Remembering Gopal Mukherjee, The Braveheart Who Saved
Calcutta In 1946
Jaideep Mazumdar
Aug 19, 2017
SNAPSHOT
During the massacre of Hindu men and women in Calcutta in 1946, one man mobilized the Hindu resistance and brought to a halt to the horrific proceedings.
If Bengali Hindus are living in Kolkata today, and if (West) Bengal exists today, they have Gopal Mukhopadhyay (and other stalwarts) to thank for.
18 August ought to be
a red-letter day for Kolkata in particular, and Bengal in general. But few
remember this day, which marked a turning point in the gory events that
overtook the city from 16 August 1946. And it was the dramatic turn of events
from 18 August that year that saved the city and Bengal from becoming part of
Pakistan.
Very few
remember Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay,
the braveheart who turned the tide against the Muslim League, saving tens of
thousands of Hindus from certain annihilation and thus defeating the League’s diabolic
pogrom against Hindus. Had it not been for him and his courageous and patriotic
band of followers, Calcutta and its neighboring Hindu-majority districts would
have been drained of Hindus and made part of East Pakistan.
The Prelude
As is well known, the
then Muslim League chief minister of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, organised a pogrom
against the Hindus of Calcutta from 16 August 1946 – the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day. The pogrom against
Hindus by the Muslim League was pre-planned. Jinnah gave enough indication of
his evil intentions – he said he would have “India divided or India burned”,
that the League had bidden “goodbye to Constitutional methods” and would
“create trouble”.
The day – 16 August –
was also chosen with care and to provoke Islamist sentiments. It was the
eighteenth day of Ramzan, when prophet Muhammad fought and won the Battle of Badr, the first decisive
victory over the heathens that paved the way for the bloody conquest of Mecca.
Posters of Jinnah posing with a sword were distributed in Calcutta while the
Muslim League mouthpiece The Star of India and other Muslim
publications reminded the community about the significance of the day and urged
them to follow in the footsteps of the prophet to kill the heathens (Hindus)
and make Bengal the “land of the pure” (Pakistan). Syed Muhammad Usman, then
mayor of Calcutta, issued a widely circulated leaflet that said: Kafer!
Toder dhongsher aar deri nei! Sarbik hotyakando ghotbei! (Infidels!
Your end is not far away! You will be massacred!)
Muslim League leaders
instructed clerics in mosques to give fiery speeches after the jumma
namaz (16 August was a Friday as well). The clerics obeyed and
reminded their congregations that the day was a significant one and exhorted
them to cleanse Bengal of kafirs or infidels. But even before
the Friday prayers, Muslims started attacking Hindu shops and business
establishments that had remained open in defiance of the Muslim League’s call
for a hartal (strike). After the prayers, tens of thousands of
agitated Muslims streamed to the Ochterlony monument (the Shahid Minar now) to
hear Suhrawardy and other Muslim League leaders. The leaders issued fiery
speeches urging the Muslims to attack Hindus and drive them away from Calcutta
so that Jinnah’s dream of making Bengal a part of Pakistan could come true.
Suhrawardy, in his speech, assured the Muslims that he had ensured that the
police and army would be “restrained”. This was construed as a direct
encouragement to Muslims to attack and kill Hindus.
The Killing of Hindus
And this is exactly
what happened. Tens of thousands of agitated Muslims, baying for the blood of
Hindus, streamed out of the rally and spread to different parts of the city
armed with iron rods, swords and lethal weapons. A shop selling arms and
ammunition belonging to a Hindu at Esplanade (just near the venue of the Muslim
League rally) was the first to be attacked. The owner and his employees were
decapitated. What followed was a one-sided orgy of violence in which thousands
of Hindu homes and shops were attacked, Hindu men and boys brutally massacred
(decapitation and amputation of limbs were the preferred forms of brutality)
while Hindu women were disrobed, raped and killed. Many were taken away as sex
slaves.
One of the worst
massacres took place at Kesoram Cotton Mills at Lichubagan in the Muslim-dominated
Metiabruz area, where a Muslim League leader, Syed Abdullah Farooqi, led a
Muslim mob inside the compound of the mill where about 600 Hindu labourers,
mostly Odias, were staying. They were all beheaded; just two survivors lived to
tell the tale of Muslim brutality. Both had their arms hacked off and had been
given up for dead, but they survived.
