1940s In India

"16th August is a blot on Bengal’s history. The day is horrifically remmembered as Direct Action Day or Great Calcutta Killings which led to the brutal killings of thousands of Bengalis. Many dead bodies kept lying on road for days to be fed by dogs & vultures even."

"If Congress regimes are going to suppress and persecute the Musalmans, it will be very difficult to control disturbances."

"[Regarding the abetment of the Bengal Muslim League government and the police in the Direct Action violence, the words of Sher-e-Bangla (Tiger of Bengal) AK Fazlul Huq, the CM of undivided Bengal (1937–43) and later briefly of East Pakistan (1954), are worth taking note here. In describing his eyewitness account of the savagery in an address to the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 19 September 1946, he said:] ‘‘It seemed …that some modern Nadir Shah had come upon Calcutta and had given up the city to rapine, plunder and pillage. Sir, each time I tried to get in touch with police officers, I was told that I was to contact the Control Room. I do not know. Sir, who was controlling the Control Room, but whenever l wanted some kind of help the reply came that my complaint has been noted and will be attended to in proper time. Then, Sir, l sometimes tried to gel into touch with high officials of Government House. I was told that none but Government servants were allowed to use the telephone to get into touch with the household of His Excellency the Governor. Police officers would not listen, the Control Office would not control, the Government House would not listen. Sir, in the^ circumstances the Great Killing went on and it is undisputed that this thing would never have happened if the police and the military had taken strong measures on Friday, the 16th, when the trouble began. Tt would have been nipped in the bud that very day, and, therefore, the conclusion is inevitable that although the police may not be responsible for the origin of disturbances, they are directly responsible for the great loss of human life, and if an impartial enquiry is held and these police officers can be spotted, my opinion is that they deserve to be hanged, drawn and quartered publicly, on charges of murder and abetment of murder."

"[Justice Khosla of Lahore High Court recounts of the carnage:] ‘The streets were strewn with dead bodies and the corpses… There were stories of children having been hurled down from the roofs of houses. Young children were reported to have been boiled in oil. Others were burnt alive. Women were raped and mutilated and then murdered.’"

"[The Muslim League pamphlet, urging Muslims to attend the rally in large numbers, read:] ‘Muslims must remember that it was in Ramzam that the Quran was revealed. It was in Ramzan that the permission for Jehad was granted. It was in Ramzam that the battle of Badr, the first open conflict between Islam and Heathenism (i.e., idolatry, which equates Hinduism) was fought and won by 313 Muslims; and again it was in Ramzan that 10,000 under the Holy Prophet conquered Mecca and established the kingdom of Heaven and the commonwealth of Islam in Arabia. Muslim League is fortunate that it is starting its action in this holy month.’ [While another leaflet, entitled Munajat for the Jehad, was to be read out in mosque prayers. It included the above passage and added:] ‘By the grace of God, we are ten cores (100 millions) in India but through our bad luck we have become slaves of the Hindus and the British. We are starting a Jehad in Your Name in this very month of Ramzan. Pray make us strong in body and mind—give Your helping hand in all out actions—make us victorious over the Kafers—enable us to establish the Kingdom of Islam in India and make proper sacrifices for this Jehad—by the grace of God may we build up in India the greatest Islamic kingdom in the world.’ [Another Bengali pamphlet, Mogur (Club), wrote of the auspicious holy month event:] ‘‘The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived… The Shining gates of heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan, victory to the Muslim nation and victory to the army which has declared a Jehad.’’ [The Mayor of Calcutta issue a leaflet, showing Jinnah with a sword, which read:] ‘We Muslims have had the Crown (of India) and ruled… Be ready and take your sword. Think you, Muslims, why we are under the kafirs today. The result of loving kafirs is not good. O kafir! Do not be proud. Your doom is not far and the general massacre will come. Show our glory with swords in hands and will have a special victory.’ [Still another leaflet, urging Muslims to come to the rally with their swords, added:] ‘‘We shall see who will play with us, for rivers of blood will flow. We shall have the swords in our hands and the noise of takbir (Allahu Akbar, Allah is Great). Tomorrow will be dooms day.’"

