But For Gopal Chandra Mukherjee, Kolkata And Much Of Bengal Would Have Fallen To Muslim League And Become Part of Pakistan

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee would not have been hoisting the tricolour at the Red Road in Kolkata Monday (August 15), and neither would millions in Bengal been celebrating Azadi ki Amrit Mahotsav now.

In fact, much of Bengal as we know it today would not have been part of India at all had it not been for a braveheart by the name of Gopal Chandra Mukherjee.

If Mamata Banerjee is the chief minister of Bengal, and over six crore Hindus are free citizens of the state, it is all because of Gopal Mukherjee, known more commonly as Gopal patha.

Had it not been for Mukherjee, the plan of the Muslim League under the notorious Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy--better known as the ‘butcher of Bengal’--of making Kolkata and the entire eastern bank of the Hooghly comprising the present-day districts of North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad and a large chunk of Malda district part of East Pakistan would have succeeded.

And had that happened, Hindus would have had to flee to other parts of India and Bengali Hindus would have been left with a little more than half of the geographical area of present-day Bengal (to the west of the Hooghly river) to call their own.

Mukherjee was singularly responsible for foiling Suhrawardy’s, and the Muslim League’s, perverted plan of driving away Hindus from Kolkata and the other areas in the east of Hooghly, and converting this vast swathe of land into a Muslim-majority belt that would then be incorporated in Pakistan.

Suhrawardy had hatched this sinister plan--of cleansing Kolkata and the areas east of the Hooghly river of Hindus--ahead of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s call for Direct Action Day. The plan involved blowing up the Howrah Bridge with dynamite to prevent Hindus from across the Hooghly from coming to the aid of their embattled brethren in Calcutta (as the city was known then).

Suhrawardy directed the murderous cadres of the Muslim League to kill Hindus, loot their properties, abduct and rape Hindu women and girls and create such fear in the minds of Hindus in Calcutta that they would be forced to leave the city. And the exodus of Hindus from Kolkata would trigger an exodus of Hindus from the 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad and Malda as well.

Suhrawardy had planned to immediately settle Muslim peasants from what was, at that time, East Bengal, in properties and lands that Hindus would have left behind and, thus, convert Calcutta and the districts immediately south and north of the city into Muslim-majority areas. Once that was achieved, the Muslim League would lay claim on the city and those districts and convince the British to award them to Pakistan.

As per the plan, the call for Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946, was followed by horrific attacks on Hindus--thousands were massacred, their properties looted, womenfolk raped and children abducted. For nearly 24 hours from the early afternoon of August 16, Muslim League murderers had a free run.

It seemed that Suhrawardy’s diabolic plan--and it was based on Suhrawardy’s belief that Hindus, though in a majority in Calcutta, were essentially cowards who would not dare to retaliate--would succeed.

But Mukherjee, who had a small army of Hindu men under his command, proved Suhrawardy wrong. From late afternoon of August 17, 1946, Mukherjee and his men and boys started resisting the Muslim League mobs and beating them back.

The resistance and fightback put up by Gopal Mukherjee and his army in pockets of central Kolkata emboldened Hindus in the rest of the city to come out on the streets and beat back the Islamist mobs. Once Hindus started retaliating, there was no looking back and hundreds of Muslim League cadres were attacked, maimed and killed.

Within a few days, the Hindus, who were numerically stronger, regained control of Calcutta from the control of Muslim League mobs. And the League was brought to its knees, forcing Suhrawardy to sue for peace.

Had the fearless Gopal Mukherjee not got Hindu men together to organise the resistance against Muslim League cadres and retaliate against them, Calcutta and the districts to the east of the Hooghly river would have been lost to the Muslim League and would have become part of Pakistan.

Mukherjee, who was 33 at that time, is a real but unsung hero. Had it not been for him, the plight of Bengali Hindus in Bengal today would have reflected the sorry and miserable state of Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh--a marginalised and persecuted lot who have to live in perpetual fear of Islamists, whose lives and properties are not secure and who can only weep silently while being assaulted, killed or watch their womenfolk being raped, abducted and forcibly converted to Islam.

