioned. When the partition of Bengal was revoked in 1911 it was once again established that in spite of a thousand differences the people of India were one. They were indivisible economically, historically, geographically, politically and culturally. Their ways, their thoughts and their goals were the same. Mookerjee strongly disapproved of Gandhi’s ideas of appeasement which eariier had allowed him to conciliate the Ali Brothers, to offer a carte blanche to the Muslims at the Round Table Conference and to force Congress to adopt a peculiar doctrine of ‘neither acceptance nor rejection’ vis-à-vis the Communal Award. It was unbelievable how the same Gandhi who had strongly opposed Pakistan in Harijan on 18 May 1940 and 22 September 1940 saying that they should rather cut him into two than cutting up the country could now talk Pakistan with Jinnah at Rajaji’s instigation.34 In course of his travels in various provinces to preside over Hindu Conferences such as the United Provinces Hindu Conference, Gorakhpur (UP) on 7 and 8 October 1944, in the Punjab Provincial Hindu Sabha Conference, Ludhiana on 11 and 12 November 1944 and All India Hindu Mahasabha session in Bilaspur on 24 December 1944 – everywhere he spoke against Mahatma Gandhi’s acceptance of the C.R. Formula and its pernicious impact on the course of nationalism. The principle of Pakisthan did not receive any serious support from any responsible non-Moslem quarter. It was only recently that Gandhiji’s acceptance of what is commonly known as the C.R. Formula has given a last flicker to a dying and decaying doctrine, which was being slowly repudiated by large sections of Moslems themselves.35

In the meanwhile the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha was trying its best to organize anti-Rajaji Formula conferences in various

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corners of the famine ravaged province with the meagre resources at their disposal. Special Branch Records mention one such conference in Chandpur in Tippera on 13 September 1944. While opposing the Pakistan formula, one Naru Babu said that if freedom cannot be obtained by 300 million Hindus, there could be no gain by adding a 100 million more Muslims, who had so far never participated in the freedom struggle. N.C. Chatterjee reminded people of the many lives sacrificed by Bengali youth on the gallows for revoking Bengal partition in 1905. The communal riots of Dacca were a manifestation of the Pakistan mentality. Bengalis should take a united stand to resist the Pakistan idea.36 THE SIMLA CONFERENCE

As early as September 1943 Wavell had offered a proposal to the Prime Minister for resolving the communal problem in India. He wanted to establish a coalition of different party leaders at the centre, working under the existing constitution and willing to support the war effort. But the Prime Minister expected to continue the constitution established by the 1935 Act keeping the princes as a breakwater on the party leaders. Wavell was not unfamiliar with the Indian political scene. The Quit India agitation had given him enough reason to worry during his 1942 campaign against Burma and had led him to develop a dislike for the Congress. He knew that Congress had all educated and politically conscious men among its members, which gave it an almost unchallenged sway in Indian politics, it had its weaknesses in being unable to bring a vast number of Scheduled Castes, aboriginal tribes and the lower strata of Hindu society within its fold. He also did not fail to notice that even during the peak of the unrest the Muslim majority provinces had remained quiet. This hardened his determination to prop up the Muslim League against the Congress on the plea of the admission of the principle of self-determination.37 The Cripps offer appealed to his imagination with its emphasis on the doctrine of self-determination. He therefore decided to make it the main plank of his India policy.38 As the war in Europe was drawing to a close, the Viceroy along

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with other important imperial officials understood that as selfgovernment has been declared as the goal of imperial policy, Indian politicians would soon start clamouring for self-rule. The Viceroy would find it difficult to face the Indian members of his council (10 of 14) unless some positive steps were taken in that direction. The cessation of war would, moreover, bring new problems to the fore like demobilization, shrinking of employment opportunities and food scarcities. Political prisoners would soon be at large to make fresh intrigues. Decline in the number of European civil servants would make it difficult to contain such discontent.39 The British element in the army had also been pruned a lot to relieve the burden on the exchequer and thus ruling by force had become difficult.40 Wavell wanted to make sure that the financial and economic interests of the British in India should be secured before the final hour of departure. It was important to have India as a partner in the British Commonwealth through the cooperation of those to whom power would be surrendered. The strength of Britain’s future position in the Far East and the Middle East would depend on her future position in India. The Cabinet Committee was not very favourable to the idea of party caucuses. But Wavell’s persistence finally made them give way on 31 May 1945.41 On 14 June the Viceroy broadcast his proposals to the Indian political leaders proposing to meet them with a view to the formation of an Executive Council, with an equal number of representatives from the Muslims as well as Caste Hindus. The Council was to be entirely Indian except the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief. And for the first time the government proposed to hand over the Home, Finance and Foreign Affairs portfolios to Indian hands. The main task of this council would be to prosecute the war. But it would also consider the means of working out a permanent constitution. The Viceroy also promised to release the members of the Congress Working Committee.42 But Wavell’s offer did not please the party leaders as much as he had expected. Gandhi asked for the release of all political prisoners and not merely of the working committee members. The parity of the Caste Hindus with the Muslims was also strongly objected to as there was no place for caste discrimination in the Congress. The

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exclusive right of the Muslim League to nominate all Muslim members was also fiercely resisted. Wavell interpreted this as a fear of ‘being manoeuvred into a position in which the Congress can be regarded as a purely Hindu body’.43 But Wavell found it impossible to ignore the claims of Unionists to be represented as Punjab was providing the bulk of the recruits to the Indian army.44 But Jinnah would not let either the Congress or the Unionists nominate any Muslims. He had demanded that the Council should include five Muslims, five Caste Hindus, one Scheduled Caste and one Sikh. But even after this formula was admitted Jinnah was not satisfied. He demanded an exclusive right of nominating all Muslim members. Probably he was scared that participation in the central government might prejudice their future demand for Pakistan.45 Ultimately Jinnah’s intransigence grounded the conference. Wavell could have gone ahead without him. But he wanted to keep the Muslim League in good humour for being able to use it as a counterweight to the Congress. Wavell, therefore, had to declare the conference a failure. The Viceroy deliberately excluded the Hindu Mahasabha from the Simla Conference as it was opposed to both parity and Pakistan. Throughout the summer months of 1945 the Hindu Mahasabha had been carrying out of an intensive propaganda against the Simla Conference. Wavell’s plan to prop up the Muslim League at the expense of the Hindus broke down because, as Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha, pointed out, Jinnah’s increasing demands were unacceptable to others and the Viceroy was unwilling to have any interim settlement without the cooperation and consent of the Muslim League. Today the stock plea of the British Government is that the political advance in India is not possible because of Hindu-Muslim differences. If once Mr. Jinnah is by-passed and a settlement even of an interim character is made with other parties, Hindu, Muslim and others, there will be no further excuse available to the British Government to delay a final settlement with India based on the recognition of her independent status. The fact that the British Government transferred the Viceroy’s veto to Mr. Jinnah for the time being shows up the real motive of the Government. Although it transferred no power to India, it was widely advertised all over

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the world during the psychological period of the British election as a veritable boon conferred on India; and the pity is that large sections of Indians them­ selves were made to dance to the tune.46 WAVELL’S NEW PLAN

Before embarking on a new course of action, Wavell wanted to go and consult the authorities at home. But prior to his departure he met the Governors once again on 2 August to ascertain their opinion. All except the Punjab Governor advised him to go for electons leading to the formation of provincial and central assemblies. Representatives of these assemblies could then elect a constitution making body. But for that an amicable atmosphere was necessary. As a first step they suggested the release of all political prisoners and the lifting of the ban on Congress organizations.47 At home Wavell found Sir Stafford Cripps in the India Cabinet Committee eager to see the revival of his earlier scheme. Wavell did not think that this had much chance of success. But Pethick Lawrence, the Secretary of State, argued that England would find her position indefensible in the forthcoming meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the three allies, Britain, Russia and America unless some positive steps were taken towards decolonization. Thus Wavell came back to India and made an announcement on 19 September 1945 on behalf of the HMG that elections were to be held in the coming cold weather. An Executive Council was then to be constituted with representatives from prominent Indian parties. A constitution making body was also to be convened. The provincial legislatures would then suggest whether the 1942 Declaration would be sufficient or any other formula would be required. The Indian states were also to have their representatives in the constitution making body. Finally their task would be to con­ clude a treaty between Britain and India prior to the severance of the colonial connection.48 THE ELECTIONS OF 19456

The election results of 1945-6 in the central and provincial assemblies

of India showed that the Muslim League had polled 86.641 per cent

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of the total votes cast in Mohammedan constituencies as against 5.667 per cent by Nationalist Muslims.49 But in spite of this roaring success the League could not form ministries in any of the Muslim majority provinces that it claimed for Pakistan except Bengal. Their core province was Punjab, but here the Congress combined with the Unionist rump and the Akalis to form an Unionist Government. The Punjab Provincial Muslim League was not unwilling to enter into a coalition with the Akalis and the Congress but Jinnah forbade all kinds of understandings with non-League Muslims by a telegram from Shillong. The statement of the Unionist Premier Khizr Tiwana that each constituent group in the Coalition would retain complete freedom of opinion with regard to the future constitution of India was found to be quite alarming in League circles.50 In Sind the Muslim League did not attain an invincible position and Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah raised a demand for fresh elections. It seemed that at least a no-confidence test would be required for the ministry to establish its claim to power.51 In North-West Frontier Province Congress with a 92 per cent Muslim population bagged 30 of the 50 seats with Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan as their mentor and the Muslim League could not make much headway. As Rajagopalachari put it, ‘the NWFP, though small is a decisive factor in any scheme of separation of Muslim areas from the rest of India’.52 The instability in the League position in most provinces led the Congress to believe that the large number of votes polled by the League could be possible only because of the pro-League inclinations exhibited by the Government in all political negotiations.53 In Bengal the Muslim League emerged as the single largest party in the elections of 1946 and of the total number of 250 seats it secured 114. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad alleged that the victory of the Muslim League was secured by ‘hooliganism and official assistance’.54 Among the Divisional Commissioners from Bengal only the Commissioner of the Chittagong Division reported free and fair elections. But other Divisional Commisioners of East Bengal reported that though there were few cases of actual violence there were several minor incidents of interference with the freedom of thinking and freedom of action of the voters. Muslim officers sometimes used their influence in favour of the Muslim candidates in their sub-divisions. Allegations of inti­ midation found greatest publicity in two districts of the Presidency

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division from where Fazlul Huq and Syed Ali had contested. Fazlul Huq’s speech was broadcast on the All India Radio, Delhi on 6 April in the ‘East Asia and Middle East Service’. The Congress press was most articulate about it. But enquiries did not prove anything in favour of their contentions.55 The Provincial Muslim League led by Abul Hashim had taken an initiative in conducting negotiations with the Bengal Congress leader, K.S. Roy for a coalition. But it could not materialize partly for dis­ agreement regarding the relative importance of the two parties in the ministry and distribution of portfolios but above all due to Jinnah’s opposition to come to terms with non-League Muslims.56 Finally the Governor invited Suhrawardy to form the ministry. The Muslim League preferred to stay in power with the support of the European group as well as independent Scheduled Castes rather than sacrifice the view that the League alone represents the Muslim community. Initially eight Muslims and one independent Scheduled Caste member were taken. The purely communal character of the ministry without any moderating influence thus remained a cause of anxiety for the Congress and the Hindu press kept agitating about it.57 Suhrawardy’s tenure did not see any legislation of note. The administration was marred by a food crisis and a situation bordering on famine. The aus harvest was unusually poor. This was combined with widespread speculations and hoarding. The Chief Minister was also suspected to be hand in glove with the blackmarketeers who capitalized on people’s miseries. As Leonard Mosley observed: Mr. Suhrawardy was a party ‘boss’ of the type who believes that no politician need ever be out of office once his strong arm squads have gained control of the polling booths; that no minister should ever suffer financially once being in public life; that no relative or political cohort should ever get unrewarded.... He was reputed to have made a fortune during the war. Before he left India for Pakistan, income tax officials in Delhi began an investigation into his wartime earnings.58

Congress members were excluded by the Government from membership of food committees. In desperation Congress leaders with Communist or Socialist leanings toured the East Bengal districts and blamed the Government for a situation bordering on famine. Rise in the prices of rice overshadowed all topics in East Bengal. In Munshiganj and Manikganj in Dacca, Tangail subdivision of

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Mymensingh and Madaripur subdivision of Faridpur prices were ranging from Rs. 30 to 35 a maund due to panic buying and speculation. In Tippera and Noakhali the rice control system was on the verge of collapse.59 Big hoards of rice in Government godowns for feeding the military were now talked about. The Government destroyed thousands of tonnes of rice in military godowns. Some of these rotten and adulterated grains were distributed through the rationing system.60 The Bengal Legislative Assembly was agitated on the question of a 13 per cent cut by the central government of the province’s sugar quota.61 There were also rumours of death through starvation in the remote areas of the province. Hunger had driven people to desperation and a near famine situation was threatening the province.62 The food crisis and the failure of the aus crop came to play into the hands of the Communists and they fanned the agrarian discontent of the tenants and sharecroppers in Midnapore to turn against their landlords. Landless bhagchasis were incited to cultivate the zamindars land by force.63 The communal situation also deteriorated under the ministry. There were reports of a riot in Narail in Jessore. In Kalna a mela was forcibly stopped by clamping the 144 Cr.PC. In Nalgora in the 24-Parganas a low caste Hindu had been excommunicated. It was heard that he had been contemplating conversion to Islam. But later he changed his mind. But the news gave rise to great commotion. Hand bills were circulated and 12,000 Hindus and 4,000 Muslims assembled from miles around. Finally the arrival of the SDO with armed police could defuse the situation. There was tension all over the province. In Bankura leaflets were being distributed on behalf of the Hindu Mahasabha exhorting Hindus to remain prepared for impending communal trouble and suggesting that the masses should be trained in lathi and dagger play.64 THE CABINET MISSION PROPOSALS

From the second quarter of 1946 the Suhrawardy ministry was also eclipsed by developments on the national scene, which had their repercussions at the provincial level. League success in the 1946 elections, so far as the Muslim seats were concerned, vindicated the

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assessment of the Indian political situation by Sir Stafford Cripps in 1942. Already on 19 December 1945 he had declared that ‘we might have to contemplate a division of India into Hindustan and Pakistan as the only solution’.65 Cripps was most moved by two papers sent to him on 21 November and 21 December 1945 by Major General Short. These two papers were by Penderel Moon, ICS and Freda Martin, the wife of the India watcher Guy Wint. They argued that Jinnah would not allow any progress in constitutional deliberations unless Pakistan was guaranteed to him in advance. The British government should therefore have in mind some definite plans about what form this Pakistan was going to assume. Mrs. Martin also suggested adjustments in the boundaries of Punjab and Bengal to provide for the non-Muslim minorities once Pakistan was agreed upon. These policy discussions led Moore to conclude that one very influential section in the HMG had been contemplating the carving out of Pakistan months ahead of the elections of 1945-6.66 In the meanwhile the post-war international developments were making disengagement from colonies imperative for Great Britain. The Attlee government wanted to define a clear course of action for the formation of a constitution-making body and understood the need for deciding on a policy in case the minorities disagreed regarding its procedure. A Parliamentary Delegation consisting of 10 members, 8 from the House of Commons and 2 from the House of Lords, led by the Labour M.P. from Wrexham visited India on 6 January 1946 to study the situation on the ground.67 Indisposition prevented Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee from meeting the Parliamentary delegation. Devendranath Mukherjee, the Mayor of Calcutta, Ashutosh Lahiri and Hardeesh Majumder met the Parliamentary delegation on his behalf and apprised the delegation of the situation in the country. They strongly urged that the twin evils of separate electorate and the Communal Award were at the root of all communal tension in India. Without these the two-nation theory would not have arisen. The Bengal Hindus, they said, had been artificially reduced to the position of a minority community as the province had not yet been restored to her natural boundaries on a linguistic or cultural basis. They expressed their preference for one undivided federal type of union of the US type.68 The India Committee decided early on 14 January 1946 that a

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mission of three ministers should be sent to India after the elections. The Secretary of State, Pethick Lawrence wanted to go himself; he was to be accompanied by Sir Stafford Cripps. A.V. Alexander, First Lord of Admiralty in both Churchill’s coalition and Attlee’s government, was named on 22 January to look after the defence aspect of the expected settlement. The purpose of sending the mission to India was defined by Prime Minister Attlee on 18 March 1946 in an address to the House of Commons: The tide of nationalism is running very fast in India…. It is time emphatically for definite and clear action.… The Cabinet Mission is going to India in a positive mood…The temperature of 1946 is not the temperature of 1920, 1930 or even 1942…The Ministers will do their utmost to help India attain freedom as speedily and fully as possible.69

On 15 March Attlee had already told the House of Commons that he could not permit a ‘minority to place a veto on the advance of the majority’, however important the minority might be.70 The Muslim Press immediately drew attention to the August 1940 Declaration of Linlithgow that no important element of India’s national life would be coerced into a system of government not acceptable to it. Jinnah reacted very sharply to Attlee’s statement from Bombay on 16 March: The issue is, to give it a similie, says the spider to the fly: ‘Walk into my parlour’ and if the spy refuses, it is said that the veto is being exercized as the fly is being intransigent. I want to reiterate that the Muslims of India are not a minority but a nation and self-determination is their birthright.71

But the Secretary of State refused to be pinned down to any a priori course of action. ‘As years go by, situation changes, and you have to adapt promises made to existing situation bearing in mind the spirit of those pledges.’ The Hindustan Times was jubilant. It came out with the heading – ‘Full Independent Status for India.’ But then the Secretary of State also spoke of the League as ‘the majority representation of the great community of Muslims’. This reassured the Dawn, which concluded that ‘the Mission is not committed to any set views’.72 The Congress Working Committee, on the advice of Gandhi,

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appointed a small ad hoc committee consisting of Nehru and Patel to negotiate with the Cabinet Mission. The Viceroy and the ad hoc Congress committee failed to see eye to eye with each other. The Congress, as Vallabhbhai Patel made it amply clear, was ready to concede safeguards of legitimate minority interests but certainly not Jinnah’s demand for the division of India. Patel could see no impediment to an immediate transfer of power. That would have been conducive to an alliance of friendship between Britain and India.73 Patel thought that there could be no satisfactory settlement of the Hindu-Muslim question until the British cleared out and left the Indians to settle matters among themselves. But for Wavell the withdrawal of the British would mean chaos and civil war unless there was a proper settlement both of the communal question as well as the form and structure of the successor state.74 The Hindu Mahasabha wanted to represent its case to the Cabinet Mission as distinct from the one put forward by the Congress. ‘Congress cannot and does not represent the Hindus,’ Dr. B.S. Moonje, General Secretary, the Central Hindu Military Education Society and the Bhonsla Military School, wrote to Dr. S.P. Mookerjee, ‘and the result of General Elections held on their Election Manifesto does not qualify them to speak on behalf of the Hindus on the communal controversy between the Hindus and the Mussalmans.’ There were fundamental differences in their respective outlook on the communal problem. Moonje therefore wanted the Cabinet Mission to be informed that no constitutional machinery would be acceptable to the Hindus without prior consultation with the Hindu Mahasabha and the inclusion of members of the Hindu Mahasabha in it.75 The Cabinet delegation remained in India from 23 March to 29 June 1946. After two weeks of talks it could not come to any settlement. In an interview to foreign correspondents Jinnah was very bitter and even talked of civil war.76 A resolution of a Convention of League Legislators under the guidance of Jinnah demanded the acceptance of the principle of Pakistan and its implementation without delay in areas where the Muslims were in dominant majority as a sine qua non of League cooperation and participation in the interim government at the centre.77 The Mission told Jinnah that if he insisted on a full sovereign Pakistan, it would have to be of the truncated

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variety, excluding most of Assam and half of Bengal and the Punjab, since it would be impossible to include in an independent Muslim state large areas in which Hindus were in a majority. But this did not appeal much to Jinnah. In Wavell’s words: ‘Congress has not abated one title of its “democratic” claims as a majority, Jinnah has not conceded one acre of Pakistan, No Hindu has said a word to suggest that the Muslims have a case, no Muslim has admitted the possibility of fair treatment by a Hindu.’78 In the second week of April the Congress President Maulana Abul Kalam Azad came up with a compromise formula. As an alternative to the League proposals for Pakistan, Azad suggested a single federal union with only three common subjects such as defence, com­ munications and foreign affairs; the residuary powers would rest with fully autonomous provinces. If any province liked to surrender more subjects to the centre they were free to do that. The scheme ‘purports to ensure freedom to Muslim majority provinces to develop according to their own will and at the same time to influence the centre on all issues affecting India as a whole’.79 Azad’s scheme won the support of the Congress Working Committee and the blessings of Gandhi. This scheme would allay the fears of Muslims in Hindu majority provinces by keeping their brethren in the Muslim majority provinces within the same federation to come to their aid and not make them complete aliens as under Pakistan.80 The Cabinet Mission along with the Viceroy with the full support of the HMG announced its six point formula for a constitution based on the union of India on 16 May. Basically it was the same as Azad’s 15 April scheme. They incorporated Azad’s plan of only three central subjects for the union government. What was new in their scheme was the introduction of the concept of Groups A, B and C. The Hindu majority areas were kept in Group A, the Muslim majority states of Punjab, Sind, NWFP and British Baluchistan in Group B and Bengal and Assam in Group C. As an additional inducement to the League it was suggested that there could be equality of representation for the members of Group A with those of Group B and C in the All India Union. A province could also opt for secession from the union after a certain number of years. The princely states were also to have option to get fitted into this scheme.81 The Muslim League demand

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for a separate sovereign state was rejected as unworkable and as contrary to the otherwise universal desire for unity of India. Lord Pethick Lawrence emphasized in course of his broadcast that the splitting up of the Indian Army into two would permanently weaken the defence of the subcontinent in modern warfare.82 ‘If the plan is not accepted,’ Cripps warned in a press conference in Delhi, ‘no one can say how great will be the disturbance or how acute and long the suffering that will be self-inflicted on the Indian people.’ He wanted the process of constitution making and interim government to follow immediately.83 At first the Muslim League found it difficult to swallow this negation of an independent sovereign Pakistan. Dawn in its editorial Long Live Pakistan took an optimistic view of the Cabinet Mission formula: ‘If after careful study it is found that British plan is a trap from which there is no exit towards Pakistan, it will have to be completely rejected. If on the other hand, it is found that by working it from within, Muslims will be able to bring themselves nearer the goal of Pakistan, that course will not be ruled out.’84 Other newspapers like Nawa-i Waqt, Inqilab and Zamindar observed that the British Award seemed to have fulfilled all Muslim demands except for the union centre. But if parity of representation in the centre could be secured, there was nothing else to fear.85 The League Council meeting of 6 June wanted to accept the Cabinet Mission scheme and seek the heip of the Delegation and the Viceroy to intimidate the Congress into accepting parity of representation. This could be a valuable precedent for the composition of the future union government.86 THE STAND OF THE HINDU MAHASABHA

The Working Committee of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, which met at Delhi on 14 April 1946 under the presidentship of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, had demanded the immediate declaration of India’s independence, formation of an interim government to which complete power must be transferred and complete autonomy for the provinces, with the residuary powers lying at the centre. The 16 May Award of the Cabinet delegation pleased the Hindu Mahasabha for the

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courageous refusal of the Mission to grant partition of the country into Pakistan and Hindustan.87 Gandhi greeted the Cabinet Mission’s announcement with an ambiguous comment; he compared it to ‘a promissory note whose worth depends entirely on its genuineness and validity’. He had probably meant that the announcement had committed the government to a course of transferring power. But there were more hurdles to be crossed to give it a final shape.88 Congress objections to the proposal were on three counts: Congress had always advocated a strong central government and the charge of only three tasks, defence, external affairs and communications was considered inadequate; secondly, Congress would not approve of secession of Muslim provinces without a plebiscite; and finally the areas which did not want inclusion in Pakistan should not be compelled to join Pakistan merely because the population was Muslim.89 Assam on the east and the NWFP on the west were under Congress ministries and had no desire to go into a Muslim League dominated group. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was going round the province trying to convince the people against being grouped with League dominated states.90 Qazi Ataullah, the Revenue Minister said that ‘Pathans should completely free themselves from Punjab’s influence if they have to make any advance.’91 Similarly Bardoloi in Assam, after consultation with Congress Working Committee and Gandhi in Delhi, started opposing grouping with Bengal. He wanted grouping to be voluntary and not compulsory.92 The Sikhs in Punjab were absolutely hostile to grouping and formed a Minorities Protection Board along with the Hindus to oppose it.93 Gandhi supported their case saying, ‘Are the Sikhs for whom Punjab is the only home in India to consider themselves against their will as part of the section which takes in Sind, Baluchistan and NWFP ?’94 Gandhi wanted the British to restore paramountcy to the states so that they were free to join the union government.95 INTERIM GOVERNMENT

While there was great anxiety in Congress circles for the formation

of an interim government, which they considered to be the basis of

free India, Jinnah avoided all mention to it in his statement. Nehru

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wanted the interim government to be responsible to the central legislature and a national government to all intents and purposes. All members except the War Member should be Indians. It should have complete freedom in conducting the day to day administration. The summoning and functioning of the Constituent Assembly should be its responsibility. It should be a step to the transition to complete independence.96 The Muslim press merely kept on harping on the theme of parity between the ‘Pakistan group’ and the ‘Hindustan group’ in the union executive and legislature, if any. They also maintained that even after joining the Indian union any province should be in a position to leave it by a majority vote after ten years.97 Jinnah carried on discussions with the Viceroy regarding parity reminding him of his promise during the Simla Conference and Bhulabhai Desai’s offer of parity during the Desai-Liaqat Pact, which had enjoyed the Viceroy’s blessings.98 However, the Mission was in a hurry as it was going to leave on 29 June. When consensus could not be arrived at on the distribution of portfolios and the relative strength of the Congress and the League in the interim government the Viceroy decided to take his own decision. Therefore on 16 June the Viceroy decided to announce the government’s intention to form an interim government with 14 members of which six would be Hindus (including one SC), five Muslims, one Sikh, one Parsee and one Indian Christian. The Viceroy invited Pandit Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Hare Krishna Mahtab, Premier of Orissa, Jagjivan Ram, President, Depressed Classes League associated with Congress and ex-Parliamentary Secretary, Bihar. From the League he named the Premier of Bengal, Mohammed Ismail and Abdur Rab Nishtar, former Finance Minister, NWFP. The remaining three were Sardar Baldev Singh, Development Minister of Punjab, Dr. John Matthai, Indian Christian and Director of Tatas and Sir N.P. Engineer, Parsi and Advocate General of India. To ensure participation by both parties, the Mission included a Resolution that the government would go on with the task of constituting the interim government and constitution-making even if one party did not take part in it.99 Congress circles continued to interpret the White Paper as giving

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liberty to a province to join or not to join at the beginning. The Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was most vehement in its resistance to compulsory grouping.100 On 19 June Congress came out with a proposal for a change in personnel – this was for the inclusion of a nationalist Muslim in the Congress quota. They named Dr. Zakir Hussain as the person of their choice. Since the Viceroy knew that this would be totally unacceptable to Jinnah he conveyed his apprehensions about it in a letter on June 22. Thereafter the Congress President informed that the CWC had decided against the acceptance of the interim government proposals.101 Amrita Bazar Patrika blamed Jinnah for refusal to accept the nomination of Dr. Zakir Hussain. ‘The CWC almost came to a decision on the composition of the interim government’ it wrote, ‘but this settlement was blown to pieces by the atom bomb of Jinnah’s letter’. Pandit H.N. Kunzru in the National Call blamed the Viceroy and the Mission for the Congress Working Committee’s decision. The Hindu Mahasabha mouthpiece Nationalist could see through the double game of the Viceroy and the British bureaucracy in trying to trick the Congress into accepting itself as a sectarian organization of the Hindus alone. But Mahatmaji’s ‘unreasoned instinct’ could check it.102 Congress had also been airing its opposition to the principle of ‘parity’ for quite some time. ‘There is no parallel in the history of any country in the world where a party representing less than 20 per cent of the people of that country had the audacity to demand 50 per cent representation’ remarked Prof. N.G. Ranga, Secretary of Congress Party in the Central Legislative Assembly, ‘and still pretend to remain democratic in outlook’. The British attempt to force ‘parity’ down the throat of the Congress showed, as the eminent economist Dr. Ganguly pointed out, ‘British view of democracy undergoes change East of Suez.’103 In a 1500 word letter to the Viceroy the Congress President clarified the reasons for Congress rejection of the Viceroy’s interim government proposals although they had already conveyed their acceptance of the long term proposals of the Delegation for the setting up of a Constituent Assembly for working out a constitution for independent

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India. Maulana Azad explained that although the Congress did not insist on an immediate declaration of independence it expected ‘a de facto change in the character of the government making for independence of action’. The status and powers of the provisional government were going to be ‘entirely different from the Viceroy’s Executive Council. It was to represent a new outlook, new methods of work and a new psychological approach by India to both domestic and external problems’. What they found totally unacceptable was the notion of ‘parity’ even as a temporary expedient. Regarding the inclusion of a non-Muslim he said that ‘even a temporary departure from such a vital principle could not be accepted by us at any time or place and in any circumstances’.104 Jinnah, however, agreed to come to the interim government and insisted on sticking to the 16 June Resolution, which had said that government could be formed with those who are willing to come, even if one party did not accept the invitation. But things had changed since the Congress had conveyed its acceptance of the 16 May proposals. A.V. Alexander thought that the Congress acceptance was not genuine. It was merely a ‘paper acceptance’ to enter the Interim Government and gain control of it.105 The acceptance referred to the Congress Working Committtee Resolution of 24 May in which they had pointed out what, in their opinion, were the drawbacks in the proposal. They had also added their own interpretation of the provisions in the statement in relation to Grouping and continued that ‘while adhering to our views, we accept your proposals and are prepared to work them with a view to achieve our objective’.106 Wavell had been assured by Cripps that Congress would never accept the Statement of 16 May. But later he persuaded the Congress into accepting it by pointing to the tactical advantages they could gain from it as regards the Interim Government. The Secretary of State too thought that it would be of advantage to get the Congress into the Constituent Assembly. This placed the Viceroy in an embarrassing situation vis-à-vis Jinnah.107 The Congress acceptance was so cleverly worded that he was left with no option but to plead that as the Congress had accepted long term plan they were entitled to representation in the interim government.108 Jinnah accused the Viceroy of bad faith and of surrendering to the Congress. The

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Statesman, reflecting the opinion of the European group thought that it was an ‘error’ to forfeit the ‘opportunity of solid and immediate cooperation’ with one of the main parties and that the Viceroy stood morally bound to form the government with the Muslim League. The Statesman editorial of 28 June bearing caption ‘the Descent’ went a step further and blamed ‘the Congress lust for Hindu Raj’ for the nation’s trouble. The Vanguard thought it was a flagrant breach of the solemn declaration of the Mission. The Times of India rightly diagnosed Jinnah’s weakness in not being able to garner a reasonable amount of non-Muslim support which kept him away from his goal.109 The Viceroy now started preparations for elections to the Constituent Assembly. The Congress now openly declared that they had only agreed to go to the Constituent Assembly and nothing else. The Constituent Assembly was a sovereign body and could take decisions on its own regardless of the terms and on the basis on which it was proposed to be set up. Once the Constituent Assembly met by sheer force of numbers the Congress members could wreck the form of the Grouping of the provinces and could extend the powers of the union centre. During ratification of the Constituent Assembly plan, the AICC session in Bombay took the view that provinces might realign themselves according to their desires in the beginning, instead of after a stated period as outlined by the mission.110 Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s Secretary, V. Shankar has admitted in his reminiscences of Sardar Patel that the Sardar had a definitive role to play in this tactical move of the Congress to upset Jinnah’s apple cart by evolving the device of accepting the long term plan but rejecting the arrangements for the Interim Government.111 Nehru now started freely airing his views of the matter. ‘The big probability,’ he spelt out ‘is that there will be no grouping.’112 When Jinnah saw that the Congress was determined to leave no elbow room for even a slow and furtive advance towards his goal of Pakistan he decided to reject the Cabinet Mission plan altogether. Liaqat Ali Khan said it would be suicidal to participate in the interim government as things stood. Congress position would make Constituent Assembly a sovereign body. ‘We would have no place in it because we would be one against four.’113 Jinnah now went back to the Pakistan demand. The Muslim League Council met in Bombay on 29 July 1946. Prominent Leaguers of

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Bengal and Sind threatened ‘Direct Action’ against the ‘dishonest methods of British statesmen’ and the Fascist technique of the ‘Hindu Congress’.114 Suhrawardy, the Bengal Premier declared that Bengal would never obey the Congress government if it came to power at the centre; it would rather be independent of it and set up a parallel government.115 Three days after the League Council’s meeting Jinnah described the League’s resolution as ‘nothing but a statement concerning steps Leaguers propose to take for their own self-preservation and self-defnce’. 16 August was fixed by the League for mass demonstrations against the betrayal by the British delegation and with a view to prepare Muslim mind towards direct action.116 Wavell invited Nehru on 6 August to form a Government. On 8 August the Congress Working Committee agreed to accept the invitation. ‘Sovereignty of Constituent Assembly would be as a whole and against interference by British Government’ declared Nehru, ‘Indeed sovereignty of Constituent Assembly is necessary for solving our problems mutually. While Congress has majority in Constituent Assembly it does not mean that it will overlook interests of minorities or act in a selfish way.’117 But Jinnah was unconvinced. Dawn described the CWC resolution as ‘a string of words to create illusion of reasonableness.’118 The Viceroy wanted the Muslim seats to remain ‘invitingly vacant’ for the Muslim League. But Nehu would not agree. On 24 August the composition of the new government was announced. It contained six Hindus (Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel, Dr. Prasad, Mr. Sarat Chandra Bose, Mr. Rajagopalachari and Mr. Jagjivan Ram, three Muslims (Mr. Asaf Ali, Sir Shafaat Ahmad Khan and Mr. Syed Ali Zaheer), a Sikh (Sardar Baldev Singh), a Parsee (Mr. C.H. Bhaba) and an Indian Christian (Mr. John Matthai). Two Muslim seats were left vacant.119 NOTES 1. A.K. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today (Gupta, Rahman and Gupta, Calcutta, 1944), p. 8. 2. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971, Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1992, 3rd edn. 2007), p. 211.

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3. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today, p. 45. 4. M.R.19966 of 27.6.44 in File No. KPM/SB/61484/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 5. Ibid. 6. Miscellaneous Report of 29.8.44 in ibid. 7. Secret S.B. Report of 11.9.44 in ibid. 8. Secret S.B. Report of 1.5.44 in ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today, pp. 46-7. 11. N.N. Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register (Gyan Publishing House, New Delhi, 1990), 1943, vol. I, pp. 270-3. 12. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Awake Hindusthan (1st pub. 1945; rpt. 2009, ed. Tarun Vijay and with a Foreward by Mohan Bhagwat), pp. 121-39; also available in Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, First Instalment, Printed Books in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. 13. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Awake Hindusthan, p. 144, op. cit. 14. The Indian Annual Register, 1943, vol. II, pp. 45-50. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Confidential Report from Governor, First Half of April 1945; Governor’s Fortnightly Report L/P & J/5/152 in IOR cited in Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704­ 1971, Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1992, 3rd edn. 2007), pp. 214-15. 18. Kamtekar Indivar, ‘A Differeent War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939­ 45’, in Past and Present 176, no. 1, August 2002, pp. 187-221; Madhusree Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (1st pub. in India in Tranquebar Press by Westland Ltd., Chennai, 2010), pp. 268-71. 19. Hindusthan, 3 November 1943 in File No. KPM/SB/02672/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 20. Special Branch Officers collected these extracts from Dr. Mookerjee’s book and highlighted the passages which they found particularly objectionable. File No. KPM/SB/02625/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 21. Letter of Ramesh Ghoshal to H.N. Kunzru dated 9.5.44 in ibid. 22. File No. F 20/18/43 in Home Poll (I), 1943 in the NAI, New Delhi. 23. File No. F 37/15/1943 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 24. Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (Aleph Book Co., New Delhi, 2016), pp. 187-8. 25. Confidential Report from Governor, First Half of April 1945; Governor’s Fortnightly Report L/P & J/5/152 in IOR cited in Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, pp. 214-15.

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26. Wavell wrote this on 20 October 1943. Cited by Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I: 1889-1947, op. cit., p. 312. 27. Ibid. 28. Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, op. cit., pp. 188-9. 29. See Chhanda Chatterjee, The Sikh Minority and the Partition of the Punjab, 1920-1947 (Manohar, New Delhi, 2018). 30. Wavell to Amery, 16 April 1944 in the Transfer of Power, vol. IV, Document No. 462, p. 883. 31. Wavell to Amery, 15 August 1944 in the Transfer of Power, vol. IV, Document No. 660, p. 1199. 32. V.P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Orient Longman, Madras, 1957; rpt. 1993), pp. 162-6. 33. Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I, p. 301. 34. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Bharat Bhango Andolan (1944) a Bengali tract in Uma Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Printed Materials, serial nos. 1-2 in Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. 35. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Awake Hindusthan, p. 186. 36. H. Jefford, O.C. Special Censor Section, Chandpur dated 18.9.44 to O.C., C.S. Calcutta in File No. KPM/SB/61484/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 37. Field Marshall Viscount Wavell to Amery, 16 April 1944 in Document No. 462 in Transfer of Power, vol. IV, p. 883. 38. Ibid. 39. D.C. Potter, ‘Manpower Shortage and the End of Colonialism: The Case of Indian Civil Service’, in Modern Asian Studies, 7, 1 (1973), pp. 47-73. 40. R.J. Moore, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 23. 41. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, pp. 121-35. 42. Ibid., p. 141. 43. Wavell to Amery, 25 June 1945 in the Transfer of Power, vol. V, Document No. 538, p. 1157. 44. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., p. 147. 45. Enclosure in the letter of Mudie to Jenkins, 16-17 July 1945 in the Transfer of Power, vol. V, Document No. 622, p. 1269. 46. The Indian Annual Register, 1945, vol. II, p. 141. 47. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, entry for 2 August 1945, p. 163. 48. Ibid. pp. 170-1. 49. Press Information Bureau’s Morgue and Reference Series: Analysis of the results of General Elections to the Central and Provincial Legislatures held in 1945-46 in File No. 79/46 of 1946 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 50. Telegram Grade C No. 2046 of 26 February 1946 and Telegram, 12 March

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72.

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1946 from Governor-General (Information & Broadcasting Department) to Secretary of State, London; Weekly Political Appreciation, No. 137 in File No. 51/3/46 of January 1946 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Telegram of 12 March 1946 from Governor-General (I&B) to Secretary of State in ibid. Telegram of 20 March 1946 from Governor General of India (I&B) to the Secretary of State in ibid. Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 1, op. cit., p. 306. Provincial Fortnightly Report, April 1946, First Half in File No. 18/4/1946 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. Governor of Bengal to Viceroy, Inward Telegram, 17 April 1946, Franchise: Elections in Bengal, 1946 (Main File), L/P&J/8/475 in IOR; Suhrawardy’s Statement in Star of India, 23 April 1946 cited by Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, op. cit., p. 216. PFR, April 1946, First Half, op. cit. Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj (Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1971), pp. 26-7. PFR, April 1946, First Half, op. cit. PFR, Second Half of June 1946 in File No. 18/6/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. BLAP, 17 July and 1 August 1946 in vol. 71, no. 1, 1946. PFR Second Half of June 1946, op. cit. Ibid. Ibid. Cited in R.J. Moore, Escape from Empire, p. 42. Ibid. pp. 58-60. Political Situation Reports Supplied by I&B Dept. in File No. 51/2/1946 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. H.D. Diary No. 3044/46 Poll I of 26.3.46 in ibid. Cited by Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985; rpt. 1994), p. 176. Political Situation Reports supplied by I & B Dept. H.D. Diary, no. 3044/46 Poll I of 26.3.46 in File No. 51/2/1946 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. Telegram of Governor General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 27 March 1946 in File No. 51/3/46 in Home poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi.

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73. Ibid. 74. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, entry for 19 January 1946 op. cit. p. 205. 75. Dr. B.S. Moonje, General Secretary, The Central Hindu Military Education Society and the Bhonsla Military School to Dr. S.P. Mookerjee, President, All India Hindu Mahasabha, 20 March 1946 in Dr. S.P. Mookerjee Papers, 1st Instalment, Subject File No. 53, Hindu Mahasabha, 1940-1950 in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. 76. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 4 April 1946, in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 77. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 12 April 1946 in ibid. 78. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, entry for 19 January 1946, op. cit., p. 244. 79. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 17 April 1946, in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 80. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: The Complete Version (Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1988), pp. 147-9. 81. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., p. 226; Telegram of Governor-General(I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 2 May and 14 May 1946, in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 82. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 23 May 1946, in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 83. Ibid. 84. Telegram of Governor General (I & B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 23 May 1946, in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the NAI, New Delhi. 85. Ibid. 86. Hindustan Times, 6 June 1946. 87. The Indian Annual Register, 1946, vol. I, p. 206; also see telegram of GovernorGeneral (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 23 May 1946 in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 88. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 23 May 1946 in ibid. 89. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 14 May 1946, in ibid. 90. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 29 May 1946 in ibid.