"Calcutta and Noakhali did not bring any condemnation from the League of these criminal attacks on minorities. Far from it-in the League Press the attempt was made to shift the responsibility, where there occurrences were admitted at all, on the Hindus."

"The Civil & Military Gazette of Lahore, by no means a paper hostile to the Muslims, said apropos the Calcutta riots in its editorial in its issue of August 20, 1946 (four days after the commencement of these riots). “We have termed the jeremiads of Muslim Leaguers ‘near hysterical nonsense,’ but they represent a trend of thought and a psychological attitude which hold the utmost danger for the whole country. Words are being broadcast everyday which will make fanatics of law-abiding citizens and throw them into the same camp with the lowest of goondas.” More significantly still, this same editorial says. “Authentic reports from all parts of India describe the country as a powder-magazine, and at the moment the Muslim League is holding a torch which may send it sky-high. If the spark is applied, the present League leadership will have to shoulder responsibility for events which will not only blast for ever all hopes of Hindu-Muslim co-operation in any field, but which will ruin all chances of India’s progress for decades.”"

"The Muslim League Bengal Government declared August 16, 1946 to be a public holiday throughout Bengal, to celebrate the “Direct Action Day”. The effect of this, in the very temperate and restrained language of Shri S. L. Ghose of the A. B. Patrika is described thus: “When a political party, by virtue of its being in power, enforces its party celebration on the whole administrative machinery by declaring a public holiday, it is natural that some at least of its adherents should infer from it that the party is the law of the land, and that anything done in the name of the party is above the scope of the law,”"

"The ‘Clarian Call’ was answered about a fortnight later in the shape of the Calcutta, Noakhali and other riots in Bengal, the ghastliest and most terrible seen till then in India, to be bettered in this respect only by the Muslim holocaust of the minorities in the Punjab, in 1947. .... The police, mostly Muslim in personnel, were, if not actually in complicity, definitely indifferent to the murder, loot and arson of the Hindus going on around them. Such a horrible carnage ensued as had not been heard of in India in the three-odd decades during which communal rioting had been heard of in India. ... This is only one glimpse of what happened for five days over a large area. Hooligans went about with full preparation for murder and arson. Petrol was in plentiful supply, and the victims were left no option but to be burnt to ashes in their burning houses or to come out and be stabbed. The total number of killed in these days is estimated at 5,000 and those injured at 15,000."

"Still more provocative speeches, if possible, were made by other Muslim League leaders on this occasion. Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan, now Prime Minister of the Dominion of Pakistan, elucidating the implications of the Direct Action threat, said: “Direct Action means resort to non-constitutional methods, and that can take any form which may suit the conditions under which we live. We cannot eliminate any methods. Direct Action means any action against the Law.”"

"“What we have done to-day is the most historic act in our history. Never have we in the whole history of the League done anything except by constitutional methods. But now we are forced into this position. Today we bid good-bye to constitutional methods.”.... “To-day we have forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.”... “We mean every word of it. We do not believe in equivocation.”"

"So, Singh misrepresents Muslim attacks on Hindus, such as the “Great Calcutta Killing”, which took place when the British were on their way out and the provinces had native autonomy. This pogrom, which convinced the British that their resistance to the Partition plan was useless, was planned by the Muslim League, with the passive connivance of the police which was under control of the Muslim League state government. He, however, denies Muslim agency by calling it a “large-scale riot” and a “massacre of Hindus and Muslims”. This is the usual media discourse: two-sided violence or even one-sided Muslim violence is presented as a Hindu attack on the poor hapless Muslims (as in late February 2020, when the Wall Street Journal and Scroll.in notoriously misrepresented a photograph of a Muslim rioters’ attack in Delhi as showing a Hindu attack), and only when the Muslim initiative is too glaring to be denied, their rearguard tactic is to present it as two-sided. In the case of the Great Calcutta Killing, this was purely a one-sided attack by the Muslim League on the Hindus, with the passive complicity of the state police, which only started to intervene as soon as the Hindu side managed to mobilize for self-defence."

