This is in continuation to our earlier article Understanding West Bengal politics The Partition – 1905 and the Reunification – 1911 . The
divide-and-rule policy of the British continued to be their way of operation till
the last date of their rule. Reading
historians’ version about Bengal partition we will get different reasons for
the partition in 1947. Still after 68 years exact reason for this partition is
yet to be ascertained. Let us go through few historians’ opinion.
According to
Harun-or-Rashid, a Bangladeshi historian from University of Chittagong,
published a paper in 1985, scrutinized the impact of Great Calcutta Killing
(1946). He wrote that Hindu Mahasabha and some
other Hindu leaders (including a section of Bengal Congress) did not launch
their movement for a separate West Bengal province immediately after the
Calcutta-Noakhali-Tipperah riots. They did it in February 1947 when some kind
of Pakistan became almost certain following Attlee's famous declaration.
Suranjan Das, a
noted historian, wrote in 1991 that 'the outbreaks were all intimately
connected with developments in institutional politics centring on the Pakistan
movement. So the term Partition Riots can be used to describe all these
outbreaks. ... These riots convinced the overwhelming majority of Hindus and
Muslims that the partition of the subcontinent was inevitable.'
Joya Chatterji, in
1995, claimed in her book that it was Hindu communal mobilization on the part
of the Bengal Congress and Hindu Mahasabha which increasingly unified in the
face of Muslim League's challenge and made partition inevitable.She emphasizes the communalization of Hindu
‘bhadralok’ politics which served as the main impetus for Partition.
Partha Chatterjee,
in 1997, wrote in his book, 'It is also historically inaccurate to suggest that
the decision to partition the province of Bengal along religious-demographic
lines actually involved the participation of masses of people. As far as opinion
in Bengal was concerned, the relevant decisions were made by members of the
Bengal Assembly, elected on the basis of a very restricted suffrage. There was
some campaigning on the issue of partition in 1947, both in favour and against,
but by the standards of mass agitation of the time they involved small numbers
of people. In fact the evidence from the period suggests that the incidents
that most strongly framed all discussion on the subject were in fact the
communal killings in Calcutta in August 1946 and those in Noakhali a few weeks
later. These were perhaps the most powerful 'mass actions' organized by Hindu
and Muslim communalists, contributing to partition'.
So it is
absolutely clear from the citations above, even historians are yet to conclude
to a particular reason for the Bengal partition in 1947, so are we. We will try
to get into few incidents which happened before partition and all were
considered as the one of the main reasons for partition either by one or the other
historian.
Direct Action Day
– 16 August 1946
The
'Direct Action' was declared by the Muslim League Council to show the strength
of Muslim feelings both to British and Congress because Muslims feared if the
British just pulled out, Muslims would surely suffer at the hands of
overwhelming Hindu majority, which resulted in the worst communal riots that
British India had seen. The
1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the
British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed an initial plan of composition of
the new Dominion of India and its government. However, soon an alternative plan
to divide the British Raj into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority
Pakistan was proposed bythe Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The
Congress rejected the alternative proposal outright. The Muslim League planned
a general strike on 16 August, terming it as Direct Action Day, to protest this
rejection and assert its demand for a separate Muslim homeland. Following
Jinnah's declaration of 16 August as the Direct Action Day, acting on the
advice of R.L. Walker, the then Chief Secretary of Bengal, the Muslim League
Chief Minister of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy requested Governor of Bengal
Sir Frederick Burrows to declare a public holiday on that day. Governor Burrows
agreed. Walker made this proposal with the hope that the risk of conflicts,
especially those related to picketing, would be minimized if government
offices, commercial houses and shops remained closed throughout Calcutta on the
16th. As a counter-blast to Muslim League, Mr. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, leader
of the Congress Party in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, addressing a meeting
at Ballygunge on the 14th, urged the Hindus to keep their shops open and
to continue their business as usual and not to submit to the hartal.