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91. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 5 June 1946 in ibid. 92. Hindustan Times, 12 June 1946. 93. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 5 June 1946 in ibid. 94. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 29 May 1946 in ibid. 95. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 5 June 1946 in ibid. 96. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 29 May 1946 in ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 13 June 1946 in ibid. 99. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 21 June 1946 in ibid. 100. Ibid. 101. Letter from the Congress President to the Viceroy, 24 June 1946 in Mohammad Ashraf, Cabinet Mission and After (Islamic Literature Publishing House, Lahore, 1946), pp. 153-4. 102. Press Information Bureau, Political Comments in L/P&J/10/58 in IOR, London. 103. Hindustan Times, 27 June 1946. 104. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., entry for 24 June 1946, p. 301. 105. Ibid., p. 305. 106. Entry for 25 June 1946 in ibid., p. 305. 107. Hindustan Times, 27 June 1946. 108. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 4 July 1946 in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India. 109. Press Information Bureau, Political Comments in L/P&J/10/58 in IOR, London. 110. Hindustan Times, 11 July 1946. 111. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (Macmillan India, Delhi, 1974) p. 15. 112. Nehru’s Press Conference of 10 July 1946 in Document 16 of the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, p. 25. 113. Hindustan Times, 11 July 1946. 114. Dawn, 20 August 1946 in L/P&J/10/58 in IOR, London. 115. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State,

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116. 117. 118. 119.

285

Weekly Political Appreciation, 15 August 1946 in File No. 51/3/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 8 August 1946 in ibid. Telegram of Governor-General (I&B Dept.) to the Secretary of State, Weekly Political Appreciation, 15 August 1946 in ibid. Ibid. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1969), pp. 165-6.

CHAPTER 7

Larke Lenge Pakistan: Muslim League

Direct Action in Calcutta and Noakhali

cornered in the war of nerves on the negotiation table by the Congress during the monotonous discussions on the Cabinet Mission proposals, Jinnah had threatened ‘direct action’ in the Muslim League Working Committee meeting at Bombay on 29 July 1946. The Congress acceptance of the proposals of the Cabinet Mission after the League had walked out on it drove him to the end of his tether. He regarded it as a betrayal on the part of the British and declared his decision to ‘bid goodbye to constitutional methods’.1 During the negotiations the British always held the key to the situation as they commanded all the authority and arms; the Congress weapon was the latent threat to break off negotiations and resort to mass struggle and non-cooperation. The Muslim League could merely look on helplessly from the one to the other. But the July 29 decision had armed them with a new weapon. This weapon was the threat of ‘direct action’. Initially, however, the ‘direct action’ day was meant to be spent in explaining the League’s resolution to the people in meetings. In other Muslim majority provinces the day actually passed quite peacefully. However, in none of these provinces the Muslim League was in control. The North-West Frontier Province was having a Congress ministry led by Dr. Khan Saheb or Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan. Punjab was having a Unionist led Government with the cooperation of the Congress. It was kept under strict control by the Governor Sir Evan Jenkins. In Sind the Muslim League Government of Sir Ghulam Hussein Hidayatullah was having a precarious majority and was under threat from his erstwhile colleague in the Sind Provincial Muslim League and its President Sir G.M. Syed. Bengal alone was a safe haven of power for the Muslim League where they could hope to enforce their writ.

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DIRECT ACTION IN CALCUTTA

In an article in the Statesman on the 5th of August published under the name of ‘Shaheed’ (which was probably a pen name assumed by the Bengal Premier to disguise his identity), the author gave a dark hint of things to come on the fateful day. ‘Bloodshed and disorder are not necessarily evil in themselves, if resorted for a noble cause,’ he argued, ‘among Muslims today no cause is dearer or nobler than Pakistan.’2 As news filtered out from Delhi on 6 August that the Viceroy had extended invitation to the Congress to form an interim government, brushing aside the objections of the Muslim League, the Bengal Premier openly threatened to rebel against such a partisan interim government and take out Bengal from under the jurisdiction of such a government. On 10 August he threatened in Delhi that if the Interim Government was formed at the Centre with the Congress alone then he would come out of the jurisdiction of such an Interim Government and set up his own independent domain in Bengal.3 Posters began to appear at various places both in Calcutta and its suburbs protesting against Congress attempt to dominate the country and hinting at violence and bloodshed to resist such attempts. Muslim Leaguers headed by one Illias Mondal of Krishnagore, police station Maheshtala and Ashraf of Akra, Puratan Bazar pasted some posters with the help of local madrasa students at the Dakghar crossing, Akra (14 miles from Calcutta) and Akra Railway Station which could be translated as: (i) ‘We won’t accept Congress Independence though there be valley of blood.’ Jinnah (ii) It is the intention of the Congress to suppress the Muslims in the name of freedom. (iii) We want free Islam in free India. Muslims will never be slaves. (iv) Not only bloodshed but we won’t hesitate to be martyrs.4 The Amrita Bazar Patrika published one letter by S.P. Tayal addressed to the editor, where extracts from a Muslim League tract had been quoted: ‘There is not an inch of the soil of India, which our fathers did not once purchase with their blood. We cannot be false to the blood of our fathers. India, the whole of it, is our heritage and it must be re-conquered for Islam.’5

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The Star of India on 13 August 1946 had urged participation in the Direct Action Day programme by the Muslims in large numbers. ‘Let the Muslims brave the rains and all difficulties’ the paper exhorted its readers, ‘and make the Direct Action Day meeting a historic mass mobilization of the millat.’6 The programme published for this day had mentioned that processions, kafelas, and akharas with music bands and tabaljungs would start from all mohallas in Calcutta, Howrah, Hooghly, Matiaburuz and 24-Parganas and converge at the foot of the Ochterlony Monument between 3 and 6.30 p.m. The special significance attached to the meeting by the League leadership could be understood from the directive to every ward and branch League to prepare a complete list of mosques in its area and to depute three workers to every mosque on Friday, the 16th of August to explain the new policy and action plan of the League before the Jumma prayers and to report to the District League about this arrangement. Every mosque was to offer special munajat (prayer) after the Jumma prayers that day for the freedom of Muslim India, the Islamic world and the peoples of India and the East in general. An appeal was tried to be made to the spirit of jehad by reminding the faithful that it was considered very fortunate that the event had coincided with the holy Ramzan. This was, the paper goaded on its readers ‘a month of real jihad of God’s grace and blessings, spiritual armament and the moral and physical purge of the nation’. It was during this month that the Quran was revealed. During this month 10,000 of the Holy Prophet’s followers conquered Mecca and estab­ lished the kingdom of Heaven and the commonwealth of Islam in Arabia.7 There was no serious apprehension of trouble in police circles about this programme and S.N. Chatterjee, the Superintendent of Police, 24-Parganas in his memo to the D.M., 24-Parganas and all the subordinate police personnel like the Additional SPs, Deputy SPs, CIs and SDPOs wrote: As far as has been gathered there will be no violence on the occasion and that the procession and demonstrations will be peaceful but if the Hindus and other non-Muslims do not close their shops and observe hartals and if the police or the military interfere with the processions and demonstrations, Muslim hooligans may create disturbances by resorting to violence i.e. setting

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fire to Hindu shops, buses and trams. In transport services (particularly bus routes) if the Muslim request to stop plying is unheeded, there may be picketing by Muslim volunteers. The Muslim League programme of Direct Action, which is not of a violent nature at the inception may immediately degenerate into a communal fracas due to non-cooperation by non-Muslims in any area, where the Muslim League has a strong hold.8

The decision of the Bengal Government to declare the Direct Action Day as a public holiday was not taken in by the nationalist press with good humour. ‘Mr. Jinnah had pressed his blackmailing to a point,’ wrote the Hindusthan Standard disapprovingly, ‘where if they fail, his day will also be over.’9 British officers like Sir Arthur Dash, J.M.G. Bell and even the Governor’s own Chief Secretary, J.D.Tyson looked askance at the yielding of the Bengal Governor to Suhrawardy’s insistence on the declaration of the Direct Action Day as a public holiday in the province. In Sind, which also had a Muslim League Ministry, the Governor had been an ICS officer with sound administrative sense. He did not agree to send government officers on a holiday and made it understood that the ministry would be held responsible for any breach of peace. Sind thus remained peaceful on the Direct Action Day.10 But Sir Frederick Burrows did not have a civil service background. He had gained eminence as a successful Railway Union leader and had been promoted to Governorship with the backing of a Labour Ministry in power in Britain. Sir Fred was heard to have boasted in his confidential circles that ‘my predecessors had a background of hunting and shooting but mine was of shunting and hooting’.11 Constitutionally or temperamentally he was no match for the magnetic personality of the Chief Minister. Thus he yielded to Suhrawardy’s request to declare 16 August as a public holiday so that people might keep safely indoors and the ministers could have a free hand to address the meeting convened at the Calcutta Maidan at 3 in the afternoon to explain ‘Direct Action’.12 The rival political groups vied with each other in whipping up hostile sentiments among supporters of their own communities during meetings preceding the Direct Action Day. The former Premier, Khwaja Nazimuddin, while addressing a meeting on 11 August, raised the spectre of fearful clashes between the two communities, which

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were to be brought about by the Interim Government, holding office at the Centre in Delhi without the sanction of the Muslim League. He also hinted at a thousand ways, which might not necessarily be non-violent, for carrying out the programme of the Direct Action Day.13 Kiran Shankar Roy, the leader of the official Congress in the Bengal Legislative Assembly addressed another meeting on 14 August at Ballygunge advising Hindus to keep their shops open and not to yield to a forced hartal. The purpose of the Bengal Government in declaring the Direct Action Day as a holiday was not to avoid trouble but rather to release men to create trouble for persons unwilling to participate in the forced hartal. Roy’s speech was followed up in that same meeting by a Sikh leader who boasted of the Sikhs having successfully beaten up the Muslims during the Calcutta riots of 1926. He promised that the Sikhs could be relied on for repeating history in 1946 once again if there was any such contingency. The stage was thus being set for an open confrontation.14 THE NIGHT OF 15 AUGUST 1946

Muslim League supporters had set about trying to enforce the compliance of the rival community to the League sponsored hartal right from the previous night. Hindusthan Standard had quoted the eye-witness account of Sudhir Kumar Sen Chowdhury, an advocate of Halderbagan Lane, Shambazar, who had been waiting for a bus at the junction of Vivekananda Road and Upper Circular Road at about 11 p.m. A procession of 50 or 60 Muslims, carrying long sticks or lathis were going towards the north shouting ‘larke lenge Pakistan! Kal sab dukan bandh karo, nahi karne se aag laga denge’ (We will take Pakistan by force. Close all shops tomorrow or they will be set fire to!) He noticed many such processions shouting similar slogans while passing Raja Dinendra Street when he reached home at about 11.30 p.m.15 16 AUGUST 1946

Even before the break of dawn on 16 August the up country Muslim

mobs from the slums of Howrah, who formed the sinews of

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Suhrawardy’s support base in Calcutta, started crossing the Hooghly River. ‘They were armed with lathis, knives, bottles and automobile cranks and other kinds of iron bars.’16 They set about their work early assaulting milkmen and newspapermen, their milk cans being thrown away and papers set on fire.17 What followed later in the day at about 9 a.m. can be known from an account of P.R.Thakur, a member of the Legislative Assembly and the Constituent Assembly. He saw several followers of the Muslim League rushing on the Harrison Road from the side of Baithakkhana Road with cries of ‘strike, strike’ on their lips. They were resisted by a rival party near Noor Muhammad Lane and began retreating into Baithakkhana Road. Meanwhile a big lorry bearing the name of ‘the Muslim League Transport Agency’ carrying some 30 to 40 men armed with big sticks and iron rods arrived and chased the resisters, who fled through lanes and by-lanes. The hooligans could then loot the shops on Harrison Road. There were repeated fights between the hooligans and the resisters in front of the Purabi cinema and the whole area from Sealdah down to the Purabi cinema seemed to have passed into the hands of goondas. A police lorry had been seen shortly afterwards moving up and down the place. But they could do nothing to stop the hooligans, who went into hiding into the lanes and bylanes. They reappeared on the scene when the police patrol passed by. Later in the day Thakur saw several dead bodies lying at the crossing of Mirzapur Road and Baithakkhana Road. P.R.Thakur found it very curious that the mobile police parties took no action against the prevailing lawlessness all around although they ‘were cognizant of the whole affair’.18 P.R.Thakur saw a party of Hindu young men rescuing men and women from Muslim areas adjoining Harrison Road at the risk of their lives. Sudhir Das lost his elder brother Nilmani Das in one such attempt to rescue a distressed family. The hooligans there had first looted a shop dealing in daos, daggers, spears, swords, etc. It was followed by the looting of a jewellary shop. Their next target was the paper godown of Messrs. Bholanath Dutta and Sons by the side of the Mitra Institution (Main). The pathetic wails of women and children of a Hindu family living upstairs moved some Hindu young men to proceed to their rescue. But heavy showers of brickbats and soda water bottles by goondas assembled at Mirzapur Street and

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Baithakkhana Road crossing prevented them. Two trucksful of police sergeants were waiting on Harrison Road at that time. But they did not interfere. Nilmani Das persuaded two sergeants to accompany him in rescuing the women and children from the fire. But the sergeants were frightened away by the showers of brickbats and bottles. A sergeant then fired at Nilmani from a close range. He was taken to medical college but died the next day leaving behind his old parents, wife and two minor daughters.19 At Chorebagan Indra Dutt Sharma, a BA student of Scottish Church College, noticed a 250 strong mob, armed with lathis, knives and khukris shouting pakro, maro, luto (catch, hit and plunder) at about 10 a.m. They stabbed an eighteen year old boy and proceeded towards Muktarambabu Street both from the main road and through by-lanes. They looted two shops on the way and would continue their mischief till they met with resistance from a defensive mob near the Chittaranjan Avenue and Chorebagan crossing. They then turned round and entered a dharamshala opposite the Scottish Church College hostel. On the way they killed six men and looted their belongings. The Burrabazar Vyayamshala was completely looted, a book shop was set fire to and a sweetmeat shop plundered. Another mob from Kalabagan trying to go to Muktarambabu Street was checked by freely showering brickbats and soda water bottles. The police never interfered in these acts. They said they had no orders. They merely stood as silent onlookers, like dolls.20 In the Ripon College League supporters tried to hoist a Muslim League flag on a pole, which the Hindu students had brought down. This was followed by a pitched battle between the two communities and League supporters were found to have even brandished a gun in course of the battle.21 Within an hour of the procession of young Muslim students of both sexes in the Amherst Street area at about 10 a.m. Muslim hooligans pounced on a defencelesss family which had arrived at the Sealdah station and was trying to cross the streets and made their eighteen years old girl strip and stand naked on the road, till she was rescued by older and more conscientious Muslims themselves. An old Bengali Muslim had to suffer martyrdom in connexion with this incident that day in the hands of rioters.22

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The Muslim League had requested for 500 gallons of petrol. Suhrawardy did not grant this request as the head of the Bengal Government. But he issued petrol coupons in the name of individual ministers and coupons worth 100 gallons in the name of the Chief Minister.23 This large supply of petrol was made use of to run the lorries carrying League supporters to various scenes of carnage and help in the acts of incendiarism which started from the later part of the morning. While passing the College Street at 8 p.m. European troops (the 7th Worcesters and the Green Howards) found: the College Street market ablaze, a few unburnt houses and shops completely sacked and the road outside strewn with charred embers, empty shoe boxes, broken furniture and other litter; the air was heavy with the fumes of gas shells the police were using to disperse the crowds. In Amherst Street looters had dragged a safe into the road and had succeeded in opening it before they were disturbed. In Upper Circular Road ‘fire bugs’ were dragging lighted pieces of kerosene-soaked sacking across the road to start fresh fires, the remainder of the mob cheering them on and looting until the fires became too hot.24

Between 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. 3 batches of Muslims numbering about 7,000 reached Sealdah by train. Among these were 400 to 500 Muslim League National Guards in uniform, some of whom were carrying daggers and knives. None could be identified by a DIO, who was on duty at the Sealdah station. These 7,000 were mostly from Hazinagore, Gouripore, Gurnlia and Kankinara. Another batch of 50 Muslims, mostly of the ordinary working class from Jagatdal started for Calcutta by lorry number C.H. 611. Amomg them were Mohammad Shafi of Hazinagore and Abdul Sattar of Gouripur. They proceeded up to Shambazar where they were stopped. About 12 of them were injured in the struggle that ensued. The party returned to Jagatdal and the injured were treated at the Jagatdal Municipal Hospital. Besides these, about 300 Muslims of Alambazar came to Calcutta in a procession under the leadership of Hasan and Alimuddin as reported by the OC, Baranagar on 21 August 1946. They returned to Alambazar on the next day.25 It was reported by the Superintendent of Police, 24-Parganas, Alipur, that Muslim mill hands from Barrackpore, the industrial areas

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of the Sadar subdivision and League adherents from Magrahat in Diamond Harbour subdivision came to Calcutta in large numbers to attend the Muslim League meeting at the Calcutta maidan scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Most of them came by trains, some from Baranagar, Jagatdal and Matiaburuz came by buses also. Muslims at Kanchrapara and Naihati protested as trains were obstructed at Dum Dum. At about midday Hindus and Muslims nearly came to a clash in Dum Dum. Large scale police concentrations came to the help of the processionists and they could proceed to their destination without further obstruction.26 Reports from Brigadier Mackinlay also reported about Hindus having erected barricades at the Tala and Belgatchia bridges to prevent Muslims from entering the city and taking their processions to the middle of the town.27 From the reports of the IB officers and Sub-Inspectors all over Calcutta it was learnt that at about 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. large Muslim League processions of about 1,500 in the Hazra Park area, 200 in the Elgin Road area of Bhowanipore, 100 from Kareya Road, Park Street, 200 in the Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, which gradually swelled to 1,000 on Russa Road, most of them apparently belonging to the labouring class, were coming from Alipur via Hazra Road and proceeding towards the maidan.28 They were carrying bamboo lathis and iron rods with Muslim League flags attached to them. The Kareya Road procession carried a big Pakistan map. Several processions were beating war drums to the accompaniment of slogans Pakistan Zindabad (long live Pakistan), larke lenge Pakistan (We shall achieve Pakistan by fighting), British Raj dhamsa hauk (down with the British Raj), Allaho Akbar and Naraye Takbir. The procession on the Russa Road was headed by a band of 3 or 4 musicians, who played dhol and nakaras (as is usually done at the time of the Moharram). In the midst of the procession at least three groups of four and five persons in each were jumping about, brandishing daggers and knives as was the norm during Moharram processions.29 Muhammad Rafiuddin reported from Jagubazar, Bhawanipore, that as soon as the Muslim League procession which started from Katoa Khoti Lane reached Jagu Babu’s Bazar at 2 p.m. brickbats and stones were hurled at the procession from the roofs of adjacent houses.

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When the procession became disorganized they were attacked with lathis by the Hindus and Sikhs. Muslims were chased by Hindus in the Bhawanipore area and a pan-bidi shop belonging to a Muslim was attacked. On that night at about 1.30 a.m. the Muslim houses at Katoa Khati Lane were besieged by the Hindu mob and several attempts were made to attack the Muslims. The next morning all the Muslims in the neighbourhood left their hearth and home to the mercy of the Hindus and took shelter in the Presidency jail premises.30 From the report of Sub-Inspector Bamford submitted on 23 August it was known that Muslim League supporters had also been misbehaving in various ways. At 10 a.m. a lorry carrying Muslim students pelted stones and spat at an Anglo-Indian on Ripon Street. At about 3.30, a mob of Muslims armed with lathis, knives, crowbars etc., attacked the wine merchant T.L. Shaw’s shop at the corner of Collin Street and Wellesley Street. The shop was broken open and looted till late midnight.31 Sub-Inspector S.M. Biswas reported that at about 8.30 in the morning the Muslim League leader K. Nooruddin was explaining duties to batches of Muslim League workers at the Muslim Institute. At this time suddenly brickbats were rained on the processionists at the junction of Wellesley Street and Surendra Banerjee Road, which injured some of them. The infuriated mob then attacked some small shops on both sides of the junction including two betel shops and a watch shop. The Muslim League volunteers had a difficult time controlling them. They could be dispersed only with police help.32 Hindus in the Wellington Square had attacked a mosque at about 11 a.m. and as a result a riot was in progress. A regular fight started opposite the Campbell Hospital. Muslims armed with lathis came from the Sealdah side and broke open Hindu shops. One Oriya man was beaten and robbed.33 At Shambazar about 1,000 Muslim League processionists armed with lathis, daggers, swords and spears, being aided by a motor lorry No. C H 611 attacked the Hindu shops on both sides of the R.G. Kar Road from about 2.30 p.m. In retaliation the Hindus also attacked some Muslim shops from about 5 p.m.34 In Russa Road also the Muslim processionists had become quite aggressive by 2.30 p.m. and had broken open a sweetmeat shop at

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the crossing of Russa Road with Rani Bhabani Road. This was followed at about 4 p.m. by an attack on Hindu inhabitants on both sides of the Russa Road with lathis, brickbats and iron rods by some 50/60 excited Muslims shouting slogans.35 Calcutta was already in the grip of a widespread trouble when Suhrawardy, Nazimuddin and other prominent Muslim League leaders started addressing the crowd on the Calcutta maidan at 3 p.m. A thousand Muslim League National Guard volunteers were seen marshalling the large crowd. A Hindu Intelligence Officer placed their number at 30,000. A Muslim Special Branch Inspector thought it was 5,00,000. The Star of India estimated it to be 1,00,000.36 S.G. Taylor, the IG Police strongly disapproved of the way in which Suhrawardy ‘in a highly inflammatory speech, . . . impressed upon his audience that they must oppose to the utmost limit any plan to allow the Hindu community to assume control’.37 The League leaders spoke of ‘the betrayal of the Muslims’ and the need for Pakistan. One speaker even wanted the establishment of Pakistan by ‘breaking the walls of the Fort William’.38 Even while he spoke men were being killed a couple of streets away and smoke rising from the houses set on fire by the aggressive mob.39 The military intelligence patrols noticed that the maidan crowd included a large number of Muslim goondas, who were slipping away from time to time. Their ranks were further swelled as the meeting ended.40 They made at once for the business district of the town in Chowringhee and a gun shop within two minutes walk from the Government House was looted.41 In Mullick Bazar Muslim shopowners had already marked their shops out with the word ‘Mussalman shop, Pakistan’ written boldly on them.42 Radha Benode Tapadar, a businessman of Mullick-bazar testified that all 9 cloth ration shops and 2 food ration shops, having goods worth Rs. 25 lakhs that were looted belonged only to Hindus. Tailoring shops, spices shops, paint shops, sweetmeat shops all were plundered. The temple inside the bazar was attacked and the jewellary of the deity was taken away. When the priest tried to resist he was assaulted. Two sannyasins were so severely beaten that they died instantly. A third one was admitted to the hospital.43 Sub-Inspector S.M. Biswas also mentioned about brass utensils being carried away from Mullick Bazar at 5 p.m. to Muslim slums near Syed Amir Ali

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Avenue and more people were being encouraged to go and continue their plunder of the shopping centre. In Russa Road Muslim League supporters had attacked Hindu inhabitants with iron rods, brickbats, etc. In Shambazar Hindus had attacked Muslim shops as an act of retaliation.44 At midday the riff raffs in Rambagan, Natunbazar and Manicktala area in north Calcutta were inflamed and excited by the spread of wild rumours that communal riots had started in Manicktala Circular Road area and Muslims were mercilessly assaulting the Hindus and butchering Hindu women and children. The low class Hindus and goonda elements inhabiting the slums at Dompara, Rambagan and Natunbazar started attacking the Muslim localities, Muslim passersby and slum dwellers. Muslim shops were also looted. Prominent among them was one Bamna Pancha, a hooligan of special notoriety, who had escaped arrest when the bustees were being searched a few days ago. Hindu inhabitants in the neighbourhood were terribly frightened. They were prompted to sink all their political differences for the time being and irrespective of political parties and creeds. Hindu young men organized Defence Corps to defend the localities against any probable attack from the rival community.45 The Police Superintendent, 24-Parganas, Alipur reported that a Muslim, who suffered injuries during a Sikh assault on a procession in the Calcutta Police area in Tollygunge had died in a hospital under the jurisdiction of the 24-Parganas. Some houses in the Calcutta police area were set on fire in the evening and it was feared that the fire would cross over to the areas in the 24 Parganas. But fortunately the flame was doused by the heavy thundershower in the evening.46 In Matiaburuz the local leader Nawab Begg returned from the meeting near the Ochterlony monument inspired with a vision of establishing Pakistan. He and his goonda friends decided that the easiest way to do it was to drive away the Hindus from the locality by looting and killing them. Soon after two Hindus in the Bengali Bazar area under the Calcutta police jurisdiction were stabbed. At about 9 p.m. several Hindu houses and shops were looted in the Bartola area. 47 In Watgunge, Babu Bazar, Orphangunge market and partly in Mohan Chand Road in Kidderpore there were arson and looting of Hindu shops on an extensive scale. A temple in Panchanantala was

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desecrated and its front portion was set on fire. Although the place was at a stone’s throw from the police station no help arrived. Hindu houses were raided and cries for help from the rooftop rent the air of the locality. From five to six hundred women and children were provided shelter in the Bakulia House.48 During the night the situation deteriorated further. Curfew had been imposed from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. to bring the situation under control. Heavy thunderstorm brought a temporay lull. But from midnight there was again looting, arson and stabbing. ‘It was unbridled savagery’ as Francis Tuker put it, ‘with homicidal maniacs let loose to kill and kill and to maim and burn’.49 The Army was called in at 2 a.m. to patrol the main streets. It was supposed to free the police to some extent and allow them to go for the mischief-makers in the lanes and bye-lanes. There was only a brief respite from 3 to 7 a.m. After that the same monotonous pattern of stabbing was resumed.50 17 AUGUST 1946

Calcutta was to witness the ‘bloodiest butchery’ on 17 August between 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The worst affected area were the 3 square miles lying between Bow Bazar Street and Vivekananda Road. Three battalions of British troops, The Yorks and Lancashires from Sealdah and the Green Howards from Barrackpore had a difficult time coping with the situation.51 The attitude of the crowd was extremely hostile and menacing. They had developed a regular technique in dealing with the mobile police patrols. On the approach of a police lorry the crowd would disappear into the side alleys, only to reform as soon as the patrol had passed. I actually saw – though at a distance – three cold blooded murders committed in quick succession – a crowd clubbing three unfortunate individuals to death.52

The role of the Chief Minister, in charge of the Law and Order portfolio, was most ambiguous at this time. He had transferred all Hindu police officers from the key posts. On the Direct Action Day, of twenty-four police stations, twenty-two were in the charge of Muslims and the remaining two with Anglo-Indians.53 Even the Governor found it surprising that the Chief Minister attended by some of his supporters was present in the Control Room of the Police

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Headquarters at Lallbazar. The Chief Minister’s behaviour had put the Governor in an embarrassing situation: This made it extremely difficult for the Commissioner of Police, who was primarily responsible for handling the situation, to give clear and balanced decisions on all the numerous calls for help that were pouring in. It is not of course the function of a Minister to direct detailed operations; but the position was one of considerable delicacy as the Commissioner of Police could not insist on the extrusion from the Control Room of the Minister responsible for Law and Order. Short of a direct order from me, there was no way of preventing the C.M. from visiting the Control Room whenever he liked and I was not prepared to give such an order, as it would clearly have indicated complete lack of faith in him.54

Horace Alexander of the Red Cross thought that the Secretary of State and the British Parliament could not absolve themselves of their ultimate responsibility as long as they did not abdicate their charges, merely by pointing to the responsibility of the Indian ministers for law and order. He could not help complaining against the atti­ tude of the police in Calcutta in his letter to the Secretary of State from what he noticed in the streets of Calcutta on the morning of 17 August, while trying to come to the help of the distressed and injured in Calcutta in a Red Cross van: I have not heard of any instance of effective intervention from the police during the whole of Friday and Saturday. I have heard several stories of the police looking on or refusing to intervene. On Saturday morning, when we were in a very badly affected area, rescuing a family who were in danger, a party of police came along followed by a lorry, and occasionally firing a shotgun in the air. The sound of these shots gave the armed goondas and looters a few moments warning, and they speedily made off, or melted down the side alleys. Within a few minutes the police passed and the roughs reappeared. All the streets at that time were lined with youths carrying the most murderous looking weapons. Apparently no arrests were being made. The failure to call in the help of the military until Saturday afternoon seems to me to call for very severe censure … I have yet to meet any citizen of Calcutta who can understand why there was such a long delay in calling them in, in the light of the plain impotence of the police.55

Sir Frederick Burrows, who ‘was not exactly a man of great strength or quickness of mind’ and admittedly no match for Shaheed

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Suhrawardy, the Chief Minister of Bengal, an ‘Oriental politician of considerable shrewdness, deviousness of mind and great natural charm’56 could not grasp the extent of the violence that had gripped the city during his ‘look see’ tour of the city on the afternoon of 16 August. Sir Frederick Burrows had already agreed to the troops being called out at that time in the afternoon. But at that time the Muslims were in the Maidan in the meeting and the comparative quietness of the streets at that time gave the Governor and the military commanders to understand that the situation was already under control and the police could manage it by themselves. The troops were placed into advanced positions of readiness but the Commissioner of Police did not call on the troops actually to come on the streets till midnight.57 By the morning of the 17th however, there was to be no mistaking about the changed temper of the crowd. Sir Frederick Burrows could see for himself that: ‘The attitude of the police party escorting me … was unsatisfactory and lends colour to the allegations that during the early stages of the disturbances the police force as a whole were not very willing to resort to firing.’58 It was then that he authorized the three battalion military operation to take over the restoration of order in central and north Calcutta, which were worst hit by violence and troops fired no less than 818 rounds of .303 in broad daylight.59 The Statesman of 23 August carried an eye-witness account of the ‘mob fury that reached a crescendo on Saturday, when defenceless men, women and children were cruelly beaten and stabbed to death’.60 Large crowds armed with lathis, daggers, spears, axes and blazing torches broke open the doors of buildings after buildings in a locality. They shouted maro, luto (plunder and kill) and carried away all that they could lay hands on. Finally they set fire to the houses. The inmates, who sometimes fled to the roof, cried for help. If the police came in time they were rescued. Otherwise they were burnt to death.61 An eye-witness account described how a couple with two small children were mercilessly killed when the mob broke into a house.62 Sir Arthur Dash recorded in his ‘Bengal Diary’ how the carnage was going on right under the eyes of the military and the police. A British-manned tank stood in the centre of the circus with a British sentry standing guard with a rifle and bayonet. A man came down a staircase in

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view of the sentry and the man was surrounded by a prowling crowd of about 50 young men. One man interrogated while another stood apart ready to give a sign. He gave a sign and the victim staggered away, stabbed in the stomach with a pen knife.63

In Hatibagan the mob did not stop with attacking the market. They also surrounded the bustees and set fire to them. When the fire drew people outside they were hacked to death.64 There were numerous instances of mindless cruelty and savagery. One eye-witness saw from the roof top of his two storeyed house how an old man was beaten to death. The old man was walking along the road, clutching a bundle, when he was attacked. He was beaten mercilessly, and he fell on the ground and probably lost consciousness. As soon as he moved he was stabbed and done away with.65 A graphic account of the plundering of a store in the Chowringhee was also provided by an eye-witness watching from his roof top. Although the door keeper did not resist yet he was beaten to unconsciousness and finally stabbed to death. The shop windows were broken, valuable rugs and carpets were pulled out of the windows and shred to pieces.66 17th of August was also the black day associated with the murder of 600 innocent Oriya coolies of Keshoram Cotton Mills in the Elias Building in Matiaburuz. Several Hindu workers, who had been living in the compound of the Mills, like Phagu Das, Dwarikanath Bera and Chintamoni Bhuniya testified that Mr. Faroqui, President of the Garden Reach Textile Workers’ Union along with Elias Mistry had ordered the mob to loot and commit the mass massacre.67 One hundred and fifty-four dead bodies were found in the Keshoram Tent godown. All the bodies were of Hindus, only one that of a Sikh.68 In the Shamsul Huda Road and Syed Amir Ali Avenue, a big mob embarked on their looting spree early in the day from 8 a.m. They broke open the Amir Ali Clinic, Sen’s Clinic and an oilman’s stores and looted the property. Later on they broke open some Hindu houses, adjoining the Amir Ali Clinic and looted trunks, radios, gramophones, valuable clothes, etc. They also piled up a lot of furniture, a bicycle, a sewing machine and other goods on the Syed Amir Ali Avenue and set fire to them. After this they soaked the windows of the house with something and were about to set fire to

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it, but were stopped owing to the presence of a mosque nearby. The women and children of the house somehow escaped to the house of a retired judge through the terrace, when looting was going on.69 18 AUGUST 1946

Next morning at about 9 a.m. other Hindu houses in the locality of Syed Amir Ali Avenue (from which the inmates had escaped) were broken open. The miscreants pulled out a car from the garage to the middle of the road and set fire to it. Two dead bodies were lying in front of the house. They were taken in a hand cart and thrown into a sewer drain. In Jhautala Road too there were two bodies inside a house.70 Jewellary shops were raided in the McLeod Road and Elliot Road. The Calcutta Sikhs now considered it their duty to come to the aid of their Hindu brethren. They raided the Syed Amir Ali Avenue locality and struck one Hakam Butler of Bright Street on the neck with a sword.71 At 3 p.m. in the afternoon they chased the Muslims on Debendra Ghosh Road in Bhowanipore when Muslims had been trying to loot a pan-bidi shop and a flower shop. Hindu youths and up country labourers joined in the fracas and gunfires were also heard.72 The Governor of Bengal sent alarming reports to the Viceroy regarding the stabbing in the dock area of Kidderpore, Watgunge and Garden Reach patrolled by the 1st and 3rd Gurkha Rifles.73 In the Clive Jute Mills, Rashid Sardar and Head Durwan Mohammed Safi Khan asked the Oriya coolies to enter the Mill at 11 a.m. on 18 August and informed them that they could work. But later another gate was opened for them to come out as the Mill was closed. As soon as the Oriya coolies came out, they began to be butchered. The area near the Okhra Brick Field and the village Bhanga Khal remained disturbed till 21 August and many coolies of the Brick Field were killed. Police discovered that several guns were being used in this area. Hindu families were forcibly converted in this area on fear of death. The Eastern Frontier Rifles had a trying time restoring normalcy to this area.74 Between 18 and 19 August the Worcesters and Green Howards cleared an area bounded by Vivekananda Road, Central Avenue,

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Sovabazar Street and Strand Road. The situation was still so serious that reinforcements were sought by the military authorities from Ramgarh (Norfolks), Ranchi (4/7th Rajputs) and Parbatipur (3/8th Gurkhas) to strengthen their existing resources. The police had to resort to firing in the Entally and Bhowanipore area. The Worcesters had to make a drive early on the 19th in the area bounded by Beadon Street, Upper Circular Road, Shyambazar Street and Central Avenue.75 Buses and taxis, loaded with Sikhs and Hindus armed with swords, firearms and iron bars dominated the roads of south Calcutta. The end of the Second World War had brought back many demobilized soldiers to the city as taxi and motor bus drivers. Along with them came various sophisticated arms and weapons and found their way into the communal clashes in the city.76 The wholesale destruction of the Sovabazar Market presented a ghastly sight. Bodies were strewn all over and there were odd bodies in sacks and dustbins. One room contained 15 corpses, another 12. Rickshaws had been smashed and their pullers massacred.77 The roads were strewn with decomposed bodies. The police, military and rescue workers had to use stench masks to clear the streets. A Corpse Removal Organisation was formed with 30 Domes (scavengers) headed by government officials. A large number of bodies had been pushed into the sewers or thrown into the river.78 The Statesman, which usually acted as the mouthpiece of the Europeans in Bengal, estimated the number of killed as 4,000 and 15,000 injured.79 Thousands of refugees were evacuated from bustees (slum areas) and provided relief in the Ashutosh, St. Xaviers and Lady Brabourne Colleges. More centres were later opened in Shambazar and Marcus Square of the Indian Red Cross Society and the Royal Calcutta Turf Club.80 The Statesman reported on 30 August that 185 relief centres were taking care of 1,27,000 refugees.81 Many, who had come to the city from the villages were seen leaving for the Howrah station on their way back to their villages.82 THE VICEROY’S TOUR OF CALCUTTA

Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been heading the interim government at

this time, wrote to the Viceroy expressing his anguish at the goings

on in Calcutta: ‘Calcutta has been a horrible shock to you and to all

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of us. And yet I may say that it has a personal significance for us which it cannot have even for you. Our friends and relatives are involved in these bloody murders and our children and dear ones may have to face the assassin’s knife at any time.’83 Wavell feared even stronger reactions on the part of the Muslims if Nehru was allowed to visit Calcutta; the ‘Direct Action’ was interpreted as an outburst of Muslim emotions at the possibility of majoritarian rule, which the formation of the interim government with Congress collaboration had conjured up before the Muslims. The Viceroy did not want to fan the flame of Muslim hatred even further by allowing the Congress supremo to make his appearance in the ravaged city. Instead he himself came on a visit to Calcutta to inspect the destruction on the 25th. Accompanied by the Governor, Major General Roy Bucher, GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, the Area Commander, Chief Secretary Walker and the Police Commissioner Hardwick, he passed through Shambazar, the scene of many a bloody conflict in the past few days and entered the Upper Circular Road, lined with burnt out houses and bustees. The Fire Brigade was seen to be trying to extinguish the smouldering embers of a devastated bustee near the Manicktala Bazar area. Wavell found the road in front of the Science College strewn with bricks and stopped at Rajabazar near the Mechuabazar crossing. The place had recently been strewn with mutilated corpses. British troops in trucks and tanks were posted in this place to guard against sudden emergencies. Driving past Sealdah, where normal activity had stopped for four days, he entered Harrison Road. This was an arterial route, linking the two main railway termini of the city. Here the Viceroy was greeted with rows of shattered and looted shops and burnt out houses. The junction of Mirzapur Street and Harrison Road was littered with broken glass. The Viceroy and his entourage passed the busy shopping centre of College Street Market, which was a mass of deserted ruins and reached the Upper Chitpur Road through Central Avenue and Vivekananda Road. The corpses had been removed from this place but the mass of debris from the looted houses and stinking garbage were still lying on the ground.