"The horror and the underlying conspiracy of this occurrence can best be described in the words of Shri S. L. Ghosh of the A. B. Patrika, quoted above. Says Shri S. L. Ghosh: “The four days’ delay in receiving the news indicates at once the magnitude of preparations of the lawless elements as well as the criminal inefficiency of the administration machinery.2 It took ten days, fraught with horror, disgrace and torture for nearly two lakhs of Hindus for the Army to reach the neighbourhood of disaster, another ten days for them to move into the inner fringe of the disturbed area, and over a month to comb the interior of the devastated countryside. “The horror of the Noakhali outrage is unique in modern history in that it was not a simple case of turbulent members of the majority community killing off helpless members of the minority community, but was one whose chief aim (to quote Dr. Syama Prosad Mookerjee) was mass conversion, accompanied by loot, arson and wholesale devastation……… No section of the people has been spared, the wealthier classes being dealt with more drastically. Murder also was part of the plan, but it was mainly reserved for those who were highly influential or who resisted. Abduction and outrage on women and forcible marriages were also resorted to; but their number cannot be easily determined. The slogans used and the methods employed indicate that it was all part of a plan for the simultaneous establishment of Pakistan. The demand for subscriptions for the Muslim League and for other purposes, including conversion ceremonies, showed that mass attackers, and their leaders were inspired by the League ideology. “Apparently, the strategy of terrorisation adopted in Calcutta had failed to achieve the objective of recognition of Pakistan. The zealots of Pakistan in Noakhali and the southern portion of Tepperah, therefore, sought to make that muslim-majority area exclusive to a certain community, and thus convert it into the fortress of Eastern Pakistan, by forcible mass conversion of the other community…… (The League) leaders tried to minimize the enormity of the crimes…… they tended to confirm the impression that they were in close sympathy with the attackers and their nefarious policy and that this was the second phase of the direct action plan of the Muslim League to achieve Pakistan.... “Over and above these persons, there will be another 50,000 or even more who are still living within the danger zone in what may be called the no man’s land. Theirs is the most tragic fate. They have all been subjected to conversion and are still3 under the clutches of their oppressors. Most of them have lost everything, and they suffer from both physical and mental collapse. Their humiliation and torture know - no limitations. Their names have been changed; their womenfolk insulted; their properties looted; they are being compelled to dress, to eat and to live like their so-called new brothers in faith. The male members have to attend the mosques, Maulvies come and train them at home; they are at the mercy of their captors for their daily food and indeed for their very existence. . . .”"

"Acharya Kripalani’s account of what he observed in Noakhali substantiates the statement of Dr. Mookerjee... Said the Acharya: “Next morning (October 22, 1946) we visited the interior of one of the affected areas. The place was Charhaim. Charhaim village and the surrounding areas are occupied by Namasudras (scheduled castes) numbering about 20,000. It was completely destroyed. Most of the houses were burnt. People were living in sheds, built from the ruins of their houses. All their property had been looted. Cash, ornaments, utensils and clothes, and cattle also, had been taken away by the raiders. All the males and females had only the clothes they were wearing. They had no food to eat. Their condition was pitiable in the extreme. There had been cases of murder, but it was not possible during the short time at our disposal to ascertain the number of the killed. Cases of abduction were reported to us. Even after looting and arson the villagers were obliged to embrace Islam; They had to perform ‘Namaz’ and recite the ‘Kalma’……… All the images of the houses were broken and temples looted and destroyed. The conch-shell bangles of women and vermillion marks, signs of their married life, were removed.”"

