WHY NO MEMORIAL IN KOLKATA TO THE THOUSANDS OF HINDUS WHO WERE MURDERED BY MUSLIMS AT JINNAH AND SUHRAWARDY'S BEHEST ON 16 AUGUST, 1946 AND THEREAFTER AT NOAKHALI TO FORCE PARTITION?

WHY NO MEMORIAL IN KOLKATA TO THE THOUSANDS OF HINDUS WHO WERE MURDERED BY MUSLIMS AT JINNAH AND SUHRAWARDY'S BEHEST ON 16 AUGUST, 1946 AND THEREAFTER AT NOAKHALI TO FORCE PARTITION?

Indrajit Dutt Yes, in Kolkata there were Hindu reprisals on Muslims, true, after the Great Calcutta Killing was unleashed on the Hindus, but far less in number. But the Noakhali massacre of Hindus by Muslims was a sheer one-sided carnage, a genocide of horrendous proportions. These killings were engineered by the All India Muslim League to force Hindu hands into partitioning India and proved eminently successful as the Congress was ill-equipped to combat such perfidy with an equal resistive force, being a toothless organisation in terms of armed preparedness for meeting such an eventuality. It needed an Abraham Lincoln to meet the challenge and conserve the territorial integrity of the emerging nation but all that we had was a non-violent Mahatma who was totally incapable constitutionally to face such a challenge.

In 1938 Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress President at Haripura had exhorted the Congress high command to build up a disciplined army of Congress cadres for the purpose of fighting for independence. But it had fallen on deaf ears as the placating supremo of the Congress gullibly took Jinnah to be a harmless countryman of common grievance and Bose a dangerous, deluded, deviated revolutionary bent upon derailing the non-violent movement for freedom and setting it on anarchic lines. Bose must have envisaged in advance the impending danger of disintegration of the emerging nation at the hands of Muslim secessionists aided by the devious British imperialists, both of whom stood to gain from breaking India, a fate that only a strong cadre-based Congress could effectively resist and thwart. As it was, Bose's radical proposals were read by the Mahatma in an altered light and deemed dangerous for India's fortunes and he was heinously sidelined from Congress politics.

The scene changes. Bose goes missing post 18 August, 1945. The following year Jinnah loses his chance in the Northwestern provinces as his party suffers heavy losses in the provincial elections and he sees his only chance in Bengal where the Muslim League is in government. He instructs his deputy, the Bengal Chief Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, to go for Direct Action on 16 August to force Partition. The Congress and the Bengali Hindus 🕉 are taken unawares as genocide is unleashed killing 6000 Hindus. Reprisals from Hindus follow but the genocide shifts seat to Noakhali where for over two months thousands of Hindus are murdered, raped and converted till Gandhiji agrees to partition the motherland to avoid a terrible nationwide civil war. As stated earlier, Jinnah could have his way thus because the Congress did not have either a militia or an army of disciplined cadres who could be mobilised to counter the violent Muslim mobs running amock at Jinnah's behest. 

Bose was betrayed in 1939. Now the nation was betrayed by the Bengali Muslims and the capitulating Congress leadership while the perfidious British facilitated the dismemberment of India to suit geopolitical exigencies.

The question now arises as to who to mourn -- as Debjit Banerjee aptly pointed out -- the victim or the assasin? I leave you to ponder and arrive at your own considered conclusion.

Written by Sugata Bose