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Tarachand Dutt Street, which was lined up with wealthy Marwari houses wore a deserted look. Palatial buildings gave ample evidence of arson and looting on a large scale. It was heard that from one single house in this area gold, jewellary, cash and works of art worth nearly half a crore of rupees had been looted or destroyed. At the corner of the Zakaria Street near the Nakhoda Mosque, the doors of a temple had been burnt. In Colootolla Street the house of a rich Bengali family stood ruined. The Viceroy reached Tiretta Bazar through Chittaranjan Avenue, Bowbazar and Lower Chitpur Road. In spite of its closeness to the Lalbazar police headquarters, the whole of the market had been looted and many of the shopkeepers butchered. In Canning Street rows of wholesale dealers’ establishment lay stripped of their valuable contents. The Viceroy reached Dhurmtollah Street through Bowbazar, Central Avenue and Chowringhee Square and witnessed how many well known shops including a departmental store had been pillaged. Driving through Wellesley Street and Park Street they entered the Lower Circular Road and inspected the Mullick Bazar, which felt the full fury of mob violence. Only one line of shops in this big market remained unaffected. New Park Street, Syed Amir Ali Avenue, Gariahat Road, Rashbehari Avenue and Russa Road were all scenes of mob fury. A mosque in a back street at Kalighat Park had suffered miserably, many people having been butchered.84 RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MINISTRY

The incidents of the Direct Action Day brought all political parties on one single political platform and the Congress Working Committee, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Forward Bloc spoke in one voice in favour of the removal of the ministry through the good offices of the Governor. The Congress President Maulana Abul Kalam Azad accused the ministry of going back on its promise of not trying to apply force in making people observe the hartal on 16 August 1946. By making it a public holiday, it had not only released men for mischief, it had also made its sanction behind the hartal very explicit. Even after the riots started the ministry’s efforts to impose Sec. 144 Cr.PC or curfew

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were lackadaisical. There were neither adequate police pickets nor was military help sought in proper time.85 The Congress Working Committee Resolution of 30 August criticized police inaction, participation in looting by the police and the complicity with criminal activities by the non-enforcement of the Sec. 144 Cr.PC and the curfew order on the first two days and the delay in calling military help. The free use of motor lorries for transporting Muslim League hooligans and unlimited supply of petrol for committing arson was also taken note of. They also expressed great apprehension about the escalation of the communal conflict.86 Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, the Working President of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, put forward the same demand on behalf of the Hindus to the Governor to relieve the ministry from the responsibility of maintaining law and order in Calcutta. This will ensure impartial administration and bring about a sense of security and would be more effective than periodical peace conferences.87 The All India Hindu Mahasabha also joined in the chorus for the removal of the Suhrawardy cabinet forthwith and demanded that the Government should provide compensation for property looted or destroyed as well as for loss of life and injuries sustained.88 Sarat Bose wanted the recall of the Governor for his inability to check the ministry. The Governor’s tour of the city in the company of the Chief Minister, who merely showed him a number of Muslim bodies which gave him no idea of the mass massacre of the Hindus, was found by him to be totally ineffective. He wanted strong military pickets all over Calcutta and the suburbs for at least a fortnight under the command of a strong military officer to hold the scales even.89 During an interview with the United Press of America on 30 August Sarat Bose explained how the Muslim League had misled the police into believing that there would be no trouble on the ‘Direct Action Day’ and prevented all precautionary measures on the part of the police to combat the sudden onslaught on the city. Since Calcutta was the capital of the only major province where the League was in control they expected to give full play to their strength in this place. They appealed for military help only when things appeared not to be going their way.90 The complicity of the Suhrawardy ministry in the riot was later confirmed by the British Commander Sir Roy Bucher. ‘Neither then (August 1946) nor afterwards’ he wrote

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in a letter to Jawaharlal, ‘did one member of that Government gave me any real assistance in bringing order out of disorder’.91 NOCONFIDENCE MOTION IN THE

BENGAL LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

Two separate no-confidence motions in the Bengal Legislative Assembly were moved and debated on 19 and 20 September 1946. One was personally against Chief Minister Suhrawardy; the other was against his Council of Ministers. The motion was supported by the Congress including 24 SC members, Hindu nationalists and one Indian Christian. But the motion against the ministry was defeated by 131 votes to 87. Twenty out of the twenty-five Europeans were present and remained neutral. The three Communist members also remained neutral. All members of the ministerial party, four AngloIndians, six Scheduled Castes of whom three hitherto belonged to the Congress and one Indian Christian voted with the Government. The other motion against Suhrawardy was also lost by 130 votes to 85.92 In spite of their failure in the face of the brute majority of the Muslims in the Bengal Legislative Assembly gifted by the Communal Award of 1932, the most striking thing about the no-confidence motion was how the opposition, irrespective of their political affiliations, spoke in one voice. Whether Congress or Mahasabhaite, they all criticized the ministry in one voice for its failure to arrange adequate police pickets and delay in calling the military. Even a European member Mr. G. Morgan questioned the police inactivity and slow requisitioning of military aid. The ‘blitz attack on the city’93 pointed to a deep laid conspiracy. Kamini Kumar Dutta mentioned the distribution of loads of dangerous weapons by red ribboned Muslim volunteers from a number of lorries. N. Mahalanobis of the Congress spoke of how Muslim officers in charge of police stations were found to have joined the jihad against Hindus.94 Although the police could not get enough lorries to carry on their duties, the hooligans had, as the Congress member Kiran Shankar Roy pointed out, numerous lorries and sufficient supply of petrol at their disposal. He found it suspicious that there were so many new faces in the

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bustees. Men who were not known in the locality and whose faces were not recognizable during the darkness of the curfew hours in the night were found moving during curfew hours blowing whistles for signals. Printed and typed copies of pamphlets were being circulated. All these led him to suspect some underground plots for concerted hooliganism. He mentioned the posting of persons of a single com­ munity to all important government posts in a district from the DM to the thana level, leading to feelings of insecurity among persons of the other community. The abduction of women and forcible conversions to Islam and the use of force in the Beniapukur thana area to make people sign the pledge of Pakistan were also brought to notice by him. Kiran Shankar Roy would not accept that the Muslim League conspiracy, which had taken the civic life of Calcutta to the brink of collapse, had any support whatsoever among the people at large. He maintained that 90 per cent of the Hindus and Muslims in the province wanted to live in peace. It was only the hooligans who had brought the life of Calcutta to a standstill and had spread anarchy in Bengal.95 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee too spoke in the same voice and said that peace could come in the province only through the willing cooperation of the two communities. The Direct Action Day might have provided a glimpse into what would follow in the subcontinent if the Muslim League persisted in its project of bringing about Pakistan by force: If it is said that civil war will break out throughout India, will that help anyone, will that help in particular 25 per cent Muslims throughout India as against 75 per cent of Hindus and other non-Muslims? It is not a question of threat at all; it is a question of facing a stern reality. Either we have to fight or we have to come to some settlement. That settlement cannot be reached so long as you say that one community will dominate over the other, but it can be reached by a plan which will enable the vast majority of Hindus and Muslims to live under circumstances which will give freedom and peace to the common man. . . . It is therefore virtually necessary that this false and foolish idea of Pakisthan or Islamic rule has to be banished for ever from your head. In Bengal we have got to live together.96 THE DEFENCE OF THE MINISTRY

Chief Minister Suhrawardy called the ‘holocaust’ an expression of the

hatred of the two people roused by the negotiations with the Cabinet

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Mission. ‘When a nation fights against another,’ Suhrawardy had said in Bombay, ‘I cannot guarantee civilized conduct.’97 By throwing the blame for the passivity of the police and the wave of lawlessness that swept the city on the fateful day to the precedent for defiance of law created during the Quit India movement, he squarely made the Congress responsible for the happenings of the Direct Action Day.98 Liaqat Ali Khan, General Secretary of the All India Muslim League put the entire blame on ‘the communal arrogance and the spirit of violence fostered by the Congress’ as evinced in the brickbats on peaceful processions. He cited hospital records to prove that the Muslims suffered more than the Hindus.99 COALITION RULED OUT

The Statesman, which nurtured no particular grudge against the Muslim League Ministry in Bengal, in its Editorial of 20 August however, openly held the ministry responsible for the ‘bloody shambles’ to which the capital city of Bengal had been reduced. It feared that if the ministry was not removed by the immediate application of Section 93, ‘it would be held in active hatred and contempt, would be an object of sustained fear and detestation in the eyes of disquietingly many of the Province’s inhabitants – for the things done and not done in Calcutta this month cannot reasonably be expected to be soon forgotten.’100 However, on 22 August Ian Melville Stephens admitted in his Editorial that the removal of the only Muslim League Ministry, worth the name, especially at a time when the Congress was going to form the Interim Government, might muddle the political situation of the country even further. It therefore wanted Jinnah to personally intervene in the matter and take an initiative in forming a coalition with the Hindus.101 Such a coalition, however, would be ‘a denial of Pakistan’, as was obvious to many contemporary observers like the Red Cross official Horace Alexander.102 Thus although Suhrawardy had opened negotiations with the Congress leader K.S. Roy for a coalition on the advice of the Governor,103 political connoisseurs could make out that ‘if there is no coalition at the centre, how can there be one in Bengal’?104 These premonitions ultimately turned out to be true and Suhrawardy informed the Viceroy that Jinnah would not permit him to form a coalition ministry.105

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The Viceroy was hesitant. He failed to rise to the occasion and advise the Governor to go immediately into Section 93. Burrows had already informed the Viceroy of the difficulties of his position. Unlike Sir Evan Jenkins in the Punjab, who risked a Section 93 as late as March 1947, Sir Frederick Burrows proved to be made of weaker mettle. Sir Frederick in Bengal complained of the skeletal European element with which he had to run the administration as the process of British departure was already under way. The communal spirit was already rampant in the police and the services. It was absurd to expect either the police or the services to sustain a Section 93 administration in a disinterested manner. Everyone was aware of the majority that the Muslim League commanded in the province and all of them would find it wiser to think of the future rather than burn their boats in the cause of a fading Pax Britannica.106 NEGOTIATIONS ON LEAGUE ENTRY TO

THE INTERIM GOVERNMENT

The Viceroy was quite convinced of the culpability of Suhrawardy after his tour of Calcutta. General Roy Bucher, Chief Secretary Walker and his assistant Martin all agreed on the communal bias of Suhrawardy. The Governor knew that Suhrawardy had forfeited everyone’s confidence. But as he could not think of an alternative ministry, Section 93 was not contemplated. Justice Patrick Spens, Chief Justice of India was considered for holding an enquiry.107 V.P. Menon could sense a definite change in the Viceroy’s attitude after his return from Calcutta. Nazimuddin had told him that the League might reconsider its policy if Grouping was accepted and provinces were not allowed to opt out before meeting as a Group.108 It had convinced Wavell that the incidents of Calcutta might be repeated elsewhere unless some agreement could be brought about between the Congress and the League.109 Wavell tried to convince Nehru and Gandhi of the necessity of Sections, as that was the ‘crux’ of the Cabinet Mission’s plan. The discussion got heated, Nehru saying that ‘if a bloodbath was necessary, it would come about in spite of non-violence’. Gandhi too thumped the table and repeated that ‘if India wants her bloodbath she shall have it’.110 In Gandhi’s

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opinion, the departure of the British alone could tame the Muslim League, as the presence of the third party was encouraging the Muslim League to make impossible demands: If British arms are kept here for internal peace and order your Interim Government would be reduced to a farce. The Congress cannot afford to impose its will on warring elements in India through the use of British arms. Nor can the Congress be expected to bend itself and adopt what it considers a wrong course because of the brutal exhibition recently witnessed in Bengal. Such submissions would itself lead to an encouragement and repetition of such tragedies. The vindictive spirit on either side would go deeper, bidding for an opportunity to exhibit itself more fiercely and more disgracefully when occasion occurs.111

Nehru had already expressed his unwillingness to surrender to the bullying tactics of the Muslim League in his private letter to Wavell on 22 August: We are not going to shake hands with murder or allow it to determine the country’s policy. We shall continue to reason with Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others and try to win them over to the path of friendly cooperation, for there is no other way for the advancement of India. But we do not believe that cooperation will come out of appeasement of wrong doing.112

Nehru conveyed the acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan by the Congress in a letter to the Viceroy, but reserved the right to interpreting it in its own way. Provincial autonomy, according to them, was sacrosanct and each province had the right to decide whether to form or join a Group or not. He suggested that the Federal Court could be approached for the question of interpretation.113 Wavell wrote to the Secretary of State that India could not be left to the control of a single party government for long without serious trouble. Compulsory grouping of provinces in the Constituent Assembly for forming both Group and provincial constitutions was the most important recommendation of the Cabinet Mission. Without such an assurance it would be impossible to persuade the Muslim League to enter the Constituent Assembly or to participate in the Interim Government.114 The Interim Government took over on 2 September and on 8 September Nehru announced his acceptance of the grouping plan:

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We are perfectly prepared to accept and have accepted the position of sitting in Sections, which will consider the question of Groups. I would like to make it clear on behalf of my colleagues and myself that we do not look upon the Constituent Assembly as an arena for conflict or for the forcible imposition of one viewpoint over the other.115

Wavell later learnt from Abell through Sardar Baldev Singh that the Congress initiative for a settlement was genuine; their only fear was that if things were made too easy for Jinnah then he might feel encouraged to ask for a higher price.116 There was increasing anxiety in Congress circles about the dangers to their Muslim colleagues from League fanaticism. The unexpected attack on Shafat Ahmad Khan, the Congress nominee to the Interim Government, sadly brought this home to the Congress members. Once the Muslim League agreed to come to the Constituent Assembly it was no longer possible to demur from working with them.117 The Congress decision to join the Interim Government was interpreted in Muslim circles as ‘the installation of a purely Congress government at the centre’.118 As news of persistent and intense Congress activity in London through Reginald Sorensen and William Coxe, advocates of the Congress in the Parliament reached India, Jinnah feared a British Labour Party plan ‘to entrust even more power to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues’.119 As a price for entering the Interim Government he demanded the Vice-Presidency of the Viceroy’s Executive Council (or the Interim Government) and safeguards for Muslims against being outvoted in this Council. He wanted to enter the Interim Government on equal terms and not as subordinates in a government run by Nehru.120 Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel would have preferred to have an acceptance of the long term plan by a resolution in the Council of the League before the coalition could come into existence or the portfolios could be distributed. But the Viceroy insisted that the League would call a meeting of the Working Committee at an early date to confirm its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan.121 At this time Nehru was hard-pressed about the Muslim League Civil Disobedience movement in the North-West Frontier Province and had to visit that province to quell this movement directed against the Congress government in the province. Nehru’s absence isolated

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the Sardar and the Congress had to be content with a verbal assurance from the Viceroy. This later offered the Muslim League an opportunity to enter the interim government without a firm commitment. They thus succeeded in appropriating to themselves the power that vested from the membership of the interim government and started to work as a parallel body within the interim government.122 Wavell’s anxiety for the inclusion of the Muslim League in the interim government merely reflected the eagerness of the British Government to bring about an agreement between the Congress and the Muslim League. The alternatives to this were either convene the Constituent Assembly without the Muslim League and face ‘direct action’. This might become violent and even cause a ‘disintegration of the Indian Army’. The British themselves would then become a participant in the civil war that would ensue. The other alternative was to evacuate India to face civil war and chaos. The great dangers looming on the horizon were: There would be no effective defence of India against external dangers, and the position of the British Commonwealth would be seriously injured because India would cease to be a participant in the Commonwealth Defence System; and if she became dominated by the Russians communications with Australia and New Zealand would be cut.123

The familiar controversy about the inclusion of a nationalist Muslim by the Congress threatened to crop up. Congress refused to budge from their right to nominate a nationalist Muslim. They withdrew Sarat Bose but insisted on retaining Asaf Ali. Surprisingly, the Muslim League agreed to enter the interim government notwithstanding the nomination of a Muslim by the Congress in their quota. But Jinnah wanted to be one up by including one Scheduled Caste among his nominees. The five names sent by him were those of Liaqat Ali Khan, Abdur Rab Nishtar, Ghaznafar Ali Khan, I. Chundrigar and Jogendra Nath Mandal.124 This redistribution of portfolios to accommodate the new entrants also led to friction. Congress did not want to part with External Affairs, Defence or Home portfolios. In his memoirs Maulana Azad blamed Sardar Patel for his refusal to part with Home; it caused so much bad blood and embittered the relations between the Congress and the Muslim League that in a way it set the stage for the eventual partition of the country.125 However, the Sardar was

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adamant and Nehru conveyed to Wavell his inability to persuade the Sardar. The Congress was ready to resign from the interim government if the Viceroy would continue to insist on the matter.126 The calculations of the Sardar behind this move has been revealed in his Secretary V. Shankar’s afterthoughts in course of writing his reminiscences: Even Macaulay’s school boy could have seen through the League game in demanding the Home portfolio. It held the key to law and order in the country in the prevailing period of transition and uncertainty and with the League’s policy of direct action still kept alive, the transfer of this portfolio to the League would have been virtually tantamount to handing over the police in a dacoit infested area to lawless elements. Without this portfolio the League could subsequently create conditions which made orderly government impossible. With this portfolio they could have created anarchy and chaos throughout the country.127

The Congress, however, was agreed to give the Finance portfolio to the Muslim League.128 Thus the entry of the League to the interim government was effected. THE EAST BENGAL DISTRICTS

While the tug of war was going on over the interim government at the centre, the East Bengal localities were ripening for trouble. In October the DIB Police in Calcutta found a leaflet in Alambazar area in the suburbs of Calcutta circulated by the propaganda department of the Muslim League exhorting volunteers to go to the villages, to organize camps and instruct the masses ‘to try to establish Pakistan by force’ through various means. The League volunteers were to hold meetings to excite communal feeling and hatred against the Hindu. They were to tell the Muslims to smuggle lathis, knives, guns and revolvers and to learn the art of coldblooded slaughter. Their aim should be to learn the scientific method of destroying Hindu properties and dislocating telegram communication, destroying railway lines and all other conceivable means of transportation and communication. They must ensure that the police force should not stand in their way and for this purpose they were to estimate the number of Hindu police force under each district authority; to gather information

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regarding Hindu police arrangement in Muslim areas; to destroy wireless and telephone installations in police stations manned by Hindu officers; and to excite Muslims in army and police against Hindu officers and masses. Their aim was not merely to loot Hindu properties; the looted goods must be sold to the Hindu again at a nominal price and then the police was to be informed about the looted goods in the possession of the Hindu so that the Hindu could be involved in false cases and the opprobrium for riots and lootings could be passed on to the other community. Finally it should be the duty of the Muslim League volunteers to form a ‘suicide squad’ to murder Hindu ring leaders and non-League Muslims.129 In Chittagong Fazlul Quader Chaudhuri, Secretary of the District Muslim League, toured the whole district and tried to enthuse the Muslim masses on the eve of the elections in the winter of 1945-6. Since then it came to the notice of the district administration that one Jahur Ahmed, the son of Azizar Rahman of Kattali Police Station, was trying to preach violence. Since the Direct Action Day the two opposing groups in the Muslim League buried hatchet and closed their ranks against the Hindus.130 J.M.G. Bell wrote in his memoirs how the Muslim District Magistrate of Chittagong did not care to consult either his principal subordinate Hindu Magistrate or the European Superintendent of Police and issued orders on the Direct Action Day (i) not to keep any police lining the routes of Muslim processionists or demonstrators; (ii) police parties manned by only Muslim police was to be posted at strategic points; (iii) ambulances were to be kept ready; (iv) and all cars carrying officials on duty were to fly Moslem League flags. As a result the Muslim League got a free hand and there was great violence on that day in Chittagong.131 Although peace committees have been formed both in the rural areas and the towns, all sources were agreed, as was reported by W.N. Bemrose, the Superintendent of Police, that the relations between the two communities would hinge on the turn the negotiations would take in Delhi. As a result the Muslim League National Guard had intensified their efforts and a Green Army was being organized and the police had information that the Muslim League was trying to collect firearms from the Cox’s Bazar subdivision. The Hindus were also organizing Defence Corps to repulse mass attacks. The murder

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of Prof. Jagdish Chandra Mitra on the night of 29 September and several other stabbing cases in the eastern business quarter of the town thoroughly shook the confidence of the Hindus in the district.132 In Mymensingh the Muslim League and the CPI succeeded in preserving peace on the Direct Action Day by arguing that the demonstrations were directed against imperialism and not against any community. But panic and uneasiness followed as evacuees from Calcutta began to pour in. There were cases of violence, loot and arson as wild rumours were spread. Jamalpur, the nearest point from Calcutta, was the worst affected. One jute godown was set on fire and its Marwari owner was burnt to death along with it. Police had to resort to firing to disperse a violent mob trying to rescue their cohort from police custody, resulting in the death of one person and injuries to several others in the Islampur police station of the Jamalpur subdivision area. There was further panic when the interim government was formed in Delhi with the Congress; Hindu families in outlying villages began to evacuate to the district and subdivisional towns among friends and relatives. Muslims also shifted to areas where they were in the majority.133 In Faridpur too there were mutual recriminations and bad blood between the two communities. Hindu students were taking lessons in the art of resistance from an INA Captain and the Muslims did not like the idea. Matters came to a head during Ramzan when a student spat on the verandah and a Hindu teacher made him clear it. There was so much protest against it from the Muslim students that the teacher was made to apologize to the students. Even this did not pacify the Muslims and police sources reported that a telegram had been sent to a prominent member of the All Bengal Muslim League by the students with a request to visit the area.134 On the Direct Action Day the Muslims kept their shops closed. Hindu shops had opened but later they had to close. In Rajbari, Madaripur and Gopalganj, however, Hindu shops were kept open. There was hartal, processions and public meetings by the Muslim League, carrying lathis, sticks and various anti-British and League posters. There were strong criticisms of the British Government, the Cabinet Mission and the Congress and the audience was urged to

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form Muslim National Guards to sweep up all those who would stand in the way of Pakistan.135 Calcutta riots gave rise to wild rumours in Faridpur town about preparations for a riot, collection of weapons and congregation of men. Sometimes this led to sudden shutting down of shops. Police pickets were also posted in the night. There were rumours on 19 August that the two sons of the Rajbari MLA Maulvi Ahmad Ali Mirdha had been killed in Calcutta. The situation became very tense immediately and there were talks of retaliation. The Additional Superintendent of Police proceeded to Rajbari, apprehending trouble. At last as an anti-climax peace returned when the two sons returned unhurt. On another occasion on 21 August there was a rumour that Muslims were targeting two Hindu shops at Gheorabazar under Gualondo police station. In yet another incident an adverse remark about Maulvi Kazi Abdul Majid, President of the Pangsa Union Board by a local Hindu doctor created a lot of tension and the police had to intervene to prevent the outbreak of a riot. The state of inter­ communal relations had come to such a bad shape that even small boys were found to carry daggers. In one case a Hindu boy of 13 stabbed a Muslim boy of 12, when the latter divulged to other boys that Saha (the Hindu boy) was carrying a dagger. The Muslim boy died on the 25th and a case was registered under U/S 126 IPC and Section 144 Cr.PC was enforced. There were chances of trouble when two students were arrested in Bhanga haat for raising alarm on a haat day with petty brickbats. Even peace meetings were not free of tension and during a peace meeting at Charmuguria Sofi Jonabali, a KPP worker was found to have taken a dagger and kept it in the custody of his friend Hashim Karikar of Pagdi. This was revealed when the police arrested Hashim for carrying the dagger. An outbreak was feared when a few days before the Durga Puja some miscreants entered the pandals stealthily at night and broke a few images. But timely condemnation of such incidents by Muslim leaders prevented the escalation of tension.136 A letter addressed to the DM of Faridpur from the people of Gopalganj reveals the feeling of insecurity from which the Hindus suffered in the district. All the Deputy and Sub-deputy Magistrates,

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Honorary Magistrates and police SIs in the district were Muslims. The new CI was over-zealous in taking action against the Hindus during Dol Jatra. The SDO KP Sen was implicated in a false case. The Hindus had lost faith in the administrative machinery and in case there was a communal outbreak they had no one to turn to. Muslim League leaders and members of the Scheduled Castes Federation were frequently touring the district ostensibly on peace missions. But their real intention seemed to be to rally the Scheduled Castes and the Muslims in a common front against the caste Hindus. On 30 November 1946 J.N. Mandal, member of the Interim Government of India, D.N. Barori, Minister of Bengal and Khan Sahib W. Zaman, MLC held meetings, where leaflets were distributed and processions were carried on shouting slogans like ‘Down with the Congress/Hindu Mahasabha/Bania Gandhi’. Their speeches were meant actually to sow hatred between communities and terrorize the Hindus. Mandal spoke of his school days when he and his Muslim friend Yasin combined against caste Hindu boys, who called him Chandal and assaulted him. If only 200 to 300 Hindus have died in Noakhali, in Bihar Hindus killed 30,000 Muslims, burnt their houses and looted their properties. Congress and Mahasabha leaders were called ‘cheats, bluffers and traitors’. Gandhi was called a ‘bluffer in loin cloth’. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was called ‘a beef eater and a relisher of ox tongues’. Mandal said that he was ready to deliver the Hindus from their sins if Brahmins would come and wash his feet like Ramchandra had done to Ahalya in the Ramayana. In Muslim majority areas like Chandradighalia, Bagail, Rugdiand and Batikmari, where the Muslims were in the majority there were arms demonstrations and secret meetings to carry on their fight against the Hindus. Their strategy was to create divisions among the Hindus and then to crush them. Even during the dead of night cries like larkey lenge Pakistan or marke lenge Pakistan rent the air, creating panic in the locality.137 THE NOAKHALI RIOTS

Among all the East Bengal districts Noakhali and Tipperah faced the

worst crisis in consequence of the Direct Action Day incidents in

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Calcutta. Some of the hooligans tried to exploit the bitterness of feeling to their advantage and looted some Hindu shops in some of the haats. There were stray assaults on Hindus while passing along the highways and some of them were robbed also.138 The Durga Puja celebrations in Ramganj were disturbed by the damaging of the idol in one place and the theft of the photo of Durga in another place.139 There were dacoities on 3 October in the Begumgunge police station area and rumours about the arrival of Sikhs led to several incidents under the Sandwip police station. There were a few cases of involving some innocent Muslims in dacoities and petty squabbles like the selection of a site for the performance of Durga Puja or the management of a school committee.140 Even if there was no serious outbreak of disturbances, both the communities were, as was reported by P.D. Martyn, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bengal, ‘in a frightened state’.141 But M.A. Abdullah, the Superintendent of Police brushed aside such fears inspite of being warned from the beginning by Hindu leaders and the respectable gentry of the locality: ‘From the beginning panicky and designing Hindus and the Magistrates demanded demonstration of armed force in the district, specially Noakhali and Feni towns, but such demonstration was considered unnecessary and indiscreet and non-occurrence of incidents in the town belied the fears.’142 He belittled the anxieties of the SDO of the Feni subdivision even when there were six dacoities, involving a murder and two robberies took place in Feni subdivision and dismissed his panic saying that ‘this is his first charge’. The SDO would have liked to establish a police outpost with armed force at Rampur, about a mile from Feni town, where a dacoity had taken place and another outpost at Khairara Bazar on the Chittagong Trunk Road to a distance of about 6 miles from Feni town. Abdullah’s opinion was that ‘if armed police is to be sent out in the rural areas its number must be very large and it will create more problems than it will solve’.143 Nevertheless the authorities considered the situation in Feni to be grave and one company of troops (the 1/3rd Gurkhas) was moved from Chittagong on 9 October and armed police was requisitioned from outside the district.144 S.G. Taylor, the IG Police later admitted that ‘the situation

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was badly misjudged and mishandled by local officers’.145 But the erring Police Superintendent won accolades from the Muslim ministry in power.146 The fact that the Bengal ministry had identified itself with the Muslim League encouraged local League leaders to actively connive with it.147 The Governor too admitted later in his report that: The preliminary examination of the information available to the local officers in Noakhali in the predisturbance period confirms the view that the district had been in a particularly disturbed state for some time previous to the date of the outbreak of the disturbance. The preliminary reactions are that the evidence of disturbed conditions in that district should have been sufficient to provide a clear warning to the officers on the spot and would appear to have fully justified the taking of preventive and precautionary measures.148

The immediate spark came from the disgruntled Golam Sarwar Husseni, a former Krishak Samity member, who had won the elections with Congress support in the 1937 elections but had lost the elections in 1946 as a pro-Congress Jamat ul Ulema candidate and was trying to curry favour with the Muslim League probably with a view to obtaining some high position. He had lost his son-in-law in the Direct Action Day riots in Calcutta. From the beginning of October he began to address mass meetings at important places urging the Muslims to enroll in the Muslim National Guard. Some of these speeches were quite incendiary in character. All these gradually developed into a strong move for economic boycott of the Hindus and Muslims trying to make purchases from the Hindus were abused or beaten.149 The Muslim Police Superintendent still believed that nothing would have happened but for the duplicity of a Hindu member of a peace committee who sent exaggerated reports of these incidents to the Hindu nationalist papers in Calcutta. These stories were brought back to Noakhali with the return of many people from Calcutta during the Puja holidays. Inter-communal relations were thus exacerbated.150 Gholam Sarwar thus had his work made easy and it merely needed one provocative speech from him to goad on the excited mob to the looting of Ramganj bazaar. The trouble spread rapidly to the neighbouring villages and over Ramganj police station in the north-west of Noakhali. From a letter of Radhanath Sarkar, the son of Late Gurudas Sarkar of the village Kamardia, Ramganj, addressed to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee it

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could be gathered that the trouble started in this area from 10th of October, the day on which all Hindu Bengali households were preparing for the worship of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. At midnight five houses were looted and set on fire in village Tamta, only half a mile away from the police station. Since the 11th, murder, loot and arson raged on incessantly in Karpara, Lamchar and several other Hindu localities only 5 or 6 miles away from the police headquarters. On 12 October murder, loot and arson were carried on in village Chandipur which was situated at a distance of only 2 or 3 miles from the police headquarters. The Hindu inhabitants were detained and tried to be converted by force. In the evening on that day Nandanpur, which was only half a mile from the police headquarters, and which was the habitat of the rich Gandhabanik caste, was attacked and eight persons of different families were killed. Gold jewellary worth more than Rs. 2 lakh along with other valuables were seized and finally the homestead was put on fire. Women were also tortured in various ways.151 The area affected in Noakhali was 300 square miles (the total area of the district being 1,650 square miles) lying under the police stations of Ramganj, Lakshmipur and part of Begumgunj, Sonaimuri and Senbag. Some 250 to 300 homesteads were set fire to in Noakhali. The hooligans moved in large bands terrorizing Hindus and committing acts of arson, loot and murder. All escape routes were closed and ransom extracted on pain of death.152 The most striking thing about the Noakhali outrages was the attack on middle class people, which included the murder of the President of the local Bar Association. Haran Chandra Ghose, MLA informed Nehru by a telegram about it.153 Sarat Bose, the Forward Bloc leader too received alarming telegrams from Khitis Roy, Chairman Municipality, Kirti Ghosh, Vice-Chairman and Dr. Sudhir Roy, Secretary, Hindu Sabha, about the ghastly murders of Rai Saheb Rajendralal Roy with his entire family, Zamindar Surendranath Bose and many other notable persons. Communications to thanas or headquarters was made impossible.154 The looting, murders and arson escalated to the neighbouring district of Tipperah on the 13th and an area of 160 square miles embracing the police stations of Chandpur, Faridganj, Hajiganj and Laksham. The situation in the island of Sandwip was very serious for

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two days from 19th to 21st of October. Even the police was attacked and two constables were killed.155 One noticeable feature of the outburst was the conversion of the people en masse. In some cases these took the form of a perfunctory reading of the kalima (Muslim prayer). In other cases initial conversion was steadily followed up and the converts were made to say their prayers regularly and made to consume beef. To set a final seal on the conversion it was proposed that a girl from a newly converted family should be given in marriage to a Muslim. In Tipperah conversion was attempted on a wide scale. New converts were made to wear a skull cap with the word ‘Pakistan’ inscribed on it or wear the lungi in the Muslim fashion. Hindu women were forced to remove vermilion marks from their forehead and break their conch shell bracelets indicating their married status. They too were to recite the Muslim prayers (kalima ) and eat food (beef ) which was a taboo in local Hindu traditions. Women and children were often carried away from their home and confined in some deserted building and raped during the period of their confinement. However, abduction, rape and forced marriage could not easily be verified as women were often afraid or unwilling to testify against their abductor husbands.156 A personal study of the situation led Acharya Kripalani, the President of the Congress, to conclude that the well to do and educated people were the main targets of the attack, while the rest were let off after conversion.157 While the Governor tried to absolve the local Muslims from all responsibility for the crime and the Muslim League vehemently denied involvement,158 the refugees testified that the raids were organized by ex-servicemen leading bands of hooligans numbering about 1,000 from outside. But their clever exploitation of the communal feelings which had been assiduously cultivated by the Muslim League leaders and Ministers since a long time soon came into play and all the local roughs soon thronged to the banner of the raiding parties. Nirmal Kumar Bose’s enquiries among the riot-stricken people in Noakhali also revealed that in most cases the neighbours and village people were the perpetrators of the crime against the Hindus.159 Acharya Kripalani’s enquiries also corroborated that many of the rapists and criminals could be identified by the refugees.160

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The raiders collected in batches of hundreds and in some places thousands and marched to Hindu villages or Hindu houses in villages of mixed population. The crowds had their leader or spokesman. They first demanded subscription for the Muslim League and sometimes for the Muslim victims of the Calcutta riots. The amount demanded was sometimes as high as 10,000 or more. But payment did not necessarily ensure protection. The attackers often returned to loot the houses and finally set them on fire. Even food grains, utensils and clothes were not spared. Cattle were also taken away. All images in the Hindu houses were destroyed and temples in the affected areas were looted and burnt.161 The raids were conducted in a military fashion. Advance parties were sent to collect information from the villages which were targeted. When the attackers left the villages they left a few behind. These people knew how to dig up roads and cut communications. They improvised barricades of banana trees and water hyacinth across streams and canals. The heavy rains of the season breached the roads. It was therefore easy for the criminals to give them the slip. Aerial survey was also impeded by the thick foliage of trees in these places.162 Claude Markovits has attributed the ghastiliness of the attacks to the participation of demobilized soldiers in the Muslim National Guard. The easy availability of dreadful weapons left behind by departing US soldiers and other ex-army personnel and the circulation of these weapons among the Calcutta underworld was also one of the reasons identified by Markovits for the intensity of the attacks.163 The criminals would not even let the victims escape in search of asylum. They issued permits to a select few mentioning in the permits that the concerned person has already converted.164 One ICS officer conveying the refugees to a safer place was attacked. Police parties also faced resistance from these men.165 In Chandpur alone there were 10,000 refugees. Agartala received 10,000 refugees. 20,000 went to other places. Gholam Sarwar was arrested on 22 October.166 The Government acted promptly to stop the outbreak of violence in Noakhali and Tipperah. Three companies of Gurkha Rifles under the command of Lt. Colonel H. Lowe were employed in these two districts and a fourth was kept as reserve. An additional 400 armed police were sent. Two Rapid Action Force reconnaissance planes were

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also being used for tracking down criminals.167 M.O. Carter, who, at this time was the Divisional Commissioner in Chittagong gave a vivid description of the measures to stop the hooliganism in these places: The agreed plan was that the police should establish pickets at intervals along the northern boundary of the affected area, while the military should divide their forces and push forward rapidly from the east to west ends. As had been hoped, the presence of a large additional force along the north, had the effect of preventing the trouble from spreading to the north part of Noakhali and probably into Tippera district.168

The operations were made more difficult by the presence of monsoon waters and the whole countryside being inundated. The only means of going from one place to another were the country boats, which moved very slowly. Otherwise one had to move on foot over roads ankle deep in mud and water. Carter spent the ‘best part of the week trumping through slush with a platoon of Gurkhas (greatly feared by the locals)’. They were accompanied by the local subinspector of police and a few constables, so that if any ‘wanted man’ were found en route, they could immediately be arrested. This ‘showing of the flag’, as Carter put it, ‘was most effective’. Law and order could be restored before long and the troops could be withdrawn.169 The Hindu nationalist press put the figure of the killed at 5,000. This, however, was exaggerated. The Government put the number of dead as something between 200 to 300 persons. But among them were certain very eminent people. The number of homesteads looted and burnt was placed by the Governor at 2053.170 RESPONSE FROM THE HINDU MAHASABHA

The details of the Noakhali catastrophe were not immediately known because of the ban on the publication of news. Brojen Chakrabarti, the Secretary of the Chandpur Relief Committee sent a telegram to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who in his turn sent a telegram to Sarat Bose.171 N.C. Chatterjee, Working President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, immediately telegraphed the Governor of Bengal who was in Darjeeling urging him to protect the people of Noakhali, who were being ruthlessly exterminated. Chatterjee informed the Governor how the civil administration had broken down, military forces were inadequate and people were being massacred on a large scale and the

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women abducted and converted. He urged the Governor to declare Martial Law.172 Ashutosh Lahiri sent a cable to the Secretary of State Lord Pethick Lawrence informing him how in spite of the timely intimation given to the Governor and other officials of the impending danger, no pre­ ventive measures whatsoever were taken. The Governor, according to Lahiri, had failed miserably in discharging his special obligation and the situation could not be faced unless the Governor was removed and the ministry dismissed.173 N.C. Chatterjee also sent a telegram to Dr. B.S. Moonje appealing to the Hindu majority provinces and to all organizations, irrespective of political affiliations, to stand by Bengal in her crisis and to help in the rescue of abducted and converted women: The Noakhali tragedy is the result of organized frightfulness calculated to terrorise the minority and to enforce mass conversion at the point of dagger. It was not fratricidal warfare but one-sided affair. Mr. Gandhi’s statements are unfortunate and distressing and unconsciously encouraging communal forces still aggressive. Do you also advise our women to take poison?174

Dr. B.S. Moonje, the Acting President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, cabled to Prime Minister Attlee to recall the Governor and to entrust the Hindu minority to the care of the Viceroy: ‘The Bengal Governor’s incompetence to control the situation, to establish law and order and to give protection to the Hindu minority, has been clearly demonstrated and the Governor is possibly used as a tool by the Muslim Premier. The Hindu minority has lost all confidence.’175 The Hindu Mahasabha in Delhi observed the ‘Noakhali day’ to express their sympathy with the victims of Noakhali and Tipperah. The Delhi Bengali Hindus marched in a procession to the Bhangi colony, where Gandhi was staying, to protest. They appealed to him to save Bengal Hindus from mass slaughter.176 REACTIONS OF MEMBERS OF

INTERIM GOVERNMENT

Members of the interim government in Delhi beseeched the Viceroy

to let them do something for Eastern Bengal. Nehru wrote to Wavell

pointing out how ‘people there look helplessly to the interim

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government expecting us to do something to relieve them’.163 He was utterly frustrated at the way things were in Eastern Bengal: ‘A vast area of Bengal has ceased to have any government functioning, any security and has just become the happy hunting ground of the worst elements in the community. Mass slaughter, arson, burning of human beings, rape, abduction on a large scale, forcible conversions and all manner of other horrible things are happening.’177 Patel too had written to the Viceroy how the Noakhali people were insulated from the world with bridges broken and barricades put up and slaughtered like rats in a mouse trap. But even then the Viceroy would not allow him to visit Noakhali on the plea that the centre should not interfere in provincial matters.178 ‘What is happening in East Bengal is much worse,’ Patel wrote to Cripps in despair on 19 October, ‘and the Calcutta incident pales into insignificance before Noakhali.’ And yet the interim government was not allowed any initiative as it would amount to an interference in provincial autonomy. ‘You would realize how difficult it is for an Indian Home Member to sit in his office quietly day by day,’ wrote a disgusted Patel, ‘when innumerable piteous appeals and complaints are received for some kind of help which would give these unfortunate and helpless victims some protection.’179 Nehru too had lost all faith in the Viceroy’s ‘special responsibility’. ‘Again and again Bengal witnesses unparalleled horrors, and yet same administrative machine and special responsibilities continue to function,’ he went on his tirade, ‘How can people have any faith in something that has failed them so often before and in which they have lost confidence completely?’180 Philip E.S. Finney, who had been the Deputy Director of Intelligence Bureau, recalls in his Reminiscences Just My Luck how Nehru became desperate during a public meeting in Dehra Dun in UP attended by one lakh people a few days after the Noakhali episode and made an inflammatory speech containing phrases such as ‘if the Muslim want to fight we will show them how and we will spare no one’. Shorthand reporters from IB brought it to the notice of Finney, who thought the speech was ‘legally actionable’. However, he could not get a clearance from Patel, who had, at this time, been holding

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the home portfolio. Finney saw a direct link between this speech and what followed in Bihar soon after.181 IMPERIALIST RESPONSE

Neither the Viceroy nor the Secretary of State was, however, in favour of disturbing the Bengal Governor or the Bengal ministry. Both of them thought it unfortunate that the East Bengal incident should occur exactly at the point when the Muslim League had been accommodated in the interim government after months of haggling. They did not want to disturb the even tenor of the negotiations for the transfer of power by dismissing the Bengal ministry, which was the only ministry under the complete control of the Muslim League. The Viceroy expressed great displeasure at the way the Hindu Mahasabha had been trying to back up the Congress campaign for the removal of the Bengal ministry.168 The Secretary of State too subscribed to the Viceroy’s impression that the Hindu Mahasabha has ‘spared no effort of exaggeration to work up the Eastern Bengal disturbances as a means of inflaming anti-Muslim feeling.’182 The Secretary of State confessed his apprehensions more frankly to Sir Stafford Cripps. ‘I certainly should not contemplate superseding a constitutional provincial government except under most extraordinary circumstances and provocation,’ Lord Pethick-Lawrence was quite emphatic in his unwillingness to budge from his pre-conceived plan, ‘which have by no means arisen and if it were resorted to I am convinced it would lead to far worse disorder and violence.183 Thus the Muslim League was not alone in its game of one­ upmanship; it could also count on the imperialist backing to fall back upon when it ran into difficult days. The Attlee government was probably a little more liberal than its predecessor manned by Churchill on the question of decolonization. But when it came to the question of coming to a deal on the final settlement it was certainly not willing to jettison the strong counter-point against the Congress it had so assiduously worked up over the long years since Lord Minto had brought the Muslim League into being. It was a valuable bargaining counter in all their negotiations with the Congress. It was the only

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weapon left in the imperialist arsenal to extract a deal from the Congress to their maximum advantage. NOTES 1. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson, London, 1969), p. 166. 2. Cited by Leonard Mosley, Last Days of the British Raj (Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1971), p. 27. 3. Sir Arthur Dash Papers, Box No. 3, Bengal Diaries in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge (CSASC). 4. DIB Officer’s Report dated 4.8.46 in I.B. File 717-46/General in WBSA, Kolkata. 5. DIB Officer’s Report dated 30.8.46 in ibid. 6. The Star of India, 13.8.46. 7. Ibid. 8. Memo. No. 4287 (29)/III-46 from S.N.Chatterjee, Police Super, 13 August 1946 to DM 24 Parganas, Additional SP (C), Additional SP (H), Deputy SP (C), Deputy SP (H), CI Sadar A, CI Sadar, B, CI Sadar, Barrackpore, SDPO, Barrackpore, CI Basirhat, CI Barasat, CI, Diamond Harbour and the OCs of Budge Budge, Matiaburuz, Tollygunge, Behala, Dum Dum, Magrahat, Barasat, Basirhat, Branagar, Khardah, Titaghur, Noapara, Bankipur, Jagatdal, Naihati, Bijpur. 9. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the first half of August 1946 in File No. 18/8/46 in Home Poll (I), 1946. 10. J.M.G.Bell Papers, Box I in CSASAC. 11. Sir Arthur Dash Papers, A Bengal Diary, vol. IX, Box 3 in CSASC. 12. Michael Edwardes, The Last Years of British India quoted by Sir Arthur Dash in A Bengal Diary, vol. IX, Box I in CSASC. 13. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the first half of August 1946 in File No. 18/8/46 in Home Poll (I), 1946. 14. Sir Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves (Cassell and Company, London, 1950), pp. 154-6. 15. Report in Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46 in IB File No. 717-46 (24 Parganas) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 16. Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj, op. cit., p. 28. 17. Eye witness account of Advocate Sudhir Kumar Sen Chowdhury in the Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46. 18. Mr. P.R. Thakur’s account published in the Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46 19. Ibid. 20. Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46.