"Acharya Kripalani arrived at certain conclusions regarding the Noakhali trouble, which are as follows:- 1. The attack on the Hindu population in the districts of Noakhali and Tipperah was previously arranged and prepared for. It was deliberate, if not directly engineered by Muslim League. It was the result of Muslim League propaganda. The local evidence all went to prove that prominent League leaders in the villages had a large hand in it. 3. The Muslim officials connived at the preparations going on. A few encouraged. There was a general belief among the Mussalmans that the Government would take no action if anything was done against the Hindus. 4. The modus operandi was for the Muslims to collect in batches of hundreds and sometimes thousands and to march to Hindu villages or Hindu houses in villages of mixed population. They first demanded subscriptions for the Muslim League and sometimes for the Muslim victims of the Calcutta riots. These enforced subscriptions were heavy, sometimes amounting to Rs. 10,000 and more. Even after the subscriptions were realized, the Hindu population was not safe. The same or successive crowd appeared on the scene later and looted the Hindu houses. The looted houses in most cases were burnt……… Sometimes before a house was looted the inmates were asked to embrace Islam. However, even conversion did not give immunity against loot and arson... 5. All those who resisted were butchered. Sometimes they were shot, for the rioters had a few shot-guns with them. Sometimes people were killed even when there was no resistance offered or expected I have on record cases where 50 to 60 members of one family were brutally murdered. Some families lost all their male members. 7. Even after looting, arson and murder the Hindus in the locality were not safe unless they embraced Islam. The Hindu population therefore to save themselves had to embrace Islam en masse……… All the images of gods in Hindu houses were destroyed and all the Hindu temples of the affected area were looted and burnt. 8. There have been cases of forcible marriages There have been cases of abduction..."

"The Congress Working Committee meeting came soon after at Delhi, and its resolution on East Bengal contained the following observations: “Reports published in the press and statements of public workers depict a scene of bestiality and medieval barbarity that must fill every decent human being with shame, disgust and anger. “The Committee hold that this outburst of brutality is the direct result of the politics of hate and civil strife that the Muslim League has practised for years past and of the threats of violence that were daily held out in past months.”"

"It was clear after Noakhali as to what India was to expect in the coming months-mass attacks on minorities in Muslim-majority areas, co-operation of Muslim police and the officials with the assailants, indifference of the British bureaucrats, and the hypocritical fathering of the League leaders of the responsibility for these occurrences on the minorities themselves. In the case of Calcutta the League leaders blamed it all on the Hindus-in the case of Noakhali and Tipperah, the figures of casualties and damage were understated to ridiculous figures, or just not noticed."

"Calcutta and Noakhali did not bring any condemnation from the League of these criminal attacks on minorities. Far from it-in the League Press the attempt was made to shift the responsibility, where there occurrences were admitted at all, on the Hindus."

"[The first news of the Noakhali violence reached Bengal Congress Office in Calcutta on 15 October 1946 from the Party members in Noakhali in the form of a telegram, which read:] ‘Houses burned on mass scale / Hundreds burnt to death / Hundreds killed / Otherwise large number Hindu girls forcibly married to Moslems and abducted / All Hindu temples and images desecrated / Helpless refugees coming to Tippera District / Golam Sarwar leader inciting Moslems to exterminate Hindus from Noakhali…’"

"[By mid-October, records Khosla:] ‘Hundreds of murders had been committed, thousands of women had been dishonored and carried away or compelled to marry Muslims. Whole villages had been burnt down and razed to the ground. All the entire Hindu population of the district had been robbed of all they possessed and then forcibly converted to Islam.’ [Hindu temples were defiled and the idols smashed. There were about 400,000 Hindus living in Noakhali; at least 95 percent of them were converted to Islam at the pain of death.] ‘The converted persons were made to read kalma, slaughter cows and eat their flesh,’ [records Khosla. Up to 5,000 people were murdered, estimated 99 percent of the non-Muslim houses looted and 70–90 percent of them burned down. A similar spectacle transpired in the neighboring Tippera District.]"

"Having thus failed in Calcutta, the Muslim League selected another venue in the district of Noakhali, where the Hindus were only 18 percent of the total population, for the nefarious deeds of arson, loot, abduction and rape of the Hindu women, mass-conversion of faith and killings."

"A few roads also serve the two districts but when disturbances broke out the roads were breached in several places and some bridges were destroyed. The passage of cars and lorries was thus almost completely stopped. It is, therefore, not surprising that for some days no news of the great upheaval reached the outside world and it was not till October 14 that Calcutta heard of anything wrong or unusual occurring in Noakhali. By that date a great deal had happened. Hundreds of murders had been committed, thousands of women had been dishonoured and carried away or compelled to marry Muslims. Whole villages had been burnt down and raved to the ground. Almost the entire Hindu population of the district had been robbed of all they possessed and then forcibly converted to Islam."

