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Direct Action Day

day of widespread communal rioting between Muslims and Hindus in the city of Calcutta

Direct Action Day (16 August 1946), also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of nationwide communal riots by the Indian Muslim community announced by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. And orchestrated by ‘The Butcher of Bengal H.S.Suhravardy. It led to large-scale violence by Muslims on Hindus? He Instigated the crazed Muslim Men to loot, maim, murder, and gang rape women and girls until they die and then the hung their bodies on poles as trophies. Hindus in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India.

Quotes

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  • 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.”
    • Translated from the Bengali original cited in R.C. Majumdar, Bangladesher Itihasa, Volume IV. Quoted in Majumadāra, S. (2001). Jihad: The Islamic doctrine of permanent war. ch. 10
  • 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.
    • Sita Ram Goel, How I became a Hindu, ch. 4
  • 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.
    • Elst, Koenraad. Ayodhya and after: issues before Hindu society. 1991.
  • 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.
    • Elst, Koenraad (2018). Why I killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's defence. New Delhi : Rupa, 2018.
  • 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.
    • Elst, K. Forever Ayodhya, 2023, Aryan Books International chapter 18. The Truth about Ayodhya that Many Journalists Seem to Ignore
  • “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.”
  • 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.”
  • 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.
  • 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 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.”
  • 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 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.’
    • Muslim League and pro Pakistan pamphlets in support of Direct Action Day, quoted in Khosla GD (1989) Stern Reckoning: A Survey of Events Leading Up To and Following the Partition of India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, [25] quoted from M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011)
  • [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.’
    • Khosla GD (1989) Stern Reckoning: A Survey of Events Leading Up To and Following the Partition of India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, [26] quoted from M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011)
  • [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.
    • Khosla GD (1989) Stern Reckoning: A Survey of Events Leading Up To and Following the Partition of India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, [27] quoted from M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011)
  • 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.
    • Suvendu Adhikari, — Suvendu Adhikari • শুভেন্দু অধিকারী (@SuvenduWB) August 10, 2021[28] [29]
  • The programme reminded the Muslims of what stuff they were made. “Muslims must remember that it was in Ramzan that the Quran was revealed It was in Ramzan that the permission for Jehad was granted by Allah It was in Ramzan that the battle of Badr, the first open conflict between Islam and Heathenism 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 The Muslim League 1s fortunate that it is starting its action in this holy month ”... Another leaflet containing a special prayer for the crusade is worth quoting in full. “ MUNAJAT FOR THE JEHAD (To be sad at every mosque after the Jumma prayer ) It was in this month of Ramzan that the Holy Quran was revealed! It was in this month of Ramzan that 313 Muslims were victorious through the grace of God over many Kafers in the battle of Badr and the Jehad of the Muslims commenced! It was in this month that ten thousand Muslims marched to Mecca and were conquerors and thus there was the establishment of the Kingdom of Islam. By the grace of God we are ten crores in India but through 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 We promise before You that we entirely dependon You Pray make us strong in body and mind—give Your helping hand in all our actions—make us victorious over the Kafers—enable us to establish the Kingdom of Islam in India and make proper sacrifice for this Jehad—by the grace of God may we build up m India the greatest Islamic kingdom in the world. ...A Bengali pamphlet Mugur (Club) concluded with a passionate appeal “The Bombay resolution of the All India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from the Qaid-e Azam of the Muslim leaders. Braves, this 13 what we want. This is the policy for the nation of heroes. For so long we have been acting like beggars. We are glad from the core of our hearts to hear this magnificent news. This 1s what we have been eagerly waiting for God has granted to the Muslims in the month of Ramzan what they have been clamouring for The day for an open fight which 1s the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come those who want to rise to heaven. Come those who are simple wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves goondas those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers—all come (Italics ours.) The shiming 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. A leaflet bearing a picture of Mr Jinnah with a sword in hand said — “The sword of Islam must be shining on the heavens and will subdue all evil designs. We Muslims have had the Crown and have ruled. Do not lose heart. Be ready and take your swords Think you Muslims, why we are under the kafirs today The result of loving the kafirs 1s not good O kafir | Do not be proud and happy Your doom 1s not far and the general massacre will come We shall show our glory with swords in hands and will have%a special victory ” Another.leaflet asked the Muslims to come into the arena with their swords and change their tactics “We shall then 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. Tomorrow will be doom’s day”
    • Direct Action Day Leaflets and pampleths, quoted in Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 46-53
  • As early as 6 a.m. reports began to pour into the Police Control Room. The eleven telephones, installed in two separate rooms, rang so frequently and brought forth so many tales of distress, so many calls for help and such a stream of appeals for rescue that it was impossible to keep even a brief record of the countless messages received. ... There can, how- ever, be no doubt that the criminal apathy of the police officials and the failure of those in authority to deploy the available forces to the best advantage were mainly responsible for the holocaust which followed. For two days the police were almost completely inactive or evasive. Appeals for assistance were answered with, “We have no orders.” Policemen stood watching the burning and looting of houses with calm indifference. ... The Mallick Bazaar was looted by a mob of hooligans who ran about displaying their booty with a great show of exultant joy. Police guards joined the looters in this merry-making.... For a day and a half the Muslim rioters held their own. The tide of the battle then began to turn and Hindus and Sikhs began to hit back. It was only when this change began to spell disaster for the Muslims, that military assistance was summoned.
    • Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 46-59
  • Reference has already been made to the forcible closing of Hindu shops as the immediate exciting cause of the disturbances. All over Calcutta Muslim crowds demanded the closure of non- Muslim shops. If the slightest resistance was offered the shop was looted and burnt. Very soon the crowds began to break open closed shops and loot them. It is significant that many Muslim shops had been marked in chalk with “Mussalman shop —Pakistan” to save them from the attentions of the mob and this circumstance was mentioned as proving a previous plan to loot all non-Muslim shops.
    • Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 61
  • A number of temples were attacked and burnt down. Among these was the Radhakrishna Temple on Cornwallis Road and the Sita Temple in College Street. The Science College and the Hindu houses in its neighbourhood were persistently attacked for several hours. ... A number of cars and lorries, marked with the Red Cross or flying Red Cross flags. were going about killing people and looting shops. The looting and killing went on continuously for forty hours in some localities and this sus- tained energy of the fanatical mobs was an astonishing feature of the riots. The streets were strewn with dead bodies and the corpses lay thus for several days giving out a foul stench. ... 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.
    • Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 61ff
  • It is estimated that more than five thousand persons were killed and more than fifteen thousand injured, and if the hospital figures are accepted as a basis for determining the ratio of the Muslim and Hindu casualties it will be clear that the Muslims fared almost as badly the Hindus. When this circumstance came to light the Muslim League leaders and the Muslim League Press asserted vehemently that the rioting was started by the supporters of the Congress and some of them even went so far as to say that the Hindus had prepared a deeply laid plan to commit wholesale murder of Muslims on Direct Action Day in order to discredit the Muslim League. On the other hand, it was sail that the Muslims had an efficient transport and ambulance corps and all their dead and injured were taken to hospital, while Hindu dead bodies were for ‘the most part burnt or destroyed and, therefore, did not figure in the official statistics.
    • Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 66ff
  • The morning of 16 August witnessed the dreaded mammoth march of the League with cries of ‘Ladh ke lenge Hindusthan’ (fighting we shall take Hindusthan). At the meeting which followed under the presidentship of the premier, speaker after speaker swore death and destruction for Hindus. Jehad on the kafirs was declared and the dispersing mob let loose g veritable hell on the Hindus with murder, loot, arson, and rape on a scale reminiscent of the bygone days of barbaric Islamic invasions. The orgy continued without let or hindrance for full two days. Calcutta reeled and lay prostrate writhing in agony. Whoever was apprehended indulging in criminal acts was immediately ordered to be set free by the premier himself who sat in the police control room and directed the operations. The English Governor F. Burrows sat like a statue in his chambers, ‘seeing no evil’ and ‘hearing no evil’. The wailings of Hindus before him and the other Government authorities fell on deaf ears. The Hindus realised that their fate would be sealed unless they struck hard in self-defence....A British correspondent of Statesman, Kim Christen, wrote: ‘I have a stomach made strong by the experience of war, but war was never like this. This is not a riot. It needs a word found in mediaeval history, a fury. Yet ‘fury’ sounds spontaneous and there must have been some deliberation and organisation to see this fury on the way.’’