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21. The Indian Annual Register, 1946, Second Half, p. 182; also op.cit., Mosley, p. 30. 22. IAR, 1946, Second Half, p.185. 23. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible? in S.P. Mookerjee Papers, V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 24. Tuker, While Memory Serves, op. cit., p. 159. 25. D.I.B. Officer’s Report dated 26.8.46, copy to D.A. Brayden, IP Deputy Inspector General of Police, No. 4372/III-46 in IB File 717-46/General in WBSA, Kolkata. 26. Special Report Case No. 225/46 Report I dated 6 September 1946 from Special Superintendent of Police, 24 Perganas, Alipur to Inspector General of Police, Bengal, DIG, Presidency Range, DIG, IB, Commissioner, Presidency Division, Deputy Magistrate, 24 Parganas in IB File 717-46 (24-Perganas) in WBSA, Kolkata. 27. Tuker, While Memory Serves, op. cit., p. 157. 28. I.B. File 717-46 (6) in WBSA, Kolkata. 29. Reports of various Sub-inspectors regarding incidents they witnessed during the Direct Action Day in Calcutta in ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. F. Burrows to Field Marshall Viscount of Wavell, 22 August 1946 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power (His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1970; published in India by Vikas Publishing House, Bombay, 1971), vol. VIII, Document No. 197, p. 293. 37. S.G. Taylor Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 38. Provincial Fortnightly Report, Second Half of August 1946 in File 18/8/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 39. Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj, op. cit., p. 30. 40. Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves, op. cit., p. 158. 41. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible? in S.P. Mookerjee Papers, V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in NMML. 42. Gopal Das Khosla, Stern Reckoning: A Survey of Events Leading up to and Following the Partition of India (1st pub. 1949; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1989; 2nd Impression 1999), p. 61. 43. Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46.

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44. IB File 717-46 (6) in WBSA Kolkata. 45. Special Branch Records in File No. KPM/SB/01817/05, Folder A, Part I, 1946 in Kolkata Police Museum. 46. Special Report Case No. 225/46, Report I dated 6 September 1946 from Superintendent of Police, 24 Parganas, Alipur to I.G. Police in I.B. Records File No. 717-46 in W.B.S.A., Kolkata. 47. Ibid. 48. Hindusthan Standard, 30.8.46. 49. Tuker, While Memory Serves, op. cit., p. 160. 50. Sir F. Burrows to Field Marshall Viscount Wavell, 17 August 1946, 10.40 a.m. in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document No. 155. 51. Burrows to Wavell, 17 August 1946 5.30 p.m. in Document No. 156 in ibid. 52. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946, Document No. 197 in ibid. 53. Khosla, A Stern Reckoning, op. cit., p. 49. 54. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946, Document No. 197 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, p. 293. 55. Mr. Horace Alexander to Lord Pethick Lawrence, 22 August 1946 in Document No. 194 in ibid. 56. Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj, op. cit., p. 26. 57. J.D. Tyson Papers in the India Office Records, British Library. 58. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946, Document No. 197 in theTransfer of Power, vol. VIII, page 293. 59. J.D. Tyson Papers in the India Office Records in the British Library. 60. The Statesman, 24 August 1946. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Sir Arthur Dash Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. DIC’s report, 17.9.46 in File 717-46, General; Special Report Case No. 225/46 Report I dated 6 September 1946 in IB Records, WBSA, Kolkata. 68. Superintendent of Police, 24 Perganas, Alpur to IG Police, Bengal et al. Special Report Case No. 225/46 Report I dated 6 September 1946 in IB Records, WBSA, Kolkata. 69. I.B. File 717-46 (6) in WBSA Kolkata. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid.

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73. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946, Document No. 197 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, p. 293. 74. Superintendent of Police, 24 Perganas, Alpur to IG Police, Bengal et al. Special Report Case No. 225/46 Report I dated 6 September 1946 in IB Records, WBSA, Kolkata 75. Burrows to Wavell, 22 August 1946, Document No. 197 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, page 293. 76. Claude Markovits, ‘The Partition of India’ in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic (eds.), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003) pp. 50-62. 77. Tuker, While Memory Serves, op. cit., p. 163. 78. The Statesman, 19 August 1946. 79. Ibid., 22 August 1946. 80. Ibid., 19 August 1946. 81. Ibid., 30 August 1946. 82. Ibid., 20 August 1946. 83. Jawaharlal’s personal letter to Wavell, 22 August 1946 cited in Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I, p. 331. 84. The Statesman, 26 August 1946. 85. Ibid., 19 August 1946. 86. Ibid., 31 August 1946. 87. Ibid., 19 August 1946. 88. Ibid., 29 August 1946. 89. Ibid., 23 August 1946. 90. Ibid., 30 August 1946. 91. Sir Roy Bucher to Jawaharlal, 13 November 1954, cited in Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I (1st pub. in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1975; 1st pub. in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1975, 3rd Impression, 2012), p. 330. 92. The Statesman, 21 September 1946. 93. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible? in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in NMML. 94. The Statesman, 21 September 1946. 95. Ibid., 29 September 1946. 96. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, The Great Calcutta Killing: Who is Responsible? op. cit. 97. Ibid. 98. The Statesman, 21 September 1946. 99. Ibid., 28 August 1946.

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100. Ibid., 20 August 1946. 101. Ibid., 22 August 1946. 102. Mr. Horace Alexander to Lord Pethick Lawrence, 22 August 1946 in Document No. 194 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII. 103. Burrows to Wavell, 28 August 1946, Document No. 210 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, p. 324. 104. Horace Alexander to Lord Pethick Lawrence, 22 August 1946 in Document No. 194 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII. 105. Note by Wavell, 8 September 1946 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII. 106. Burrows to Wavell, 10 September 1946 in Document No. 303 in the Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, p. 485. 107. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 16 August 1946, p. 339. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. p. 341. 110. Ibid. Entry for 27 August 1946, p. 341. 111. Gandhi to Wavell, 28 August 1946 in ibid., pp. 342-3. 112. Jawaharlal’s personal letter to Wavell, 22 August 1946 in Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. I (1st pub. in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1975; 1st pub. in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1975, 3rd Impression, 2012), p. 331. 113. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 29 August 1946, p. 343. 114. Entry for 31 August 1946 in ibid. 115. The Statesman, 8 September 1946. 116. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 29 August 1946, p. 348. 117. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (Macmillan India, Delhi, 1974), p. 18. 118. Hindustan Times, 20 August 19. 119. Dawn, Delhi, 22 September 1946. 120. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 2 October 1946, p. 348 and Entry for 16 October, p. 360. 121. Wavell to Nehru, 2 October 1946 in India Office Records L/P&J/10/75. 122. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (Macmillan India, Delhi, 1974), p. 19. 123. Note of a discussion between the Secretary of State and the President of the Board of Trade, 27 September 1946 in India Office Records, File No. L/P&J/10/75. 124. Wavell’s draft reply in India Office Records, File No. L/P&J/10/75; Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 13 October 1946, pp. 357-8.

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125. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: The Complete Version (Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1988). 126. Nehru to Wavell, 24 October 1946 in India Office Records File No. L/P&J/10/75; Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., Entry for 24 October 1946, p. 362. 127. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel, op. cit., p. 20. 128. Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., Entry for 24 October 1946, p. 362. 129. Leaflet found in Alambazar by DIB Police in Alambazar on 14.10.1946 in IB File No. 717-46 (24 Parganas) Part I in WBSA, Kolkata. 130. Report from W.N. Bemrose, Superintendent of Police, Chittagong dated 12.10. 46 in IB File No. 1104-46, Office of DIB Police, CI Department in WBSA Kolkata. 131. J.M.G. Bell, ‘Last Days in India’, in J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 132. Report from W.N. Bemrose, Superintendent of Police, Chittagong dated 12.10. 46 in IB File No. 1104-46, Office of DIB Police, CI Department in WBSA, Kolkata. 133. Superintendent of Police, DIB, Mymensingh to Special Superintendent of Police, 14 October 1946 in ibid. 134. Report from the Superintendent of Police, Faridpur dated 8.8.46 in ibid. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid. 137. Letter to the DM, Faridabad from the people of Gopalganj dated 2 December 1946 in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Subject File No. 32, First Instalment, papers concerning Tippera and Noakhali District, Relief, Rescue and Rehabilitation in Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. 138. Monthly DO for August 1946 from M.A. Abdullah, Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in File No. 717-46 (5) Memo No. 269 E, 10/1 in WBSA, Kolkata. 139. Ibid. 140. Report from M.A. Abdullah, Superintendent of Police, Noakhali, 10.10.46 in File No. 717-46 (5) Memo. No. 269 E, 10/1 in WBSA, Kolkata. 141. P.D. Martyn, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bengal to the Secretary to the Govt. of India, 25 October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 142. Report from M.A. Abdullah, Superintendent of Police, Noakhali dated 10.10.46 in File No. 717-46 (5) Memo. No. 269 E, 10/1 in WBSA, Kolkata. 143. Ibid. 144. Telegram of Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 16 October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India,

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145. 146. 147. 148.

149.

150.

151.

152.

153.

154. 155.

156. 157. 158.

159.

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New Delhi; Sir Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves (Cassell and Company, London, 1950), pp. 170-1. Report of S.G. Taylor, IG Police dated 9.11.46 in File No. 1104-46, Office of DIG Police, CI Dept. in WBSA, Kolkata. J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. Report of S.G. Taylor, IG Police dated 9.11.46 in File No. 1104-46, Office of DIG Police, CI Dept. in WBSA, Kolkata. Report from the Governor of Bengal to the Secretary to the Governor General, 18th of November 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India. P.D. Martyn, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bengal to the Secretary to the Govt. of India, 25 October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Report from M.A. Abdullah, Superintendent of Police, Noakhali dated 10.10.46 in IB File No. 717-46 (5) Memo. No. 269 E, 10/1 in WBSA, Kolkata. Radhanath Sarkar, son of Late Gurudas Sarkar, village Kamardia, Ramganj, 1 November 1946 in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Subject File No. 32, First Instalment, papers concerning Tippera and Noakhali District, Relief, Rescue and Rehabilitation in Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Telegram of Governor of Bengal to the Viceroy, 16 October 1946 and 29 October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Nehru to Wavell, 14 October 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document 451, p. 724. Sarat Bose to Wavell, 14 October 1946 in ibid. Report of the Governor to the Viceroy, 29 October 1946; P.D.Martyn, Additional Secretary to the Government of Bengal to Secretary to the Government of India, 25 October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Report of the Governor of Bengal, 18 November 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. The Statesman, 21 October 1946. Report from the Governor of Bengal to the Secretary to the Governor General, 20 of October 1946 in File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Ministry of Home Affairs (Pol. Section) communal situation in paragraphs for monthly summary for the month ending 14 November 1946 for the cabinet in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Nirmal Kumar Bose, ‘Satchollisher Diary’ (The Diary of 1947), Punashcha,

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160. 161. 162. 163.

164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 173. 174. 175.

176. 177. 178. 179. 180.

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Kolkata, 2014, pp. 28-33. See specially the case of Labonya Majumder of Dashpara or Namita of Karpara. The former was raped but let off to live in camp but the latter was raped and killed. The Statesman, 21 October 1946. Press Statement of J.B. Kripalani, 26 October 1946 in The Statesman, 27 October 1946; also see India Office Records, L/PJ/8/578. Tour Diary of E.F. McInerney, District Magistrate, Noakhali in The Statesman, 21 October 1946 and 13 November 1946. Claude Markovits, ‘The Partition of India’, in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic (eds.), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003), pp. 50-62. The Statesman, 27 October 1946. Report of the Governor of Bengal, 18 November 1946 File No. 5/55/1946 (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Report of the Governor to the Viceroy, 23 October 1946 in ibid. Governor of Bengal to the Secretary to the Governor-General, 17 October 1946 in ibid. M.O. Carter Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge Ibid. Governor of Bengal to the Secretary to the Governor-General, 18 October 1946; Report of Govvernor of Bengal, 18 November 1946 in ibid. The Statesman, 18 October 1946. Ibid., 18 October 1946. Ibid., 18 October 1946. Ibid., 21 October 1946. Ibid., 2 November 1946. Ibid., 23 October 1946. Nehru to Wavell, 23 October 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. VIII, Document No. 496, p. 781. Nehru to Wavell, 15 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document 462, p. 732. Note by Wavell, 16 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document 471, p. 741. Patel to Cripps, 19 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document 478, p. 750. Nehru to Wavell, 23 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document 496, p. 781. ‘There is no doubt that the Congress have played up the occurrences in East Bengal quite deliberately for political reasons, and though no one can defend what occurred or acquaint the Muslim League of all blame, it is exasperating that additional fuel is being added to the fire for purely party

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reasons.’ Field Marshall Viscount Wavell to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 30 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document No. 534, pp. 841-5. 181. P.E.S. Finney wrote, ‘It may have been a mere coincidence but shortly after this speech the Hindus living in a large area of one of the Bihar districts fell upon the Moslem minority in surrounding villages. There followed murder, rape, looting and the burning of Muslim houses.’ P.E.S. Finney Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 182. Pethick-Lawrence to Wavell, 1 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document No. 541, p. 858. 183. Pethick-Lawrence to Cripps, 28 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, ibid., Document No. 523, p. 830.

CHAPTER 8

The Best of a Bad Bargain:

Dr. Mookerjee’s Formula for Peace

RIPPLES OF NOAKHALI ELSEWHERE

despite the efforts of the Viceroy and the Secretary of State to contain the violence of Noakhali and Tipperah, the Pandora’s box had already been opened and the Noakhali outrage began to send its ripples to various other parts of India. The incidents began with the neighbouring districts of Dacca and Calcutta; but soon they crossed over the boundaries of the province to Bihar. Thereafter the seeds of evil began to sprout in other districts as far as UP and Punjab. Punjab was another key province needed by the Muslim League to press ahead with its programme of Pakistan. Like the educated Bengali Hindu middle class in Bengal, Punjab too had its counterpart in a strong and articulate minority of Sikhs, strongly entrenched both in landownership and army recruitment. They lent their full weight behind the Hindus and orchestrated violent resistance to the Pakistan movement in the Punjab. Like the Great Calcutta Killing and the pogrom of Noakhali and Tipperah, the riots in Multan and Rawalpindi in March 1947 stiffened non-Muslim opinion in favour of a partition of the province. On 8 March 1947 Congress took the fateful decision in favour of the partition of the province. This provided the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal with a confirmation of what it had been sug­ gesting for quite some time – a partition of the province. IMPACT ON DACCA

Dacca was in a disturbed state for quite some time even before the Great Calcutta Killing. It is known from a DIB report that the Dacca city was divided into clear zones of Hindus and Muslims which were known in popular parlance as ‘Hindustan’ and ‘Pakistan’ zones

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respectively. Communication between the two zones was almost non­ existent and people from one zone would not venture into the other zone for fear of life. Only a few menials like sweepers, cobblers or washermen catered to both localities because of the indispensable nature of their services.1 Ashok Mitra, the Marxist leader, who later became the Finance Minister in the CPI (M) government in independent West Bengal, had written about these communally conceived zones in his boyhood memories of Dacca in his memoir Apila Chapila.2 Feelings sometimes ran high and outrages occurred as on 30 June 1946 when a Hindu procession passing by a mosque at prayer time caused a riot. There was a lot of stone throwing. Several Muslims received injuries. A few houses of both communities were looted. Two mosques were burnt and two temples were defiled.3 This was followed by the stabbing of one Hindu constable and four Hindus on 1 July. Cases of stabbing continued till 6th of July, when the Dacca Defence Scheme was put in operation and the DM imposed fines on the areas concerned.4 However, these disturbances were ‘more of a political nature than communal,’ as the Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, Dacca remarked, ‘because the disturbances aim at the assertion of the rights of the communities for the eventual establishment of a Pakistan or Hindustan as the case may be.’5 While the Great Calcutta Killing was the signal for the outbreak of disturbances elsewhere in the province, in Dacca the RSP and CPI had reached an agreement with the Muslim League, through the strenuous efforts of its Secretary, to keep the district quiet.6 But the local Muslim hooligans suddenly got a shot in the arm from a section of the League dominated by the Khwaja group at Dacca. On the night of 26th/27th of August K. Nasrullah called a meeting of 2,000 heads of Muslims at the Ahsan Manzil, Dacca between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and incited them to take recourse to ‘Direct Action’ through mass attack. He declared that what had so far been done to the Muslims was only a beginning and they would be taught a good lesson this time.7 Nasrullah’s call for action was followed by a number of incidents like attacks and looting of houses in Takurhat and Narinda. A motorbus engaged in rescue and relief was attacked with bricks near Rai Saheb’s Bazar and two prominent Congressmen were injured.

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A merchant was stabbed in Babur Bazar, while removing goods from his shop. Finally there was arson in Kayettuly during the night. The IG Police arrived on 28th morning and held a conference with the District Commissioner and DM and barbed wire entanglements were erected at the entrance to several lanes.8 On 31st there were clashes on both ends of the Nawabgunge Road with brickbats, a house broken into and damaged and the crowd could not be dispersed till the police came. A man was stabbed in Kaoranbazar on the 30th morning, a boat was attacked on Buriganga and the passengers stabbed and robbed. At Swamibag 25 persons with weapons were intercepted by a police patrol party. During the night a shop was set on fire at Baburbazar.9 Such incidents continued without a break and the monthly summary for the period ending on 14 October 1946 recorded 60 cases of stabbing, 19 cases of throwing brickbats, 75 cases of arson, 2 cases of rioting and 2 of looting. The disturbances even spread as far as the villages and as many as 3,000 refugees were seeking shelter in the town.10 A 48 hour curfew had to be imposed in Dacca by the 20th of September.11 While earlier the weapons used had been lathis, knives, swords, bows and arrows, catapults and other lethal weapons, with the passing of time corrosives, explosives and incendiaries were being used. Arson was often attempted for loot and police personnel and constables were freely attacked.12 On 20 September Jatindranath Roy, a subinspector of police travelling in plain clothes in the Dacca bound Mymensingh local was stabbed and thrown from the train.13 A constable in uniform was fatally stabbed in Kaltabazar. The DM imposed a 72 hour curfew after that.14 The headless body of a clerk of the Dacca Collectorate, who was murdered at Keranigunge on his way home on the other side of the Buriganga River ford, was discovered on 5 November.15 By the first half of October people from minority areas or places which they believed to be threatened were leaving en masse. This gave rise to a new problem of abandoned houses being used by marauders for looting or as vantage points for raids. Serious clashes broke out over a Kali puja procession and there was a murderous attack on a train near Dacca.16 The communal virus had affected the lower rungs of the police and members of respective communities demanded officers from their own communities. Both communities

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were intent on shielding criminals from their own communities and ‘the most notorious stabbers, looters and other offenders are being reckoned as the tower of strength by their respective societies’.17 The trouble spilled over the boundaries of Dacca town and spread in the suburbs from where about 3,000 refugees have thronged the town for shelter.18 IMPACT ON CALCUTTA

The events of September 1946 in Calcutta proved that the wounds of the Direct Action Day had not really healed. Calcutta was sitting on a powder keg ready to flare up at the slightest provocation. Isolated stabbing cases were of daily occurrence. Military vigil had been intensified and curfew hours were rigorously enforced. On the evening of 5 September one Fakir-ud-din Mir aged about 60, a resident of Sukia Lane and an employee of Volkarte Brothers was knocked down and injured by a bus on Wellesley Street. The bus tried to pass on without stopping but was chased by a crowd and stopped. A hostile crowd demonstrated and a Muslim leader in a big car blocked the road ahead of the bus and the crowd made the bus turn back to pick up the Muslim and take him to hospital. The driver and his assistant were dragged out of the vehicle and stabbed. Kartar Singh, the assistant and brother of the driver was stabbed in the back and Jay Singh the conductor was injured in the hand. A police constable picked up Kartar Singh from the pavement and took him to Medical College in an ambulance. The driver drove the bus to Lalbazar. Fakhruddin was admitted to Campbell Hospital and the conductor was admitted to Sambhunath Hospital. Curfew prevented further trouble that night.19 What followed the next morning was vividly captured by the pen of J.D.Tyson, the Secretary to the Governor of Bengal: Next morning there was a good deal of panic among Sikh bus drivers and conductors. They took the line that they were afraid to stop their buses, either to pick up or to set down in Muslim areas along their routes and they started to rush their buses through Muslim areas and stop only in Hindu areas. The result was that Muslim would be passanger standing at bus stops in Muslm areas saw buses driven by bearded Sikhs driving past at high rate

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and refusing to stop; worse still they saw and heard enfuriated and panicstricken Muslim passengers already in the buses shouting ‘stop, stop: where are you taking us?’ For the Muslim passengers were unwilling to be dropped in Hindu areas as the bus drivers were to stop in Muslim areas. This sort of thing quickly gave rise to rumours that Sikhs in buses were abducting Muslims to murder them in Hindu areas. Result: stone throwing at buses and trams: cessation of bus and tram traffic on certain routes: increased panic because the buses and trams were not running (always a sign of falling political or ‘communal’ barometer); heightened communal feeling; wild rumours; isolated stabbing and brick batting incidents and so on.20

Rumours spread quickly that persons were being stabbed and assaulted in various localities and the military and police were firing on several occasions to disperse hostile crowds. When two buses were stoned the next day, all buses were withdrawn. Stabbing started in Park Circus, Raja Bazar, Chitpur and Bhowanipur area. Two men died in Jorabagan from stabbing injuries and another was brought dead to Medical College from Colootola area. Twelve persons with stab injuries were admitted to the Medical College from various parts of the city. The area in front of the Science College on the Upper Circular Road was the scene of virtually a pitched battle, brickbats being freely exchanged. The military and the police dispersed them. The two yelling mobs met again next morning and the military had to fire four rounds to disperse the crowd.21 The conservancy staff of the Corporation did not report for duty, attendance in government and mercantile offices was greatly affected and the offices closed earlier than usual. Curfew was clamped from 10.30 p.m but streets were empty long before that. Country liquor shops were closed by government order.22 September 13 saw a fresh spate of violence and there were 8 cases of stabbing in Jorasanko, Colootola and Manicktala areas.23 On 23 September events took such a bad turn that the military which had been withdrawn on the previous day had to be called back again.24 On that day a mob raided a house on Raja Dinendra Street, assaulted three men and threw one of them from the second storey. A crowd collected near Sealdah as a sequel and threw brickbats and bottles at tram cars. Police fire 5 rounds to disperse the mob. Stabbing and attacks with lathis and brickbats went on in Scott Lane, off Bowbazar

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Street, Amherst Street, Shashibhushan De Street, College Street, Colootola Street, Zakaria Street, Lower Chitpur Road, Harrison Road, Beliaghata Main Road, Central Avenue, Esplanade and Muktaram Babu Lane. A Sergeant opened fire when a man attacked a passerby at 10 a.m. There were three fatal cases at College Street Mirzapur crossing. Altogether 9 were killed and 54 injured.25 This was followed on the succeeding day by 9 stabbing cases and attack on trams by hooligans. A newspaper hawker was killed at 5 a.m. at the Chandni area. Later a man alighting from a tram at Syed Amir Ali Avenue-Beniapukur crossing was stabbed. A crowd collected, the tram car was boarded and passengers were stabbed. As a result one was dead and 14 were injured.26 A tram car guard fired on a mob, killing one and injuring another at Syed Amir Ali Avenue Park Street crossing. A bank clerk was stabbed at Pollock Street Bank. Altogether 18 died and 93 were injured in four days.27 Stabbing and assaults continued in Bowbazar, Colootola Street, Belgatchia Railway Bridge, Phear’s Lane, Amratollah Lane, Corporation Street and Esplanade East.28 Four bodies were discovered in the city’s sewers in the Beliaghata, Tangra, Entally area. The body of a man wrapped in a gunny sack was found on a north Calcutta street.29 Two corpses were recovered by police from a canal in Belgatchia.30 Inter-communal clashes also resulted in frequent cases of setting fire to bustees as in Howrah, Belgatchia or Cossipore rendering people homeless.31 Shops were set ablaze in the Paikpara area.32 In Paikpara three boatmen were killed and corpses were thrown into a canal. There were clashes between boatmen and coolies near Strand Road.33 Public transports like tram cars and motor buses were often targeted by assailants. Stone throwing at trams stopped services on both north and south at about 9 a.m. Service was resumed after three hours. One tram car was set on fire in south Calcutta. Later trams plied with armed escorts in certain sections of north Calcutta.34 Dhiren Majumder, the Secretary, Tram Workers’ Union called for stopping attacks on trams.35 Motor transport workers struck work and representatives of Sikh Defence Committee met the Commissioner of Police and the Deputy Commissioner, Motor Vehicles Department on behalf of them.36 Buses and taxi strikes and disruption in train services affected Calcutta’s food supply also.37

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Attacks on police had also become very frequent. Acting on information, the police had gone to a vacant plot of land in the Wellington Street area, where a dead body was found after digging. Several men were arrested and put into the police truck, when a hand made bomb was thrown at the truck by a man from the crowd of curious people, who had gathered round to watch the proceedings. The missile burst, killing two of the arrested men and injuring two constables. The crowd was fired on, injuring 8 men.38 The police were again the object of attack in the Mechuabazar area. Here a mob closed in on a picket, snatching a rifle from one of the armed constables. The picket thereupon made a bayonet charge and three men were injured.39 Use of bombs and acid throwing were two new features noticed in the crimes related to the unrest in Calcutta during this period. Seventeen persons were burnt by acid when a lorry in which they were travelling was attacked in the Belgatchia area. Acid was also thrown on the processionists taking part in the immersion ceremony associated with Kali Puja.40 On two occasions acid was thrown on military trucks with troops in north Calcutta. The police later recovered 28 soda water bottles and 40 bulbs fitted with acid from a Chemist’s shop in the locality. In another incident three persons received acid burns in Cornwallis Street.41 It was known from the statement of the Under-Secretary Arthur Henderson in the House of Commons that 5,018 had been killed and 13,320 had been injured in Calcutta. This statistics was based on the incidents that took place in Calcutta and excluded those of East Bengal.42 The situation could not be brought under control in spite of military and police pickets. Lt. General Roy Bucher visited the southern part of Calcutta in the morning of 26 October. The Viceroy himself decided to tour the city. Hindu businessmen met at 100 Clive Street and proposed a general suspension of business from 4 November unless the authorities did something to remedy the situation. The meeting was presided over by Sarat Bose.43 Sarat Bose wanted that mill owners should pay one month’s wages in advance so that the mill hands could agitate without interruption.44 All attempts to form a Central Peace Committee failed through the opposition of certain Hindu political leaders.45 The Viceroy suspected a Hindu hand in

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the continuing unrest and viewed it as a move to unseat the Bengal ministry.46 The total number of arrests was 5,003 of whom 608 were known goondas, who were to be eventually externed under the provisions of the Presidency Area (Emergency) Security Act (Bengal Act III of 1926).47 IMPACT ON BIHAR

Noakhali sent its shockwaves directly to the neighbouring Hindu majority48 province of Bihar. Hindu-Muslim relations in Bihar were already at a low ebb since the Direct Action Resolution of 29 July 1946. The Great Calcutta Killing pushed it to the brink of collapse. As a large horde of refugees from Noakhali began to cross over to Bihar, their tales of woe excited the Hindus of Bihar. Communal passions were kept alive by wild rumours and lurid reports in newspapers. When a Muslim goonda was attacked while returning to Dinajpur from Patna and died soon after, some Muslims rode on a truck in Patna crying out that communal rioting had started. In Beniabad in Muzaffarpur district, 14 Muslims were killed and many Muslim houses were burnt because of a rumour that a Hindu girl had been brought from Calcutta by a Muslim and married forcibly after conversion.49 ‘Noakhali Day’ meetings at Chapra and Patna to sympathise with the victims of Noakhali on 25 October gave the final push and riots broke out in south Bihar, which surpassed the slaughter of East Bengal ‘in savagery and bestiality’.50 The trouble reached its crescendo in Chapra Town (Saran district) on 25 October with the murder of Muslims and setting fire to their houses.51 Aerial survey by the Superintendent of Police revealed a number of houses burning in Paigambarpur. Many persons were killed in Khudaibagh and Rasulpur.52 Chapra riot was brought under control with the help of three companies of armed police and one of Gurkha Rifles and one troop of mounted military police. But the riot spread quickly to the south of the Ganges to the district of Patna, the southern part of Monghyr and Bhagalpur and the northern part of Gaya. The riots took a serious form in the Santhal Parganas. Most of those who died in the affray were Muslims. While men often took to their heels,

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women and children were left at home to bear the brunt of the attack.53 Troops were called for the help of civil authorities. The frenzied mob fired on the troops and police. Khusrupur, Bakhtiyarpur and Barh subdivision of Patna were badly affected. At Barh the mob demanded the surrender of 100 refugees, who were being accompanied to relief camps.54 The morale of the police and the services had sunk to the bottom due to the operation of provincial autonomy. The Muslim press accused the Bihar Premier Srikrishna Sinha of having engineered the riot.55 Hussein Imam, the local Muslim League leader, who had lost all faith in the provincial government, wanted the machine-gunning of crowds from the air as had been done during 1942 to suppress the Quit India activists.56 Nehru was also equally concerned about the damage the Bihar affair was going to cause to the interim government; it would provide the Muslim League with a ready excuse to decide against participation in the Constituent Assembly. During the aerial survey of Bihar along with Lt. General Bucher he too therefore started toeing the line of the League leaders Nauman and Muhammad Yunus about aerial bombing of the recalcitrant areas.57 Nehru’s threats about aerial bombing proved to be like a red rag to a bull among the Bihar Hindus. He had a ‘rough passage’ during a students’ meet in Bihar. He was shouted down with ‘go back Nehru’ slogans.58 The Viceroy, too, had made an aerial survey of Bihar with Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, a Muslim League member of the interim government and G.E. Abell, PS to the Viceroy, Colonel Currie, the Military Secretary, Brigadier Binney of Eastern Command and Brigadier William of GHQ. He interpreted the riots as an expression of discontent from ‘the ruffianly gangster side of Congress, which had expected the interim government to be a Hindu Raj, which would suppress the Muslim League.’59 In the meanwhile the members of the interim government met the Viceroy, the Governor of Bengal and the Chief Minister of Bengal in Calcutta. Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel and Maulana Azad met Gandhi several times seeking his advice regarding the restoration of communal harmony in the country. They also held meetings with Congress and Hindu Mahasabha leaders in the province like Sarat

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Chandra Bose, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Kiran Shankar Roy, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar and Bidhan Chandra Roy. Muslim League representatives in the Central Government Liaqat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar, on the other hand, had meetings with Muslim League leaders of Bengal like Nazimuddin, M.A. Ispahani, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Abul Hashim, S.M. Osman and Hamidul Huq Chowdhury. The gravity of the problem could only elicit a very guarded joint statement from them professing their intention to ‘do the utmost that lies in us, to put an end not only to the immediate perils but also to the basic causes which have given rise to them’.60 GANDHI’S REACTIONS

Gandhi’s discerning eyes saw that the Bihar carnage was going to bring nothing but discredit to the ruling Congress government in the province and tarnish the image of the interim government at the centre for having encouraged the show. He threatened to go on fast if the slaughter in Bihar was not ended immediately. He had already taken to a low diet as a penance for the happenings in Bihar. He addressed a letter to the people of Bihar warning them that their misconduct would malign all the Hindus in the eyes of the world. Bihar Hindus, as Gandhi put it, were ‘honour bound to regard the minority Muslims as their brethren’. They needed protection from the Hindus, who commanded a majority in the province. ‘What you have done is to degrade yourselves,’ Gandhi tried to bring the point home, ‘and drag down India.’ Gandhi was not a believer in the doctrine of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ and he condemned the attempt to avenge the Calcutta and Noakhali wrongs by another revengeful act in Bihar. Persecution of a small minority by a large majority was not bravery. It was worse than cowardice. He reminded the Biharis that Congress was a party proud of its longest and largest political record. Congressmen should not do anything which might ‘justify Mr. Jinnah’s taunt that the Congress is a Hindu organization in spite of its boast that it has in its ranks a few Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and others. Let not Bihar, which has done so much to raise the prestige of the Congress, be the first to dig its grave.’61

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MUSLIM LEAGUE POLITICS WITH BIHAR REFUGEES

Iftikhar Ahmad Khan, the Nawab of Mamdot, the leader of the Punjab Muslim League and Firoz Khan Noon made a sympathy visit to Bihar.62 Nazimuddin, as the spokesman of the Bengal ministry, led a deputation from Bengal and estimated the number of Muslim refugees in towns and camps as something between 70,000 to 80,000. Many more were still in the villages, unable to move out without protection and suffering from want of food. The deputation alleged that Hindus, with the complicity of the government, were destroying bodies and evidence of the extent of their misdeeds. They emphasized the brutalities and atrocities committed and the need for relief and rehabilitation.63 At the behest of the Bengal Government and pro­ paganda by Muslim League about 60,000 Muslims, including a large number from unaffected areas, moved into Bengal between the third week of November and early December 1946. N.M. Khan, the Bengal Director of Agriculture prepared a plan to offer free lands to Muslim refugees from Bihar in the Burdwan district and other places of West Bengal.64 J.M.G. Bell, the District Magistrate of Burdwan complained that the ministry made no attempt to discuss its policy towards the refugees with the District Officers. They relied on ‘volunteers,’ young men of the excitable student type, to shepherd and advise the refugees, and appointed junior Moslem officers to important ‘supervisory’ jobs in Calcutta but left the district officer to arrange accommodation, food, water supply, clothing etc. No information was given as to how long the refugees should be accommodated, or if an attempt should be made to get them away to Moslem areas. The only interpretation that seemed possible was that the Bengal Muslim Ministry was privately sponsoring a kind of transfer of the population in an effort to create ‘cells’ of Moslem resistance, over the heads of its own officers.65

The Burdwan DM also mentioned how the ministry wanted the administration to spend generously without any regard to expense to make the refugees comfortable. No railway official was to demand tickets from the refugees. Free clothing was distributed by Government order. These were often sold by the refugees later on. Rations in the camps were often higher than outside. Burdwan being on the main line from Bihar to Calcutta, trainloads of refugees passed through

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Burdwan to improvised camps set up by the Bengal ministry in Calcutta. When those camps were filled up, the refugees got down at Burdwan or Asansol. Nearly 36,000 refugees had been housed in these places by January 1947. Six large airfields with their buildings left by US troops when they pulled out after the war were devoted for the purpose.66 Emboldened by the backing of the Muslim officers of the Bengal Government, these refugees often took a very aggressive stand and often engaged in affrays with the local Hindu inhabitants. This gave rise to a lot of tension in the Birbhum district. These refugees had lots of luggage and cash with them and could not be called destitutes. They numbeed about 20,000 and were spread over 7 different camps. Many of them wanted to be armed and there was a large increase in the number of applications for licenses for revolvers.67 Panic and night alarms continued. Many cases of private manufacture of arms (swords, spears and arrows and firearms only occasionally) came to light.68 The arrival of about 11,000 refugees from Bihar gave rise to an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion in Asansol.69 As the Burdwan DM put it, ‘they were a serious threat to the peace and order of the district, full of fear and hate themselves, and hated and mistrusted by the local population’.70 Their presence created great panic among coolies from Bihar and colliery labour absented themselves from work out of fear.71 On the 17th of November ‘Bihar Day’ was celebrated in Calcutta. Muslim shopkeepers and tea stall owners in the Muslim quarter observed a partial hartal. Food grains and funds were collected by volunteers of the Bihar Relief Committee and the Muslim National Guard. ‘Bihar Day’ roused much sympathy in Nadia and in Jessore the District Muslim League collected for the Bihar riot victims.72 This was also an eyesore for the Hindu Mahasabha leaders, who could not reasonably protest at the goings on. They resented the influx of 1,50,000 refugees from Bihar into districts where the Muslims were in the minority. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee could merely insist on the same kind of care for the Hindu refugees from Noakhali that was being extended to the Bihar refugees on behalf of the Government of Bengal.73 The Bihar riots of November 1946 and the influx of a large number of refugees from Bihar into the Bengal districts alarmed the Sikhs as

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much as the Hindus as to its probable implications as to the communal ratio in Bengal. They feared a further tilting of the scales in favour of the Muslim population of Bengal, which was already having a large Muslim majority. The Bengal Branch of the Hindi-Sikh Minorities Protection Board urged the Bengal Government for the repatriation of the refugees from Bihar to their home province and not to try to settle them in West Bengal. As an alternative to this, the Sikhs requested permission from the Bengal Government to come and settle in East Bengal districts in large numbers and set up gurdwaras and allow them equal rights and opportunities for this purpose.74 GANDHI’S TRAVAILS IN NOAKHALI

The Noakhali outrage had appeared to Gandhi as a war of extermination and a prelude to the partition of the country. He therefore tried to make a last ditch effort to effect an understanding between the two communities by his personal presence in Noakhali. He was known to have confided to Professor Nirmal Kumar Bose, who kept him company throughout his sojourn in Noakhali: The first thing is that politics has divided India today into Hindus and Muslims. I want to rescue people from this quagmire and make them work on solid ground where people are people. Therefore, my appeal here is not to the Muslims as Muslims nor to the Hindus as Hindus, but to ordinary human beings who have to keep their villages clean, build schools for their children, and take many other steps so that they can make life better.75

In Gandhi’s opinion inter-communal fights would ultimately result in the destruction of both Hinduism and Islam. Both Bihar and Bengal had tarnished their images by attacking the minorities. Loot, arson, molestation of women and forcible conversion of the small Hindu minority by the large Muslim majority in Noakhali was ‘nothing short of stabbing their own religion’. However, he was not happy with the idea of having to approach the Viceroy for requisitioning the military to suppress the outbreak of riots. Such a contingency, in his perception, would be tantamount to an abject surrender to the might of British Imperialism.76 He had several talks with the Bengal Premier Suhrawardy, who visited Gandhi four times in his Sodepur Ashram along with the Labour Minister Shamsuddin Ahmed, Mr.