The Hindus, as
Suhrawardy had rightly predicted, did not put up any resistance in the first
two days. He had told his colleagues that Hindus had been numbed into
submission by centuries of Muslim rule and just did not possess the courage to
stand up to Muslims, even though Muslims were in a minority in the country. It
must be remembered that Calcutta had 64 per cent Hindus and 33 per cent Muslims
in 1946, and only a few districts neighbouring Calcutta like Howrah and Hooghly
were Hindu-majority. Suhrawardy told his Muslim League colleagues that after
centuries of being dominated by Muslims, Hindus did not “have it in their genes
to resist Muslims” and that “Hindus were of the firm belief that they (Hindus)
were weak and Muslims were strong and ferocious”.
Suhrawardy stationed
himself in the control room of the Calcutta Police headquarters at Lalbazar,
from where he restrained the British and Anglo-Indian police officers from
deploying forces to areas where Muslims were attacking Hindus successfully.
Earlier, Suhrawardy had changed the composition of the city police’s
constabulary by inducting a large number of Pathans and Muslims from United
Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) into the force to replace Bihari Hindus. These
Muslim constables also aided the Muslim League criminals in killing Hindu men
and raping and butchering Hindu women.
The killings took
place in Hindu-majority areas of the city, and in the first two days – 16, 17
August – a few thousand Hindus were killed. Estimates vary between 4,000 and
20,000; about 3,500 bodies of Hindus were cremated, but British and Indian
contemporary historians have written that many times that number were stuffed
into underground sewers or simply dumped in the Ganges and the various canals
that criss-crossed the city. A conservative estimate would put the number of
Hindus killed or missing at over 7,000.
Exodus of Hindus
Hindus started fleeing
Calcutta. Howrah station was a mass of humanity with Hindus desperate to board
trains bound for other parts of the country. Hundreds of Hindu families,
desperate to cross the Hooghly in country boats, were drowned when Muslims
manning barges rammed their vessels into the country boats. This was exactly
what Suhrawardy had planned: kill Hindus and create such a fear psychosis that
Hindus would flee Calcutta, and the city would then become Muslim-majority. A
Muslim-majority Calcutta would then bolster the Muslim League’s demand for its
inclusion in Pakistan.
Suhrawardy had planned
that after driving Hindus out of Calcutta, he would turn his attention to
Hindu-majority districts of Howrah and Hooghly as well as the 24 Parganas that
were industrialised and driving the economy of Bengal. Without these districts,
he realised, East Pakistan would not be economically well off. So it was
imperative to drive Hindus away from these districts or beat them into
submission so that they would not oppose the League’s demand for the inclusion
of the districts in Pakistan.
Enter Gopal
Mukhopadhyay
It was at this crucial
juncture, when Suhrawardy’s and the Muslim League’s diabolical plan of killing
Hindus and reducing them to a hopeless minority in Calcutta and neighboring districts was coming to fruition, that Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay emerged on
the scene. Gopal, then 33, belonged to a family of nationalists. He was an
ardent supporter of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and used to abhor Gandhian
non-violence. He was a nephew of Anukul Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a nationalist
thinker and professor of philosophy at Allahabad University who was awarded the
Padma Bhushan in 1964.
Gopal used to run his
family mutton shop and, hence, was popularly known as Gopal ‘patha’ (‘patha’
means male goats in Bengali). Many researchers have said he used to interact
closely with Muslim traders and rearers of goats, and bore not an iota of ill
will towards Muslims. From his early days, Gopal was a philanthropist, helping
families and people in distress. Gopal had already raised the Bharat Jatiya
Bahini, a nationalist organisation comprising young men, to help people in
distress and carry out relief works during calamities. Many members of the
Bahini were wrestlers.
On the night of 17
August, when distressing reports of large-scale massacre of Hindus and rape of
Hindu women started reaching Gopal, he called out to Hindu youths and members
of his Bharat Jatiya Bahini to resist the attacks by Muslims. Throughout the
night, Gopal and his associates chalked out detailed action plans to stop
Muslim attacks on Hindus. Hearing of the self-defence strategy being chalked
out by Gopal, many non-Bengali Hindu men offered to help. Marwari traders of
Burrabazar, who had also borne the brunt of Muslim attacks, offered financial
help. Hindu blacksmiths made thousands of swords, spears, choppers, cleavers
and other weapons in their workshops overnight.
The Hindu Fightback
By early morning of 18
August, small armies of Hindu youths were ready in Hindu localities to take on
Muslim attackers. Suhrawardy and his Muslim League colleagues knew nothing of
this build-up of Hindu resistance and started directing League criminals to
Hindu areas from that morning again. Suhrawardy told his Muslim League
colleagues and workers that they had two more days to cleanse Calcutta of
Hindus as pressure was building up due to news of the killings reaching Delhi.