If Bengali Hindus of Kolkata, the two 24 Parganas district, Nadia, Murshidabad and Malda live without such fear and foreboding, and with their heads held high, they only have Gopal Mukherjee to thank for.

It is sad that Mukherjee’s fight and heroism remains unacknowledged even as the nation celebrates 75 years of freedom. There are no statues of Mukherjee in Kolkata, the city he saved from becoming part of Pakistan. Nothing is taught about this great saviour of Hindus in history textbooks. And so, few know about him today.

For an extensive background to the Great Calcutta Killings, read on:

Suhrawardy’s Plan: United Bengal was then a Muslim-majority province with only 42 per cent Hindus, but Calcutta had 64 per cent Hindus and 33 per cent Muslims. Bengal was the only province in British India where a Muslim League government was in power.

Jinnah’s call for the creation of Pakistan found an ardent advocate in Suhrawardy, who wanted the entire Bengal and Assam to become part of Pakistan. He was desperate to include Hindu-majority Calcutta and some of its Hindu-majority neighbouring districts into Pakistan. Calcutta was, even then, the first city of British India and would have been a prized pick for the proposed Pakistan nation. But since Hindus were in a majority in the city and its neighbouring districts, they would, Suhrawardy felt, have to be reduced to a minority through killings and large-scale riots and then beaten into submission.

In early 1946, British prime minister Clement Attlee sent a three-member Cabinet Mission to finalise the formalities for the transfer of power. On 16 June 1946, the Mission, under pressure from Jinnah, proposed an alternate plan for the sub-continent to be partitioned into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Congress rejected the plan outright and, on 10 July, Nehru announced that while the Congress had agreed to participate in the Constituent Assembly, it would be free to change or modify the Cabinet Mission Plan as it thought best.

Jinnah’s Call for ‘Direct Action’

Jinnah construed this as the Congress, in the Hindu-majority Constituent Assembly, declaring its intent to reject the partition of the sub-continent and keeping Muslims under Hindu domination. He convened a meeting of the Muslim League Working Committee on 29 July and got it to pass two resolutions: (a) withdrawal of the Muslim League’s acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 16 June, and (b) announcement of the ‘Direct Action’ programme. The Muslim League, he explained, would “stop cooperating with the government and bid goodbye to Constitutional methods”.

The Islamist Connection

Jinnah further declared that he was going to “create trouble” and pledged “I will have India divided or India burned”. He gave a call for ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946, where Muslims would observe a hartal (general strike) to demonstrate to the British their resolve for the creation of Pakistan.

In what gives the lie to later claims that Jinnah was tolerant and secular, and exposes him as a bigoted Islamist, he chose 16 August deliberately. That day in 1946 was the eighteenth day of Ramzan, and it was on that day that Prophet Muhammad waged the Battle of Badr which resulted in his first decisive victory over the heathens and the subsequent conquest of Mecca. Islamists celebrate the victory in this battle as a decisive one for Islam.

Suhrawardy and his Muslim League colleagues delivered fiery speeches reminding the Muslims of Bengal of the victory of Badr and exhorting on them to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet and wrest a victory for Islam on 16 August. Devendra Panigrahi, in his seminal India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat, quotes the 13 August 1946 issue of Muslim league mouthpiece The Star of India, which gave detailed instructions on how to observe ‘Direct Action Day’. The newspaper wrote:

Muslims must remember that it was in Ramzan that permission for jehad was granted by Allah. It was in Ramzan that the Battle of Badr, the first open conflict between Islam and heathens, was fought and won by 313 Muslims and again it was in Ramzan that 10,000 Muslims under the Holy Prophet conquered Mecca and established the Kingdom of Heaven and the commonwealth of Islam in Arabia. The Muslim League is fortunate that it is starting its action on this Holy month and day.