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J. De, ICS, Secretary of the Central Peace Committee, Calcutta and K.F. Sobhan, the Peace Commissioner.77 Gandhi decided to wait till the Bakr-Id was over on the request of the Bengal Premier.78 He was to be accompanied by Satish Chandra Dasgupta, Manu Gandhi, J.M. Dutta, Dr. Sushila Nayar and Mrs. Ava Gandhi. The Chief Minister asked Mr. K. Nasrullah and Mr. A. Rashid, Parliamentary Secretaries to the Premier and the Finance Minister to join the team.79 M.O. Carter, who at this time had been posted as the Divisional Commissioner in the Chittagong Division was taken aback when he was informed of Gandhi’s determination to visit the riot ravaged villages of Noakhali on foot. I will recall my consternation when I had decoded the telegram bringing the news. It was only too obvious that if anything were to happen to him at Muslim hands whilst he was in Noakhali, it might be a spark that would set fire to a conflagration all over India. We made the most elaborate police arrangements. Gandhi had refused to have any police protection, but of course he got it. The field, where he had established his headquarters, was thick with plain clothes constables or sub-inspectors. The trouble is that a number of them come from Bihar or the west of Bengal and even when they are wearing dhotis or chadars, the difference in appearance from the locals is painfully obvious to the discerning eye.80

Gandhi’s tour began with a visit to a house in the Ramganj thana area where 19 out of the 22 male members in a house of 72 had been killed. The charred bones and the blood-stained floors bore witness to the horror that gripped the village on October 15th. Once a prosperous village, inhabited by middle class people, the village is now deserted. The survivors of the riots were probably languishing in some rest camps. Sucheta Kripalani, Nasrulla, Rashid, McInerney and the Police Superintendent Mr. Abdullah also accompanied him. In Gopalpara, a neighbouring village of Dattapara 20 men were murdered in the house of the Patwari and burnt in the courtyard. The house was looted, 3 girls were abducted. Two of them were still untraced. It wore a desolate look and blood stains could be seen everywhere. Gandhi discussed how the 6,000 persons in the camp could be repatriated. The refugees could not trust Muslim assurances. Moreover, there was no place to go to, as the houses had all been burnt and

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razed to the ground.81 Enquiry by some Senior European Officer of the Bengal Government revealed that most of the homesteads and market places had been reduced to ‘a tangled wreckage’. Homesteads were pillaged, where they were not burnt, Haimchar in Chandpur being the worst affected.82 Gandhi continued his tour of Ramganj through skulls and bones, scorched trees and wreckages of goods. In course of his tour he was confronted by a hundred women, who complained to him of their vermilion marks being removed and conch shell bangles, the auspicious sign of married women, being forcibly broken. At Dattapara he was joined by the Congress President, Acharya Kripalani.83 While Gandhi and Kripalani continued on their mission in Dattapara, conditions remained as disturbed as ever and many of the miscreants were still at large. A senior ICS officer along with his police party, trying to make arrests of criminals and rescue people still marooned in their villages, were attacked thrice early in November. The police had to open fire, which resulted in 7 deaths and 10 injuries.84 Life was still insecure in these regions and a Hindu returning home from Gandhi’s meeting at Dattapara was murdered on his way back. Six Hindus were murdered in different villages and a clerk carrying relief goods went missing. Persons who had been arrested but were later released on bail, continued to intimidate Hindus. A crowd of 300 Muslims threatened some DIB officers, who had been returning on boat after the Governor’s visit to Faridganj thana in Tippera district.85 Hindu property was still very insecure and betel nuts were being stolen from the trees belonging to Hindus and paddy belonging to Hindu refugees had been harvested and misappropriated at various places. 86 Gandhi could not see any light in ‘the impenetrable darkness’ around him. ‘From all accounts received by me,’ Gandhi wrote sadly from Srirampur, ‘life is not as yet smooth and safe for the minority community in the villages.’87 Gandhi was waiting for ‘mutual love’ to return between the two communities and would not like to leave till he had achieved his end. Exchange of population was very far from Gandhi’s thoughts. He

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regarded it as ‘unthinkable and impracticable.’88 He rejected the zonal colonization plan offered by the Hindu Mahasabha leaders N.C. Chatterjee and Devendranath Mukherjee, who came to see him in Srirampur.89 Concentration of minority population, in Gandhi’s opinion would imply that ‘the whole country should be divided into hostile sections perhaps enjoying a sort of armed peace’. He would like them to derive courage from inner strength, which comes from God.90 Local Hindus were, however, scared to stay. A large number of women and a few men of ordinary background were seen to be led by three or four bhadralok youth (who were probably Hindu Mahasabha workers) along with a tall up country man in Khaki shorts (probably a RSS leader) out of their villages on the plea that their life was not secure there.91 Inspired by Gandhi’s exhortations, the Khadi Pratisthan worker Sourindra Kishore Basu advised Hindu residents of Sundura village under Ramganj police station to stay on. But both Barada Kanta Majumder, the RSPI worker of Ratanpur and Shasanka Shekhar Ghosh, Forward Bloc worker of Komardia insisted on the evacuation of marooned and converted Hindus.92 Many like Santi Ranjan Roy, Jamini Kumar Ray, Kanak Kanjilal and Amiya Sengupta of the People’s Relief Committee were spreading rumours about there being widespread communal trouble on 9 December, the day on which the Constituent Assembly was scheduled to meet.93 Santi Ranjan Roy and B. Dasgupta were later asked to leave the village.94 It was learnt from an intercepted letter of Rashamoy Deb, a Hindu Mission worker writing to his Mission colleagues in Calcutta that CPI workers were asking people not to leave home, while removing their own families to Calcutta.95 While Gandhi tried to put back refugees to their own villages through the jont efforts of Hindus and Muslims, the attitude of the two communities was diametrically opposite regarding the presence of the police and the military. The Hindus wanted the police and military to be increased for the security of the minority, while the Muslims strongly resented their presence.96 In Noakhali Gandhi wanted to walk through Noakhali villages and stay among Muslims to convince them that he was a friend to them. He would start at 7.55 a.m. and cover 2½ miles in one hour and twenty minutes. Bengal Government offered him eight armed guards although he disapproved of escorts. A mobile cottage was

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moving with him so that villagers did not have to be disturbed for night shelter. After prayers he would visit houses of villagers freely mixing with them for about two hours everyday. Along with Gandhi went Miss Manu Gandhi, M.P. Ramchandran, N.K. Bose and Parasuram, the stenographer.97 Gandhi had decided that he would rather stay in Noakhali to achieve his peace mission and not attend the AICC session in Delhi.98 But he had already advised Assam against going into Sections, where the Muslim League might impose a constitution on her against her wishes.99 These remarks provoked a very strong reaction among the ‘intransigent elements’, who had been watching Gandhi’s movements with ‘subdued feeling’. Posters could be seen at Chaumohoni, Noakhali and Lakhipur, asking him to ‘Quit Bengal’. However, this hostility was not very widespread and the general attitude of the Muslims was to ‘wait and see’.100 Nehru, Mridula Sarabhai, Acharya Kripalani and Shankar Rao Deo came down to Feni to consult with Gandhi about Grouping and Sections.101 Gandhi insisted on staying in Noakhali and continued on his walks in Karpara, Bhatialpur and Narayanpur.102 At Ramdevpur he was met by some influential Muslim leaders who wanted him to use his influence at high levels to seek the release of Gholam Sarwar, who had been denied bail.103 From his rural seclusion in Ramdevpur Gandhi made a statement after his prayer meeting on the evening of 18 January. He clearly expressed his opposition to Compulsory Grouping. He said that there was no contradiction between his aim and his advice to the people of Assam, the Sikhs, the Frontier Province and those who felt like staying out of the Groups or from the Constituent Assembly. The Cabinet Mission Paper, in his opinion, was of a voluntary nature and no party could be compelled to join the Constituent Assembly. They had the force of public opinion to back their resolution or wishes.104 He saw no impediment in the way of the Muslim League’s entry into the Constituent Assembly as the Congress had completely identified itself with the Cabinet Mission Paper. The success of the Constituent Assembly, he thought, would depend on the backing of the Indian masses. If it tried to turn against public opinion it would collapse like a house of cards. Instead of trying to compel Assam to

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join Bengal or the Sikhs or the Frontier Province to join Punjab and Sind, the Congress and the League, whosoever it might be, should try to make its programme attractive so that the recalcitrant groups come on their own.105 Gandhi continued undeterred in his progress through the villages of Purkot, Badalkot and Atakhora with olive branches.106 But on 20 January news broke of a mela in Comilla being invaded and looted by a mob of 1,000.107 It merely exposed the undercurrent of hostility still active in Eastern Bengal. The Suhrawardy government was becoming restless about the dreadful discoveries of human brutality to which Gandhi’s travels were drawing the attention of the whole world with his continued stay in Noakhali. In the third week of December, Maulvi Hamiduddin Ahmed trained his guns on Gandhi in a savage manner: ‘It was known to everyone that the oppressed community in Noakhali was Hindu and that in Bihar was Musalman. Would it be wrong for anyone to feel that by riveting the attention of the whole world to Noakhali, Mr. Gandhi’s purpose is to draw attention away from Bihar?’108 INTERIM GOVERNMENT AND

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The interim government was functioning very smoothly before the Muslim League came in. Nehru called it the ‘Cabinet’ and not the Viceroy’s Executive Council. He had put up the Congress flag on his lawn.109 The Cabinet used to meet at Nehru’s residence informally and make all the important decisions unanimously and promptly. Thereafter the Viceroy was presented with the unanimous decision of the Cabinet and he had nothing to do but to endorse the decisions. If the system had continued for some time then the Muslim League would have come on its own. It was the impression of Sudhir Ghosh, a person close to Gandhi and acting sometimes as a go between, conveying Gandhi’s wishes to the Vceroy, that they ‘were really dying to come in’.110 That would have prevented the splitting up of the country and a coalition in the real sense would have come up. But the Viceroy handled the situation in a most incompetent manner,

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allowing the Muslim League to get an upper hand and ruining the spirit of cooperation. ‘The Muslims have come in without any settlement and understanding with the Congress,’ as Ghosh put it, ‘and their behavior shows that they have no desire to offer genuine cooperation.’111 Events in Noakhali, Bihar and Garhmukteshwar fair112 further embittered relations between the Congress and the Muslim League. League’s participation in the Constituent Assembly scheduled to meet on 9 December became uncertain in view of these disturbances. The crux of the question was Congress acceptance of meeting in Sections. The League insisted that provinces must first meet in Sections. Representatives in the Sections would decide, by a majority if necessary, whether there would be Groups. The Sections, again by majority, would frame the provincial constitution and the Group constitution if necessary. But Congress always tried to scuttle this basic League demand. The proposition as embodied in the 16 May statement was never accepted by Congress, as the Muslim League later discovered. The Assam Premier was allowed to defy the 16 May Statement. Nehru had empowered Gopinath Bardoloi to take a decision both on Grouping and the provincial constitution in consonance with the norms of provincial autonomy. ‘Even to think of the proposed Constituent Assembly or any talk about it, when we are faced with two hostile camps, with the result that killing, murder and destruction of property are going on apace,’ Jinnah wrote to Wavell on 17 Nov­ ember 1946, ‘is neither advisable nor possible.’113 Nehru and Patel thought that if League would not accept the Cabinet Mission Plan, they would forfeit the right to be in the Coalition. They should be asked to quit. But the Viceroy would not oblige. Jinnah argued that it was the Congress who had trounced the Cabinet Mission Plan by its own interpretation of the Grouping pro­ cedure. Thus a constitutional stalemate had been reached.114 The British Government was anxious to bring both parties into the Constituent Assembly and Prime Minister Attlee therefore invited the Viceroy along with the representatives of the two main contending parties, the Congress and the Muslim League to London for a meeting in London on 2 December. Wavell decided to take Liaqat and Jinnah

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along with him on 30 November. The Congress and Sikh representatives initially decided to decline the invitation. But a personal message from Prime Minister Attlee persuaded him later to go.115 Nehru gave it to understand in London that India could solve her own problems in the natural course had there been no external interference. The ground realities were muddled by other questions only because outside involvement was there.116 During the London Talks, Nehru, Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan, Sardar Baldev Singh, Lord Wavell and the three members of the Cabinet Mission were brought together in a round table. Nehru and Sardar Baldev Singh were to leave early for the Constituent Assembly meeting. Wavell, Jinnah and Liaqat were to stay on.117 The differences between the two parties had been regarding the interpretation of Para 19 of the 16 May statement.118 The Cabinet Mission was of the view that decisions in the Sections would, in the absence of agreement to the contrary, be by a simple majority vote of the representatives in the Sections. This interpretation suited the Muslim League. But the Congress insisted that provinces had the right to decide both as to Grouping and as to their own constitution.119 As the success of the Constituent Assembly depended on the equal participation of both the Congress and the Muslim League, the HMG wanted the Muslim League to participate in the Constituent Assembly and refer to the Federal Court for the correct interpretation of the Cabinet Mission Plan. After the preliminary meeting the Constituent Assembly was to divide into Sections and decide on whether a group constitution should be framed for the provinces within a Section and if so, for what subjects. Individual provinces would be free to opt out of a group after the first elections under the new constitution.120 Jinnah, however, was not willing to wait for the interpretation of the Federal Court.121 In the meanwhile, Gandhi was heard to have advised Assam not to go into Sections. Thus there seemed to be no meeting ground between these conflicting viewpoints and Pakistan looked to be the only solution.122 M.A. Abdullah, the Superintendent of Police, Directorate of IB, Noakhali, reported that Gandhi was informed by Nehru that on his return from the London Conference Jinnah was reported to have said, ‘I have got what I wanted’.123 It was obvious that the HMG’s sympathy lay with Jinnah. If he could not get the Congress to accept two strong Sections dominated by the

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Muslim League on the East as well as the West within a weak federation he would rather go for secession from the Indian Union with the states which were willing to go with the Muslim League. His goal of Pakistan was now within sight. For the Congress, however, the prospect of Pakistan was devastating. Twelve members of the Constituent Assembly urged the acceptance of the HMG’s statement of 6 December as, they thought, the alternative of going into sections was civil war.124 But HMG’s inter­ pretation was anathema to Congress. Assam was most unwilling to sit into Sections, while North-West Frontier Province agreed to sit and then opt out. AICC therefore thought of approaching the Federal Court for the right course to be followed.125 The AICC decided to accept the HMG’s statement of 6 December concerning Grouping and going into Sections. But it was made clear that the Congress would not be a party to the forcing of any province or part of a province to join a Grouping against its will. In other words it is a reiteration of the principle of settling all constitutional issues by negotiations and mutual understanding. The reference to ‘part’ of a province was meant to cover the opposition of the Sikhs to compulsory Grouping and other cases of the same nature.126 There also emerged a strident opposition in the AICC to the undue interference of the HMG in the process of India’s constitution making. The fears and doubts of the small provinces in Sections B and C were also voiced during the meeting.127 The Statesman in its editorial of 6 January pointed out that the Congress was trying to represent the case of the Sikhs, the North-West Frontier Province or Assam as ‘a compulsion of the minority by the majority in the Sections’.128 Acharya Kripalani, the Congress President, was absolutely indignant in his denunciation of HMG’s interpretation of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 6 December: British Statesmen were like jugglers. They produced new meanings and new interpretations from old statements like a juggler producing rabbits out of a hat. … State Paper of May 16 … provided for an All-India Union, recognized the autonomy of the provinces and that residuary powers should rest with the provinces. But according to their latest interpretation with the introduction of Grouping the autonomy of the provinces would rest with the Groups. This was a novel democracy which the British sought to apply in other countries.129

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The AICC at its meetng of 6 January 1947 accepted HMG’s interpretation with regard to the procedure to be followed in the Sections of the Constituent Assembly by 99 votes to 52. Nehru advised Assam to join Sections. He said that the Constituent Assembly would devise its own measures for settling disputes.130 But representatives of states which were supposed to suffer a total blackout of their wishes by joining into Sections, where they would be reduced to powerless minorities raised their voices against the AICC resolution. Dr. Gidwani from Sind pointed out that once they sat in Sections, constitution making would pass into the hands of the Muslim League, making it impossible to opt out at a later stage. Baidyanath Mukherjee, a minister in the Assam Government wondered how Assam representatives in the Constituent Assembly could go against Gandhi’s advice and subvert the mandate of the Assam Legislature by joining a Section, where the Assam representatives would be reduced to a minority? J.P. Narayan thought acceptance of the AICC resolution was tantamount to acceptance of Pakistan. The greatest mistake was to allow the Muslim League to enter the interim government without insisting on their assurance of cooperation. As things stood, the Constituent Assembly could do things only with the approval of the League, the British and the Princes. He wanted the Constituent Assembly to prepare a revolutionary constitution and to ask for complete transfer of power to those elected under that constitution. Asaf Ali said that Assam should not be afraid of entering into Sections as nothing would prevent her from getting out if anything was imposed on Assam against her will. Congress had opposed many constitutions and reforms in the past. The same could be tried for Assam if the need arose.131 The AICC resolution also roused fierce resistance from Sarat Chandra Bose in Bengal. Bose thought that the resolution reduced the Constituent Assembly to a subservient body and irrepairably damaged the integrity of India. It actually compelled the provinces to accept Grouping against their will and surrender provincial auto­ nomy, while doling out misleading assurances that no compulsion or interference was involved. A Constituent Assembly acting in accordance with the British Government’s interpretation and mandate could not possibly frame a constitution for a sovereign republic of India. Bose

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did not believe that the AICC resolution would induce Jinnah to come to the Constituent Assembly. The British Government’s communiqué of 6 December merely strengthened his hands. He would now get his Pakistan hands down.132 While Gopinath Bardoloi in Assam continued to make noises against compulsory Grouping, Gandhi pointed out from Noakhali that it was open to both the Congress and the League to make their programme more attractive to draw the dissenting provinces and Groups instead of using compulsion from outside.133 A Statesman editorial noted the apparently conflicting utterances of Gandhi, advising Assam, on the one hand, not to join Groups and exhorting the League, on the other, to come to the Constituent Assembly. Assam and the Sikhs remained the main stumbling blocks to the imple­ mentation of the Cabinet Mission Plan. 134 The League Working Committee considered all options in its Working Committee meeting at Karachi on 29 January and decided to ask the British Government to declare that the Cabinet Plan had failed. The AICC resolution was dubbed by them as no more than a ‘dishonest trick’. The 16 May Statement had, at no point, been accepted by either the Congress or the Scheduled Castes or the Sikhs. They therefore demanded that the Constituent Assembly should forthwith be dissolved. The Constituent Assembly in which only the Congress is represented has taken decisions on principles and procedures exceeding the limitation imposed by the Statement of 16 May 1946 on the Assembly’s formations and powers at the preliminary stage which impinge upon the powers and formations of the Sections. By these acts the Congress has already converted that truncated Assembly into a rump and something totally different from what the Cabinet Mission had provided for. The committee is of opinion that the elections to and the summary of the Constituent Assembly were ab initio void, invalid and illegal and the continuation of the Constituent Assembly and its proceedings and decisions are ultra vires invalid and illegal and it should be forthwith dissolved.135

The Congress viewed the Karachi resolution of the League as ‘a broken pledge’ as the AICC resolution had promised to go by the HMG’s December 6 interpretation of Sections. They argued that the acceptance of the long term and the short term plan of the CMP

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cannot go separately; and since the League was in no mood to accept the long term plan the Congress pressed for the exclusion of the League from the Central Government.136 Jinnah, in his turn argued, that it was the Congress, who were not fit to sit in the Interim Government as they had never accepted the CMP’s Grouping plan. The verbal exchanges continued as the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly took place on 12 December and no solution to the consti­ tutional stalemate was in sight. THE DETERIORATING COMMUNAL ATMOSPHERE

Noakhali: The hitch in the negotiations over the Interim Government and the Constituent Assembly in Delhi had been lengthening their shadows on the relations between the Hindus and the Muslims all over India. Even Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts to bridge the gulf between the two communities in the Bengal countryside were of no avail. Desher Bani (Tidings from the Countryside), a local weekly published from Noakhali reported in its 19 March 1947 issue that Gandhi’s appeal to the majority community had proved futile. Rather, the persecution of Hindus and assaults on Hindu property was on the increase in those areas. The persons accused of murder, loot and arson had been released from their jail custody on bail. Being at large once again, they were behaving as if they were the masters of the village and the evacuees, who had been persuaded to return to their riotravaged homes were being intimidated by various means.137 How Gandhi’s meanderings for peace through the village paths of Noakhali were being viewed by the riot-torn people of the area can be gauged from an anonymous letter from the district: When the Day of Action for the extinction of Hindus was proclaimed by Jinnah … and the blood of thousands of men, women and children overflooded the streets of Calcutta … Maharaja Nehru on the newly acquired Delhi throne could not help it. He went on his pleasure trip to NWFP to receive the homage from tribesmen. . . . His Guru Gandhi while then enjoying the protection of the British police in his Bhangi quarters . . . began to preach his cowardice of non-violence in his Harijan. He asked the poor girls when being raped by the Leaguers to bear it bravely and not to imperil

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their liberty by calling for police or military or any outside help; he advised the men to bear the knives of the assailants bravely and not to cry for help. Suhrawardy had by this time brought eternal sleep of death to reign over this area and he proclaimed all was now calm. Now Gandhi found that his journey would be safe and that coward of cowards has come to preach his non-violence. They had been threatening the people of Bihar and thereby all the people of India not to come to the help of any Hindu. Mr. Jinnah does not ask or invite the Hindus to come to any settlement. He is determined to make India his Pakistan at any cost and Nehru and Gandhi have come like Mir Jafar in the field of Plassey to call upon the Nawab’s soldiers to desist from fighting in the very heat of battle. The soldiers halted and the result is this chain of slavery. The call of Nehru and of Gandhi is the same if not worse than that of Mir Jafar.138

Even as late as March Desher Bani, the local weekly paper from Noakhali reported the resistance faced by Hindus in carrying on their regular work of cultivation through the forcible boycott imposed on Muslim labour to work in the fields of Hindus by well known murder convicts and jail birds, recently released on bail. The Muslim labourers who worked in Hindu land were being intimidated and their plough and plough bullocks were being seized or destroyed. Minorities working their own fields were not spared either; thefts of fodder, bullocks and setting fire to stacks of hay being common. In Begamgunj a cultivator working his own field had been chased by hooligans and approaching the authorities was of no help.139 Minority life in Noakhali and Tipperah was still haunted by total insecurity and uncertainty. In Bhuabari under Parkot police station miscreants entered the house of Indra Kumar Bhaumik by breaking into his boundaries and carried away all the goods they could find. In Panchgaon also looting and setting fire in hay stacks took place. Doors and roofs of houses were often removed to prevent people from coming back and taking possession of their houses.140 Bankura: Fear and hatred of the aggressive posture of the majority community was also spreading in the West Bengal districts, where the Muslims were still in a minority. In Bankura Noakhali day was observed on 31 October 1946 with the publication of a pamphlet

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Bankura Zilaya Sarbatra Purna Hartal O Pratibad Sabha, signed by all parties like Hindu Mahasabha, Congress, Forward Bloc and several men who were not attached to any political party. The pamphlet deprecated the unrestrained murder, desecration of temples, molestation of women and their forcible conversion with the connivance of the Muslim League Ministers and called for measures to prevent the spread of such ‘medieval barbarity’. On 5 November a Hindu Mahasabha meeting at Khatra was chaired by Debadidev Sarkar and was attended by 300 persons. The meeting stressed the need for the formation of a united front by the Hindus of India to give an effective answer to the Muslims who were oppressing the Hindus in the Muslim majority provinces. They urged the formation of Hindu Defence Corps in every village.141 Darjeeling: Darjeeling district had also witnessed a huge influx of the riot victims from Noakhali and all parties, irrespective of their ideological differences had united in sympathy for the riot victims. ‘Noakhali Day’ was scheduled to be observed in Darjeeling with a general strike on 29 October. There was a complete hartal, suspension of vehicular traffic, closure of shops and restaurants. Speeches were made in Pahari language in a big meeting in the bazaar. It coincided with the Governor Sir Frederick Burrows’ visit to Kurseong on 26 October to preside over the prize distribution ceremony of the Victoria School. On the day of His Excellency’s departure, hill tribals and Bengalis gathered in large numbers carrying Congress flags, Communist flags and Gorkha League black flags with the words ‘Go to Noakhali’ and ‘Stop hooliganism’ inscribed on them. The crowd swelled to such enormous proportions on the road from the Victoria School to the railway junction that the Governor had to take a different route for his journey back in the midst of loud cries of ‘shame’ ‘shame’.142 Howrah: The industrial pockets of the Howrah district like Howrah and Golabari police stations, Bantra, Malipanchghora, Shibpore and Bally had been witnessing frictions between the two communities ever since the Great Calcutta Killing. News of the outbreak in Noakhali and influx of refugees added fuel to the fire. On 27 October police fired on a mob at Jelliapara Lane injuring a Hindu. Two Muslims

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were stabbed on G.T. Road in front of Sri Durga Rolling Mills under police station Malipanchghara. There was also trouble in Adamjee Jute Mill. A Hindu house was set fire on at Pilkhana Road. The frenzied mob caught hold of the Police Inspector, who had come to quell the riot. The mob took a violent attitude and declared that the whole area was under the Muslim League and they would not allow any police officer to touch anyone in the locality.143 On 30 October 300 Muslims with guns, swords, lathis, crowbars, daggers and other weapons attacked Hindus at Kapurgali under Golabari police station. One person died and 21 were injured as a result.144 The monthly summary for the Cabinet ending on 14 November 1946 reported the use of arms by the public in Howrah on more than one occasion and there were 26 dead and 63 injured.145 The Provincial Fortnightly Report noted 3 cases of bomb throwing, one case of looting and one case of shooting by a member of the public.146 Minor frictions often led to serious flare ups like the incident of assault with lathis and knives on a Muslim cart-puller on 26 December over the use of a road in Tindelbazar closed to traffic for repairs. Eight Hindus were arrested in connection with the incident.147 A Kabuliwallah was assaulted on 26 March 1947 at the crossing of Haridhan Ghose Road under Golabari police station. There were also stabbing and lathi injuries on two Hindus. Close in the wake of this incident on 29 March 1947 two Hindu darwans of Allen Berry Company were murdered at Kapurgali, Pilkhana. Muslim goondas set fire to a bustee. Goondas of both communities were eager to make the best of the trouble and indulge in loot and plunder. Even the police could not check the mob; the goondas fired on the police. A police patrol lorry was fired upon from a mosque at Belilious Road. Later a search conducted by sergeants led to the seizure of an assortment of weapons like spears, daggers, a hand made gun and cartridge. One dagger had blood marks on it. A huge consignment of weapons were also recovered from bustees with military help.148 The worst attack was on Mohish bustee in Bhotbagan under Malipanchghara police station. The disturbances had been the work of Pathan military personnel. The firebrigade found it difficult to control the fire for two days. 2,000 persons of both communities had

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to be evacuated. The majority of those affected were, however, Hindus.149 On 31 March 1947 once again fire arms were used by rioters in Harcut lane. The mob used shot guns. Military help had to be sought and Col. Gregory quelled the riots.150 The police personnel itself had become unreliable; communal feelings had infested their ranks. They themselves sometimes were responsible for aiding and abetting the rioters. On the night of 9 April 1947 policemen shouted Jai Hind during curfew hours in front of a Muslim bustee to frighten the inmates and excite the goonda elements among them.151 Hooghly: There were similar troubles among the industrial workers of Hooghly in April 1947. Six Sikhs in the Angus coolie line at Gourhati, Bhadreshwar, were found to be in the possession of a large sword in the evening of 6 April 1947. They were immediately arrested for violation of orders U/S 144 Cr.PC. On the same night Hindu and Muslim coolies armed with lathis and other weapons assembled and were about to attack each other. Four of the rooms and a shop belonging to the Muslims were looted. Finally the police arrived and arrested 13 persons.152 On the next day at about 6.45 a little before sunset the Muslims cried out that the Muslim flag had appeared on the sun. This referred to the sun spot visible to the naked eye since some time. Most of the Muslim coolies came running from their lines to see the flag on the sun. The Hindus thinking that they were going to be attacked also came out of their lines with lathis. The large collection of men on both sides resulted in riots. Hindu coolies retreated slightly on the arrival of the police. But the Muslm coolies persisted and tried to overwhelm the police party. The OC, Bhadreshwar, the town S.I. and one constable were injured. The OC ordered firing and 5 persons were killed on the spot. One later succumbed to injuries and 19 persons were injured.153 MILITANCY AND MOBILIZATION

AMONG THE TWO COMMUNITIES

The successive outbreaks in Calcutta, Dacca, Noakhali, Bihar,

Garshankar and in many other places on a smaller scale led to great

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alarm among both the Muslims and the Hindus. A new consciousness could be noticed among the middle ranking people, particularly among Government clerks, who had been fast imbibing the new ideas of militant nationalism. Communal feelings among these people had already reached a high pitch and many were seeking enrolment in the Muslim National Guard or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha. Parades were no longer forbidden since the termination of the Camps and Parades Order of 1944. Volunteers of both communities could therefore parade and get trained up.154 Recruits to the Muslim National Guard were 4,000 in Calcutta alone. Volunteers were being trained to administer first aid and to make all possible sacrifices for the achievement of Pakistan and the protection of Muslims in Bengal.155 Hindus were also not lagging behind. The militant Hindu outburst in Bihar had roused the Hindus of Bengal to the necessity of unity and organization to defend their rights and honour. The Interim Government’s handling of the Great Calcutta Killing and the Noakhali outrage had disillusioned the Hindus of Bengal about the role of the Congress in coming to a vigorous defence of Hindu interests in the province. Bengali Hindus did not take kindly to the harsh measures resorted to by the Bihar Government in suppressing the disturbances and Nehru’s threat of aerial bombing if necessary. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee received bunches of letters from the East Bengal districts everyday protesting against the failure of the Congress to rise to the occasion. Nehru’s offer for the aerial bombing of Bihar merely added fuel to the fire of indignation that had been raging in the mind of Bengali Hindus. Syama Prasad also received many letters from Bengalis working in northern India informing him of the huge preparations being made by the Khaksars to train and organize the Muslim youth in the art of offence and defence.156 As the President of the Hindu Mahasabha Syama Prasad could not sit idle. He too therefore chalked out the plans for a Hindustan National Guard, which was formally announced during the Gorakhpur session of the Hindu Mahasabha in December 1946. His aim was to establish a network of branches of this Hindustan National Guard all over the province and to train up the recruits into ‘all the qualities which go to make up a good soldier’.157 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had already announced the formation of the Hindustan National Guard in a press statement issued on 1 November 1946. The Central Office of the organization

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had been opened at the Ashutosh College Hall ( 9 Russa Road) and recruiting centres had been started at the Ashutosh College, the Arya Samaj (19 Cornwallis Street) and the Hindu Mahasabha Office (162 Bowbazar Street) in Calcutta. Col. D.N. Bhattacharji of the Calcutta University Territorial Force and Ram Narayan Arora of Patna were appointed GOCs in Bengal and Bihar respectively. Branches were sought to be organized in Howrah, 24-Parganas, Midnapore (Kharagpore and Ghatal), Burdwan, Dacca, Barisal, Mymensingh and Pabna. Volunteers were to be trained by experts from Calcutta in batches of 30 and once they had qualified, the best three among them would be engaged to train up another batch of 30. That is how the organization was planned to be spread all over the province.158 Syama Prasad published several bulletins specifying the aim and purpose of his organization. In Bulletin 1 he pointed out why the organization of this Hindustan National Guard was considered necessary: Law and order seems to have suffered a permanent breakdown and no land can live for ever dependent on military protection. Therefore the sons of Bengal must learn to protect themselves, to protect their mothers and sisters, to protect their hearths and homes. None knows how these underground forces are working and how, when and where will be the next outburst if one comes again…. If possible there must be no repetition of these tragedies, which have already occurred, with their aftermath of bitterness, suspicion and hatred, which if prolonged, will land our country into Civil War.159

Syama Prasad conceived of Bengal as a microcosm of India; if the tide of communalism could be checkmated in Bengal, it would be possible to stem the tide of communalism elsewhere in India by the application of the same remedies. Bengal could thus play the catalyst for the rest of India as it had always been. It has always been in Bengal that new movements have taken birth and the new light has dawned whose rays have lighted the Indian national movement. And so it must be in Bengal now with her almost equal proportion of the people of the two major communities that this conscious Indian nationalism must be reborn on a much wider basis. For Bengal is a miniature of the rest of India with West and South-West Bengal with their preponderating Hindu majority, with East and North Bengal with their preponderating Muslim

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majority. Thus it is in Bengal that it must be decided not in theory but in action, if India is to be divided into two nations or be an integral whole, whose cultural synthesis will be a treasure and blessing to the world. . . . Thus the struggle in which we call our youths to make their contri­ bution is the struggle between communalism on the one side and nationalism on the other, a struggle between reaction and progress and not as has been falsely declared a struggle between Hindus and Muslims. . . . Today the Bengali Hindu, struggling for nationalism must give his verdict and decision not through any artificial plebiscite but must sign his contract of patriotism in letters written in his own blood.160

Syama Prasad’s statement shows that even as late as November 1946 he was hopeful of being able to wage a last ditch fight against communalism and keep the country undivided. By stemming the tide of communalism in Bengal he was hoping to overpower the trend at the all India level. Syama Prasad’s hopes were shattered by the League’s Karachi resolution of 29 January 1947 rejecting the Cabinet Mission Plan and refusing to come to the Constituent Assembly. It was thus obvious that the country was fast drifting towards partition. However, the AICC’s refusal to become a party to the coercion of a province or part of a province on 5 January 1947 opened up new possibilities for Syama Prasad. The Congress had obviously referred to the Sikh problem. The Sikhs had been clamouring for a long time for the creation of an Azad Punjab, or Khalistan or Sikhistan, which was comparable to the creation of the Muslim province of Sind through a readjustment of the boundaries of Bombay.161 Worried about the fate of the Bengali Hindus, unwilling to go to Pakistan as part of the Muslim majority province of Bengal and plagued by tales of their persecution in the hands of the Muslims in the Muslim-dominated districts of East Bengal, Syama Prasad seriously began to consider the idea of a readjustment of the boundaries of Bengal to carve out a new province of West Bengal. SEPARATE PROVINCE FOR WEST BENGAL

Once it became clear that the Cabinet Mission proposals had failed

to make much headway and Pakistan could not be resisted for long,

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the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha started organizing public opinion for a separate province of West Bengal outside the proposed Pakistan. A committee was set up by the Working Committee of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha to tour the districts of eastern as well as western Bengal to ascertain opinion on the matter, to consider questions of constitutional safeguards for protecting the interests of the minority Hindus and to submit constructive proposals regarding Bengal for consideration by the Constituent Assembly. A small committee under the chairmanship of N.C. Chatterjee was set up to examine the position of Hindus in Bengal and to suggest safeguards essential for them.162 The Hindu Mahasabha embarked on a programme of integrating submerged social groups in the outlying districts with the mainstream Hindus and creating a favourable climate of opinion in favour of a separate Hindu majority province. By February 1947 the Hindu Mahasabha organization in Bankura had been making good progress. Various programmes were being undertaken to organize the backward local tribes like Bauris and to draw them close to Hindu ideals. The Hindu Mahasabha Secretary Rakhahari Chattopadhyay had also started mobilizing public opinion in favour of the formation of a separate province of West Bengal.163 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s judgement of the exact moment when he should declare the new policy of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha was extremely opportune. There was actually going to be a new policy at the top. The Attlee Government was disappointed with Field Marshall Viscount Wavell’s incompetent handling of the transfer of power negotiations and had chosen a successor in his office even before the London talks ended on its whining note. Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten, who was chosen to succeed Lord Wavell as the Viceroy, was given ‘plenipotentiary powers’164 to deal with the emergencies which might arise in course of the discharge of his special task of transferring British power to Indian hands. Wavell had failed to bring about a consensus among the Indian politicians probably because he was never allowed to spell a date of departure for certain and the Indian leaders thought they could merrily continue their bargaining under British protection. Mountbatten did not want to

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repeat the same story. Thus he wanted to announce a definite date for departure before he set about his task in earnest.165 On 20 February 1947 therefore it was announced that the British would not prolong their stay in India beyond June 1948 and power would be transferred by then to responsible Indian hands. This was known as the ‘Plan Balkan’ as it conceived of a multiplicity of successor states.166 The vagueness of the declaration alarmed the Hindu Mahasabha and they opposed the transfer of power to provincial governments, which might lead to unrest and strife. When power was to be transferred it should be to a strong and independent central government. The 20 February declaration was found by them to have run counter to earlier British declarations to keep the geographical unity of India intact. The Cabinet Mission had noticed a universal desire for unity. The Attlee government had roused hopes by saying that the minority would not be allowed to place a veto on the progress of a community. The reference to ‘existing provincial governments’ disappointed the Mahasabha for having indirectly assured the League of a sovereign Pakistan. They thought it was immoral to impose Pakistan on the Hindu and Sikh minorities of Punjab and the Hindu minorities in Bengal, Sind and Baluchistan.167 The announcement of 20 February also produced a tremendous impact in the Punjab, where the Congress and their allies of the Akali Dal had been propping up the Unionist rump of nine Muslims in power to the exclusion of the large Muslim League majority, who had scored a brilliant victory in the elections of 1945-6. The Unionist Chief Khizr Hayat Khan understood that his noble mission of shut­ ting out the communal majority of the Muslim League through a patchwork quilt of non-League MLAs had reached a dead end. The 20 February Declaration signified the withdrawal of the protective hand of the British and brought the Muslim League face to face with the Congress and its allies. Khizr’s resignation of his Premiership on 2 March 1947 was the signal for the eruption of the civil war between the League and its adversaries. Multan and Rawalpindi between 5 and 7 March saw Noakhali and Tipperah replicated in a different milieu. The Congress now understood that the days of subtle diplomatic manoeuvrings were over. They decided to pull out of the

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fray and on 8 March the Congress Working Committee opted for the partition of Punjab.168 This resolution strengthened the Hindu Mahasabha’s case for the formation of a Hindu majority state in Bengal. On 16 March 1947 the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha organized a two day conference presided over by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the Indian Association Hall in Calcutta. The meeting resolved that although their ideal was Akhand Hindusthan yet they were unwilling to tolerate any communal regime or submit to Pakistan rule. Hindu majority Bengal would remain united with the Indian Union and would never separate from it. The meeting demanded the immediate creation of a Hindu majority province for Bengal by partitioning Hindu majority areas from Muslim majority areas. It promised all facilities to the minorities and citizenship rights to the Hindus from East Bengal. In his Presidential address Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee asserted that the demand for a separate province for the Hindus in Bengal did not represent any narrowness, defeatism or political manoeuvre. It was a spontaneous demand arising out of an anxiety to escape the torture going on in Calcutta, Dacca, Noakhali and Tripura. Bengali Hindus had always stood for unity and co­ operation. Communalism had never been allowed to determine political considerations in India. But such a course has been made imperative through the unreasonable policies of the Muslim League. The Conference called upon all like-minded parties to constitute an anti-Pakistan Front. Dr. Mookerjee did not want this movement to be confined within a particular class; he wanted to transform it into a people’s movement and spread it among all sections of society including peasants, workers and students. Dr. Mookerjee’s plan was to lead a constitutional movement against the imperialist government for partitioning Bengal before the final transfer of power. Failing that they threatened to paralyse the government through uninterrupted agitation.169 A scheme for the purpose of delimitation of the areas to constitute the new Hindu majority province of Bengal was to be drawn up by the Working Committee of the Provincial Hindu Mahasabha. A special committee was to be set up to organize strong Hindu public opinion for a separate state and to establish closer contact with the existing nationalist and social organizations of the province including the Bar Libraries. They decided not to pay taxes or offer allegiance

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to the upcoming Pakistan State or owe allegiance to it. They decided to devise ways and means to represent their case to the HMG, the Central Government and the Constituent Assembly.170 On 20 April Nehru again spoke of partitioning both the provinces of Punjab as well as Bengal.171 These talks of partition strengthened Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s arguments. The Commissioner of the Burdwan Division reported numerous meetings in favour of separating off from the Muslim section of the province and the movement was gaining strength in four out of the six districts under his charge. Local Congress organizations were also active in support of the movement.172 The Akali leader Master Tara Singh visited Calcutta during the celebration of the Pakistan Day in Calcutta by the Muslims on 23 March not only to raise funds from his Sikh followers in Calcutta but also to see that the Sikhs and Hindus in Bengal remained firm in their resolve to partition the province.173 SUHRAWARDY’S INITIATIVE FOR AN

UNDIVIDED INDEPENDENT BENGAL

Suhrawardy took great alarm at the proposal of the Hindu Mahasabha to take out the Hindu majority districts out of Bengal. He had his power base in Calcutta. His strength lay in the ability to mobilize the large number of up country Muslim workers inhabiting the various Muslim slums of Calcutta. In East Bengal he would be reduced to a non-entity without the backing of this huge mass of supporters. He could get out of this imbroglio only if he could devise a plan to keep Calcutta in Bengal. Thus in course of a meeting in Rajshahi he floated his alternative of a ‘Greater Bengal’, which would not only be undivided, but would try to include the Bengali speaking areas in Bihar like Singbhum and Manbhum in Purulia district as well as Sylhet in Assam. This idea was followed up by him on the floor of the Legislative Assembly. Nalini Ranjan Sarkar’s proposal that such a province should do away with the communal electorate and power should be shared by the Hindus and the Muslims in it was readily agreed to by him.174 The idea of a ‘Greater Bengal’ had actually originated long back in 1944 when the Gandhi-Jinnah talks had been going on. Harun­ or-Rashid gives a detailed account of how during that time the

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Working Committee of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League had chalked out a plan for an independent state of Eastern Pakistan. They had been influenced by the ideas of the East Pakistan Renaissance Society, consisting of a few Muslim intellectuals and journalists close to the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, who had put forward their ideas in a small booklet called Eastern Pakistan: Its Population, Delimitation and Economics. Abul Hashim, the President of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League had incorporated these ideas in his Draft Manifesto of early 1945 and Suhrawardy had spoken to the Associated Press about it during the Cabinet Mission Plan discussions in June 1945.175 Thus the plans of ‘Greater Bengal’ were very much an offshoot of the plans for a ‘Greater Pakistan’.176 Suhrawardy had also spoken to the Associated Press of Bangasam or united Bengal and Assam, which he expected would materialize in the next twenty years.177 The Congress High Command saw in it a deep laid conspiracy to extend the hold of Eastern Pakistan on Assam through the control of the Sylhet districts. Nehru understood the importance of valuable mineral resources like coal and petroleum for the Indian Union. An Independent Bengal would cut off Assam from the rest of India. Nehru therefore expressed great concern about ‘important strategic areas’.178 Suhrawardy succeeded in including the support of two big luminaries – Sarat Bose of the Forward Bloc and Gandhi. Bose’s motive in trying to keep Bengal independent of the Indian Union was to keep the INA alive. He later demanded that the proposed state should be organized on a Socialist pattern, which was not to the liking of Suhrawardy.179 Gandhi, on the other hand had been known for not extending his open support to partition at any point.180 In the opinion of Nirmal Kumar Bose, Gandhiji supported Suhrawardy’s United Bengal movement as it was a negation of Jinnah’s two-nation theory. When Syama Prasad insisted on a guarantee that this united Bengal would not join Pakistan in future, Gandhi asked him not to be adamant about it. He would like the people of Bengal to have full freedom to decide whichever way they would go in future.181 Kiran Shankar Roy of the official Congress had also been sympathetic. Patel’s views on the matter were very clear. ‘Bengal has to be partitioned,’ Patel insisted, ‘if the non-Muslim population is to survive’.182 Kiran

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Shankar Roy therefore had no option but to withdraw when the High Command resolved in favour of Partition.183 Abul Hashim and Suhrawardy conjured up the picture of a shared political and economic life free of the exploitation of up-country capitalists. The question largely revolved around the question of the control of Calcutta’s lucrative jute industry. While the Indian Chamber of Commerce dominated by G.D. Birla hoped to wrest the control of this trade from the hands of the European Chamber of Commerce with the gradual withdrawal of the British from India, M.A. Ispahani & Co. had also been eyeing the control of Calcutta’s rich commerce. It was probably on Ispahani’s suggestion that Jinnah agreed to the creation of a separate state of Bengal compromising his arguments for the two-nation theory.184 Jinnah had reaffirmed his wish for a solid single state of Pakistan during the Delhi Muslim Legislators Convention in April 1946 abrogating the provision for plural states in the Lahore Resolution of 1940 as a ‘printing mistake’.185 His unwillingness to enter a coalition with Congress or to join the Constituent Assembly was well known. Thus there were some doubts as to how the proposal for a sovereign Bengal would be received by him. Yet he expressed his approbation of the united Bengal scheme during his interview with Mountbatten on 26 April 1947 without the batting of an eyelid: ‘I should be delighted. What is the use of Bengal without Calcutta?; they had much better remain united and independent; I am sure that they would be on friendly terms with us.’186 Mountbatten interpreted Jinnah’s consent as his jubilation at the prospect of securing ‘a subsidiary Pakistan’ in independent Bengal with its Muslim majority.187 DEMAND FOR WEST BENGAL

GAINING MOMENTUM

Suhrawardy’s case was, however, weakened by the outbreak of riots in Kalabagan on the night of 16 March. The inhabitants of the bustee came out at the sound of the bursting of two crackers and started stoning passing vehicles. It was followed by several cases of stabbing.

