Remembering the ‘Great Calcutta Killings’: When Jinnah’s ‘direct action’ caused a bloodbath

Sub: History

Sec: Modern India

Context:

A year before colonial rule in the subcontinent ended, Calcutta (now Kolkata) witnessed a bloodbath which claimed thousands of lives.
The ‘Great Calcutta Killings’ of 1946, which went on from August 16 to 19, were the single most violent massacre in the lead-up to Independence and Partition.

Call for ‘direct action’

By August 1946, relations between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress had frayed beyond repair.
After the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 1946, which had proposed a loose federal structure for post-colonial India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah had called for ‘direct action’ on August 16.
This was done to exert pressure on the British government to accede to the League’s demand to divide the nation along religious lines.

What caused the violence?

The political context of Bengal, and more specifically Calcutta, facilitated the violence in the city.
Muslims represented a majority in Bengal (54 per cent according to the census of 1941) but were largely concentrated in the countryside in eastern Bengal (today’s Bangladesh).
Calcutta itself was predominantly Hindu (73 per cent vs 23 per cent), with Muslims occupying a peripheral position – socially, economically, and even geographically.
The relations between the two communities had been tense since the turn of the 20th century, with periodic instances of communal violence breaking out in Bengal, including in Calcutta.

Huseyn Suhrawardy

Huseyn Suhrawardy, the foremost leader of Bengali Muslims and somewhat of a rival to Jinnah in the League, was the Chief Minister of Bengal in 1946.
He was a revered figure among Muslims, but hated by Hindus who held him partially responsible for the Bengal famine of 1943.
Suhrawardy was also notorious for his off-the-cuff inflammatory statements.

Suhrawardy’s role in the violence:

His actions and attitude are believed to be responsible for things taking a violent turn.
In the lead up to the violence, Suhrawardy gave a number of speeches which seemingly indicate his tacit, if not active, support to any violence.
On August 16, in a massive public, Suhrawardy reportedly said that he had taken measures to “restrain” the police on Direct Action Day.
This, his critics say, was effectively an open invitation to the masses to go on a rampage.
Once the violence erupted, Suhrawardy indeed “restrained” the forces.
Suhrawardy himself stayed inside the Police Control Room, and according to eyewitnesses, prevented the Police Commissioner from acting independently.

Horrors of the incident:

While exact numbers are not available, scholarly estimates put the number of dead in the Calcutta riots at 5,000-10,000. Some 15,000 people were wounded.
Historian Markovits Claude, in ‘The Calcutta Riots of 1946, Mass Violence & Resistance’ (2007), pointed out that the savagery of the violence was remarkable. “Not only were victims brutally killed, they were also grotesquely mutilated”.
He also points out that the event also saw the deployment of rape as a political tool, which till then, had not been too common in communal riots in India.