Gandhi's Experiments with Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi

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The riots in Calcutta shocked Gandhi, the nation, and the world. Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh leaders exploited the communal tensions in 1946-1947 for their own political gain. In their fervor for liberation from the Hindu majority.

Richard L. Johnson, in Gandhi's Experiments with Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi

  • The riots in Calcutta shocked Gandhi, the nation, and the world. Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh leaders exploited the communal tensions in 1946-1947 for their own political gain. In their fervor for liberation from the Hindu majority.
    • In p. 46
  • Be ready to take your swords...we shall show our glory with swords in hand and will have a special victory”
  • H.S. Suhrawardy, the Chief Minister of Bengal and a major Muslim leaguer in Calcutta, was “appalingly negligent …perhaps…even deliberately provocative” in the early stages of killing.
    • Dennis Dalton, commenting on the death toll was four thousand in the four days of the Great Calcutta Killing” p. 46
  • Each group blamed the other for the violence. Jinnah blamed the “Viceroy, Mr. Gandhi, and the Congress”. Nehru placed the responsibility “for all that has happened” in Calcutta on the Muslim League.
    • In p. 46
  • Gandhi however, believed, that blaming others would never resolve the conflict. As a staygarhi [sic], he asserted that separatism and hatred within each person led to violence. He therfere [sic] held every one in Calcutta responsible for the rioting. He admonished all to ‘turn search lights inwards” and to ses that the street criminals directly responsible for most of the violence, the goondas, were a reflection of the goomdaism within every Hindu, Mulsim [sic] and Sikh.
    • In 47
  • Was [Gandhi] almost seriously wounded when the crowd attacked his party.
    • Dennis Dalton reports that Gandhi and and his party was attacked and he was injured. Quoted in p. 47
  • the weapon which has proved infallible for me
    • Gandhi, quoted by Dennis Dalton reported that on 1 September 1947, Gandhi decided to hold an indefinite fast till the rioting stopped though he understood that “an appearance before a yelling crowd does not always work”, in p. 47
  • I want to touch the hearts of those who are behind the goondas.
  • 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.
    • Amiya Chakravarty, a teacher, quoted in p. 47
  • 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.
    • In p. 47
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • He had in fact worked a miracle, perhaps the greatest in modern times.
    • E.W.R. Lumby on success of Gandhi’s fast resulting in stoppage of communal riots, quoted in p. 47
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