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Although the police brought it under control with some effort, there was a fresh spurt of violence on 25 March embracing 9 police stations of central and east Calcutta following a rumour that a Muslim woman with a boy had been killed. There were stabbings, looting, arson and acid throwing resulting in 43 deaths and 351 injuries. Normal life came to a stand still. Shops and bazaars had to be closed. Government transport had to be withdrawn. Conservancy staff and ration vehicles demanded protection for themselves. A 14 hour curfew with intensive police patrolling had to be imposed in 6 localities under Jorasanko, Muchipara, Taltola, Burtolla, Amherst Street and Bowbazar. The military had to be called on the night of 28 March and the 14 hour curfew was extended up to 5 April.188 Similarly Howrah too was in the grip of trouble with 38 cases of arson, 10 lootings, 18 deaths and 35 cases of injury. The use of modern weapons by both communities was recorded and military help was called on 30th night for managing the situation.189 Bogra in East Bengal was also the scene of a clash, where Muslim League members tried to drive out Marwaris. The latter had procured licences for selling controlled goods and had been making huge profits from their sale. It was the intention of the Muslim League members to appropriate the licences themselves and partake of the profits. Marwari shops were burnt down and even a train was attacked as the Marwaris with their families and valuables were believed to be escaping by that train.190 In Noakhali absconders had returned and the enormous delay by the police in preparing chargesheets had once again made life insecure for the non-Muslims. Economic boycott had been lifted but Muslim labourers were demanding an exhorbitant rate for their labour. Arson had once again become a feature of life in Chandpur in Tipperah.191 As days were on Suhrawardy and Abul Hashim’s attempt to project a happy image of an united independent Bengal was set at naught. It became obvious, as the author of the secret report for the first half of April 1947 remarked, that ‘there was a fundamental unwillingness and inability to cooperate’.192 The communal virus had become so widespread that it had even affected the police. Mr. Tyson, the Secretary to the Governor of Bengal, reported in the Governor’s Conference on 15 April the armed

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police in Calcutta was earlier recruited mostly from among the Gurkhas. There were about 1,200 of them in Calcutta. But when the IG Police sought to strengthen them by a 50 per cent increase Suhrawardy insisted only on the recruitment of Muslims. It was decided that ex-soldiers should be recruited to be able to cut the training period short. As no one from the province fitted the requirements, 600 Muslim ex-soldiers were brought from the Punjab. They were regarded as the favourites of the Chief Minister. They were heard to have bragged that they had been brought for a special purpose which would be known with the passing of time. There developed an intense hatred between the two forces, the Gurkhas and the Punjabi Muslims so much so that the Gurkha forces were heard to have fired on their Punjabi counterparts from a lorry on 10 April.193 Sometimes the police was subjected to attacks with bombs, acid, etc., by the public indicating a growing animus, which had not been experienced during the August disturbances. Things were in such a bad shape that non-uniformed officers were unwilling to move singly. Matters were aggravated by the non-stop campaigning of the newspapers, specially those representing the Hindu camp. Finally the Government imposed pre-censorship on the reporting of police activities by the press.194 These incidents came as a shot in the arm for the Hindu Mahasabha and a consensus grew among all sensible Hindu Bengalis regarding the threat to their lives, property, religion and security posed by the domination of the other community. The incidents provided a valuable opportunity to the proponents of a separate West Bengal to argue ‘that the only way of obtaining relief from the present impasse is the formation of a West Bengal, separated from the Muslim League controlled East Bengal’.195 Leading newspapers like the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Ananda Bazar Patrika, the Hindusthan Standard and various industrial and commercial enterprises also engaged in constant propaganda for the separation of the Hindu provinces. Given G.D.Birla’s close links with Mahatma Gandhi it was quite predictable that the Mahatma was not going to throw his entire weight against partition irrespective of what his private opinion might be.196 Backed by public opinion in his own province Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee took his campaign to Delhi and addressed a crowd of

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Bengalis to demand that the principles of partition should be immediately agreed upon although its actual execution may take time. This was a necessity both for ending the communal strife as well as for self-development of the areas under consideration. There was an unanimity among all sections of Hindus on this matter, the Scheduled Castes and other minorities too.197 From the administrative point of view also it was quite desirable to divide Bengal with its large population of 60 million into two homogeneous provinces. Partition would be advisable even if Pakistan did not come and a loose federal union with strong provinces as devised by the Cabinet Mission was realized, Syama Prasad argued. The government at the centre could not prevent lawlessness or flagrant acts of injustice to the people of Bengal which could happen because of the breakdown in the provincial machinery. ‘Our fate will be even more tragic in future,’ Syama Prasad tried to alert his people, ‘if we have to live in a so-called United Bengal under a weaker central government than the present one.’ Bengal should not be left in the hands of a one party government swayed by the totalitarian and fanatical doctrine of the Muslim League. Partition was the only long term solution. Till then he demanded an immediate promulgation of Section 93 or formation of regional ministries and he wanted to send deputations to the Viceroy, Vice-President of the central government and President of Constituent Assembly to impress upon the immediate need for taking charge of law and order.198 The annual session of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha on 4 April in Tarakeshwar, Hooghly and presided over by N.C. Chatterjee laid down the lines of action for the division of the province. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Major A.C. Chatterjee addressed a huge crowd of 25,000. Taking a leaf from the Akalis in the Punjab they declared their plans to appoint a Council of Action to provide direction to the partition movement, establish Rs. 50 lakh fund from the contributions of its sympathizers and enroll one lakh volunteers for the execution of the plan. The Constituent Assembly was to be asked to appoint a Boundary Commission and once the frontiers of the new province had been settled, the Hindu members of the Legislative Assembly were to demand that it should be accorded the status of a

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new province. The MLAs could also separate from the Bengal Assembly and constitute themselves into a distinct legislative body. The new province should come into being before the final transfer of power by the British Government. The two regions should also have two different ministries in the interest of the restoration of peace and order in the province.199 The demand of the Mahasabha was strengthened by the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee’s resolution for the immediate establishment of two separate regional ministries. The Executive Committee of the BPCC also demanded the formation by His Majesty’s Government of a separate province with such portions of Bengal as would like to remain with the Indian Union should the HMG decide to handover power to the existing Government of Bengal. Coming as it did from the BPCC, which had always preached to be a secular body, the novel demand showed how popular the Hindu Mahasabha’s cry for a separate province had become in the critical months before the transfer of power. The BPCC could only ignore this demand at the cost of its own political extinction. It was forced to join in the chorus for a Hindu majority province alongside the Hindu Mahasabha to the utter consternation of the provincial Muslim League.200 In the meanwhile the movement was gathering momentum in different parts of the province. While the Commissioner Burdwan Division mentioned numerous meetings in different parts of the province, the Commissioner of the Presidency Division reported about the progress of the movement in Jessore, Khulna and part of 24-Parganas. In North Bengal too there was a wide support for the movement and in Malda partition on a thana basis was being discussed by those who were in favour of it. In Jessore P.R.Thakur, a Namasudra Scheduled Caste MLA of Faridpur and a member of the Constituent Assembly had been holding meetings of Namasudras in support of the movement. The popularity of the movement among the Namasudras could be gauged from the fact that the meeting was attended by 10,000 persons and Thakur was anointed with a blood tilak.201 The movement continued to spread very rapidly to all parts of the province. Huge crowds assembled at all the meetings arranged by the

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Hindu Mahasabha to consult the public on the question. Of the several meetings organized in Bankura, one was attended by 1,200. In Calcutta N.C. Chatterjee presided over a meeting of 2,000 against the pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu policy of the Muslim League Coalition ministry.202 A hartal was called on 23 April to protest against the political excesses in Calcutta and to organize defence against the anti-Hindu policy of the ministry. Besides the Hindu Mahasabha, the CPI, the Trade Union Congress and the Marwaris were prominent in staging demonstrations on that day. The Forward Bloc Students’ Bureau, who had been agitating for some time against the introduction of additional Muslim police into the city actively supported the hartal. The response for this hartal was wholehearted and spontaneous and all the shops, daily markets, cinemas, jute presses and educational institutions in the Hindu localities were fully closed. Employees of almost all the Banks and mercantile firms absented themselves from work. The attendance at government offices was very thin. All public conveyances except a skeleton service of buses and trams, taxis, rickshaws and carts came to a standstill. The success of the hartal sent alarm signals to the ministry as it watched the tide of public opinion moving inexorably towards partition.203 The hartal was followed up by a gallop poll by the Amrita Bazar Patrika which went overwhelmingly in favour of partition.204 Jubilant at the success of the hartal and vindicated by the gallop poll about the support of the people of Bengal Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee addressed a letter to the Viceroy on 2 May in which he summarized the arguments in favour of partition. The partition was administratively viable, as Bengal was a large province of 60 million with 78,000 square miles of territory. The Hindus and Muslims lived in two more or less compact zones and partition of Hindu majority provinces with 24 million Hindus quite feasible. The 4.5 million Scheduled Castes who would come to Hindu Bengal out of a total of 7.6 million would then be more closely integrated to their Hindu brethren. The Hindus had suffered too much for the past ten years under a communal ministry and lagged behind in every sphere of national activities, educational, economic, political and even religious.

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Even if India was not partitioned the bitter experience of the past ten years would make it desirable for the Hindus of Bengal to have separation from Muslim dominated Bengal. Mr. Jinnah’s claim for Pakisthan is based on the theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and Muslims must have their own homeland and their own state. That being so, Hindus in Bengal who constitute about 26 millions of people may well demand that they must not be compelled to live with the Moslem state and the area where they predominate should be cut off, so that the province thus created may link itself up with the Hindusthan Union. This demand Mr. Jinnah can never resist, for, as the Cabinet Mission pointed out in its scheme of May 16, the same logic and arguments applicable to Pakisthan apply also to partition of Bengal.205

Dr. Mookerjee followed up these developments by sending cables to the Secretary of State, Lord Listowel and Sir Stafford Cripps, informing them of the strong public opinion against inclusion of the Hindu majority districts of Bengal either in Pakistan or a sovereign Bengal.206 He demanded a separate province including Calcutta consisting of 75 per cent of the Hindus, which would stay in the Indian Union. He also requested an immediate dissolution of the Bengal ministry, which had failed to maintain peace.207 At the instance of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha 10,000 telegrams were also sent to the Viceroy by different individuals and organizations from all over India with copies to the Secretary of State on 12 May 1947.208 Gandhi was at this time in Sevagram in Sodepur and he was known for his opposition to partition, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee met him and tried to convince him for half an hour of the necessity of leaving the question to the judgement of the Hindus.209 DOUBTS ABOUT THE FEASIBILITY OF

PARTITION OF BENGAL IN IMPERIAL CIRCLES

During his interview with the new Viceroy on 8 April Jinnah was adamant about his goal of the partition of the country into two dominions. He offered the utmost resistance to a proposal of the Viceroy to the revival of the Cabinet Mission Plan.210 When the

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Viceroy pointed out that his arguments in favour of partition were equally applicable in the case of Punjab and Bengal, Jinnah expressed his resentment against ‘a moth-eaten Pakistan’.211 Liaqat Ali Khan’s reaction was more sensible when he understood that the British Government had made up its mind in favour of the partition of these two border provinces. ‘We shall never agree to it,’ he was reported to have said, ‘but you may make us bow to the inevitable.’212 The Viceroy had weighed various options before coming to a final decision. The Governor of Bengal Sir Frederick Burrows had pointed out that the East Bengal districts, if separated from the rest of Bengal, would not be able to provide for its requirements of food as its fertile plains were mostly devoted to the monoculture of jute. As most of the jute processing mills except two lay in the western half of the province, the eastern districts would be reduced to the position of slums.213 The Viceroy had therefore thought of trying to stop the separation of the western half by threatening to shift the jute mills to the eastern districts. However, he soon came to realize that this jute threat would not work as the ownership of jute mills had passed to mostly Indian hands.214 The Viceroy had also toyed with the idea of a referendum on the single point of partition as suggested by I. Chundrigar, member of the Interim Government.215 But Ismay and Abell both advised him strongly against it.216 The Muslim League ministry had scored its victory in the elections on the issue of giving Pakistan to the Muslims. Seeking popular opinion on partition of the province might lead to riots far worse than had been experienced on the Direct Action Day.217 The Viceroy therefore decided to allow no option for a sovereign independent Bengal in his Minutes of 12 May.218 The refusal of the Congress High Command to countenance the secession of any province from the Indian Union finally sealed the fate of a sovereign Bengal.219 The Congress High Command was under no illusions as to the implications of a sovereign Bengal planned by Suhrawardy. Patel warned Kiran Shankar Roy against it, describing it as ‘a trap’.220 V. Shankar, the Secretary of Sardar Patel, says that the Sardar was, by this time, reconciled to the idea of partition as a lesser evil rather than accepting a weak centre as was envisaged under the Cabinet Mission

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Plan. Muslim League intransigence and the communal riots since August 1946 conjured up the spectre of an impending civil war unless the separation of the Muslim League-dominated units was conceded. ‘Partition was thus a price worth-paying’ as Patel probably had thought, ‘for the prosperity of the rest of India and the evolution of its future untrammeled by a weak centre, a Muslim veto and perpetual accusation of the tyranny of the majority over the minority.’ According to Patel, the implementation of the 16 May Plan would have meant letting the whole of India go the Pakistan way rather than salvaging the economic and administrative progress of 75 to 85 per cent of the country from the Muslim League veto.221 In an interview to the Associated Press of America he had declared: ‘If the Muslim League insists it wants separation, then Congress will not compel them to remain by force. But it will result in dividing Bengal and the Punjab.’222 There was some anxiety regarding how the Scheduled Castes were going to react to the proposal for partition. I. Chundrigar, the Muslim League representative in the Interim Government insisted that 40 per cent of the Scheduled Castes of Calcutta would vote against partition.223 Jogendranath Mandal, another of Jinnah’s hand picked men also tried to whip up anti-partition sentiments in a meeting at Harinarayanpur in 24-parganas. The meeting, however, was very thinly attended and not more than 50 persons were around.224 But when Dr. Rajendra Prasad came to preside over a meeting of the Bengal Provincial Depressed Classes League where Jagjivan Ram came as a Chief Guest on 27 May, a huge crowd of 2,500 people came to attend it.225 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had an able lieutenant in P.R. Thakur, who organized a meeting in Delhi to advocate partition.226 THE DECLARATION OF 3 JUNE 1947

In the meanwhile the inter-communal relations took a turn for the worse in almost all the districts. ‘The situation is everywhere electric’, wrote Lord Ismay, who had been the Military Secretary of Lord Willingdon, Secretary to the Defence Committee of the Cabinet and primarily Churchill’s personal military adviser and liaison officer with the combined Chiefs of Staff throughout the war, to Lady Ismay on

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25 May 1947, ‘and I got the feeling that the mine would go off at any moment.’227 Firearms and acid were in frequent use in the Howrah town. There was mutual suspicion and distrust in Bankura. Partition movement added to tensions over annual procession of local deities. Dacca was under curfew. Rajshahi was tense from enthusiasm over partition. In Tippera there were more molestation of Hindu women by Muslims and in Noakhali the left wing of the Muslim League was planning economic boycott of Hindus once again. In Calcutta there were frequent attacks by the Muslims on the Gurkha police and by the Hindus on the Punjabi police with firearms and acid. Large scale searches led to the discovery of acid, ammunitions and weapons of various descriptions both in bustees as well as in the houses of respectable persons. The city had virtually become divided into zones and members of one community were scared to set foot in areas known for the concentration of the other community. As a result trade, commerce and the quality of life in general suffered an eclipse.228 The Viceroy felt that the British Government must come out with a declaration immediately, stating what exactly it intended to do in respect of India. The Viceroy’s establishment had already started working on the nitty gritties of the transfer of power to the two different communal polities.229 On 1 May the Viceroy reported to HMG that the Governor of Bengal, when asked whether he was sitting on a barrel of gunpowder had replied ‘Good Lord no, we got off that a long time ago and are now sitting on a complete magazine which is going to blow up at any time.’230 He needed authority from the HMG to say something definite. No sooner did the mandate come from London than the Viceroy was ready with a broadcast on 3 June to ‘transfer power immediately’ to two successor states, leaving the work of defining the new boundaries to a Boundary Commission appointed for the purpose. The provincial assemblies of Bengal and the Punjab would each be asked to meet in two parts one representing the Muslim majority districts and the other the rest of the provinces. The members of the two part of each assembly sitting separately would be empowered to vote whether or not the province should be partitioned. If a simple majority of either part decides in favour of

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partition, division will take place and arrangements would be made accordingly.231 REACTIONS OF THE HINDU MAHASABHA

The 3 June announcement ran counter to the declared aims of the Hindu Mahasabha to preserve the unity of India unimpaired (Akhand Hindusthan). Hindu Sabha leaders tried to persuade the people that Pakistan had become inevitable because of the communal policy of the Muslim League and appeasement by the Congress. They called a hartal on 3 July to protest against the vivisection of the country. For the Hindus of Eastern Bengal the 3 June announcement ushered a period of gloom and despair and a large exodus from the eastern to the western districts began to take place. The Mahasabha started preaching that there could never be peace unless and until the separated areas were brought back into the Indian union and made its integral part. People began to look upon the Hindu Mahasabha as their only saviour. The popularity rating of the Mahasabha began to soar high despite their poor performance at the hustings. N.C. Chatterjee presided over a meeting at Suri, which was attended by 8,000 persons.232 The Viceroy announced on 10 June that the Bengal Legislative Assembly was to meet on 20 June in two parts represented by Muslim and non-Muslim members to decide the long awaited question for which Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had been moving heaven and earth whether Bengal should undergo a partition.233 The Bengal Boundary Commission met on 9 July for the first time with Justice B.K. Mukherjee and Justice C.C. Biswas to represent the Hindu side and Justice Abu Salih Muhammad Akram and Justice S.A. Rahman to represent the Muslim side. They were to meet again with Atul Gupta from the Congress, N.C. Chatterjee representing three different bodies, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Indian Association and the New Bengal Association and Hamidul Huq Chowdhury from the Muslim League on 16 July. They were to submit their final report by 11 August.234 In a memorandum submitted to the Boundary Commission the

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Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, the New Bengal Association and the Society of Hindostan jointly recommended that the new province of West Bengal should comprise of the entire Presidency and Burdwan Divisions, Malda district, Rajshahi town and certain parts of Backergunj and Faridpur districts. Mr. N.C. Chatterjee pointed out that this boundary was not only for the province; it was to be the eastern boundary for the future Indian Union. Adequate provisions should therefore be made for its defence. For the defence of Calcutta the whole of southern Bengal up to the Bay of Bengal was required. The cultural landscape of this entire region was the work of the Hindus and therefore they rightly deserved to be conceded these territories. The Presidency and the Burdwan Divisions were two homogeneous units and should not be split up. For medical reasons like fighting malaria or strategic reasons like control over the river system they deserved the area. Dr. Nalinakshya Sanyal raised the question of transport and communications in framing the borders. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were largely non-Muslim (of a total population of 2,47,053 only 7,270 were Muslims) and they too deserved to be included into the new province. The Chambers of Commerce also submitted their Memorandums.235 The Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee demanded approximately half the area of Bengal including Calcutta for the new province in a memorandum submitted to the Boundary Commission. They emphasized with statistical evidence that the division of the province should be based on the principle of ensuring full responsibility for the economic development of Bengal and on such factors as natural boundaries, public health and the river system.236 They also demanded the inclusion in West Bengal of Burdwan and Presidency Divisions (excluding small portions of Nadia, Jessore and Khulna districts) and a large slice of Rajshahi and certain other areas. The latter included the thanas of Gournadi, Najipur, Sarupkati and Jhalkati in Bakharganj district and the subdivision of Gopalganj police station of Rajair in Faridpur district. These were demanded on the ground that they were contiguous Hindu majority areas.237 The Muslim League in its Memorandum advocated that the boundary between East and West Bengal should be drawn on the

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basis of Muslim and Hindu blocs. Muslim blocs should consist of contiguous Muslim areas and Hindu blocs of contiguous non-Muslim areas. They claimed that Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts being contiguous to Muslim majority areas should go to East Bengal. The non-Muslim majority areas in the 24-Parganas and Khulna districts should also go to East Bengal. The Muslim League also put forward a claim to Calcutta.238 The proposed state of West Bengal was to consist of a total population of 4,300,000 Muslims out of a total Muslim population of 33,000,000 in the whole of Bengal. Thus only 13 per cent of the Muslims would be left in West Bengal. The number of non-Muslims to be left in East Bengal was, however, to be 12,000,000 out of a total number of 27,300,000 non-Muslims. This would mean that 44 per cent of the non-Muslims would be left in East Bengal.239 CONTROL OF CALCUTTA

There was a fierce contest between the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha for the control of Calcutta. The Bengal Provincial Muslim League submitted a memorandum to the Boundary Commission for the inclusion of Calcutta into Pakistan. In this memorandum the League argued that Calcutta had a floating population consisting mostly of migrant labour from Bihar; they often left Calcutta during vacations or intermissions in their work. Calcutta’s Hindu majority was therefore questionable. Moreover, the fortunes of Calcutta depended mainly on jute. This jute was supplied by Muslim Bengal. So the city rightfully belonged to the Muslims.240 As against this N.C. Chatterjee submitted to the Boundary Commission that Calcutta was a predominantly Hindu city and should be the capital of West Bengal. The life and prosperity of the proposed state of West Bengal depended on Calcutta. According to the 1941 Census the non-Muslim population of the city was 76.4 per cent or roughly 21,08,891. Muslims, according to Chatterjee constituted only 23.59 per cent of a total of 4,97,535 of Calcutta’s population. The contiguous areas were also Hindu majority areas. The district of 24-Parganas on the east and south of the city had a

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non-Muslim majority of 67.6 per cent. In Howrah 30.32 per cent of the population consisted of non-Muslims.241 It was also the trading outlet for other provinces of India like Bihar, Orissa, CP, UP, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. 91.55 per cent of the city’s buildings were owned by Hindus and they paid 93.8 per cent of its taxes while the Muslims paid no more than 6.2 per cent. Most of the industries and educational institutions were owned by the Hindus.242 The cultural and the intellectual life of the province also bore a stamp of Hindu personalities from Raja Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. Of the total endowments to the University of Calcutta amounting to Rs. 1,30,00,000 only Rs. 10,000 came from Muslims and 99 per cent from the non-Muslims.243 Chatterjee refuted Muslim League’s claim to Calcutta on the ground that most of the jute on which the prosperity of Calcutta depended came from jute, with the counter-argument that by the same logic Dundee too might advance a claim to Calcutta as the largest single purchaser of Calcutta’s jute. Besides jute Calcutta also provided an outlet for the export of tea, coal, hardware and other industries. The hydro-electric power from big rivers, which could be used as substitutes for coal were also produced in Calcutta.244 There was great apprehension at all levels as to how the Muslims would take the inclusion of Calcutta into West Bengal by the Boundary Commission. Nehru feared the sacking of Calcutta by the Muslims in case the Hindus obtained control of Calcutta after partition.245 Mahatma Gandhi came to Calcutta and took up his residence in a Muslim slum area in Beliaghata to start a fast appealing for peace in the city during the transfer of power on the 15th of August. Better sense now dawned upon Suhrawardy and he too wanted the Muslims in Calcutta to accept the new arrangement peacefully and a calm and quiet transition to the changed state of affairs. So he too came and joined Gandhi during his programme of fast in the Hydari Manzil, a dilapidated, dirty and stinking building in the midst of the Beliaghata Muslim slum area. Mountbatten hailed Gandhi’s achievement as one which ‘had achieved by moral persuasion what four Divisions would have been hard pressed to have accomplished by force’.246 Thus the day of independence passed off peacefully and men from the two communities joined hands in welcoming the new dawn.

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NOTES

1. Appreciation of the communal situation of the Dacca district by B. Banerjee, Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, CID, Dacca to Special Superintendent of Police, IB, CID, Calcutta dated 19 October 7387 (2) 69-46 (B) in File No. 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 2. Ashok Mitra, Apila Chapila (Ananda Publishers, Kolkata, 1st pub. 2001, 13th edn. 2013). 3. Extract from Intelligence Bureau Daily Summary of information dated 8 July 1946 in File No. 5/27/46-Poll (I) in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 4. Ibid. 5. B. Banerjee, Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, CID, Dacca to Special Superintendent of Police, IB, CID, Calcutta dated 19 October 7387 (2) 69-46 (B) in File No. 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 6. Ibid. 7. B. Banerjee, Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, CID, Dacca, to Special Superintendent of Police dated 8 November 1946 in File No. 717­ 46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 8. The Statesman, 28 August 1946. 9. Ibid., 31 August 1946. 10. Summary of the communal situation in paragraphs for the Cabinet No. 4 for the month ending 14 October 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs (Pol. Section) in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 11. The Statesman, 21 September 1946. 12. B. Banerjee, Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, CID, Dacca, to Special Superintendent of Police dated 8 November 1946 in File No. 717­ 46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 13. The Statesman, 21 September 1946. 14. Ibid., 1 November 1946. 15. Ibid., 5 November 1946. 16. Summary of the communal situation in paragraphs for the Cabinet No. 5 for the month ending 14 November 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs (Pol. Section) in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 17. B. Banerjee, Additional Superintendent of Police, DIB, CID, Dacca, to Special Superintendent of Police dated 8 November 1946 in File No. 717­ 46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. 18. Secret Report of the Political Situation in Bengal for the Second Half of September 1946 in J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. 19. The Statesman, 6 September 1946.

388 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

49.

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J.D. Tyson Papers in India Office Records, British Library, London. The Statesman, 6 September 1946. Ibid., 6 September 1946. Ibid., 14 September 1946. Secret Report of the Political Situation in Bengal for the Second Half of September 1946 in J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. The Statesman, 24 September 1946. Ibid., 25 September 1946. Ibid., 26 September 1946. Ibid., 28 September 1946. Ibid., 7 October 1946. Ibid., 26 October 1946. Ibid., 7, 26 and 27 October 1946. Ibid., 27 October 1946. Ibid., 27 October 1946. Ibid., 27 October 1946. Ibid., 27 October 1946. Ibid., 27 October 1946. Ibid., 29 October 1946. Ibid., 26 October 1946. Ibid., 26 October 1946. Ibid., 26 October 1946. Ibid., 28 October 1946. Ibid., 4 November 1946. Ibid., 1 November 1946. Wavell to Pethick Lawrence, 5 November 1946 in N. Mansergh (editor-in­ chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. IX, Document 8, p. 10. Secret Report of the Political Situation in Bengal for the Second Half of September 1946 in J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. Wavell to Pethick Lawrence, 30 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., Document 534, pp. 841-5. Secret Report of the Political Situation in Bengal for the Second Half of September 1946 in J.M.G. Bell Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. In Bihar the Hindus constituted a comfortable 80 per cent of the population while the Muslims were a miniscule 20 per cent. See The Statesman, 10 November 1946. Summary No. 4 for the month ending 14 October 1946 in Ministry of

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

389

Home Affairs (Pol. Section) communal situation summary in paragraphs for the Cabinet in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Entry for 6 November 1946 in Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Oxford University Press, London, 1973), p. 370. Sir H. Dow, Governor of Bihar to Wavell, 10 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., Document 19, p. 38. The Statesman, 29 October 1946. Sir H. Dow, Governor of Bihar to Wavell, 10 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., Document 19, p. 38. The Statesman, 4, 5 November 1946. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the first half of November 1946 in File No. 18/11/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Entry for 6 November 1946, p. 374. Lord Pethick Lawrence to Wavell, 8 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., Document 18, p. 33. The Statesman, 9 November 1946. Entry for 10 November 1946 in Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, op. cit., p. 374-5. The Statesman, 4 November 1946. Ibid., 7 November 1946. Ibid., 11 November 1946. Entry for 20 November 1946 in Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, p. 379. The Statesman, 6 January 1947. Summary No. 6 for the month ending 14 December 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs (Pol. Section) communal situation summary in paragraphs for the Cabinet in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. J.M.G. Bell papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. Summary No. 6 for the month ending 14 December 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs, op. cit. J.M.G. Bell papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives, Cambridge. Ibid. Ibid. Summary No. 6 for the month ending 14 December 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs, op. cit. Secret Report on the Political Situation of Bengal for the first half of

390

73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

93. 94.

95.

96.

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November File No. 18/11/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Dr. S.P. Mookerjee in Bengal Legislative Assembly, 6 February 1947 Report of 21.2.47 in File No. 313-41 in WBSA, Kolkata N.K. Bose quoted in B.R. Nanda, ‘Tragedy and Triumph: The Last Days of Mahatma Gandhi’, in S. Settar and Indira Baptista Gupta (eds.), Pangs of Partition, vol. I: The Parting of Ways (New Delhi, Manohar, 2002), pp. 41-51. The Statesman, 7 November 1946. Ibid., 2 November 1946 Ibid., 4 November 1946 Ibid., 6 November 1946 M.O. Carter Papers in Centre of South Asian Studies Archives in Cambridge (henceforth C.S.A.S.A.C.). The Statesman, 11 November 1946. Ibid., 13 November 1946. Ibid., 13 November 1946. Summary No. 6 of the communal situation in paragraphs for the Cabinet for the month endind 14 December 1946, op. cit. Ibid. Ibid. The Statesman, 22 November 1946. Ibid., 4 December 1946. Ibid., 8 December 1946. Ibid., 8 January 1947. Extract Tour Diary of M.A. Abdullah, IP, Superintendent of Police, DIB, Noakhali for November 1946 in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717­ 46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Extracts from the Report of the DIO IV SI Anil Kumar Sengupta, 8 December 1946 in the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Ibid. Extracts from the Report of Mr. Gomes, K.M.O., Noakhali, 16 December 1946 in the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Report of DIO V, Abdul Jabbar, SI in the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Extract from the monthly DO to the DIG Range for the month of November

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97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

391

1946 in the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. The Statesman, 3 January 1947. Ibid., 29 December 1946. Ibid., 21 December 1946. Extracts from the SP’s monthly DO on the communal situation and moral of the force for the month of December 1946, Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. The Statesman, 28 December 1946. Ibid., 15 January 1947. Ibid., 18 January 1947. Ibid., 19 January 1947. Ibid., 19 January 1947. Ibid., 20 January 1947. Ibid., 20 January 1947. Ramchandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World (Penguin Random House, India, Gurgaon, 2018) pp. 801-2. Sir F. Wylie, Governor of UP to Wavell, 14 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., pp. 70-1. Mr. Sudhir Ghosh to Sir Stafford Cripps, 31 October 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., p. 25. Ibid. Early in November at about the same time that Noakhali and Bihar were reeling with inter-communal strife, a minor dispute in the annual religious fair at Garhmukteshwar erupted into a big riot in the neighbouring villages in the Meerut district, where a thousand lost their lives in different incidents. See The Indian Annual Register, 1946, Second Half, pp. 214-15. Jinnah to Wavell, 17 November 1946 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., p. 92. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (The Macmillan Company of India, Delhi, 1974), p. 34. The Statesman, 27, 28 and 30 November 1946. Ibid., 6 December 1946. Ibid., 7 December 1946. Para 19 (5) These Sections shall proceed to settle provincial constitution for the provinces included in each Section and shall also decide whether any Group constitution shall be set up for those provinces and if so with what provincial subjects the group should deal. Provinces should have power to opt out of the groups in accordance with the provision of the sub-clause (8) below.

392

119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137.

138.

139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

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Para 19 (8) As soon as the new constitutional agreements have come into operation, it shall be open to any province to elect to come out of any group in which it has been placed. Such a decision shall be taken by the legislature of the province after the first general election under the new constitution. The Statesman, 8 December 1946. Ibid., 12 December 1946. Ibid., 15 December 1946; also V.P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1957), p. 328. The Statesman, 21 December 1946. Extracts from the SP’s monthly DO for the month of December 1946 on communal situation in the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Noakhali in Memo No. 269 E of 10/1/47 in File 717-46 (5) in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. The Statesman, 30 December 1946. Ibid., 31 December 1946. Ibid., 5 January 1947. Ibid., 6 January 1947. Ibid., 6 January 1947. Ibid., 6 January 1947. Ibid., 7 January 1947. Ibid., 7 January 1947. Ibid., 7 January 1947. Ibid., 8, 9, 11 and 18 January 1947. Ibid., 19 January 1947. Ibid., 1 February 1947. Ibid., 6 February 1947. Desher Bani, a weekly journal, ed. Sri Mathuranath Chakravarty, 19 March 1947 (Noakhali, Chaitra 5, Wednesday, Bengali Year 1353, 10th Issue, 25th Year) in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. An anonymous letter from an unfortunate sufferer in East Bengal in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers V-VII Instalment, Speeches and Writings in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Desher Bani, a weekly journal, ed. Sri Mathuranath Chakravarty, 19 March 1947, op. cit. Ibid. File 717-46 (Bankura) in I.B. Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Ibid. WCR of Superintendent of Police, DIB, Howrah for week ending October

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144. 145.

146. 147.

148. 149.

150. 151. 152. 153.

154.

155.

156.

157.

158.

159.

393

1946 in File 717-46 (Howrah) in IB Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Ibid. Summary No. 5 of the communal situation in paragraphs for the Cabinet for the month ending 14 November 1946 in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. Secret Report on the political situation in Bengal in the first half of November 1946 in File No. 18/11/1946 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. File 717-46 (Howrah) in IB Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. WCR of Superintendent of Police, DIB, Howrah for week ending March 1947 in File 717-46 (Howrah) in IB Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Ibid. Ibid. Report of Superintendent of Police, DIB for 12.4.47 in File 717-46 (Howrah) in IB Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Extract from WCR of SP, DIB, Hooghly for the week ending 12 April 1947 in File No. 717-46 (Hooghly), IB Records, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. D. Stephens, Special Superintendent of Police from Superintendent of Police, Hooghly, Dist. IB, Hooghly, Chinsurah, 6 May 1947 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Summary of the communal situation in paragraphs for the Cabinet No. 4 for the month ending 14 October 1946 in Ministry of Home Affairs (Pol. Section) in File No. 5/12/46 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Secret Report on the political situation in Bengal in the first half of November 1946 in File No. 18/11/1946 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. See the letter from Bhramar and the bunch of postcards from East Bengal in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, 1st Instalment, Subject File 53, Hindu Mahasabha 1940-50 in NMML, New Delhi. Circular letter No. 4 from Ashutosh Lahiri, General Secretary, All India Hindu Mahasabha, Reading Road, New Delhi to the General Secretary, Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, 5 January 1947 in IB File No. 1036­ 46 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata. Syama Prasad’s press conference of 1 November 1946 and translation of extracts from Hindusthan dated 27 November 1946 in IB File 1036-46 in West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata.

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160. Bulletin No. 1, Hindusthan National Guard in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, 1st Instalment, Subject File 53, Hindu Mahasabha 1940-1950 in Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 161. Bulletin No. 3, Hindusthan National Guard in ibid. 162. For details see Chhanda Chatterjee, The Sikh Minority and the Partition of the Punjab, 1920-1947 (Manohar, New Delhi, 2018). 163. The Statesman, 2 February 1947. 164. Rakhahari Chattopadhyay, Secretary, Hindu Mahasabha, Bankura to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, 1st Instalment, Subject File 53, Hindu Mahasabha 1940-50 in NMML, New Delhi. 165. Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (Collins, London, 1985), p. 355. 166. Ibid. 167. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson of London, 1969), p. 199. 168. The Statesman, 10 March 1947. 169. See Chhanda Chatterjee, ‘Muslim Direct Action and Popular Reaction in the Punjab: The Multan and Rawalpindi Riots, March 1947’, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Fifty-ninth Session, Patiala, 1998, published by Centre for Advanced Study in History, Aligarh, 1999), pp. 834-43. 170. Desher Bani, a weekly journal from Noakhali, ed. Sri Mathuranath Chakravarty, 10th Issue, 25th Year, Bengali Year Chaitra 5, 1353 (19 March 1947) in Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers, Subject File 32, 1st Instalment in NMML, New Delhi. 171. The Statesman, 17 March 1947. 172. The Statesman, 20 April 1947; N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Enclosure to Document 511, pp. 897-901, 308-9. 173. Provincial Fortnightly Report, March 1947, First Half in File No. 18/3/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 174. Ibid. 175. Ibid.; Sir Frederick Burrows to Wavell, 19 March 1947 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., pp. 985-6. 176. Raghib Ahsan, Hussain Suhrawardy and the Inner History of the United Bengal Scheme (Jinnah Awami Muslim League, Karachi, 1951) cited in Harun-or-Rashid, ‘A Move for United Independent Bengal’, op. cit., pp. 311-27. 177. Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947, London and New York, Routledge Curzon, Indian Reprint, 2004), p. 137; also Bidyut Chakrabarty, ‘The 1947 United Bengal Movement: A Thesis Without

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178. 179.

180.

181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187.

188. 189.

190. 191. 192. 193. 194.

195.

395

a Synthesis’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 30, 4, 1993, pp. 467-88. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘A Move for United Independent Bengal’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, op. cit., pp. 311-27. Note by Pandit Nehru, 11 May 1947 cited in Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906-1947, op. cit., p. 298. Burrows to Mountbatten, 19 May 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document 487, p. 903. Nirmal Kumar Bose, Satchollisher Diary, 13 May 1947, p. 199. Durga Das, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence (Navjiban Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1972), pp. 46-7. Sir Frederick Burrows to Wavell, 19 March 1947 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., vol. IX, Document 546, pp. 985-6. Sir F. Burrows to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 11 April 1947 in N. Mansergh, op. cit., vol. X, p. 203. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘A Move for United Independent Bengal’, op. cit., pp. 311-27. Ibid. Record of Interview between Mountbatten and Jinnah, 26 April 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, pp. 451-4. Minutes of India Committee meeting, 19 May 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), in ibid., pp. 896-901. Provincial Fortnightly Report, March 1947, Second Half in File No. 18/3/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; The Statesman, 27, 28 and 30 March 1947. Provincial Fortnightly Report, March 1947, Second Half in File No. 18/3/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. Secret Report for the first half of April 1947 in File No. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. Mountbatten and Mr. Tyson interviewed in the Governor’s Conference, 15 April 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document 154, p. 263. Secret Report on the political situation of Bengal for the Second half of April 1947 in File No. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi.

396 196. 197. 198. 199. 200.

201. 202.

203. 204. 205.

206. 207. 208. 209. 210.

211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218.

