Pakistan Historian

Communal riots in 1947: Who were the architects & why?

Tracing the roots of the 1947 riots:The roots of the riots in 1947 date back to 1906:

At the request of the Muslims of Bengal, in 1905, Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal. It was the beginning of of the Muslim awakening from the long slumber of self-pity and “reveling in the glory of yester year“. The British wanted to divide Bengal, to allow the Muslims some sense of self rule. Partition of Bengal’s implications for Bangladesh & Pakistan then and now

Map of Bengal 1906: THe partition of Bengal and the riots

The Muslims formed a majority in all of Bengal (which included Bengal, Bihar and Orissa). East Bengal, present day Bangladesh was a Muslim Majority area and West Bengal at that time included both present day Orissa and Bihar where also Bengalis would become minorities. Bengal was the epi-centre of Indian Nationalism. Bengali ideas influenced whole of India. The Muslim Bengalis Waqar ul Mulk, Mohsin ul Mulk had led a campaign for Muslim rights.

According to the 1941 census 53.4 per cent of the Bengalis were Muslims and the rest Hindus, with a minuscule proportion of Buddhists and Christians thrown in. The province was divided into five administrative divisions, which were further subdivided into districts, as follows : Presidency division, consisting of the districts of 24-Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, Jessore and Khulna and the Presidency town of Calcutta ; Burdwan division, with the districts of Howrah, Hooghly, Midnapore, Bankura, Burdwan and Birbhum ; Rajshahi division, with the districts of Rajshahi, Pabna, Malda, Dinajpur, Bogra, Rangpur, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling ; Dacca division, with the districts of Dacca, Faridpur, Barisal and Mymensingh (the largest district in British India) ; and Chittagong division with the districts of Chittagong, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Tipperah. Apart from these districts of Bengal, the people of Sylhet district of Assam, adjoining the Tipperah and Mymensingh districts of Bengal, those of the princely state of Cooch Behar adjoining Jalpaiguri and Rangpur, and a large number among the people of the princely state of Tripura, and among those of the districts of Manbhum nad Singhbhum in Bihar also largely spoke Bangla, and therefore were Bengalis. A map of the erstwhile province of Bengal, as it existed till the midnight of 14th August 1947 is at Fig. 1. The Bangla-speaking areas outside Bengal are also shown in the same map.

There was a vague and unofficial division of the province into three parts : East, West and North. West included the Presidency and Burdwan divisions ; North, the Rajshahi division ; and East, the Dacca and Chittagong divisions. There were substantial differences in the geography and the culture of the three parts. The West, particularly Burdwan division, had no navigable rivers, and some parts of the division were semi-arid ; however, the division had very large reserves of coal in its Ranigunge coalfields which had sired a large number of heavy industries in the region, including an integrated steel plant at Burnpur. The North was bounded by two great rivers, Padma and Jamuna (different from the Jumna or Yamuna which flows by Delhi and Agra ; this Jamuna is the Bengali incarnation of the mighty Brahmaputra of Assam). The region was criss-crossed by a number of swift-flowing tributaries of the two rivers. The East, as opposed to the two, was a low-lying flood plain, being a delta created by three huge rivers : Ganga, a snow-fed river, rechristened after entering Bengal as Padma; Brahmaputra, ditto, Jamuna ; and Meghna, a short but wide river fed only by rain, but from some of the rainiest places in the world, including Cherrapunjee. Certainly the major rivers, and practically all their tributaries and distributaries were navigable right through the year. In fact the usual means of locomotion in British East Bengal used to be the country boat, the nouka.

To oppose the partition in 1906, Swadeshi movement came into action. The RSS already mobilized used this as an excuse to create mayhem. Under presrrue of the Swadeshi movement and Hindu mahasaba Lord Curzon cancelled the partition of Bengal.

Communal riots in 1947: Who were the architects & why? Mohammad Zainal Abedin noazabd@gmail.com

I had the opportunity to go through the write-up of Tilak R. Sikri in the Washington Post captioned “”India’s Survivors of Partition Begin to Break Long Silence” that referred to the untold sufferings of the people who were the victims of communal riots that made millions of people homeless and hundreds of thousands of
them killed. In recalling the fateful scar of communal riot he mentioned how the Hindus suffered, but he did not mention what happened to the Muslims who suffered more tragically, as they (Muslims) were minority and the victims of the Hindus and their Sikh allies in Punjab. Tilkar failed to mention who were the
masterminds of that communal riot that made the partition of the subcontinent inevitable.

Muslims, even their leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, could be happy if the subcontinent remained undivided. They opted for a separate homeland for the Muslims when Hindu leaders denied to provide equitable rights to Muslims in independent India.

Hindu leaders agreed on partition of the subcontinent, as they thought and hoped that the dismemberment of India would be a temporary arrangement and reunification of India was a matter of time. History says that the riot of 1947 was masterminded to divide Bengal and Punjab, which were Muslim majority provinces at that time. Riots would not have occurred if they were not politically motivated. Neither innocent people would have been displaced or massacred; if Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister and his preceptor Gandhi would not had set a pre-condition that division of India “must mean a division also of Bengal and Punjab.” (See Nehru’s letter written on May 23, 1947, to Ashraffuddin Ahmad Chowdhury, the Congress President of Tripura, now Comilla, and district.) Nehru also did not keep secret the goal of his demand.

He in the same letter informed Ashraffuddin, “That is the only way to have a United India soon after. If we have a United India straightway, without such division that will, of course be very welcome.”

It is known to all that the Sikhs of Punjab and the Bengalees of Bengal wanted to have independent Punjab and Bengal. Sikhs of the Punjab were incited to stand against the Muslims and they were instigated that they would become the slaves of the Muslims if they would side with the Muslims for an independent sovereign Punjab, as the Muslims were slightly Majority over the Sikh in Punjab. Hindus joined hand with the Sikhs in anti-Muslim riot in Punjab. In this way division of Punjab was made inevitable.

When a joint movement of the Bengalee Hindus and Muslims in favour of United Independent Bengal got momentum, both Gandhi and Nehru vehemently opposed the idea. To break the unity of the Bengalee
Muslims and the Hindus Nehru and his disciples warned that Muslims would dominate the Hindus, if Bengal remained undivided. They demanded that Hindu majority region of Bengal Must merge with
India. Nehru publicly declared, each village, even each house of Bengal would have to be divided on communal line. To disunite the Bengalee Muslims and the Hindus and deter the emergence of United
Independent Bengal communal riots were masterminded.

It is easily understandable who were behind the riots of 1947. There were originated due to anti-Muslim communal feelings of the anti-Muslim cliques. Hundreds of thousands of anti-Muslim riots that occurred in India since 1947 unequivocally justify who were and are communal and terrorists. Tilak though in his write-up condemned communal riot, utterly failed to rise above his communal feelings, which was amply exposed in his writing.

Contributed by Isha Khan, who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com