"Anti-Hindu propaganda was started in Noakhali towards the end of August. Meetings were held throughout the district on August 29 which was the occasion of the /d festival, Rumours were spread through the district that bands of armed Sikhs had been imported from outside with the object of assaulting and murdering Muslims. The Maulvis in their waaz (sermon) preached hatred against the non-Muslims and warned the Muslims to be on their guard. Soon afterwards looting of Hindu shops and houses in various parts of the district began. Temples were desecrated and idols were broken."

"Muslim mobs began attacking Hindu houses on the pretext of searching for Sikh and Hindu goondas who were alleged to have been brought to Noakhali for the purpose of attacking Muslims. Another method adopted was to make demands for large sums of money in order to relieve the sufferings of the Calcutta Muslims. In some cases, as much as a thousand rupees were demanded from an individual. The demand was almost invariably followed by looting and burning. A school master of Khilpara stated that his house was attacked in this manner by seven different gangs each numbering about three hundred or four hundred. All images and sacred pictures were desecrated and smashed and he and his family were then forcibly converted to Islam. This is typical of what was happening all over the district of Noakhali. A crowd of Muslims drawn from a number of contiguous villages would proceed to a chosen village, loot and burn all the Hindu houses and then convert the non- Muslim population to Islam en masse, on pain of death. They would carry away the womenfolk and give them in marriage to Muslims. It was estimated that at least 95 per cent of the non- Muslim population of Noakhali District was, in this manner, converted to Islam and their women dishonoured. The converted persons were made to read kalma, slaughter cows and cat their flesh. The conch-shell bangles of the women were broken and the sandhoor mark was removed before they were made to marry into Muslim families. The converted persons were given Muslim dress to wear including caps printed with League flags, a map of Pakistan and the slogan “ Pakistan Zindabud.”"

"The house of Rajendra Babu was then attacked and set fire to. The inmates climbed up to the roof and some of. the hooligans fired shots at them. The unfortunate victims took shelter behind the garret. A portion of the roof collapsed and some of them fell into the flames and lost their lives. A number of hooligans cut down a tall coconut tree and, using it as a ladder, climbed on to the roof. “One by one the mate inmates were brought down and mercilessly butchered on the spot. The female inmates were brought down and cordoned off and taken to the Pir Sahib who was waiting in a boat at a distance. He ordered them to be taken to some other house. The heads of Rajendra Babu and some others were reported to have been presented to the Pir Sahib."

"The aim of the Noakhali Muslims was to terrorize the Hindus, dishonour their women, plunder their property. desecrate their gods and convert them to Islam."

"During the disturbances the districts were visited by Acharya Kripalani, President of the Congress. He flew over some of the affected area on October 19 and remained touring in the district until the 26th, On his way to Comilla, on the morning of the 19th, he flew very low over the area north of Begumganj and Chitansi and saw houses burning in ten or fifteen villages. On the 20th he again flew over Noakhali and saw fresh fires burning in Faridganj, Raypur, Chandpur and Ramgunye areas. In Charhain village he found that every non-Muslim house was completely devastated. Hindu houses had been burnt down and looted of all movables including ornaments, utensils, clothes and foodgrains. The cattle had been driven away. In Khalpara and Hipara all Hindu shops had been looted and League flags were flying on them."

"It was estimated that 99 per cent of the non-Muslim houses had been looted and between 70 and 90 per cent of the houses had been burnt down."

"The destruction is so complete that, except for sheets of corrugated iron, the looting of _ which is in progress each night even at present, nothing remains but pathetic wreckage. . . . Large numbers of small personal temple-huts have been burnt out, images have been pulled down and smashed and at least one large and brick-built temple has been looted and desecrated.”"

"The condition of refugees was deplorable. Foodstuffs were unavailable and the price of rice when it could be obtained was Rs. 2 per seer. A large number of refugees had congregated at different places and their state was pitiable. At Faridganj on November 2 there were about six thousand refugees huddled on boats and sheltering in huts ashore. Many of them were suffering from dysentery and other diseases. Rescue parties sent from Calcutta were refused police protection and had to go back."