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Ibid. G.D. Birla, Baptu: A Unique Associaton (Bombay, 1977). The Statesman, 23 April 1947. Ibid. Secret Report for the first half of April 1947 in File No. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Sir F. Burrows to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 11 April 1947 in N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.) assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, p. 203. Sir F. Burrows to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 11 April 1947, ibid., vol. X, p. 203. Provincial Fortnightly Report for the Second half of April 1947 in File No. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Ibid. Ibid. Mr. S.P. Mookerjee to Rear Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, 2 May 1947 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), Assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document No. 281, p. 555. The Statesman, 8 May 1947. Ibid., 12 May 1947. Ibid., 14 May 1947. Ibid., 12 May 1947. Viceroy’s Interview with Jinnah, No. 41, 8 April 1947 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document 101, p. 158. Viceroy’s Interview with Jinnah No. 46, 10 April 1947 in ibid., Document 116, p. 185. Viceroy’s Interaction with Liaqat Ali Khan, 15 May 1947 in ibid., Document 442, p. 825. Minute of the Viceroy’s Ninth Miscellaneous Meeting, Item No. 1 in ibid. Document 264, p. 507. Viceroy to Sir Frederick Burrows, 2 May 1947 in ibid., Document 280, p. 554. Minute of Viceroy’s Twentyfifth Staff Meeting, Item 3 in ibid., Document 290, p. 579. Lord Ismay to Mountbatten, 6 May 1947 in ibid., Document 330, p. 636. Burrows to Mountbatten, 4 May 1947 in ibid., Document 311, p. 614. Minutes of Viceroy’s 31st Staff Meeting, 12 May 1947 in ibid. Document 414, p. 780.

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397

219. Mountbatten to Burrows, 18 May 1947 in ibid., Document 478, p. 889. 220. Sardar Patel to Binoy Kumar Roy, 23 May 1947 in Durga Das (ed.), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, p. 43; also Patel to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 17 May 1947 in ibid., p. 41. 221. V. Shankar, My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (The Macmillan Company of India, Delhi, 1974), pp. 41, 44, 69. 222. Report of Interview by Sardar Patel to Associated Press of America in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power , vol. X, pp. 716­ 17. 223. Viceroy’s Interview No. 86 with Mr. I. Chundrigar, 22 April 1947 in ibid., Document 199, p. 371. 224. Secret Report on the Political Situaton, Second Half of May 1947 in File No. 18/5/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 225. Ibid. 226. The Statesman, 16 May 1947. 227. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson of London, 1969), p. 289. 228. Secret Report on the Political Situaton, Second Half of April 1947 in File No. 18/4/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 229. Note by Mr. Christie, Mountbatten Papers, Official Correspondence Files: Bengal 29 April 1947 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document 252, p. 482. 230. Viceroy’s Personal Report No. 5, 1 May 1947 in Nicholas Mansergh (editor-in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), Assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document No. 276, p. 533. 231. The Statesman, 4 June 1947. 232. Ibid., 9 June 1947; Provincial Fortnightly Report, First Half of June 1947 in 18/6/47 in Home Poll (I) in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. 233. The Statesman, 12 June 1947. 234. Ibid., 10 and 12 July 1947. 235. Ibid., 16 July 1947. 236. Ibid., 16 July 1947. 237. Ibid., 17 July 1947. 238. Ibid., 16 July 1947. 239. Ibid., 18 July 1947. 240. Ibid., 15 July 1947. 241. Ibid., 19 July 1947.

398 242. 243. 244. 245.

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Ibid., 19 July 1947. Ibid., 19 July 1947. Ibid., 19 July 1947. Mountbatten to Burrows, 10 May 1947 in in Nicholas Mansergh (editor­ in-chief ), Penderel Moon (ed.), assisted by David M. Blake and Lionel Carter, The Transfer of Power, vol. X, Document 393, p. 747. 246. Alan Campbell Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (Robert Hale, London, 1951), p. 181.

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion

in an editorial1 of 11 April 1947 the pro-Muslim League news magazine Millat compared Hindu Mahasabha’s demand for the partition of Bengal to the mythical figure Parashuram’s act of matricide, splitting her into two with the sharp edge of an axe. But before going into such commiserations one must look back at the developments of the preceding decade, which made it impossible for the Hindus and the Muslims, the two dominant religious communities of Bengal to live side by side as they had been in the habit of doing for several centuries. One obvious reason for this might have been that the vast majority of the Bengali Muslims had not been taught to regard their Hindu counterparts as the ‘other’, as both the Hindu as well as the Muslim peasants were equally exploited by their rentier landlords in an even handed manner. That the economic divide in the east Bengal countryside between the Hindu landlords and their Muslim tenants coincided with their religious divide did not make much difference as Bengali Muslim society at this time was hopelessly differentiated between the ashraf and the atrap. Ashrafs were usually of Persian or Arabic origin, who had come to Bengal in the train of the Muslim conquerors or were posted by the ruling Muslim chiefs at Delhi with administrative assignments. They were usually Urdu speaking and kept their atrap brethren at a distance. Ashrafs were often paid by jagirs for their administrative services. These estates were later converted into zamindaris. Most of them also enjoyed pompous designations like Raja, Nawab, etc., and regarded the low caste peasants, whether Hindu or Muslim, with great contempt. British rule in Bengal did not immediately interfere with this social differentiation till about the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The widespread commercialization of agriculture which came in the wake of British rule brought about a new stratification among

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the peasants. A section of the peasantry, who could retain their hold over a part of their product after meeting their obligations to the zamindar and the moneylender, could often sell them at a profit. There thus grew a handful of affluent cash crop cultivators among the peasantry from about this time.2 Some of them aspired after ashraf status and started sending their children to schools. With it was heralded the dawn of a community consciousness among the madrassa educated literati. Revivalist movements like the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya, the Wahhabis, the Fara’idis and the Ta’aiyyunis created an impact exactly among these people. Although differing in details they all served to promote an Islamic identity among the Muslim peasantry and arrested their assimilation with the local inhabitants belonging to other belief systems. According to the Fara’idi doctrine a fara’id was to observe the five fundamentals of Islam (bina’ al-Islam) like reading the kalima (the article of faith), offering five times daily namaz, fasting during ramzan, paying poor tax (zakat), and performing hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). The poor, however, were exempted from the last two. The Fara’idis tried to restore tawhid (belief in one God) and tried to stop un-Islamic practices. They insisted that congregational prayers of Jum’ah and Eid could not be held except in misr al jami (a city where the city lord or Amir and the Qazi or Judge were appointed by a Sultan, enjoying the sanction of Islamic law). All places other than that were dar-ul-harb, a country of the enemy. The pure way of life, they believed, would help them regain their political power and restore the dar-ul-Islam (rule of Islam). The Tariqah-i Muhammadiah, propagated in Bengal by the Patna caliphs, Maulanas Inayet Ali (1794-1858) and Wilayet Ali (1791-1835) succeeded in mobilizing a large number recruits from the Bengal districts like 24-Parganas, Jessore, Faridpur, Pabna, Rajshahi, Malda and Bogra for the purpose of retrieving the holy land from the incursions of Sikh infidels on the Afghan border. This Tariqah movement was sometimes confused with Wahhabism of Shah Waliullah (1703-62) of Delhi. Maulana Karamat Ali’s Ta’aiyyuni movement too had the same goal of winning over the Muslims of Bengal from the mire of local customs. Although the Fara’idis did not support jihad, unlike the Wahhabis, yet ultimately they all converged in propagating jihad to rescue the converts from

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the evil contact of infidel religion. This urge for uniting against the infidels at one point helped to bridge the yawning gap between the ashraf (elite) and the atrap (plebian) among the Muslims.3 The deep impact made by these revivalist movements on the Muslim mind can be gauged from the eagerness with which some Malda villages sent contributions for waging a jihad on the North-West Frontier to drive out the British from India.4 Abul Mansur Ahmad also mentions of such expeditions to the North-West in his memoirs.5 Mahatma Gandhi could feel the pulse of the Muslims when the post war settlement in Turkey embittered the Muslims against Britain. During his Non-Cooperation movement of 1920 Gandhi therefore chose to make Khilafat one of the main issues to draw the Muslim sympathy against the British. This, however, yielded a bitter crop of communal consciousness and resulted in fostering separatism among the Muslims. Mullas and maulavis from this time were given absolute freedom to talk about politics. The result was a widespread communalization of politics.6 Hindus demanded a ban on cow slaughter as a price for participation in Khilafat; instances of Hindu participation in Khilafat were rare.7 Muslims, on the other hand, soon understood the adverse impact of boycott on the Muslim traders in Chundni in Kolkata. Fazlul Huq soon reversed his initial enthusiasm for Khilafat and began to help government appointed mullas to convince the rural populace against boycott.8 Thus Gandhi’s decision to bring in religion into politics to buy Muslim sympathy resulted in further alienating the Muslims. Chittaranjan Das had rightly identified the sore point of the rising Bengali Muslim educated middle class. Alternating phases of boom in the prices of cash crops led by jute in east Bengal had thrown up a strong and aspiring group of educated Muslims, who wanted to have a place in the sun. The Bengal Pact of 1923 tried to address their long standing grievances about opportunities of employment by conceding a quota of 50 per cent of the available jobs. It was also agreed that appointment of Hindus would be put on hold for some time till the communal ratio in employment came at par. But the Cocanada Session of the Congress in December 1923 refused to abide by these guidelines as the swarajists were merely a handful. After Chittaranjan’s death his policies were thus thrown to the winds.9

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The Communal Award of 1932 was not a big shot in the arm for the Bengal Muslims as is usually made out; if it reduced the Hindus to a statutory minority, it had also put a check on the percentage of the Muslims. The European Group was allowed an edge at their expense in order to keep them perpetually dependent on the Europeans for support. For the Hindus the Poona Pact had done most mischief by taking out a large chunk from their share. The Ghuznavi-Burdwan Pact of 1936 took note of all these factors when they agreed upon a 50/50 share.10 Fazlul Huq’s KPP tried not to lock horns in a bitter fight with the Congress in the countryside. Rather it tried to resolve the economic conflict between the Hindus and Muslims by abolishing the Permanent Settlement which had given such obnoxious powers to the zamindars on the cultivators. Its other agenda was to resist the intrusion of the Muslim League and its communal politics into the Bengal countryside. But the Congress High Command’s decision not to accept office and Sarat Bose’s priority to the release of detenus over the economic programme of the KPP wrecked the possibility of a Proja-Congress government.11 Huq was now thrown into the arms of the Muslim League, for his popularity among the large Muslim population of east Bengal had made it certain that the Chief Ministership would be his. Coalition politics now compelled him to jettison some of the main planks of the programme of the KPP; even his close associate Shamsuddin had to be kept out of the cabinet. Another close associate Tamizuddin joined his critics to create pressure on him. The other KPP member, Nausher Ali also tried to topple the Government in League with the Congress and fnally left the cabinet. The no-confidence motion brought against the Coalition Government in August 1938 could be defeated only through the intervention of the European Group. It prompted the snide remark from Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee that ‘the Chief Minister is a dreamer of dreams of lions and tigers of Thanesur and Panipat, of Siraj-ud-daula; but when the crucial moment came, he had to depend on the support of the direct descendants of Clive.’12 Huq now became a captive in the hands of the Muslim League. All Huq’s oratorical skill was now directed to implementing the Muslim League agenda in every sphere of administration. A Bill was

CONCLUSION

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brought for bringing Secondary Education under strict Government control through the introduction of the nomination system in the Secondary Board which was to be constituted. Attempts were also made to achieve greater control on the civic body in Calcutta, although Muslims paid only a miniscule amount of the taxes of the city. The most unpopular act of the Coalition was the attempt to enforce the communal ratio in jobs.13 This brought the clash of interests of the middle classes of the two communities in the open. Mohammad Shah has called it a ‘struggle within an elite group, between those in power (the dominant Hindus) and those seeking it (the nascent Muslim middle class)’.14 Congress withdrawal from the provincial ministries in protest against the involvement of India in the Second World War by the Viceroy’s diktat spruced up the Muslim League’s sagging fortunes and Jinnah could manipulate the two heavyweight Premiers from two Muslim majority provinces, Sir Sikander Hyat Khan and Fazlul Huq into proposing and seconding the Lahore Resolution, which floated the idea of Pakistan for the first time. The resolution proposed two ‘Independent States’, one on the west and other on the east with contiguous territories. This was also the time when the Bengal Provincial Muslim League had been secretly working on a plan of a greater Bengal including the Bengali speaking areas of Singhbhum, Manbhum in Bihar and Assam. The scheme known as the Bangasam scheme15 was hoped to provide the Bengali Muslims with ample lebensraum for unfettered expansion The preferential treatment demanded by the upcoming Muslims in every sphere, job quotas, separate electorate and constitutional safeguards was bound to bring them into conflict with the Hindus. Congress was often hesitant to come up with a full blooded scheme in the defence of Hindu interests as they had to keep the interests of their minority wing in mind. Thus the Hindus of the province had no one to turn to. At this crucial juncture the Hindu Mahasabha stepped into the province. The Hindu Mahasabha President V.D. Savarkar visited Khulna for the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha Conference in February 1939 and drew attention to how the religion, culture, education and even life, property and honour of the Hindus were in danger. He called upon all the Hindus to offer united resistance. He

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wanted the Hindus to resolve their caste disputes as caste had no importance in public life. The work of the Hindu Sangathan had assumed a peculiar importance in this context for ‘awakening the consciousness of solidarity among different sections and sub-sections of the Hindus.’ Without a sense of solidarity it would be impossible for the Hindus to survive as a nation in Bengal.16 Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had been passing through a crisis of conscience at this hour, could see a light at the end of the tunnel in Savarkar’s call. He fell hook, line and sinker for it and placed his services at the disposal of the Hindu Mahasabha. He toured the countryside along with B.C. Chatterjee and drew up a list of grievances after the manner of the cahiers de doleances drawn up by the leaders of the Third Estate on the eve of the French Revolution.17 These were to be discussed at length at the Calcutta Session of the Hindu Mahasabha in December 1940. The 1941 Census was also approaching and both communities stood facing each other as two hostile armies. It just needed a spark to start a huge conflagration. The terrible Dacca riots of 1941 gave a taste of the smouldering embers. The series of temple defilement, image breaking, deadlock over music before mosques, and cow slaughter during kurbani continued to mark the life of the province with an unrelieved monotony. They were probably too much for even a committed Muslim like Huq. Huq now revolted against Jinnah’s strictures on his freedom to join the Viceroy’s Defence Council and resigned from the high offices in the Muslim League. Jinnah eased his path by expelling him from the membership of the Muslim League. But Huq’s magic was not yet exhausted. Many of the independents still clung to him and he commanded the allegiance of a large number of the MLAs. He was therefore able to cobble up a majority with Forward Bloc and Hindu Mahasabha support and form a government. Huq’s acceptance of the Hindu Mahasabha in the government provided his adversaries in the Muslim League with a handy weapon for propaganda. They now decided to go to the people themselves for redressal. The Governor, Sir John Herbert was also distrustful of the Forward Bloc and the Mahasabha. He immediately secured the imprisonment of Sarat Bose on charges of treason and sent him out of the province to uproot the main source of intrigue against British

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rule. In the meanwhile the Japanese were approaching the Indian coastline after their victories in Singapore and Burma. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee asked the Governor and later on, the Viceroy, for a mandate to form a Home Army with whatever weapons they could lay hands on. But Churchill would not trust the Indians. The Governor ridiculed Mookerjee’s proposed army as ‘a guerrilla army of bhadraloks’ and saw in it nothing but a ploy for Hindu domination.18 The British remedy against a possible Japanese attack on the land route was to denude the coastal districts of all kinds of food and means of transport. These were riverine districts, depending on boats for communication between small islands and char lands thrown up by the rivers. Boat denial affected their means of living, their cultivation on char lands and fishing. Rice was sometimes destroyed, to prevent its appropriation by invading armies; sometimes it was brought from the countryside to feed the city population, the army and the military. Destruction or siphoning off of surplus rice left no reserve for the local populace to fall back upon. From the end of 1942 they could feel the pinch. By the middle of 1943 villagers began to flock to Calcutta asking for gruel and die by the scores along the roadside.19 Syama Prasad could sense the impending crisis exactly before it reached its peak and resigned on the question the provincial government being ignored by the Governor at the time of taking crucial policy decisions. He also exposed the vindictive attitude of the Government towards the rebels of the Quit India movement in Midnapore. In October 1942 Midnapore was hit by a terrible cyclone, when sea water entered the villages and submerged them. The cyclone alert in this district was deliberately withheld by the DM and relief delayed for a month to punish the rebels. Syama Prasad resigned over these issues and released the contents of his resignation letter to the press, so that it could draw the attention of American journalists, swarming in the metropolitan cities by the scores. Through them the news might reach Churchill’s trusted ally, the American President Roosevelt. Britain was at the receiving end from Hitler’s blitzkrieg at this time and was pitifully dependent on American help in combating the Axis Powers in Europe and elsewhere. Syama Prasad expected his complaints to reach the American President through newspaper reports. The

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American President alone was in a position to bring Churchill to heel.20 The Huq ministry did not outlive the resignation of Syama Prasad for long. Rice denial and boat denial had given rise to a terrible famine which took a human toll far surpassing the total number of casualties in the Second World War. The American military personnel in the coastal districts of east Bengal had overreached themselves in trying to expedite evacuation. Complaints were even heard about the torture of village women for the gratification of the military. The Feni sub­ division of Noakhali witnessed a particularly gruesome incident. When the Chief Minister visited Noakhali and tried to meet the victim he faced resistance from the local administration under the Governor’s instructions.21 Huq was worried and wanted an all party government to work in the province in an united manner to combat the ravages of famine. The Governor now duped him into signing a resignation letter, promising to make him the Chief Minister of an all party government. The year and a quarter from December 1941 to March 1943 had brought about a sea change in Huq’s popularity in the countryside. His opponents of the Muslim League, Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy had toured the countryside in these months and convinced the Muslim population of Huq’s betrayal of the cause of the Muslims. The Syama-Huq ministry’s dilatory tactics over the Secondary Education Bill and the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill and their unwillingness to enforce the Communal Ratio in ARP recruitment brought the clash of interests of the middle classes of the two communities to the fore.22 It had now become obvious, what Maulana Akram Khan had tried to emphasize in course of a debate in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1939, that the two communities could never see eye to eye with each other and their interests were irreconcilable: The difference was compared with the difference between the two sides of the plantain leaf. When eating meal a Hindu takes it on one side of it and the Muslim takes it on the other side. S.N. Sanyal claimed the side on which a Hindu eats his meal as obverse and called the other side on which the Muslim eats as reverse. The Maulana pointed out the difference in the angles of vision of the two communities by stressing that what appeared obverse in a Muslim’s eyes was reverse in the eyes of a Hindu.23

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Governor Herbert then tried to run the province with Nazimuddin as Premier. But Nazimuddin failed to control his colleagues and there was such rampant corruption, black marketing, price rise and profiteering at the cost of the famine victims that the Governor was compelled to go into Section 93 after a few months. In the meanwhile the developments in all India politics began to impinge on the region. In 1932 Prime Minister Churchill, under pressure from the American President for humane treatment of the colonies, sent Sir Stafford Cripps with the offer of dominion status after the war and right to secession from the Indian Union for the unwilling provinces. The offer did not appeal to any of the political parties but the latter provision nearly set a seal on Pakistan. In the meanwhile Gandhi judged the moment opportune for declaring his ‘Quit India’ hoping to have Britain in a tight corner. The Congress Working Committee was immediately taken into custody, leaving the leaderless workers to go on a rampage. Destruction of telegraph lines, railway tracks and roads created great disruptions in military communications and created a hostile impression in the mind of Lord Wavell, who was at this time in charge of military operations. He continued to harbour this hostility even when he was made the Viceroy. During the crucial negotiations for the transfer of power during his Viceroyalty he was always partial to the Muslim League and hostile against the Congress. The international scene, however, changed very soon. Gandhi made his August 1942 declaration when the Allied Powers were fighting with their back to the wall. But by 1943 the tables had been turned on Hitler. Britain had two strong allies, the USA and Soviet Russia to help her out. Gandhi became worried for his jailed Working Committee members. He approached Jinnah in 1944 for a settlement once he was released on the basis of the C.R. Formula. He conceded Pakistan on principle but would not agree to surrender a strong union. Thus the Gandhi-Jinnah talks came a cropper. But the very fact that Gandhi had met him on a one to one basis added to the moral stature of Jinnah, which he could not otherwise have aspired to. Congress prestige and programme suffered a further setback with Bhulabhai Desai’s informal understanding with Liaqat Ali Khan about a parity at the Centre. Though the CWC members condemned and disowned

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this ‘Desai-Liaqat Pact’ and Desai was denied tickets to fight the elections in 1945-6 for this error, it is well known that he had the Mahatma’s nod to go ahead. Immediately at the close of the war Wavell decided to invite the important political leaders to Simla and arrive at a consensus regarding the meeting of a Constituent Assembly, which might author the constitution for the election of a government to which power could be transferred. But invitations to this Simla Conference of 1945 were sent on certain calculations. The Hindu Mahasabha was excluded as it would not agree to undue concessions for the Muslim League. Representation to the Congress and the Muslim League was given on the principle of parity. Gandhi probably saw through the game and demanded the right to nominate a nationalist Muslim, thereby rejecting the Muslim League’s right to be the sole spokesman of Muslim interests. The Attlee Government then sent three cabinet delegates to work out a formula for the Interim Government and a Constitution. Elections had been held in 1945-6 to the provincial assemblies. These provincial assemblies were to choose the members of the Constituent Assembly. However, the Cabinet Mission failed to resolve the dispute of the Congress and the Muslim League over a strong centre, parity of representation, the right of the provinces to choose their own destiny, etc. In spite of having won the maximum number of Muslim seats the Muslim League could not even form a Government in any province except Bengal. Having failed to have their way by political means, they resorted to naked violence in the name of ‘direct action’. Bengal being their stronghold they chose Calcutta to test their strength. Chief Minister Suhrawardy had left no stone unturned to rouse primeval passions to intimidate the Hindus. But the Hindu Mahasabha was not lagging behind in preparations. The Arya Bir Dal, the Mahabir Dal, the Akalis – all took up the challenge to beat the Muslim League at its own game. The Muslim League then shifted venue. They found a soft target in the Hindu minority in Noakhali and derived great satisfaction in the burning alive of several families, the premiere families of Noakhali showing the way. Syama Prasad saw in it an attempt at the extermination of entire communities. The seriousness

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of the crime brought Gandhi from his latest abode in the Bhangi Colony at Delhi. But even Gandhi’s tireless tour of the district for three months could not restore confidence in families, whose members had been burnt alive, women raped and all earthly belongings destroyed. Nor could he make much progress among Muslims, who had been seething for revenge at the prospect of Hindu domination since the Interim Government started functioning with only Congress members in office. Nirmal Kumar Bose, Gandhi’s companion in Noakhali, wrote that by February 1947 even Gandhi began to understand that his mission had failed. Thus when Syama Prasad approached him subsequently in his Sodepur ashram to secure his compliance to his plan for the partition of Bengal, Gandhi was not as adverse to the idea as before. The Congress President Jawaharlal Nehru, who had not cared to come down to Calcutta after the Great Calcutta Killing and threatened Bihar with aerial bombing if riots against the Muslims did not stop, had to concede the necessity for partition after the massacre of Multan and Rawalpindi in the Punjab in March 1947. The CWC adopted a resolution for the partition of the Punjab. This strengthened the hands of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had already floated the proposal in the province and received strong approval from all corners. Muslim Direct Action in Calcutta and Noakhali and thereafter in the Punjab killed all hopes of compromise. As the military commander Sir Francis Tuker saw it, just as the vultures carried mouthfuls after mouthfuls from the dead and rotting bodies of the riot victims, in the same manner all good feelings between the two communities were being chipped away bit by bit beyond recovery. The Akali leader Master Tara Singh, who had been in close touch with Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee since the days of the Communal Award, encouraged him to go ahead with the scheme of partition of the province. In Punjab he had been propagating a territorial regrouping since long. After the Multan and Rawalpindi massacres, the anti-Tara Singh Akalis led by Giani Kartar Singh, who had so long advocated an understanding with Jinnah for some compromise were also discredited. All roads now led only to the Mecca of partition. When Lala Lajpat Rai had pointed out in 1924 that separate

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electorates would not douse the flame of communalism and com­ promises in the nature of the Lucknow Pact or the Bengal Pact would ultimately prove to be the prelude to a partition of the two communities in the Punjab and Bengal he had been supremely prophetic.24 The clash of middle class ambition among different communities might lead to bitterness. But the aggressive form that it assumed in the Punjab and Bengal could only be resolved by partition. Proposals for a sovereign, united Bengal from Suhrawardy, the high priest of the Great Calcutta Killing, could only raise spectres of a ‘subsidiary Pakistan’. Thus Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee appeared to the people of Bengal as the man of the hour and a new messiah. It was Muslim intransigence rather than ‘bhadralok culpability’25 which had cast the die. NOTES 1. Cited by Sugata Bose, The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood (Penguin Viking Random House India, Gurgaon, 2017), pp. 1-31. 2. ‘Expansion of market had evidently in some cases wholesome effects on agriculture’. See B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘The Process of Depeasantisation in Bengal and Bihar, 1885-1947’, in The Indian Historical Review, vol. II, no. 1, July 1975. 3. Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan, H istory of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal, 1818-1906 (Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, 1965), pp. 60-103; Rafi­ ud-din Ahmad, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1st pub. 1981, 2nd edn. 1988; Oxford India Paperbacks, 1996), Chapters I-IV. 4. Mohammad Shah, ‘The Bengal Muslims and the World of Islam: Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial Bengal as Reflected in the Press’, in Ahmed Rafiuddin (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 86-112. 5. Abul Mansur Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar (Nowroz Kitabistan, Dacca, 3rd enlg. edn., 1975), pp. 138-41. 6. M.J. Akbar, A Mirror to Power: Notes on a Fractured Decade (Harper Collins, Noida, 2015). 7. Mohammad Shah, ‘The Bengal Muslims and the World of Islam’, op. cit. 8. Taj ul-Islam Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalisation of Class Politics in East Bengal, 1920-1947 (Westview Press, Boulder, 1992), p. 55.

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9. Enayetur Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943 (The Institute of Bangladesh Studies, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh, 1981), p. 114. 10. Bazlur Rahman Khan, Politics in Bengal, 1927-1936 (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1987), pp. 36-41. 11. Abul Mansur Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar, op. cit. 12. The Communal Ratio had been fixed at 60 per cent for Muslims, 20 per cent for SCs and 20 per cent for the rest. The resolution was moved by Hafeez Malik of the Coalition Party and passed after a debate for two hours. 13. Indian Annual Register, 1938, vol. II, pp. 120-2. 14. Mohammad Shah, In Search of an Identity: Bengal Muslims, 1880-1940 (K.P. Bagchi & Co., Calcutta, 1996), p. 228. 15. Raghib Ahsan, Hussain Suhrawardy and the Inner History of the United Bengal Scheme (Jinnah Awami Muslim League, Karachi, 1951) cited in Harun-orRashid, ‘A Move for United Independent Bengal’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971: Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1st pub. 1992; 3rd edn. 2007), pp. 311-27. 16. Indian Annual Register, vol. I, 1939, pp. 383-5. 17. Hindusthan Standard, 8 December 1939, How Hindus Suffer in Bengal: Provocative and Communal Utterances of Mr. Huq: Policy of Curbing, Checking and Injuring Hindu Interests; Moslemisation of Educational Services in Bengal. Demand for Enquiry in the General Interest of the Whole Province: Joint Statement of B.C. Chatterjee and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in File No. KPM/SB/02630/05 of 1939 in Kolkata Police Museum. 18. Herbert to Linlithgow, 25 February 1942 in Linlithgow Collection in British Library. 19. M.O. Carter Papers in the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge. 20. File No. R/3/2/41, 1942-43, File No. 31, Collection No. 2 in India Office Records, London. 21. A.K. Fazlul Huq, Bengal Today (Gupta, Rahaman and Gupta, Calcutta, 1944). 22. Report of a Special Branch Secret Agent dated 14 August 1942 in File No. KPM/SB/01576/05 in Kolkata Police Museum. 23. Mohammad Shah, In Search of an Identity: Bengal Muslims, 1880-1940, op. cit., p. 238. 24. V.C. Joshi (ed.), Lala Lajpat Rai: Writings and Speeches, vol. 2, 1920-1928, (Universal Publishers, Delhi, Jullundher, 1966), pp. 170-222. 25. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932­ 1947 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995), p. 317.

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. source book Huq, A.K. Fazlul, Bengal Today (Gupta, Rahaman and Gupta, Calcutta, 1944). Joshi, V.C. (ed.), Lala Lajpat Rai: Writings and Speeches, vol. 2: 1920-1928, (Universal Publishers, Delhi, Jullundher, 1966). Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, Leaves from a Diary (Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1993). ———, Awake Hindusthan (1st pub. 1945, New Delhi, rpt. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, 2009, ed. Tarun Vijay with a Foreword by Mohan Bhagwat). Mansergh, Nicholas (editor-in-chief ) and Penderel Moon (ed.), The Transfer of Power: Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, vols. I-XII (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, distributed in India by UBSPD, Bombay, 1971). Moon, Penderel (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Oxford University Press, London, 1973).

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SECONDARY BOOKS Aziz, K.K., The Partition of India and Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publications, Delhi, 1990). Ahmed, Rafi-ud-din, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1st pub. 1981, 2nd edn. 1988; Oxford India Paperbacks, 1996). Ahmed, Rafiuddin (ed.) Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001). Akbar, M.J., A Mirror to Power: Notes on a Fractured Decade (Harper Collins, New Delhi, 2015). Ashraf, Mohammad, Cabinet Mission and After (The Islamic Literature Publishing House, Lahore, 1946). Aziz, K.K., The Partition of India and Emergence of Pakistan (Kanti Publications, Delhi, 1990). Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar (ed.), Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (Manohar, New Delhi, 2001). Bose, Nirmal Kumar, My Days With Gandhi (Orient Longman, Calcutta, 1974). Bose, Neilesh, Recasting the Region: Language, Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014). Bose, Sugata, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919-47 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986). Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, The Defining Moments in Bengal, 1920-1947 (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014). Campbell-Johnson, Alan, Mission with Mountbatten (Robert Hale, London,1951). Chakrabarty, Bidyut, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 (Routledge Curzon, London and New York, Indian rpt. 2004). Chakraborty, Dipesh, Rochona Majumder, Andrew Sartori, From the Colonial to the Post-Colonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007). Choudhry, Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Longmans, Lahore, 1961). Chaudhuri, Nirad C., Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Jaico Publishing House, 2013; 1st pub. 1951), pp. 531-2. Chatterjee, Partha, The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism, (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997). Chatterjee, Chhanda, The Sikh Minority and the Partition of the Punjab, 1920­ 1947 (Manohar, New Delhi, 2018). Chatterji, Joya, Bengal Divided : Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). Chatterji, Prasanto Kumar, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics, 1938-1953 (Cambridge University Press India under the imprint of Foundation Books, New Delhi, 2010).

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Chawla, Muhammad Iqbal, Wavell and the Dying Days of the Raj: Britain’s Penultimate Viceroy in India (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2011). Casey, Lord, Personal Experience, 1939-1946 (Constable and Co., London, 1962). Coupland, R., The Indian Problem, 1833-1935 Report on the Constitutional Problem in India (Oxford University Press, London, 1942). ———, The Cripps Mission (Humphrey Milford, Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1942). Das, Suranjan, Interrogating Politics and Society: Twentieth Century Indian Subcontinent (Primus Books, Delhi, 2014). ———, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Oxford University Press, 1991, Oxford India Paperbacks 1993). De, Soumitra, Nationalism and Separatism in Bengal: A Study of India’s Partition (Har-Anand Publications in association with Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1992). Enayetur, Rahim, Provincial Autonomy in Bengal, 1937-1943 (The Institute of Bangladesh Studies, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh, 1981). Eaton, Richard M., The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1st end. 1993). Edwardes, Michael, The Last Years of British India (Cassell & Co., London, 1963). Gordon, Leonard A., Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (Penguin, Viking, 1990). Gould, William, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge University Press/published in India by Foundation Books, New Delhi, 1st South Asian edn. 2005). Guha, Ramchandra, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World (Penguin Random House India, Gurgaon, 2018). Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906-1947 (The University Press, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1987, rev. and enlg edn. 2003, 2nd Impression 2012). Hasan, Mushirul (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993). Hasan, Mushirul, Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000). Hodson, H.V., The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Hutchinson of London, 1969). Ikramullah, Begum Shaista Suhrawardy, From Purdah to Parliament (The Cresset Press, London, 1963). ———, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1991).

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Islam, Sirajul (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971, Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1992, 3rd edn. 2007). Jaffrelot, Christophe (ed.), Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (Permanent Black, Delhi, 2007). Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah and the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 1985). Kabir, Humayun, Muslim Politics, 1906-1942 (Gupta, Rahman and Gupta, Calcutta, 1944). Khosla, G.D., Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events Leading Up to and Following the Partition of India (1st pub. 1949; Oxford University Press Paperbacks 1989; 2nd Impression 1999, New Delhi). Khan, Muin-ud-Din Ahmad, History of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal, 18181906 (Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, 1965). Low, D.A. (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1968). Low, D.A. and Howard Brasted (eds.), Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence (Sage, New Delhi, 1998). Misra, Jagannath Prasad, Madan Mohan Malaviya and the Indian Freedom Movement (ICHR, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016). Menon, V.P., The Transfer of Power in India (Orient Longman, Madras, 1957). Moore, R.J., The Crisis of Indian Unity, 1917-1940 (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1974). ———, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983). ———, Endgames of Empire: Studies of Britain’s India Problem (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1988). Moon, Penderel, Divide and Quit (Chatto and Windus, London, 1962). Mosley, Leonard, Last Days of the British Raj (Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1971). Mukherjee, Madhusree, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (1st pub. in India in Tranquebar Press by Westland Ltd., Chennai, 2010). Mukherji, Saradindu, Hindus Betrayed: Religious Cleansing in Bangladesh (India Policy Foundation, New Delhi, 2013). ———, Caliphate Movement in India, 1919-1924 (India Policy Foundation, New Delhi, 2015). Page, David, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control 1920-1932 (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1982). Philips, C.H. and Mary Doreen Wainwright, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (Aberdeen, George Allen and Unwin, 1970). Reid, Sir Robert, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam (Ernest Benn, London, 1966).

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Ray, Rajat Kanta, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927 (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1984). Roy, Tathagata, The Life and Times of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee: A Complete Biography (Prabhat Prakashan, New Delhi, 2012). ———, My People Uprooted: The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh (Synergy, New Delhi, 2015). Shankar, V., My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel (The Macmillan Company of India, New Delhi, 1974). Sen, Dr. Shila, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937-1947 (Viswakos Parishad, Kolkata, 2001, 1st pub. 1976). Sengupta, Nitish, Bengal Divided: The Unmaking of a Nation, 1905-1971 (Penguin, Viking, New Delhi, 2007). ———, Land of Two Rivers: A History of Bengal from Mahabharata to Mujib (Penguin, New Delhi, 2011). Settar, S. and Indira Baptista Gupta (eds.), Pangs of Partition, vol. I: The Parting of Ways (New Delhi, Manohar, 2002). Srimanjari, Through War and Famine: Bengal, 1939-45 (Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2009). Taj ul-Islam, Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalisation of Class Politics in East Bengal, 1920-1947 (Westview Press, Boulder, 1992). Talbot, Ian, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: The Growth of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India, 1937-47 (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1988). Tharoor, Shashi, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (Aleph Book Co., New Delhi, 2016). Tuker, Sir Francis, While Memory Serves (Cassell and Co., London, 1950). Wallbank, T. Walter, The Partition of India: Causes and Responsibilities (Problems in Asian Civilizations Series, D.C. Heath and Co., Boston, 1968). Ziegler, Philip, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (Collins, London, 1985).

ARTICLES IN BOOKS AND JOURNALS Ahmad, Rafiuddin, ‘The Emergence of the Bengal Muslims’, in Rafiuddin Ahmad (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001), pp. 1-25. Aiyar, Sana, ‘Fazlul Huq, Region and Religion in Bengal: The Forgotten Alternative of 1940-43’, in Modern Asian Studies, 42, 6 (November 2008), pp. 1213-49. Broomfield, J.H., ‘The Forgotten Majority: The Bengal Muslims and September 1918’, in D.A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Weidenfeld and Nicholson: London, 1968), pp. 196-224.

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Chakravarty, Dipesh, ‘Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of Partition’, in D.A. Low and Howard Brasted (eds.), Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence (Sage, New Delhi, 1998). Chakrabarty, Bidyut, ‘The 1947 United Bengal Movement: A Thesis Without a Synthesis’, in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 30, 4 (1993), pp. 467-88. ———, ‘Political Mobilisation in the Localities: The Quit India Movement in Midnapur’, Modern Asian Studies, 26, no. 4, 1992, pp. 791-814. Chatterjee, Joya, ‘The Decline, Revival and Fall of Bhadralok Influence in the 1940s: A Historiographic Overview’, in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (ed.), Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (Manohar, New Delhi, pp. 297-315. Chatterjee, Partha, ‘The Colonial State and Peasant Resistance in Bengal, 1920­ 1947’, in Past and Present, no. 110 (February 1986), pp. 169-204. ———, ‘Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 1926-1935’, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1982), pp. 9-38. ———, ‘Bengal Politics and the Muslim Masses, 1920-47’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1993), pp. 254-73. Chatterjee, Chhanda, ‘“Bagla Bhagats” or “Desh Bhagats”? The Congress Programme of Contacting the Muslim Masses in the Punjab, 1937-38’, in The Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Modern India Section, Amritsar (63rd) Session (Kolkata, 2002), pp. 762-7. Eaton, Richard M., ‘Who are the Bengal Muslims? Conversion and Islamisation in Bengal’, in Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001), pp. 26-51. Farzana, Shaikh, ‘Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial India: The Making of Pakistan’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993), pp. 81-100. Gordon, Leonard A., ‘Divided Bengal: Problems of Nationalism and Identity in the 1947 Partition’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993), pp. 274-317. Husain, Mahmud, ‘Dacca University and the Pakistan Movement’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright (eds.), The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947 (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1970), pp. 369-73. Harun-or-Rashid, ‘Bengal Ministries 1937-1947’, in Sirajul Islam (ed.), History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971, Political History (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1st pub. 1992, 3rd edn. 2007), pp. 195-219.

420

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Gallagher, John, ‘Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930-39’, in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1973), pp. 589-645. Graham, B.D., ‘Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Communalist Alternative’, in D.A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1968), pp. 330-74. Kamtekar, Indivar, ‘A Differeent War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939-45’, Past and Present 176, no. 1, August 2002, pp. 187-221. Mahalanobis, P.C., ‘The Bengal Famine: The Background and the Basic Facts’, Asiatic Review, New Series, 42, no. 152, October 1946, pp. 310-18. Markovits, Claude, ‘Businessmen and the Partition of India’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000), pp. 236-58. ———, ‘The Partition of India’, in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic (eds.), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003) pp. 50-62. Mukherji, Saradindu, ‘Unanticipated Catastrophe: Bengal in the 1940’s’, in Thierry Di Costanzo and Guillaume Ducoeur (eds.), Decolonisation and the Struggle for National Liberation in India (1909-1971) (Peter Lang, Frankfurt au Main, 2014), pp. 169-84. ———, ‘The Man Who Saved Bengal,’ Review of Tathagata Roy’s book Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee: A Complete Biography (Prabhat) in The Pioneer, 19 January 2013. Nanda, B.R. ‘Tragedy and Triumph: The Last Days of Mahatma Gandhi’, in S. Settar and Indira Baptista Gupta (eds.), Pangs of Partition, vol. I: The Parting of Ways (Indian Council of Historical Research, Manohar, New Delhi, 2002). Nicholas, Ralph W., ‘Islam and Vaishnavism in the Environment of Rural Bengal’, in Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretive Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001), pp. 52-70. Owen, Hugh F., ‘Negotiating the Lucknow Pact’, in the Journal of Asian Studies, XXXII, 1973, pp. 561-87. Potter, D.C., ‘Manpower Shortage and the end of Colonialism: The Case of Indian Civil Service’, in Modern Asian Studies, 7, 1 (1973), pp. 47-73. Ray, Rajat and Ratna Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, in Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (1975). Sanyal, Hiteshranjan, ‘The Quit India Movement in Medinipur District’, in Gyanendra Pandey (ed.), The Indian Nation in 1942,( K.P. Bagchi, Calcutta, for Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1988). Sartori, Andrew, ‘Abul Mansur Ahmad and the Cultural Politics of Bengali Pakistanism’, in Dipesh Chakraborty, Rochona Majumder, Andrew Sartori (eds.), From the Colonial to the Post-Colonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007), pp. 119-36.