The Star
of India, an influential local Muslim newspaper, edited by Raghib Ahsan Muslim
League MLA from Calcutta published detailed program for the day. The program
called for complete general strike in all spheres of civic, commercial and
industrial life except essential services. The notice proclaimed that
processions would start from multiple parts of Calcutta, Howrah, Hooghly,
Metiabruz and 24 Parganas, and would converge at the foot of the Ochterlony Monument
(now known as Shaheed Minar) where a joint mass rally presided over by
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy would be held.
Troubles
started on the morning of the 16 August. Even before 10 o'clock Police
Headquarters at Lalbazar had reported that there was excitement throughout the
city, that shops were being forced to close, and that there were many reports
of brawls, stabbing and throwing of stones and brickbats. These were mainly
concentrated in the North-central parts of the city like Rajabazar, Kelabagan, College
Street, Harrison Road, Colootolla and Burrabazar.
The
meeting began around 2 pm though processions of Muslims from all parts of
Calcutta had started assembling since the midday prayers. A large number of the
participants were reported to have been armed with iron bars and lathis. The
main speakers were Khawaja Nazimuddin and Chief Minister Suhrawardy. Nazimuddin
in his speech preached peacefulness and restraint but rather spoilt the effect
by asserting that till 11 o'clock that morning all the injured persons were Muslims
and the Muslim community had only retaliated in self-defence.
Hindus
and Sikhs were just as fierce as the Muslims in the beginning. The figures of
Muslim casualties were heavier as Hindu retaliation took pace, Muslims started
migrating towards East Bengal which was Muslim Majority and the stories of
Muslim Massacre in West Bengal fuelled the later Anti-Hindu riots in East
Bengal which was Muslim Majority.
Violence
in Calcutta, between 1945 and 1946, changed from Indian versus European to
Hindu versus Muslim as British diverted Indian’s attention form anti-European
to Hindu-Muslim through their divide and rule policy. Indian Christians and
Europeans were generally free from molestation as the tempo of Hindu-Muslim
violence quickened. The decline of anti-European feelings as communal
Hindu-Muslim tensions increased during this period is evident from the casualty
numbers. During the riots of November 1945, casualty of Europeans and
Christians were 46; in the riots of the 10–14 February 1946, 35; from 15
February to the 15 August, only 3; during the Calcutta riots from 15 August
1946 to 17 September 1946, none.
Noakhali
Genocide
Noakhali
did not witness any violence during the Direct Action Days. Though it was quiet
the tension was building up. The Eastern Command Headquarters in Kolkata
received reports, indicating tension in the rural areas of Noakhali and
Chittagong districts, a week after the Direct Action Days, six weeks before the
genocide in Noakhali.Village poets and ballads composed anti-Hindu poems and
rhymes, which they used to recite and sing at the market place.
The
Noakhali riots also known as the Noakhali genocide or the Noakhali
Carnage, was a series of massacres, rapes, abductions and forced
conversions of Hindus and looting and arson of Hindu properties, perpetrated by
the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of
Bengal in October–November.
1946, a year
before India's independence from British rule. It affected the areas under the
Ramganj, Begumganj, Raipur, Lakshmipur, Chhagalnaiya and Sandwip police
stations in Noakhali district and the areas under Hajiganj, Faridganj,
Chandpur, Laksham and Chauddagram police stations in Tipperah district, a total
area of more than 2,000 square miles. (The then undivided district of Noakhali
consisted of the present districts of Noakhali, Lakshmipur and Feni, now in
Bangladesh. and Tipperah. The then undivided district of Tipperah consisted of
the present districts of Comilla, Chandpur and Brahmanbaria, now in Bangladesh)
In 1937,
Gholam Sarwar Husseini, the scion of a Muslim Pir family, was elected to the
Bengal Legislative Assembly on a Krishak Praja Party ticket. However, in the
1946 elections, he lost to a Muslim League candidate. Gholam Sarwar's father and
grandfather were pious Muslims and had led lives of penance. Their family
happened to be the hereditary khadims at the Diara Sharif in Shyampur,
revered as a holy place by Muslims and Hindus alike. After the Direct Action
Day riots in Kolkata, Husseini began to deliver provocative speeches, inciting
the Muslim masses to take revenge for the Kolkata riots. In some places Hindu
shops began to be boycotted. In the Ramganj and Begumganj police station areas,
the Muslim boatmen refused to ferry Hindu passengers.In the first week of
September, the Muslim miscreants looted the Hindu shops in Sahapur market. The
Hindus were harassed and molested when they were returning to their native
villages from Kolkata to spend the Puja holidays. From 2 October on wards there
were frequent instances of stray killings, snatching and looting.