"From a relief centre in an East Bengal village, Miss Muriel Lester wrote on 6 November 1946: ‘‘Worst of all was the plight of women. Several of them had to watch their husbands being murdered and then be forcibly converted and married to some of those responsible for their death. Those women had a dead look. It was not despair, nothing so active as that. It was blackness..... the eating of beef and declaration of allegiance to Islam has been forced upon many thousands as the price of their lives... perhaps the only thing that can be quite positively asserted about this orgy of arson and violence is that it is nota spontaneous rising of the villagers.’’"

"V. P. Menon writes : ‘‘In about the second week of October 1946, there was a large-scale outbreak of lawlessness and hooliganism in the Noakhali and Tipperah districts of East Bengal. Large forces of armed police and military had to be employed to control the situation. Referring to these distur- bances, a prominent politician, who himself hailed from East Bengal, reported that whereas the lawlessness had been given the colour or pure goondaism, in fact it was not so; it was an organised attack engineered by the Muslim League and carried out with the connivance of the administrative officials. The attacks, he said, were made by the people armed with guns and other deadly weapons, roads had been dug up and other means of communication cut off to prevent ingress and egress ; canals had been blocked and strategic points were being guarded by armed insurgents.’’"

"Bengal Chief Minister H.S. Suhrawardy was not only politically responsible for the remarkable police inaction, but as a Muslim League leader, he had also organized the agitation."

"This scenario is not a hypothetical construction. It has been staged on a very large scale in 1946, when the Muslim League felt that it was not yet sufficiently supported by the common Muslims, and that the Hindus had not yet unambiguously conceded Pakistan. To convince the former that only the Muslim League and Pakistan could protect them, and to terrorize the latter into the big concession, the Muslim League government in Bengal organized a mass killing of Hindus (the Direct Action Day). They knew fully well that the Hindus would end up retaliating by killing innocent Muslims. Upon which more Muslims would kill Hindus, etc. The important effect was that Muslims suffered at the hands of the Hindus , lost all faith in co-existence with them, and joined hands with the communalist leaders. The pogroms against the Hindus caused a lot of deaths among the Muslim population, but for the Muslim League this brought resounding success. ... What makes creating riots even more attractive, is the sympathy you get for them from secularist politicians and intellectuals. When the Muslim League killed thousands of Hindus in Calcutta, Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru looked the other way. But when Hindu workers staying in Calcutta fled to their villages in Bihar and started killing Muslims there, the same Nehru proposed to bomb those villages from the air. When Hindus got killed, he didn't move a finger, but the killing of Muslims was enough to blow off his Gandhian facade and make him demand indiscriminate killing."

"The 16 August, 1946 communal riots broke out in Calcutta after a few days. I would have been killed by a Muslim mob in the early hours of that day as I walked back towards my home from the coffee house which I had found closed. My fluent Urdu and my Western dress saved me. My wife and two year old son had joined me a few days earlier in a small room in a big house bordering on a large Muslim locality. On the evening of the 17th we had to vacate that house and scale a wall at the back to escape murderous Muslim mobs advancing with firearms. Had not the army moved in immediately after, I would not have lived to write what I am writing today."

"The Great Calcutta Killing of 1946 was again the consequence of a call for jihad, which in this case was pronounced by Mohammed Usman, the Mayor of Calcutta at that time. He put the call in black and white and addressed the mujãhids as follows: “It was in this month of Ramzan that open war between Mussalmans and Kafirs started in full swing. It was in this month that we entered victorious into Mecca and wiped out the idolaters. By Allah’s will, the All India Muslim League has selected the selfsame month of Ramzan to start its jihãd for realising Pakistan.”"

"...the time has come for the Muslim nation to resort to direct action to achieve Pakistan, to assert their just rights, to vindicate their honour and to get rid of the present British slavery and the contemplated future caste-Hindu domination."

