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A genteel, unplanned divide

The story of partition of Bengal substantiates the perception that Indian history has always been north-centric. Any story on partition will talk about aspects and responses that applied to Punjab and rest of the north, but were nearly absent in the division of Bengal.

A genteel, unplanned divide

Tale of despair: Not many among those who made it to the other side in Bengal lost their lives. But they were worse off — with no shelter, no livelihood Photo courtesy: Photo division/PIB



Sandeep Dikshit

The story of partition of Bengal substantiates the perception that Indian history has always been north-centric. Any story on partition will talk about aspects and responses that applied to Punjab and rest of the north, but were nearly absent in the division of Bengal.

The saga of partition, from fictionalised accounts to factual tomes, never thought it fit to inject a footnote on the different trajectory of Bengal's partition. All post-partition accounts are heavily disposed towards the trauma of Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi. They rarely talk about how the partition history for Bengal and Punjab was different; and why this distinctiveness came to subsequently haunt them in different ways.

Every part of the north and the north-west was pockmarked by instances of savage massacres, enforced conversions, abductions and savage sexual violence. But the administration was prepared for the transfer. Muslims migrating to Pakistan were immediately allotted plots and land vacated by departing Hindus. The same story played out in India.

In Bengal, migration was gradual and it never ended. But the administration was not prepared and if the migrating Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims alike, did not face the bloodbath of the Punjab, not many among those who made it to the other side in Bengal lost their lives. But they were worse off with no shelter, no livelihood.

For Punjab, the partition came like a jack hammer blow. That was not the case in Bengal. Savagery was no less absent. If the Mantos and Khushwant Singhs narrated the saga of dehumanisation of man in the north during the frenzy of partition, the devil in the man was equally ably captured by celebrated novelist Nirad C Chaudhuri. The intrepid photo journalist Margaret Bourke-White, after a spell of murderous frenzy, compared the streets of Calcutta with the Nazi concentration camps she had visited a year before.

But Bengal was not totally unprepared for a parting of ways. Mountbatten, a stylish and fashionable minor royalty, accompanied by a rich and beautiful wife, was tasked to speed up partition. Cyril Radcliffe had just 40 days to draw the borders without having visited any of the water bodies, districts and villages that were to be assigned to India and Pakistan. In that short time, personalities called the shots and obviously they pulled up short. This triggered misgivings, apprehensions and fears that enticed man to set upon man in the most humanly impossible manner.

Bengal already had absorbed with some of the issues with the first partition in 1905 unlike Punjab that was caught unawares around Independence. The Hindus who controlled Bengal’s industrial and agricultural stirrups renegotiated its reunification. But the British assiduously sowed the seeds of bitterness among the two major communities. The first partition of Bengal was the second part of a project that began in 1870 to persuade Hindus and Muslims to form political parties based on their religious identities. This second part began with Bengal’s partition in 1905 and moved into high gear with separate electorates in the 1909 elections.

When the second partition came, the Bengalis sat across the table to agonise long and hard about whether to part ways on the basis of Hindu identity. The first vote was to remain united and the second vote, primarily of Hindu legislators, pressed for a partition as they feared Muslim domination in a united Bengal.

The most prominent leader of the Muslims H S Suhrawardy even presented a third alternative: an independent country of Bengal. But the Hindu leaders as well as those from the Congress ran it down. This was a reflection of the polarisation underway for more than 50 years.

Suhrawardy was to figure again, this time as a protagonist who made inflammatory speeches laced with a questionable moral tone: “Bloodshed and disorder are not necessarily evil in themselves, if resorted to for a noble cause.”

Calcutta went into convulsions and 4,000 were massacred in three days of rioting in 1946. Mahatma Gandhi was to figure prominently as he ventured into Calcutta and rural parts of Bengal that had witnessed murder and mayhem.

In Punjab, the long days and nights of terror subsided once governments took charge. Very few minorities remained on either side. The borders were sealed by the wall of religion. In East Pakistan, there were 25 per cent Hindus. The polity had been irretrievably vitiated by the taint of communalism. Just three years after partition, severe riots rocked Barisal and several other places. A second, mini partition took place. Such was the animus that a Cabinet Minister of unified Pakistan, Jogendranath Mandal fled to India protesting the intimidation and second-class treatment to lower caste Hindus, who had opted to stay in Pakistan.

If Suhrawardy’s speeches and Jinnah’s Direct Action Day had set the template for rioting, there was a reaction in neighbouring Bihar. In one of the little-known stories, the then Bihar chief minister and a major Congress satrap, had instigated rioting against the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, with embitterment in their hearts, fled to the safety of compatriots in East Pakistan. It is these people who provided the foot soldiers in the first instance of the assault on Hindus in 1950. They later teamed up with the Pakistan army to launch an assault against leftists, Bengali nationalist intellectuals and Hindus that culminated in the 1971 Bangladesh war.

Since there was no near-complete ethnic cleansing in both the Bengals, very unlike the situation in Punjab, informal migration continued. Perhaps, the much reviled Suhrawardy was right in opposing the partition of Bengal and the Congress-Hindutva groups misplaced in pressing for it. Suhrawardy had argued that partition would economically harm Bengal irreparably as East Bengal was rural and West Bengal was endowed with industries. The offshoot is economic migration that continues from Bangladesh to India.


FACT FILE

  • The first partition of Bengal came about on October 16, 1905, after a line drawn by Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India. It was reversed in 1911. The second partition of the state took place in 1947.
  • The reason given for the first partition of Bengal was that the population of nearly 85 million people was too large for a single province and 'merited reorganization and intelligent division'. The second partition of Bengal in 1947 was done on the basis of religion. The Hindu population migrated to West Bengal. 
  • The division saw intellectual Hindu leadership of Bengal's bhadralok or respectable people" tied to the Bihari and Oriya-speaking Hindus to their north and south.
  • Between 1947 and 1964, some five million Hindus left East Pakistan following communal riots in different parts of the country. 

Killing statistics

August 1946

The Great Calcutta Killings

Various historians have given different estimates of casualties, mostly Muslims. These vary between 5,000 dead and 15,000 injured, according Penderel Moon. Randall Hansen, however, puts the number of dead at 4,000 and 10,000 injured.

October 1946 

The Noakhali Anti-Hindu Massacre

The death toll is close to 5,000 dead according to the press (Debjani Sengupta), though Penderel Moon considered that it should rather be counted in hundreds. Nearly 75 per cent of Hindus previously in the area left the place. (Sengupta, 2007; Moon, 1998).


"A Hindu mob stripped a 14-year-old boy naked to confirm that he was circumcised, and therefore Muslim. The boy was then thrown into a pond and held down with bamboo poles — a Bengali engineer educated in England noted the time he took to die on his Rolex wristwatch, and wondered how tough the life of a Muslim bastard was." 

—Nirad C Chaudhuri

"There were 'brave men' in India who from house tops were saying: "Hindus are being butchered, they are subjected to atrocities in Noakhali and we must save them." But, there was only one Gandhi and his peace mission went to Noakhali."

—Madhu Dandwate in “Gandhi's Human touch”

"There is the reality of the continuous flow of ‘economic migrants’/’refugees’/ ‘infiltrators’/ ‘illegal immigrants’ who cross over the border and pan out across the sub-continent, looking for work and a new home, settling in metropolitan centres as far off as Delhi and Mumbai, keeping the question of the partition alive today."

—Bashabi Fraser

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