On 10
October, the day of Kojagari Lakshmi Puja, when the Bengali Hindus were busy in
puja activities, the Muslim League leadership started a false rumour that the
Sikhs had attacked Diara Sharif. As the rumour spread Muslims from the
surrounding areas began to assemble at the Diara Sharif. Gholam Sarwar
instructed the Muslim masses to march towards the Sahapur market. Another
Muslim League leader Kasem too arrived at the Sahapur market with his private
army, then known as Kasemer Fauz.
The massacre of the Hindu population
started on 10 October and continued unabated for about a week. It is estimated
that over 5,000 Hindus were killed, hundreds of Hindu women were raped and
thousands of Hindu men and women were forcibly converted to Islam.Around 50,000
to 75,000 survivors were sheltered in temporary relief camps in Comilla,
Chandpur, Agartala and other places. Apart from that, around 50,000 Hindus that
remained marooned in the affected areas were under the strict surveillance of
the Muslims, where the administration had to say. In some areas, the Hindus had
to obtain permits from the Muslim leaders in order to travel outside their
villages. The forcibly converted Hindus were coerced to give written
declaration that they have converted to Islam on their own free will. Sometimes
they were confined in houses not their own and only allowed to be in their own
house, when an official party came for inspection. The Hindus were forced to
pay subscription to the Muslim League and payjiziah, the protection tax paid byzimmis
in an Islamic state.
Haran Chandra Ghosh Choudhuri, the only Hindu representative to
Bengal Legislative Assembly from the district of Noakhali, described the
incidents as the organised fury of the Muslim mob. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the
former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and the former Finance
Minister of Bengal, dismissed the argument that the Noakhali incidents were
ordinary communal riots. He described the events as a planned and concerted
attack by the majority community on the minority community.
Mohandas Gandhi camped in Noakhali for four months and toured the
district in a mission to restore peace and communal harmony. However, the peace
mission failed to restore confidence among the survivors, who couldn't be
permanently rehabilitated in their villages. In the meanwhile, the Congress
leadership accepted the Partition of India and the peace mission and other
relief camps were abandoned. The majority of the survivors migrated to West
Bengal, Tripura and Assam.
Bengali Hindu
Homeland Movement
The law
and order situation had rapidly deteriorated in Kolkata after the riots. When
the Inspector General of Police asked for 50% increase in the Calcutta Armed
Police Force, the Prime Minister HuseynShaheedSuhrawardy insisted that the new
recruits must all be Punjabi Muslims to which Governor Frederick Burrows
readily agreed. To speed up training they must be ex-servicemen. As suitable
candidates were not found in Bengal, 600 Punjabi Muslims were recruited from
the Punjab. When the new recruits were given preferential treatment by the
Muslim League government, the existing Gurkha policemen resented and the former
engaged themselves in an armed conflict with the Gurkha policemen. The Muslim
police used to enter Bengali Hindu households and molest women. On 12 April,
the police entered a Bengali Hindu household in Manicktala and beat up the
residents. One, ChhayalataGhosh, who was pregnant at that time, was severely
injured. News spread out that on 14 April another Bengali Hindu housewife was
raped by the police. Another such incident which took place on 100, Harrison
Road, grabbed the headlines for quite some time. The Calcutta Riot Enquiry
Committee observed that the police used to arrest young Bengali Hindu boys, so
as to prevent them from appearing before the Committee in order to provide
evidence. The Deputy Police Commissioner of Kolkata, Shams-ud-Doha
systematically arrested Hindu youths upon identification by one single Muslim.
He believed he would teach Hindus a lesson that way.
The
Muslim League government imposed pre-censorship on news comments criticizing
the police excesses. Through a special ordinance, the government imposed
penalties on Hindu-owned media like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Hindustan Standard,
AnandabazarPatrika and Modern Review and their security deposits confiscated.