16 August was also a Friday, and the Muslim League under Suhrawardy instructed all clerics to deliver sermons urging Muslims gathered for jumma namaz to use all means for the creation of Pakistan. Accordingly, the clerics interpreted ‘Direct Action’ as a call for violence against Hindus to force them to accept the creation of Pakistan. It was, to the Muslim League goons, a call to kill Hindus and reduce them to a minority.

Historian Patrick French writes in his book Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence & Division that Jinnah may not have realised that he was unleashing a bloody genie through his ‘Direct Action Day’ call. To quote French, “Sitting in his ivory tower dressed in his London suit, he (Jinnah) had not realised how the criminal underworld of Calcutta might behave. The Muslim League was too ramshackle an organisation to have any genuine control over its supporters. HS Suhrawardy ran the Bengal League and his organisation had entrusted direct action to Calcutta’s pirs and mullahs, who were told to mobilise the Muslim community at Friday prayers”.

But other historians claim that Jinnah has full knowledge of Suhrawardy’s plans to unleash violence on Hindus and went along since he (Jinnah) believed that nothing short of large-scale communal violence would convince the British that Hindus and Muslims would never be able to live together in one country. Suhrawardy, these historians argue, could not have kept Jinnah in the dark about his plans. And Jinnah, they point out, had already talked about “creating trouble”, “bidding goodbye to Constitutional methods” and ‘burning India’.

“There were enough indications from Jinnah that there would be grave trouble and the whole intention of calling for ‘direct action’ was creating trouble. Jinnah became hell-bent on proving to the British that Hindus and Muslims would not be able to live together in one nation and the best way to demonstrate that was to engineer killings and communal clashes on a big scale. He thus gave a free hand to Suhrawardy to terrorise the Hindus and start a pogrom against Hindus,” explains historian Juthika Roy.

And Suhrawardy had the additional task of ensuring that the Hindus of Calcutta and its neighbouring districts do not start opposing the integration of areas in Bengal they (the Hindus) were in a majority into Pakistan. For this reason, the Hindus had to be terrorised and beaten into submission. Suhrawardy realised that without Calcutta and its industrially and economically advanced surrounding areas like Howrah and Hooghly (where also Hindus were in a majority), East Pakistan would be economically hobbled and so it was very important to have all these areas into East Pakistan.

The Villainous Suhrawardy

A Demi Official letter written to a senior British officer based at Fort William after the ‘Great Calcutta Killings’ by a senior intelligence operative (the latter is in the National Archives in the United Kingdom) is indeed revealing. The intelligence officer writes:

There is hardly a person in Calcutta who has a good word for Suhrawardy, respectable Muslims included. For years he has been known as “The king of the goondas” and my own private opinion is that he fully anticipated what was going to happen, and allowed it to work itself up, and probably organised the disturbance with his goonda gangs as this type of individual has to receive compensation every now and again.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and history buff Tathagata Roy (former Governor of Tripura) provides elaborate details about Suhrawardy’s mishandling of the Bengal famine of 1943 when he became the minister of food and civil supplies in Bengal.

Roy, in his blog titled ‘My People, Uprooted: The Saga of Hindus of Eastern Bengal’, writes extensively about Suhrawardy’s shameful role, his inaction and negligence and his corrupt deals that exacerbated the sufferings of the people during the famine. Roy also quotes Hindu Mahasabha leader and freedom movement stalwart Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had exposed Suhrawardy’s ineptitude and corruption during the 1943 famine.

The Pogrom Against Hindus

Back to 16 August 1946, sporadic trouble started breaking out in many areas of Calcutta from 10 am. Suhrawardy had got governor Frederick Burrows, a man who was complicit in the communal clashes that followed, to declare the day a public holiday. Congress opposed this and its leaders like Kiran Shankar Roy urged Hindus to keep their shops and establishments open. Muslim mobs started forcing the Hindus to close their shops in a bid to enforce their hartal and this triggered sporadic clashes.

