Author’s Views: The author as a prelude to the Calcutta riots of August 1946 narrates various troubles that were simmering in Calcutta from 1945 onwards. Though he qualifies these events as non-communal , he says that the after effects of these strikes though non-communal and concerned with local issues, overlapped each other promoting violence and disorder. The reader is urged to go through the original text.
Comments: It appears that the author wants the reader to believe that the killings and arson in Calcutta as a fall out of ‘Direct Action day’ are to be taken as a matter of routine. Because as per the author, after all , that was the way things were happening in Calcutta from November 1945 onwards for almost a year and there was nothing to suggest that the killings and arson from August 16 to August 19, 1946 (with the full connivance of the Local Government) were anything different!!! How bizarre his intentions are.
It is a well-known fact supported by recorded evidence, that in support of the resolution of July 29 of the Muslim League for "Direct Action" for creation of Pakistan, inflammatory speeches were made. Statements and pamphlets by responsible members of the League and Ministers were circulated widely to inflame a large section of Muslim masses. The government of Bengal declared August 16 as a public holiday. This created an impression that the observance of August 16 as ‘Direct Action day’ was tacitly approved by the Government of Bengal and any one not joining could claim no protection from the Government. There was no police, not even traffic police to be seen on August 16. The curfew order was not enforced even after it was proclaimed for the first two nights. Detailed description of the mayhem is available in the world wide web (Search for Calcutta Killings of August 1946) and I need not deal with it further. But the question to be asked to the author, did all other agitations, protests and riots from November 1945 onwards (as the author narrates in the pages quoted above), had the same response from the government like the ones on August 16-19?
In a public meeting in Delhi, Ganzafar Ali Khan declared, “ the aim of our direct action is to paralyze Nehru’s Government which will vanish like the historic half-day rule of Nizam the water carrier ….Muslims will resist such a government with their blood.”
Were such inflammatory speeches made to incite the public for other agitations in Calcutta from November 1945? Does the author want to state that the Calcutta killings and arson of August 16-19 are nothing peculiar but to be taken as routine events of Calcutta? Why he is trying to defend an indefensible?
No comments:
Post a Comment