"What shocked the conscience of India even more than Calcutta, was the large-scale murder, loot, arson, rape, abduction and forced marriage of Hindu women in the Noakhali District of Eastern Bengal. This time the trouble came about in the October of 1946. It appears the League enthusiasts were on the look-out for an area of operation where they could be sure of very little resistance and where they could demonstrate to the Hindus in action as to what was in store for them in case they did not accept the Muslim League demand of Pakistan. In Calcutta the Hindus-although on the first two days they were completely surprised, and reeled under the sudden blow, and lost more than a thousand in killed-yet on the subsequent days they rallied and gave the Muslims as good as they got. The Muslim League perhaps realized the folly of having tried out Calcutta. A better spot should be selected, and this time it was Noakhali and the adjoining area of Eastern Bengal. ... As the trouble broke out, for some time the country did not know about it. Noakhali is a far-away part of Bengal, and the Muslim League Ministry of Bengal did not allow the news of the carnage to trickle though as long as they could help it. So, the assailants had it all their own way for several days, unchecked."

"The ‘Clarian Call’ was answered about a fortnight later in the shape of the Calcutta, Noakhali and other riots in Bengal, the ghastliest and most terrible seen till then in India, to be bettered in this respect only by the Muslim holocaust of the minorities in the Punjab, in 1947."

"As a matter of fact, the driving out of minorities had begun as early as November, 1946 with Noakhali, when the whole of Northern India was flooded with destitutes begging for a morsel or a piece of cloth to cover their shivering bodies."

"The Calcutta carnage was followed by the 'Noakhali Riot' in October 1946. There, Hindus including Scheduled Castes were killed and hundreds were converted to Islam. Hindu women were raped and abducted. Members of my community also suffered loss of life and property. Immediately after these happenings, I visited Tipperah and Feni and saw some riot-affected areas. The terrible sufferings of Hindus overwhelmed me with grief, but still I continued the policy of co-operation with the Muslim League."

"The holocaust in Noakhali in the same year (1946) was likewise intended as a full-fledged jihãd. The call in this case was pronounced by Gholam Sarwar, a Muslim M.L.A. from those parts. Gholam Sarwar’s call was not documented, but the report submitted by Judge Simpson clearly refers to “large-scale conversion of Hindus to Islam by application of force in village after village. In many instances, upon the refusal of the menfolk to embrace Islam, their women were kept confined and converted under duress.” All these of course were characteristic of a true jihãd. This was not all. As in Calcutta, the Noakhali riots were characterised by the dishonouring of thousands of Hindu women. There were clear indications that these unfortunate women were looked upon as the mujãhids’ lawful plunder (ghanîmah). Baboo Rajendralal Roy, the President of Noakhali Bar Association, attempted to put up on his own some resistance to this jihãd. The outcome of this resistance has been described by a contemporary writer: “Rajenbaboo’s head was presented to Gholam Sarwar on a platter, and two of his lieutenants received as guerdon both of his young daughters (in their harem).”"

"The immediate occasion for the outbreak of the disturbances was the looting of a Bazar in Ramganj police station following the holding of a mass meeting and a provocative speech by the person now arrested, wrote the Governor, alleged to be the organizer of the disturbances — Gholam Sarwar Hussein."

"I may stay on here for a whole year or more. If necessary, I will die here. But I will not acquiesce in failure. If the only effect of my presence in the flesh is to make the people look up to me in hope and expectation which I can do nothing to vindicate, it would be far better that my eyes were closed in death."

"It was the cry of outraged womanhood that had peremptorily called him to Noakhali. He felt he would find his bearings only on seeing things for himself at Noakhali. His technique of non-violence was on tried. It remained to be seen how it would answer in the face of the present crisis. If it had no validity, it were better that he himself should declare his insolvency. He was not going to leave Bengal until the last embers of the trouble were stamped out."

"He had in fact worked a miracle, perhaps the greatest in modern times."

"In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large scale rioting in our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting."

"Gandhiji has achieved many things, but in my considered opinion there has been nothing, not even independence, which so truly wonderful as his victory over evil in Calcutta."

"Women in Calcutta stopped eating during his fast. Police officers,- Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, Indians and British, fasted for twenty-four hours in solidarity with God, By September 3, the rioting had ceased. On September 4, a group of leaders from all faiths came together and promised they would give their lives for continued peace and communal harmony in Calcutta."

"Even while repudiating his method and efficacy, the one question in people’s mind would be, How is Gandhiji?...University students...would say...one thing stuck them as curious, after all, if anybody had to suffer for the continued killing and betrayal in the city, it was not Gandhi. He had taken no part in it. So while others were engaged in crime, it was he who had to suffer like this."