After it became apparent that the division of India
on the basis of the Two-Nation Theory will almost certainly result in
the partition of the Bengal province along religious lines, Bengal provincial
Muslim League leader Hossain Sahid Suhrawardy came up with a radical plan to
create an independent Bengal state that won’t join either Pakistan or India and
remain un-partitioned. Suhrawardy realised that if Bengal is partitioned then
it will be economically disastrous for east Bengal as all coal mines,
all jute mills but two and other industrial plants will certainly go
to the western part since these were in an overwhelmingly Hindu majority area.
Most important of all, Kolkata, then the largest city in India, an
industrial and commercial hub and the largest port will also go to the western
part. Suhrawardy floated his idea on 24 April 1947 at a press conference in
Delhi.
However, the plan directly ran counter to
the Muslim League’s, which was a political party during the period of the
British Rule which advocated the creation of a separate Muslim-majority nation,
demand of the creation of a separate Muslim homeland on the basis of two-nation
theory. Initially Bengal provincial Muslim League leadership opinion was
divided. Barddhaman’s League leader AbulHashim supported it. On
the other hand Nurul Amin and Mohammad Akram Khan initially
opposed it. But Muhammad Ali Jinnah realized the validity of
Suhrawardy’s argument and gave his tacit support to the plan. After
Jinnah’s approval, Suhrawardy started gathering support for his plan.
On the other hand in Congress side, only a handful
of leaders agreed to the plan. Among them was the influential Bengal provincial
congress leader Sarat Chandra Bose, the elder brother
of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Kiran Shankar Roy. However, most
other Bengal Provincial Congress Committee leaders and Congress leadership
including Nehru and Patel rejected the plan. The Hindu
nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Dr.Shyama
Prasad Mookerjee vehemently opposed it. Their opinion was that the
plan is nothing but a ploy by Suhrawardy to stop the partition of the state so
that the industrially developed western part including the city of Kolkata
remains under League control. They also opined that even though the plan asked
for a sovereign Bengal state, in practice it will be a virtual Pakistan and the
Hindu minority will be at the mercy of the Muslim majority forever.
Dr.Shyama Prasad Mookerjee adopted causes to
protect Hindus against what he believed to be the communal
propaganda and the divisive agenda of the Muslim League. Mookerjee
and his future followers would always cite inherent Hindu practices
of tolerance and communal respect as the reason for a healthy,
prosperous and safe Muslim population in the country in the first place.
His views were strongly affected by the Noakhali
genocide in East Bengal, where mobs belonging to the Muslim league
massacred Hindus in large numbers.
Dr. Mookerjee was initially a strong opponent of
the Partition of India, but following the communal riots of 1946-47,
Dr.Mookerjee strongly disfavoured Hindus continuing to live in a
Muslim-dominated state and under a government controlled by the Muslim League.
Actually, with his prolific political stature and influence, Dr.Mookerjee
traumatised Jinnah, Suhrawardy and other Muslim Leaguers for their plan of
Pakistan with Muslim dominated areas when the Lion of India roared with a
demand for the Hindu dominated areas for Bengali Hindus in the Western part of
Bengal.
Unless, Dr.Shyama Prasad Mookerjee partitioned
Pakistan to create West Bengal and proclaimed the safety and security of
Bengali Hindus form the clutch of Muslims, the majority Bengali Hindus had to
face the same eventualities as now being faced by Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh
and the Hindu minorities in Pakistan.
Three of the
incidents cited above were claimed to be the reason for partition of Bengal by
different historians and none can converge to a single cause of partition. The
youth of post India independence have a different sense of history. In an
opinion poll conducted by The Outlook in 1997 amongst 18-25 years old from
major cities of India showed that they also can hardly identify the reason of
partition. 21% identified Noakhali as the reason and 53% identified
JallianwalaBagh!!
The Boundary Commission headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe decided on the
territorial demarcation between the two newly created provinces – India and
East Pakistan. The process was done hurriedly and has left few unresolved
problems pertaining to India-East Pakistan border, presently India-Bangladesh
border. We will try to highlight those in our next blog.
References
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Good research work.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate the hark work of the Author.