By early afternoon, Muslims armed with iron rods, sticks, swords and weapons started streaming out of the mosques in areas like Park Circus, Metiabruz, Rabindra Sarani and Garden Reach and congregating at the Ochterlony monument (the Shahid Minar now) for the Muslim League rally. The gathering, estimated variously between 60,000 and 200,000, was by far the largest assembly of Muslims in Bengal.

Muslim League leader Khwaja Nizamuddin (who later became governor general of Pakistan after Jinnah’s death) was one of the first to address the rally. He laid the ground by alleging that Hindus had attacked Muslims that morning and the Muslims had only retaliated in self-defence. Suhrawardy delivered a fiery speech calling for the creation of Pakistan and urging Muslims to fight for it. He gave the slogans: “Maar ke lenge Pakistan, lad ke lenge Pakistan, le kar rahenge Pakistan”. (We will kill and fight to create Pakistan, we are determined to create Pakistan.)

Suhrawardy, according to reports filed by British intelligence operatives after the 16 August rally, told the large and agitated crowd that he had ensured the police and army would not intervene. That was seen as an open call and encouragement to the goons to attack Hindus. Even Banglapedia, the ‘National Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh’ (where Suhrawardy is a revered figure), writes that Suhrawardy had told the gathering that the police and the army had been “restrained”. That meant they would look the other way and would not interfere when Muslim mobs attacked Hindus.

And that is exactly what happened. Enraged and emboldened Muslims streamed out of the rally and started attacking Hindu homes and properties. Hundreds of Hindus in Hindu-majority areas like College Street, Kalabagan, Harrison Road, Colootolla and Barabazar were massacred.

Suhrawardy, along with his associates, went to the Calcutta Police headquarters at Lalbazar and restrained the police from venturing into areas where Muslims were attacking Hindus. He ensured that the police were deployed only in areas where Hindus were putting up a resistance and fighting back. The British and Anglo-Indian police officers were only too happy to oblige Suhrawardy.

The Pogrom was Pre-Planned

That Suhrawardy had planned a long time ago was evident from the fact that he started making demographic changes in the Calcutta Police constabulary. Tathagata Roy writes:

“The constables of the Calcutta Police were, as a rule, recruited according to what was known as the A.B.C.D. rule – which meant that they were drawn all from the districts of Arrah, Balia, Chhapra and Deoria. These are districts around the boundary of the United Provinces and Bihar, in the area generally known as Bhojpur. People from this area are well-built, tough and loyal – almost ideal police constable material. There was just one problem that Suhrawardy had with them. They were all devout Hindus, and moreover, worshippers of Lord Hanuman, the Hindu God who personifies strength, manliness and undying loyalty to his master, Lord Rama. They, therefore, could not be trusted to carry out the designs that Suhrawardy had in mind.

“In order to get round this problem Suhrawardy turned to Niaz Mohammed Khan, the ICS officer who, while District Magistrate of Midnapore, had carried out (Bengal Governor) Herbert’s nefarious designs of crackdown on the participants in the Quit India movement. The idea was to Muslimise the Calcutta Police. Why the Calcutta Police in particular? Because Calcutta had already been chosen by the Muslim League as the theatre of the bloodbath that had been scheduled on 16th August 1946, in what they would call ‘Direct Action’, and what the rest of the world would eventually call the Great Calcutta Killings.

“Niaz Mohammed Khan, under Suhrawardy’s orders journeyed to the Northwest to recruit Punjabi Muslim and Pathan constables for the Calcutta Police. Pathans are Pashto-speaking Muslim tribesmen inhabiting the barren hills of the frontier, and are divided into a large number of tribes such as Afridi, Mohmand, Waziri, Khattak, Yusufzai etc. Blood feuds among them between different tribes or different groups (called khel) in the same tribe are still very common.