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Index

Abdullah, M.A. 319, 356

Abell, G.E. 345

abwabs 85

Agricultural Debtors Act (1940) 30,

97, 107, 108

ahimsa 196

Ahmad, Abul Mansur 82, 83, 84, 85,

401

Ahmad, Asimuddin 108

Ahmad, Jasimuddin 125

Ahmad, Khan Bahadur Jalaluddin 248

Ahmad, Kosimuddin 120

Ahmad, Maulvi Mafizuddin 108

Ahmad, Muzzaffar 93

Ahmed, Imamuddin 204

Ahmed, Jahur 315

Ahmed, Kazi Moizuddin 93

Ahmed, Maulavi Abdul Jalil 204

Ahmed, Maulvi Hamiduddin 354

Ahmed, Mohinuddin 119

Ahmed, Shafi 187

Ahmed, Shamsuddin 28, 85, 88, 90,

96-7, 148, 149, 205, 206, 214,

346, 349

Ahsan, Raghib 89

AICC 48, 66, 103, 357-9, 367

Akali Dal 369

Akhanda Bangla 194

Akhand Hindustan 21, 370

akharas 288

Akram, Abu Salih Muhammad 383

Alexander, A.V. 277

Alexander, Horace 299, 309

Ali, Amir 126

Ali, Asaf 313, 358

Ali, Chaudhuri Rahamat 105

Ali, Hashem 206

Ali, Inayet 400

Ali, Maulavi Hatem 203

Ali, Md. Yashin 125

Ali, Nausher 28, 88, 94-5, 101, 149,

402

Ali, Sarafat 119

Ali, Shaukat 71

Ali, Syed Nausher 100

Ali, Wilayet 400

Alimuddin, Md. 125

All Bengal Census Board 124

All Bengal Muslim Students’ League

93

All Bengal Protest Day 183

All Bengal Secondary Education Week

249

Allied Powers 407

Allied War Councils 233

All India Depressed Classes Association

74

All India Hindu Mahasabha. See Hindu Mahasabha All India Hindu Yuva Sabha 182

All India Muslim Conference 70

All India Muslim League Council 42

al Mahmood, Abdullah 120

Ambedkar, B.R. 25, 74

Amir 400

Anderson, Sir John 27, 87

Aney, M.S. 67

Ansari, Aziz 86

Anti-Communal Award Day 185-8

Anti-Hindu Bills 193

Anti-Pakistan Day 215

Apila Chapila 338

Ariff, Golam Husain 65

Ariff, Y.C. 67

Arora, Ram Narayan 366

Arya Dal 54

424

INDEX

Arya Samaj 68, 182

ashraf 206, 399, 401

Ataturk, Kemal 64

atrap 399

Auchinlek, Claude 221

Axis Powers 233

Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam 104, 277,

305, 313, 345

Azad Punjab 367

Badruddoza, Syed 206

Bahadur, Khwaja Nawab Habibullah

212

Bakhsh, Kadu 120

Bakshi, M.S. 183

Bal, P.C. 131

Bande Mataram 89, 91, 163, 260

Banerjee, Jogesh Chandra 121

Banerjee, Pramatha Nath 185, 186, 214

Banerjee, S.N. 24, 29, 99

Bangasam 372, 403

Bangistan 225

Bangiya Milan Mandir 182

Bankura, communal atmosphere in

361-2

Bardhan, Satish Chandra 231

Bardoloi, Gopinath 359

bargadars 108, 230

Barman, Premahari 249

Barman, Upendranath 214

Barnwell, Hatch 32, 141

Barori, D.N. 318

Basiruddin, Md. 125

Basu, J.N. 88

Basu, Narendra Kumar 185

Basu, Santosh Kumar 241

Basu, Sourindra Kishore 352

Begg, Nawab 297

Bell, J.M.G. 289, 315, 347

Bemrose, W.N. 315

benamdar 228

Bengal Agricultural Debtors’

Amendment Bill 183

Bengal Anti-Communal Award

Committee 87

Bengal Congress Nationalist Party 185

Bengal Hindu Mahasabha Conference

of 1939 31

Bengali Muslim Association 204

Bengal Krishak O Praja Party 203

Bengal Landlordism 95

Bengal Legislative Council 65, 66

Bengal Moneylenders’ Act 30, 83, 97,

107, 125, 126

Bengal National Chamber of

Commerce 88

Bengal Pact of 1923 65-6, 401, 410

Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee

377, 384

Bengal Progressive Muslim League 206

Bengal Provincial Congress Committee

24

Bengal Provincial Depressed Classes

League 381

Bengal Tenancy Act (1938) 83, 97, 107

Bengal Tenancy Amendment Bill 30

Bengal Turbulent Areas Ordinance 145

Bera, Dwarikanath 301

bhadralok 22, 23, 36, 136, 140, 219,

220, 231, 352, 405

Bharat Sevasram Sangha 182

Bhattacharji, D.N. 366

Bhattacharya, Bankim Chandra 204

Bhattacharya, Haridas 133

Bhattacharya, Rai Bahadur

Krishnamohan 180

Bhaumik, Indra Kumar 361

Bhuniya, Chintamoni 301

Bibigram Masjid 119

‘Bihar Day’ 348

Bihar Premier Srikrishna Sinha 345

Bihar violence, Noakhali riots impact

on 344-6; Bihar Premier Srikrishna

Sinha 345; Gandhi’s reactions 346;

Hindu-Muslim relations in 344;

Nehru’s threats about aerial

bombing 345; ‘Noakhali Day’

meetings at Chapra and Patna

344-5

Birla, G.D. 66, 373, 375

INDEX

Biswas, C.C. 383 Biswas, Charu 196 Biswas, Rasik Lal 93, 108 Biswas, S.M. 295, 296 Biswas, Sasadhar 133 Blandy, E.N. 139 blitzkrieg 239, 405 Bose, Beni 141 Bose, Kalipada 234 Bose, Nirmal Kumar 47, 322, 349, 353, 372, 409 Bose, Santosh Kumar 136, 214, 237 Bose, Sarat Chandra 27, 32, 34, 48, 50, 82, 83, 88, 92, 93-4, 108, 116, 132, 133, 137, 141, 146, 214, 306, 313, 343, 345-6, 358, 404 Bose, Subhas Chandra 30, 32, 66, 179, 183, 221 Bose, Surendranath 321 Bose, Surjya Kumar 133, 146 Boundary Commission 376, 382, 383, 386 Brabourne, Lord 104 Brahma, Phanindranath 204 Brahmachari, U.N. 78 British Imperialism 95, 203, 239 Bucher, Sir Roy 304, 306, 310, 343, 345 Budge Budge Mills 94 Burman, Premahari 234 Burman, Shyama Prosad 108 Burrabazar Congress Committee 66 Burrows, Sir Frederick 49, 289, 299, 300, 310, 380 bustees 301, 303, 308 Bux, Allah 236 cabinet crisis 210-11 Cabinet Mission 47-8, 51, 278, 308-9, 310, 311, 316, 369, 375, 408; expectations of Muslim League 41-2; negotiations 49; Paper 353; Plan 355, 356, 357, 359, 367, 372, 379, 380-1; proposals 268-73; stand of Hindu Mahasabha 273-4

425

Calcutta: control of 385-6; ‘Direct Action’ of Muslim League in 287-90; Great Calcutta Killing 42-5 Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill 28, 29, 35, 98, 99-100, 125, 126, 158, 183, 193, 204, 233, 406 Carter, M.O. 37, 139, 235, 324, 350 Census of 1941 123-6 Central National Muhammadan Association 65 Central Peace Committee 343 Chakrabarti, Brojen 324 Chakravarty, Bidyut 74 Chakravarty, Mukunda Chandra 138 Chakravarty, Naran 192 Chakravarty, Narendra Narayan 232 Chandal 318 Chandpur Relief Committee 324 Charfassion Mosque 120 char lands 405 Chatterjee, A.C. 51, 376, 378 Chatterjee, B.C. 32, 88, 182, 185, 404 Chatterjee, Chitta 139 Chatterjee, N.C. 46, 51, 54, 121, 124, 159, 179, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 193, 194, 204, 220, 225, 231, 262, 306, 324, 325, 352, 368, 376, 383, 384, 385, 386 Chatterjee, Ramananda 75, 78, 183 Chatterjee, Ramesh Chandra 132 Chatterjee, S.N. 288 Chatterjee, Sris Chandra 129 Chatterjee, Suniti Kumar 181, 186 Chatterji, Joya 22 Chattopadhyay, Rakhahari 368 Chaudhuri, Fazlul Quader 315 Chaudhuri, Malda Zahur Ahmed 119 Chaudhuri, Nawab Khan Bahadur Saiyid Nawab Ali 65 Chaudhuri, Nirad Chandra 22, 82, 116 Chaudhuri, Yusuf Ali 35 Chaudhury, Hasan Ali 237 Choudhury, Jagat Chandra 138

426

INDEX

Chowdhury, Hamidul Huq 346, 383

Chowdhury, Hari Krishna Pal 138

Chowdhury, Jatindra Roy 182

Chowdhury, K.C. 101

Chowdhury, Manoranjan 230, 231,

251

Chowdhury, Rajendra Lal Ray 46

Chowdhury, Raj Kumar Pal 138

Chowdhury, Sanat Kumar Ray 124,

184, 192, 194

Chowdhury, Sudhir Kumar Sen 290

Chundrigar, I. 313, 380, 381

Civil Disobedience movement 226,

230-2

Cocanada Session 1924 25

communal atmosphere: in Bankura

361-2; in Darjeeling 362; in

Howrah 362-4; in Noakhali 360-1

communalism 248-51, 370

communalization of province 116-50;

campaign by Muslim League

ministers 117-21; Census of 1941

123-6; communal frictions 121-3;

communal scene 1937-41 116-17;

Khulna and Dacca riots 126-50;

Muslim mass contact campaign of

Congress 116-17

communal ratio 35, 406; in services

102

Communist Party 260

Congress Nationalist Party 25;

activists, tension over torture of

235-8; Congress Working

Committee 103, 104; decision to

join Interim Government 312;

Muslim Mass Contact 116-17;

placating Muslims, policy of 194;

tactical mistakes of 26-7; working

of Muslim League 27-31

Congress Swaraj Party 65, 77

Congress Working Committee (CWC)

103, 104, 224, 276, 305, 370, 407;

Resolution of 30 August 306;

Resolution of 24 May 277; and

Wavell’s invitation to Nehru 279

Constituent Assembly 354-60, 367,

376, 408

Corpse Removal Organisation 303

Council of Action 376

Cow Preservation League 66

C.R. Formula 258-60, 407; reactions

of Hindu Mahasabha 260-2

Crear, Sir James 71

Cripps, Sir Stafford 40, 46, 52, 223-6,

265, 277, 326, 327, 379, 407

Cripps Mission 223-6

Cyclone in Midnapore 229-30

Dacca: post-riots trouble in 219-21;

riots. See Dacca riots of 1941;

Syama Prasad visited riot affected of

218-19; violence of Noakhali,

impact of 337-40

Dacca Nawab 32-3, 84, 86

Dacca riots 404

Dacca Riots Enquiry Committee 143

Dacca riots of 1941 32-3, 126-50,

194, 203; chariot festival and

143-5; confidential communication

about 134-5; confrontation at

Victoria Park 129; Dolai Khal 129;

escalation to villages 137-43; failure

of Bengal government 146-8;

impact on neighbouring districts

148-50; Malitola Mosque, attack

on 129; Namasudra, stabbing of

134; Namasudras asked to become

Muslims 142; riots enter a new

phase 143-6; visit of Bengal

Governor 142-3

Dainik Basumati 132

Dal, Arya Bir 408

Dal, Mahabir 408

Dalhousie Jute Mills 94

Darjeeling, communal atmosphere in

362

Dar-ul-harb 400

Dar-ul-islam 400

Das, Chittaranjan 24, 65, 66, 67, 401

Das, Girish Chandra 146

INDEX

Das, Janardan 250-1

Das, Narendra Nath 124

Das, Phagu 301

Das, Provash Kumar 182

Das, Sachindra Chandra 138

Das, Snehomoy 194

Das, Sudhir 291

Dasgupta, B. 352

Dasgupta, Bimalanada 138, 146

Dasgupta, Dhirendra Chandra 220

Dasgupta, Satish Chandra 350

Dash, Sir Arthur 29, 30, 37, 38, 289,

300

Dawn 273, 279

De, J. 350

Deb, Rashamoy 352

Debt Conciliation Boards 108

Debt Settlement Boards 30

Declaration of 3 June 1947 381-3 Defence of India Ordinance 183

Defence of India Rules 44

Defence Scheme 219

Dehlavi, S. Kander 86

Delhi Muslim Legislators Convention in April 1946 373 de Montmorency, Geoffrey 71

denial policy: boat 227, 230; and

Congress movement 228-9;

evacuation and protest against,

230-2; rice 227-8, 230

Deo, Shankar Rao 353

Desai, Bhulabhai 40, 275, 407-8

Desai-Liaqat Pact 408

Desher Bani 360, 361

Deshpande, V.G. 183, 192

Dhakeswari Cotton Mills 136

Dhawan, Rai Bahadur Belliram 184

Diktat 403

‘Direct Action’, of Muslim League

286-328, 409; 16 August 1946

290-8; 17 August 1946 298-302;

18 August 1946 302-3; in Calcutta

287-90; coalition ruled out 309-10;

defence of ministry 308-9; East

Bengal districts 314-18; interim

427

government, negotiations on entry

to 310-14; night of 15 August

1946 290; and Noakhali riots

318-28; no-confidence motion in

Bengal Legislative Assembly 307-8;

responsibility of ministry 305-7;

viceroy’s tour of Calcutta 303-5

Direct Action Day 288-90, 298, 305,

306, 308, 309, 315, 316, 320, 340,

380

Direct Action Resolution 344

Dolai Khal 129

Dol Jatra 318

Dominion Status to India 69, 223

Durga Puja 196, 317, 319

Durgeshnandini (drama) 250

Dutt, Akhil Chandra 186

Dutta, J.M. 350

Dutta, Kamini Kumar 307

Eastern Bengal 45-7

East Pakistan Renaissance Society

372

Elections of 1945-6 265-8

Engineer, Sir N.P. 275

Famine of 1943 37-9, 253-8

fara’id 400

Fazl-i-Husain, Sir 63, 64, 69-72

Finney, Philip E.S. 326-7

Floud, Sir Francis 97

Fort Gloster Mill 94

Fort William 296

Forward Bloc 32, 34, 220, 305, 321,

404; Students’ Bureau 378

French Revolution 404

Gandhi, Ava 350

Gandhi, Mahatma 24, 25, 40, 42, 47,

48, 50, 52, 63, 64, 66, 73-5, 76,

93, 103, 116, 134, 139, 184, 194,

226, 233, 236, 310-11, 318, 356,

359, 360-1, 372, 375, 379, 386,

401, 407, 408, 409; opinion on

inter-communal fights 349-50;

428

INDEX

reactions to Bihar violence 346;

rural seclusion in Ramdevpur 353;

travails in Noakhali 349-54

Gandhi, Manu 350, 353

Gandhi-Irwin Pact 71

Gandhi-Jinnah talks 371-2, 407

Gangee, Abdullah 86

Ganguly, Anath 127

Gani, Abdul 119

Gani, Maulavi Abdul 203

George, J. 128, 129, 147

Ghosal, Jyotirmay 194

Ghose, Nitish Chandra 102

Ghose, Pankaj Kumar 131

Ghosh, Hemendra Prasad 186

Ghosh, Kirti 321

Ghosh, P.C. 53

Ghosh, Shasanka Shekhar 352

Ghosh, Sudhir 354, 355

Ghuznavi, A.K. 87

Ghuznavi, Sir A.H. 28

Ghuznavi-Burdwan Pact of 1936 402

goalas 122

Godse, Nathuram 21

Gopal, Sarvepalli 226

Goswami, Anath Bandhu 141

Government of India Act of 1935 26

Great Calcutta Killing 42-5, 337, 338,

344, 365, 409, 410

‘Greater Bengal’ 371

Guha, A.B. 136, 146

Gumasthas 85

Gupta, Atul 383

Gupta, J.C. 138

Gupta, Jogesh Chandra 137

haat 317, 319

Habibullah, Khwaja 87

Habibullah, Nawab 86

Hailey, Malcolm 71

Hakim, Abdul 237

Halder, Babu Manoranjan 129

Hamid, A.M. Abdul 25

Hands, A.S. 234, 235

Haque, Mozammel 237

Harijan 226, 261

hartal 43, 51, 96, 290, 305, 316, 348,

378

Hashim, Abul 50, 346, 373

Hashmi, Jalaluddin 127, 237

Hashmi, Taj ul-Islam 24

Henderson, Arthur 343

Hendry, David 235

Herbert, Sir John 34, 208, 222, 227-8,

232, 404, 407

Hidayatullah, Sir Ghulam Hussein

286

Hindi-Sikh Minorities Protection

Board 349

Hinduism 179, 349

Hindu Mahasabha 21-2, 25-6, 40, 53,

69, 79, 125, 146, 160, 236, 237,

238, 250, 305, 327, 348, 368, 369,

375, 378, 404, 408; All India

Session of 1946 46; and

Anti-Communal Award Day in

August 1940 185-8; anti-Pakistan

propaganda of 251-3; Bengal

Provincial 51, 145, 149, 368, 370,

376, 379, 384; Calcutta Session of

1939 172-8; and Congress policy

of appeasement 77; Dacca riots and

190-2; defeatism and inertia 159;

demand for partition of Bengal

399; Khulna Provincial 158; look

into complaints of Bengalis and

Sikhs 77-8; against MacDonald

Award 64; Madura Session

December 1940 188-90;

Maharashtra Fund for relief 192;

more Bengal provincial meetings

193-7; and network of Hindu

organizations 162-3; in

no-confidence motion 95; open

session of Calcutta, June 1941

192-3; Pakistan Resolution,

campaign against 179-83; partition

of Bengal and reactions of 383-5;

reaching out to people 163-7;

reaction of Hindus 157-60;

INDEX

reactions on C.R. formula 260-2;

re-organization in Bengal 160-2;

resolution against Cripps proposals

225-6; rise of, deterioration of

communal relations and 31-3;

sovereign power 49-50; stand on

Cabinet Mission 273-4; Sukkur

and NWFP riots 184-5; support to

Haq 34-5; Syama Prasad

Mookerjee’s tour of East Bengal

167-72; Working Committee 276;

Working Committee of 180; and

work of Hindu sangathan 178;

works in Bengal during 1939-41

157-97

Hindu Mission 107, 179, 352

Hindu-Muslim rapproachment 236

Hindu-Muslim relationship 28, 67-9,

106-7, 186

Hindu-Muslim unity 185

Hindu Rashtra 189

Hindus 28, 404; Bengali 30; Calcutta

Municipal Amendment Bill and 29;

Cow Protection Leagues 68; East

Bengal 32; MacDonald Award of

1932 and 63-4; splitting 63-4;

Sukkur 184

Hindu Sakti Sangha 193

Hindu Sangathan 158

‘Hindustan group’ 275

Hindustan National Guard 52, 54,

365, 366

Hindusthan Standard 289, 290, 375

Hoare, Sir Samuel 72, 73

Holy Quran 122

Home Army 36

Hooghly, communal atmosphere in

364

Hornell, Sir William 102

Hossain, Aftab 209

Hossain, Khan Bahadur Syed

Moazzemuddin 248

Hossain, Latafat 101

Hossain, Nawab Mosharraf 248

Hosseini, Gholam Sarwar 45

429

Howrah, communal atmosphere in

362-4

Huq, Abdul 118

Huq, Fazlul 402, 23, 27, 28, 30, 33-6,

38, 39, 65, 82-94, 96-9, 100, 105,

117, 124, 131, 137, 140, 158, 193,

235, 236, 237, 241-2, 248, 249,

401, 403, 406; and cabinet crisis

210-11; expelled from Working

Committee and Council 214;

Progressive Coalition Ministry

216-19; Progressive Coalition Party

211-16; reaction to Cripps scheme

224-5; rift with Muslim League

204-10

Huq-Jinnah rift 209

Hussain, Khan Bahadur Musharraf 66

Hussain, Nawab Musharraf 24, 87

Hussain, Zakir 276

Husseni, Golam Sarwar 320

Ikramullah, Begum Shaista Suhrawardy

91

Imam, Ali 70

Imam, Hasan 70

Imam, Hussein 345

Imperial Legislative Council 65

Independent Proja Party 95

‘Independent States’ 403

India Act of 1935 76

India Cabinet Committee 265

Indian Moslem Association 65

Indian National Congress 40, 63, 75,

104, 146, 157, 158

Indian Union 380

Inqilab 273

Interim Government 274-9, 408;

Congress decision to join 312; and

Constituent Assembly 354-60;

inclusion of Muslim League in 313

Iqbal, Muhammad 105

Irwin, Lord 70, 71

Isharatullah, Md. 125

Islam, Kazi Nazrul 211

Ismail, Khan Bahadur K.M. 131, 251

430

INDEX

Ismail, Mohammed 275 Ismay, Lord 52, 381 Ispahani, M.A.H. 86, 100, 229, 346 jagirs 399 Jain, Padmaraj 180, 182, 192 Jamat ul Ulema 320 Janvrin, J.V.B. 139 Japanese attack, defence against 221-2 jihadi ideology: emergence of, among Muslim 22-6; sabiqi life style 23 Jenkins, Sir Evan 286, 310 jihad 288, 307, 400, 401 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 27, 30, 33-4, 39-42, 47-8, 50, 69, 70, 76, 87, 90, 91, 103, 104, 106, 181, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213-14, 224, 237, 241, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 286, 309, 313, 355, 356, 359, 360, 361, 373, 379, 380, 403, 404, 407, 409 John, R.S.T. 219 Joint Parliamentary Committee, 1934 76 Jumma prayer 119 Kabir, Humayun 83 Kachia Jubak Samiti 119 kafelas 288 kalima (Muslim prayer) 322, 400 Kanjilal, Kanak 352 Karikar, Hashim 317 Karim, Abdul 35, 118, 214 Karim, Muhammad Rezaul 185 Kashim, Khan Bahadur Abul 214 Kelkar, Narsimha Chintaman 67 Kesoram Cotton Mills 94 Khaliquzzaman, Chaudhry 90, 209 Khalistan 367 Khan, A.Z. 121 Khan, Abdus Salam 35 Khan, Aga 70, 73 Khan, Durwan Mohammed Safi 302 Khan, Ghaznafar Ali 313 Khan, Iftikhar Ahmad 347

Khan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar 274 Khan, Khan Abdul Jabbar 286 Khan, Khan Bahadur Fazlul 118 Khan, Khan Bahadur Hasheem Ali 214 Khan, Khizr Hayat 369 Khan, Liaqat Ali 41, 42, 278, 309, 346, 355, 356, 380, 407 Khan, Maulana Akram 125, 209, 406 Khan, N.M. 229, 347 Khan, Nawabzada Liaqat Ali 208 Khan, Shafat Ahmad 25, 71, 72, 312 Khan, Sikander Hyat 39, 70, 105, 236, 241 Khan, Sir Sikander Hyat 225, 403 Khan, Tamizuddin 85, 92, 95, 96, 237, 248, 402 Khanna, Meher Chand 236 khilafat 23, 24 Khilafat Committee 64, 96 Khulna: Muslims in 125; rape of Namasudra women in 125; riots 126-37 Kripalani, Acharya 351, 353, 357 Krishak Praja Party (KPP) 27, 28, 39, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89-90, 93, 95, 97, 105, 118, 127, 149, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 237, 317, 402 Krishak Praja Samity 92, 95 Krishak Samitis 93 Kundu, Nisith Nath 234 Kundu, Subodh Chandra 234 Kunzru, Pandit H.N. 276 kurbani 35, 66, 404 Lahiri, Ashutosh 183, 325 Lahore Resolution of 1940 33, 105, 373, 403 Lalmohan Mosque 118, 120 Lambrick, H.T. 116 Land Revenue Commission 97, 233 lathis 294, 295, 296, 300, 316, 339, 341, 364 Lawrence, Lord Pethick 325 Lawrence, Pethick 265 League-Congress alliance 180

INDEX

League-Congress Pact 180 League Working Committee 359 lebensraum 403 lingua franca 23 Linlithgow, Viceroy 91, 104, 105, 157, 224 Listowel, Lord 52 Llwellyn, J. 219 London Conference 356 Lord Privy Seal 40 Low, David Anthony 226 Lowe, H. 323 Lucknow Pact 410; of 1916 64, 69, 78, 84 Ludlow Jute Mill 94 Lumely, Sir Roger 207 lungi 23, 322 MacDonald Award 25, 63, 73-9, 82, 85, 86-7, 123-4, 125, 126, 148, 158, 164, 165-6, 167, 173, 176, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 194, 197, 204, 213, 217, 402, 409 Madaripur Sevasram 182 Madura Session of Hindu Mahasabha 188-90 Mahalanobis, N. 307 Maharashtra Fund for relief 192 Mahomedan Educational Conference 23 Mahtab, Hare Krishna 275 Majid, Maulvi Kazi Abdul 317 Majumder, Barada Kanta 352 Majumder, Dhiren 342 Majumder, Prafulla Chandra 251 maktabs 23 Malaviya, Madan Mohan 67, 68, 69, 75 Mallick, Mukunda Behari 88 Mallick, Pulin Bihari 249, 251 Mallick, Rajendra Nath 250 Mallik, Arijit Basu 194 Mandal, Birat Chandra 250 Mandal, J.N. 318 Mandal, Jogendra Nath 74, 249, 313, 381

431

Mandal, Md. Fazu 125 Mandal, Narendranath 250 Markovits, Claude 323 Martyn, P.D. 319 Mathot 85 Matthai, John 275 maulavis 64, 118, 119, 142, 401 Mazumder, Niharendu Datta 93 Mazumder, R.C. 130, 131 Mehdi, Sayed Mohammed 91 melas 119-20 Menon, V.P. 310 methor (sweeper) 123 Milad Sharif 123 Militancy and mobilization 364-7 millat 288, 399 Minorities Protection Board 274 Minto, Lord 327 Mir, Fakir-ud-din 340 Mirdha, Maulvi Ahmad Ali 317 Mirza, Nawabzada Kasem Ali 206 Mirza, Yusuf 211 Mistry, Elias 301 Mitra, Ashok 227, 338 Mitra, Jagdish Chandra 316 Mitra, Suresh Chandra 133 Momin, Khan Bahadur Abdul 211 Momin, Maulvi Abdul 100, 102 Mondal, Illias 287 Montagu, Edwin 66 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms 63, 64, 66, 72, 73, 82 Montagu Report 186 Montford reforms 69, 71 Mookerjee, Sir Ashutosh 66, 84, 98 Mookerjee, Sir Manmatha Nath 145, 149, 181, 183 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad 21, 29, 31, 32, 33-6, 38, 40, 44, 45, 54, 78, 95, 99, 100, 131, 132, 136, 138, 140, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 193, 213, 214, 215, 216, 224, 230, 231, 232, 250, 308, 318, 320, 324, 346, 348, 365-7, 368, 370, 371, 372, 375, 376, 378, 379, 381, 383, 402,

432

INDEX

404, 405, 406, 408, 409, 410; allegation about riot 46; appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University 88-9; Communal Award 187; against inclusion of Hindu majority districts in Pakistan 52-3; launched Hindustan National Guard 52; letter demanding for Bengali Home Army 222-3; in Madura Session 189-90; protest against Congress movement (1942) 232-3; resignation of 238-42; separate state of West Bengal, movement for 49-50; at Shraddhanand Park meeting 186; tension over torture of Congress activists 235-8; understanding with Subhas 179; views on Cripps offer 225-6; visited riot affected of Dacca 218-19 Moonje, B.S. 46, 65, 67, 74, 75, 77, 184, 224, 325 Moplah riots of 1921 184 Morgan, G. 307 Mountbatten, Viscount 49, 368, 386 Muhammad, Mollah Jan 102 Mukherje, Madhushree 38 Mukherjee, B.K. 383 Mukherjee, Devendranath 352 Mukherjee, Dhiresh 181 Mukherjee, Harendra Kumar 185 Mukherjee, Madhusree 227 Mukherjee, Radha Kumud 78 Mukherjee, Santosh K. 182 Mukherjee, Subodh Chandra 129 Mukherjee, Taraknath 249 Mukherji, H.K. 185 Mukherji, Haro Prasad 192 mullas 401 munajat (prayer) 288 Municipal Amendment Bill 186 Munshi, K.M. 196 munsiff 108 Muslim League 24, 26, 38-44, 70, 125, 149, 179, 241-2, 278, 279,

311, 312, 322, 327, 345, 355-8, 369, 370, 374, 376, 380, 381, 382, 384-5, 402, 404, 406, 407, 408; acceptance of Fazlul Huq’s Premiership 83; Bengal Provincial 33-4, 249, 372, 385; Calcutta District 33, 208, 249; Coalition Ministry 27-31, 32; Conference of 1934 77; Congress playing second fiddle to 90-1; Congress policy and 26-7; Council meeting in Bombay on 29 July 1946 278-9; ‘Direct Action’ 286-328; exhorting volunteers 314-15; expectations of, Cabinet Mission and 41-2; Huq inclination towards 92-3; Huq-Jinnah feud 33-4; Huq’s rift with 204-10; inclusion in interim government, Wavell’s anxiety for 313; jihadi mentality 28; join interim government 47-8; Lahore session of 39-40; Lucknow session of 1937 193; Lucknow session of 1938 39; Ministries 22; National Guards 52, 120, 293, 296, 315; Parliamentary Board 86, 87, 88; performance in legislature in Bengal 83; politics with Bihar refugees 347-9; and Progressive Coalition Ministry 34-6; return to power 248-9; and Scheduled Castes Federation 318; session of December 1930, 105; Sirajgunge Conference of 1939 28, 98; supporters of 86; totalitarian and fanatical doctrine of 51; Working Committee 48, 104, 208, 286 Muslim National Guards 39, 235, 317, 320, 323, 365 Muslims: backwardness of 72; Bengali 23, 24; Bengal Pact and 65-6; emergence of jihadi ideology 22-6; identity 23; intellectual development 85; liberal nationalists 25; maktabs 23; Mullick Bazar

INDEX

296-7; peasantry in East Bengal 84; schism in 34; ulama 24, 25 Nabayuga 211 Nag, P. 132 Nagari, Abdul Wahid Baqai 237 Nagarmull, Surajmull 234 naibs 85 Namasudra 125-7, 134, 142, 250, 377 Namaz 400 Nandy, Maharaja Manindra Chandra 24 Nandy, Maharaja Sris Chandra 88 Narayan, J.P. 358 Nashkar, Hem Chandra 93 Nasrullah, K. 338, 350 Nath, Shib Chandra 141 National Defence Council 207-8 Nayar, Sushila 350 Nazimuddin, Khwaja 32, 33, 34, 38, 42, 83, 86, 89, 147, 149, 206, 210, 211, 213, 234, 237, 242, 248-9, 296, 310, 406, 407 Nehru, Jawaharlal 41, 47, 48, 50, 90, 274, 275, 279, 303 n 304, 310-12, 314, 321, 326, 345, 353, 354, 355, 356, 365, 371, 372, 386, 409 Nehru, Motilal 65, 69 Nehru Report 25, 69 New Bengal Association 383, 384 New Delhi Hindu Sabha 77 Nikhil Banga Praja Samity 84, 86 Nilmani, Sudhir 291, 292 Nishtar, Sardar Abdur Rab 275, 313, 345, 346 Noakhali: communal atmosphere in 360-1; Gandhi travails in 349-54; minority life in 361 ‘Noakhali day’ 325 Noakhali riots 318-24; Bihar, impact on 344-6; Calcutta, impact on 340-4; Dacca, impact on 337-40; imperialist response 327-8 Non-Cooperation movement 65, 69, 401; revocation of 64

433

Noon, Firoz Khan 347 Nooruddin, K. 86, 295 North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) 52, 69, 90, 100, 274, 286, 312, 357, 401; Congress coalition 39; Congress performance in 90; restoration of Hindu 176; riots 184-5 Osman, S.M. 346 Pain, Baroda Prasanna 249 ‘Pakistan Day’ 33 ‘Pakistan group’ 275 Pakistan Resolution 105, 209; Hindu Mahasabha campaign against 179-83 Pakistan Scheme 185, 187, 188, 194, 209 Pal, Bipin Chandra 24 Pal, Mahesh Chandra 138 Panchasher Manwantar, ban on 38 Pangsa Union Board 317 Partition of Bengal: control of Calcutta 385-6; Declaration of 3 June 1947 381-3; doubts about feasibility of 379-81; reactions of Hindu Mahasabha 383-5 Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai 275, 278, 312, 313-14, 326, 345, 355, 372, 380, 381 Permanent Settlement 89, 92, 97, 402 Peshwari, Molla Jan Mohammad 120 Pilditch, D. 106 Pinnell, Leonard George 227 Poddar, Kesoram 66 Poona Pact 25 Prakash, Indra 192-3 Pranabananda, Swami 182 Prasad, Rajendra 76, 103, 134, 139, 141, 142, 275, 381 Presidency Area (Emergency) Security Act 344 Progressive Coalition Ministry 241-2 Progressive Coalition Party 211-16,

434

INDEX

232, 235, 237; ministry at work,

216-19

Progressive Muslim Party 34, 234

proselytization 179

Provincial Autonomy in Bengal 82-109; agrarian legislation, adverse impact of 107-9; black bills 97-102; changed power 103-6; communal clashes, cause of 106-7; communal ratio in services, implementation of 102; communal virus in police 106; Congress playing second fiddle to Muslim League 90-1; departure of Shamsuddin from ministry 96-7; Huq Cabinet, formation of 82-9; Huq controlled by Muslim League 97; KPP programme, tone down of 89-90; Nausher Ali, dissent of 94-5; no-confidence against coalition (2 August 1938) 95-6; quitting of office by Congress Ministries 103-6; Sarat’s attempts to break up ministry 93-4; trouble within coalition 92-3 Provincial Muslim League 65, 237

Provincial Press Advisory Committee

132

Punjabi Hindu Bhratri Sabha 77

Punjab National Unionist Party 64, 70

Punjab Provincial Muslim League 69

pyjamas 23

Qazi 400

Quit India movement 36, 40, 226,

309, 405

Rafiuddin, Muhammad 294

Rahim, Sir Abdur 65, 86

Rahman, Azizar 315

Rahman, Fazlur 65, 206

Rahman, Maulavi Syed Habibur 203

Rahman, Obaidur 118

Rahman, S.A. 383

Rai, Ganpat 77

Rai, Lala Lajpat 67, 409

Raikut, Prasanna Dev 88

Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti 40, 275;

formula 258-60

Rajah, M.C. 74

Rajah-Moonje Pact 74

Raksha Dal 182

Ram, Jagjivan 275, 381

Ramayana 318

Ramchandran, M.P. 353

Ram Sena 183

Ramzan 288, 316, 400

Ranga, N.G. 276

Rashid, A. 350

Rashid, Abdur 119

Rashid, Khan Bahadur K.A. 129

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha 54,

365

Rathajatra 120, 121, 143, 194

Ray, D.N. 250

Ray, Jamini Kumar 352

Ray, K.N. 132

Ray, Manoranjan 137

Ray, R.E.A. 139

Reid, Sir Robert 89, 95, 96, 102, 107

Reign of Terror 235

Rentiers 98-9

rice denial 227-8

Ripon College League 292

Round Table Conferences in London

(1930) 73-4

Roy, Anil Chandra 136

Roy, B.P. Singh 88, 89, 97, 121

Roy, Bidhan Chandra 75, 346

Roy, Bijoy Prasad Singh 134

Roy, Ishwar Chandra 138

Roy, Khagendranath 131

Roy, Khitis 321

Roy, Kiran Shankar 50, 212, 217, 290,

307, 308, 309, 346, 372-3, 380

Roy, Kshetramohan 230

Roy, Mahim Chandra 138

Roy, Murari Mohan 138

Roy, Nepal Chandra 183

Roy, Prafulla Chandra 186

INDEX

Roy, Rai Saheb Rajendralal 321

Roy, Raja Rammohun 386

Roy, Ranjit 129

Roy, Santi Ranjan 352

Roy, Sudhir 321

Roychowdhury, Rajendralal 231

Rural Primary Education

(Amendment) Bill 234

435

Secondary Education Bill 28, 29, 35,

98-9, 126, 183, 186, 193, 233,

249, 406

Sen, Atul Chandra 137, 146

Sen, K.P. 318

Sen, Promode Kumar 147

Sen, Shila 83

Sengupta, Amiya 352

Sengupta, Amrita Lal 191

Sengupta, Ananta Kumar 191

sabiqi (traditional) life style 23

Sengupta, Babu Kedareshwar 134

Saha, Mahesh Chandra 141

Sengupta, Indranarayan 186

Saha, Pratap Chandra 141

Sepoy Mutiny 193

Saha, Ram Chandra 141

Seth, Maheswar Dayal 236

sampradaik danga 132

Shafi, Mohammad 293

Sanga, Rana 194

Shafi, Sk. Md. 125

sangathan 404

Shah, Abdul Hamid 237

Sanyal, Nalinakshya 384

Shah, Mohammad 403

Sapru, Sir Tej Bahadur 224

Shah, Punjabi Habib 65

Sarabhai, Mridula 353

Shahabuddin, K. 86, 131, 139, 248

Sardar, Rashid 302

Shakti Sangh 54

Sarkar, Bidhu 179

Shankar, V. 278, 314, 380

Sarkar, Debadidev 362

Sharma, Indra Dutt 292

Sarkar, Gurudas 320

Sher-e-Bangla 91

Sarkar, Maulvi Abu Hosain 100

Shuddhi 159

Sarkar, Nalini Ranjan 27, 34, 83, 86,

Siddique, Pir Abu Bakr 25

88, 89, 92, 346, 371

Siddiqui, Abdur Rahman 86

Sarkar, Nil Ratan 78

Sikhistan 367

Sarkar, Nripendra Nath 76

Simla Conference of 1945 41, 262-5,

Sarkar, Radhanath 320

275, 408

Sarvadhikari, Deva Prasad 75

Simla Deputation in 1906 84

Sarwar, Gholam 323, 353

Simon, Sir John 69

Sattar, Abdul 293

Sind Provincial Hindu Conference 184

satyagraha 184

Sind Provincial Muslim League 286

Satyanand, Swami 107, 185

Singh, Baldev 275

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar 31, 32,

Singh, Giani Kartar 409

54, 124, 157-63, 159, 165, 167,

174, 175, 179, 181, 190, 192, 193, Singh, Jay 340

215, 224, 225, 236, 253, 403, 404 Singh, Kartar 340

Singh, Master Tara 50, 225, 236, 371,

Scheduled Caste Assembly Party 93

409

Scheduled Caste Organization 250

Scheduled Castes 63, 74, 75, 99, 122, Singh, Sardar Baldev 312, 356

124, 141, 212, 213, 313, 359, 378, Siraji, Maulana Ismail Hossein 25

Sitaram (drama) 250

381; Federation 318

Sobhan, K.F. 350

‘Scorched earth’ policy 226-7

Spens, Patrick 310

Seal, Acharya Brajendra Nath 78

436

INDEX

Srinivasan, Rao Bahadur 74

Stephens, Ian Melville 309

Sufi 206

Suhrawardy, Abdullah 67

Suhrawardy, H.S. 33, 34, 38, 43, 44,

46, 50, 51, 66, 86, 87, 94, 96, 106,

208, 209, 233, 234, 235, 237, 248,

279, 293, 296, 306, 307, 308-9,

310, 371-3, 374, 375, 380, 386,

406, 408, 410

Suhrawardy, Shaheed 206, 299-300

Sukkur Relief Fund 185

Sukkur riots 184-5

Swaraj 24, 64, 66, 84

Swarajists 401

Swarajya 215

‘Syama-Huq’ ministry 34

Syama Prasad Mookerjee: tour of East

Bengal 167-72

Syed, Sir G.M. 286

Tabaljungs 288

Tagore, Rabindranath 78, 79, 386

Tariqah i Muhammadiah 400

Tarun Jain Sangha 196

tawhid 400

Tayal, S.P. 287

Taylor, S.G. 38, 43, 44, 47, 229, 296,

319

tazias 123

Thakur, Brojesh Chandra Chakrabarty

231

Thakur, P.R. 291, 377, 381

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 189

Tottenham, R. 188, 191, 224

Trade Union Congress 96, 378

Treaty of Sevres 64

Tuker, Francis 298

Turbulent Areas Ordinance 220

Twynam, Henry 107

Tyson, J.D. 42, 43, 44, 49, 51, 289,

340, 374

ulama 24, 25, 26, 64

United Muslim Party 87

Vir Dal 54

Wadud, Maulavi Abdul 119

Wahhabis 400

Waliullah, Shah 400

Wavell, Lord 41, 46, 47-8, 355, 356,

407, 408; convince Nehru and

Gandhi 310-11; and inclusion of

Muslim League in interim

government 313; new plan 265;

tour of Calcutta 303-5

Wavell, Viscount 368

West Bengal: demand for 373-9;

proposed state of 385; separate

province for 48-54, 367-71

Willingdon, Lord 71, 72, 381

Woodhead, Sir J.A. 97, 100

Yakub, Sir Muhammad 77

Zaman, A.M.A. 100, 101, 102, 206

Zaman, Khan Sahib W. 318

zamindar 273

zamindaris 399

zamindari system 27