Suhrawardy apprehended intervention by the viceroy, and hence his priority was
to step up the killings of Hindus in Calcutta on 18 August and then turn his
criminals loose in the three neighbouring districts over the next two days to
complete his evil plan.
But the Islamist goons
and criminals received a nasty shock on 18 August morning. “They faced
resistance everywhere. Hindu youths counter-attacked with such ferocity that
the Muslim League men had to flee. Many were killed. Emboldened by their
success in taking on and defeating their Islamist attackers, Hindu youths took
the fight to Muslim-majority areas and started killing Islamist men. They did
not, however, touch Muslim women and children or the aged and the infirm,”
writes historian Sandip Bandopadhyay, who researched Gopal Mukhopadhyay
extensively. “Gopal was never communal. He simply organised self-defence of
Hindus by organising Hindu youths to fight back Islamist aggression. He gave
shelter to the homeless and widows and stopped them from getting killed or
converted,” writes Bandopadhyay.
Over the next three
days – 18-20 August – Muslim League goons were paid back in their own coin. All
Muslim League goons who had led mobs in attacking Hindus and those who had
participated in the pogrom against Hindus were identified, hunted down and
killed. Panic spread among Muslims, who felt they were no longer safe in
Calcutta. From 19 August, the tide had turned and Islamist men and youth who
had killed Hindus were at the receiving end. Suhrawardy and his men, as well as
the biased and anti-Hindu Calcutta Police officers and constabulary, could do
nothing to stop Hindu resistance.
The Hindu fightback
was led by Gopal Mukhopadhyay and some men like Basanta, a famous wrestler of
Beadon Street (near Gopal’s residence in Bowbazar), but it was the Dalits and
non-Bengali Hindus from Bihar and United Provinces who provided the muscle.
Financed by Marwari traders, they fought back valiantly and succeeded in
reversing the tide in favour of Hindus. By counter-attacking Islamists, they
not only shattered the illusion among Islamists that Hindus were meek but also
drove fear into the hearts of the Islamists who were confident of annihilating
the Hindus.
Setback to Suhrawardy
Suhrawardy, who had
thought Hindus were cowards and would submit meekly to Islamist attacks and
subsequent domination, received a deep shock. He was shattered and, according
to a British police officer, was seen in Lalbazar in the evening of 19 August
in a state of utter shock, his head in his hands and muttering he could never
imagine the Hindus would fight back and kill Muslims.
Suhrawardy’s sinister
plan to kills Hindus in Calcutta and the neighbouring districts in order to
create panic among the Hindus and trigger an exodus from these areas, thus
converting them into Muslim-majority areas that would be ripe for inclusion in
East Pakistan, received a huge setback. Suhrawardy was a defeated man, thanks
mainly to Gopal Mukhopadhyay. His plan lay in tatters. By 21 August, when
viceroy’s rule was imposed in Bengal, Suhrawardy was dismissed, and the British
and Gurkha army troops spread out all over Calcutta to put an end to the
killings, more Muslims than Hindus had been killed.
Suhrawardy, in order
to save his chair and put an end to the violence, deputed G G Ajmeri and Mujibur Rahman (later the creator of
Bangladesh) who were musclemen and members of the Muslim League students’ wing
and the Muslim National Guard, to seek truce with Gopal Mukhopadhyay. They went
to Mukhopadhyay and pleaded for an end to the killings. Mukhopadhyay agreed on
the condition that the Muslim League would disarm its killing squads and stop
attacks on Hindus first. Suhrawardy complied.
Historians say
Suhrawardy was not only driven to the wall by Hindu resistance and the
consequent failure of his diabolical plans, he also sensed that the British
viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell was
at the edge of his patience and could dismiss Suhrawardy’s Muslim league
government in Bengal. That would have been more disastrous for Suhrawardy and
he would have lost all power on the eve of independence of India. He panicked
and in order to save his chair, suggested truce with the Hindus. But it would
prove to be too late; Lord Wavell dismissed the Muslim League government in
Bengal on 21 August.
If Not for Gopal
Mukhopadhyay...
It would be relevant
here to examine what course history would have taken had Gopal Mukhopadhyay not
organised a resistance by the Hindus from 18 August 1946. Calcutta’s population
at the time was about 20 lakh. Of them, there were 12.8 lakh Hindus and 6.6
lakh Muslims. Of the 12.8 lakh Hindus, about 30 per cent (or about 3.84 lakh)
were non-Bengalis whose voices and opinions would not have mattered had a
referendum been held on the inclusion of Calcutta in East Pakistan since they
would have been considered migrants from other provinces.