"These tribes are by nature extremely fierce and cruel – in fact they had been extensively used in British jails in India for application of third-degree methods. Under the benign leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) party a considerable number of them had become mellowed and come closer to the Indian mainstream, but this had made little difference to the people away from towns like Peshawar and Kohat.

"There was another feature that should be mentioned. Because their womenfolk were all kept in strict purdah – the Pathans are first cousins of the present-day Afghan Taliban – these rural Pathans had no respect for women, nor were they accustomed to seeing women out in the open. This had some extremely unsavoury consequences.”

That the pogrom against Hindus was pre-planned is also proven by accounts of British police and intelligence officers who reported that special coupons for gallons of petrol were issued in the names of Muslim League ministers, and this petrol was used to make petrol bombs by Muslim League goons. One month’s food ration was withdrawn and stocked to feed 10,000 Muslim League musclemen and goons. These accounts have been documented in articles like these.

Bangladeshi historian Harun-or-Rashid, in his book The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League & Muslim Politics: 1906-1947, also alludes to the diabolic role of Suhrawardy in engineering riots against the Hindus in a pre-planned manner and shielding the Muslim marauders from the police.

The worst affected part of Calcutta – where thousands died, many times that number maimed, and thousands of women raped and butchered – was “bound by Bowbazar Street on South, Upper Circular Road (now known as Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road) on the east, Vivekananda Road on the north and Strand Road on the west”. After six days of mayhem, Bengal was put under Viceroy’s rule on 21 August, five battalions of British troops supported by four battalions of Indian and Gurkha troops were deployed in Calcutta. Rioting and violence ultimately stopped on 22 August.

The Calcutta killings triggered violence in Bihar, the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The worst riots, however, were reported from Noakhali. The mastermind behind the infamous Noakhali riots was Muslim League leader Gholam Sarwar Husseini, a close associate of Suhrawardy. There are many letters (which exist in National Archives in India and the UK) written by Suhrawardy to Husseini, urging the latter to initiate ‘direct action’ against Hindus in Noakhali.

The Noakhali Riots

An estimated 5,000 Hindus were killed, many times that number injured, about 4,000 Hindu women raped and thousands of families forcibly converted to Islam during the two months of October and November of 1946, in Noakhali. The Hindu population of Noakhali declined dramatically as a result of the riots. The unimaginable torture meted out to Hindus is well documented here.

Suhrawardy is reported to have told his aides in Calcutta that Husseini should have been in the city (Calcutta) to ensure the success of the pogrom against the Hindus of the city. Suhrawardy’s close associates also massacred hundreds of Hindus in Dhaka, seized properties of Hindus, raped Hindu women and forcibly converted an estimated 1,300 Hindu families of Dhaka to Islam.

Gopal Mukherjee, the saviour

Mukherjee had become very active in the 1942 Quit India movement. Though he was not a member of the Indian National Congress, senior leaders of that party had got to know him very well. Mukherjee had earned a reputation for being fearless and a good organiser.

During the Quit India movement, many young men had been drawn to Mukherjee because of his valour and fearlessness. He then started building a small army of volunteers to help the Congress in times of need.

It was this army of young men that Mukherjee called in the afternoon of August 17, 1946, and asked them to resist the Muslim league mobs and retaliate against anyone trying to harm Hindus. Mukherjee’s bank of young men had a large number of Hindi-speaking Hindus.

On Mukherjee’s orders, they put up a fierce resistance against the Muslim League and struck fear in the hearts of the marauding Islamists. Mukherjee had expressly told them to be brutal against all those who attack Hindus. Mukherjee gave the call for killing ten Muslim League member for every Hindu killed (hear this interview of Mukherjee).

Mukherjee turned the tide in favour of Hindus and against the Muslim League that crucial August of 1946. And Bengali Hindus should remain eternally grateful to him for that.

Read this and this to know more about Gopal Mukherjee and his acts.

Hear Gopal Mukherjee’s interview with BBC on his role in saving Hindus of Calcutta from annihilation.