By 17 August night, an
estimated 7,000 Hindus had been massacred by the Islamists and that had
triggered a massive exodus of Hindus, mainly Bengali Hindus, from Kolkata. Had
the killings continued for two more days, more Hindus would have died and the
city’s Hindu population – the killings and exodus combined – would have come
down to an estimated 7.8 lakh.
Researchers who have
studied genocide and ethnic killings and subsequent exodus of the targeted
community say that the killing of every 100 people triggers an exodus of at
least 4,000 people. Thus, the killings of 12,000 Hindus (7,000 already killed
and at least another 5,000 who would have been killed had the pogrom continued
for another two days) would have triggered the exodus of nearly five lakh
Hindus from Calcutta. That would have brought the population of Hindus in
Calcutta down to about 7.8 lakh, a little higher than the existing Muslim
population.
Suhrawardy and his
Muslim League colleagues had also planned to bring in Muslims from Calcutta’s
hinterlands to take over properties left by Hindus who had fled or were killed.
He had plans to bring in at least four lakh Muslims from the Muslim-majority
and densely populated eastern part of Bengal to settle in Calcutta in the neighboring industrial and economically advanced districts. Thus, the plan was
to make Calcutta and its rich and industrially (as well as economically)
advanced neighboring districts into Muslim-majority areas. That would have
strengthened the Muslim League’s claim for inclusion of Calcutta and these
districts in East Pakistan.
Gopal Mukhopadhyay
Averted Disaster for Hindus
Had Suhrawardy’s game
plan succeeded, it would have been disastrous for Bengali Hindus. Had Calcutta
and its neighboring districts gone to East Pakistan, lakhs of Bengali Hindus
would have been rendered homeless. And Hindus, as experience has shown, would
not have been safe in Muslim-majority East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Statistics prove this
contention. Bengali Hindus have never been safe and have always faced
discrimination, killings, rapes, forcible conversions and forced displacements
in Muslim-majority East Bengal that went on to become East Pakistan and then
Bangladesh. In 1901, Hindus formed 33 per cent of the population of the eastern
part of Bengal. They dwindled to 31.5 per cent in 1911, 30.6 per cent in 1921,
29.4 per cent in 1931 and 28 per cent in 1941.
After 1947, the
decline in the Hindu population in East Pakistan was sharp. Hindus got reduced
to 22.05 per cent of the population of East Pakistan in 1951, to 18.5 per cent
in 1961, 13.5 per cent in 1974 (after the creation of Bangladesh), 12.13 per
cent in 1981, 10.51 per cent in 1991, 9.2 per cent in 2001 and 8.96 per cent in
2011. By 2031, Hindus will form barely 5 per cent of the population of
Bangladesh.
This proves that
Bengali Hindus would never have been safe in Muslim-majority East Pakistan that
would have included Calcutta, Howrah, 24 Parganas and Hooghly had Suhrawardy’s
pogrom against Hindus succeeded and had Gopal Mukhopadhyay not valiantly
organised and fought back the murderous Islamist mobs inspired and led by
Suhrawardy.
Will History Repeat Itself?
Bengali Hindus would,
thus, have been without a homeland today if Suhrawardy had succeeded. If
Bengali Hindus are living in Kolkata today, and if (West) Bengal exists today,
they have Gopal Mukhopadhyay (and other stalwarts, primary among them being Dr
Syama Prasad Mookerjee) to thank for. Had it not been for them, Calcutta and
major parts of present-day Bengal would have been part of East Pakistan and
then Bangladesh, where Hindus are a persecuted lot living like miserable
second-class citizens in penury and despair. Unfortunately, Bengali Hindus have
forgotten their heroes to whom they owe their existence. They have forgotten
their history. And that is why Bengal today faces the danger of Islamist forces
trying to wrest political control of the state. Those who cannot remember the
past, as nineteenth-century Spanish philosopher George Santayana had famously
said, are bound to repeat it.
The only redeeming
feature here is the brave efforts by Hindu Samhati over the past
few years to resurrect the memory and contribution of Gopal Mukhopadhyay. For
the past several years, Hindu Samhati has been organizing a rally on 16 August to
commemorate Gopal Mukhopadhyay’s life and his efforts in saving the Hindus of
Bengal and this city from becoming part of Pakistan. Encouragingly, a growing
number of people, especially young men and women, have been participating in
the rally. This year, an estimated 10,000 young men and women took part in the
rally in Kolkata. Some Hindus, at least, are remembering history and drawing
lessons from it.
