Direct Action Day 1946 Calcutta Killings | |||
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Part of the Partition of India | |||
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Date | 16 August 1946 | ||
Location | 22°35′N 88°22′E / 22.58°N 88.36°E | ||
Caused by | Perceived unfairness, fear of Ethnic and Religious Discrimination | ||
Goals | Ethnic and religious persecution | ||
Methods | Massacre, pogrom, forced conversion, arson, abduction and mass rape | ||
Resulted in | Partition of Bengal | ||
Parties | |||
Lead figures | |||
No centralized leadership | |||
Casualties | |||
Death(s) | 4,000 - 10,000 (mostly Hindus) [3][4] |
Part of a series on |
Persecution of Hindus in pre-1947 India |
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Issues |
Incidents |
Direct Action Day (16 August 1946) was the day the All-India Muslim League decided to take a "direct action" using violence to intimidate non-muslims and their leadership for a separate Muslim homeland after the British exit from India. Also known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings, it was a day of nationwide communal riots.[5] It led to large-scale violence between Muslims and Hindus in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India.[3] The day also marked the start of what is known as The Week of the Long Knives.[6][7] While there is a certain degree of consensus on the magnitude of the killings (although no precise casualty figures are available), including their short-term consequences, controversy remains regarding the exact sequence of events, the various actors' responsibility and the long-term political consequences.[8]
There is still extensive controversy regarding the respective responsibilities of the two main communities, the Hindus and the Muslims, in addition to individual leaders' roles in the carnage. The dominant British view tends to blame both communities equally and to single out the calculations of the leaders and the savagery of the followers, amongst whom there were criminal elements.[citation needed] In the Indian National Congress' version of the events, the blame tends to be laid squarely on the Muslim League and in particular on the Chief Minister of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.[9] The view from the Muslim League is that Congress and the Hindus in fact used the opportunity offered by Direct Action Day to teach the Muslims in Calcutta a lesson and to kill them in great numbers.[citation needed] Thus, the riots opened the way to a partition of Bengal between a Hindu-dominated Western Bengal including Calcutta and a Muslim-dominated Eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh).[8]
The All-India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress were the two largest political parties in the Constituent Assembly of India in the 1940s. The Muslim League had demanded since its 1940 Lahore Resolution for the Muslim-majority areas of India in the northwest and the east to be constituted as 'independent states'. The 1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed a three-tier structure: a centre, groups of provinces and provinces. The "groups of provinces" were meant to accommodate the Muslim League's demand. Both the Muslim League and the Congress in principle accepted the Cabinet Mission's plan.[10] However; Nehru's speech on 10 July 1946 rejected the idea that the provinces would be obliged to join a group[11] and stated that the Congress was neither bound nor committed to the plan.[12] In effect, Nehru's speech squashed the mission's plan and the chance to keep India united.[11] Jinnah interpreted the speech as another instance of treachery by the Congress.[13] With Nehru's speech on groupings, the Muslim League rescinded its previous approval of the plan[14] on 29 July.[15]
Consequently, in July 1946, the Muslim League withdrew its agreement to the plan and announced a general strike (hartal) on 16 August, terming it Direct Action Day, to assert its demand for a separate homeland for Muslims in certain northwestern and eastern provinces in colonial India.[16][17] Calling for Direct Action Day, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All India Muslim League, said that he wanted "either a divided India or a destroyed India".[18][19]
Against a backdrop of communal tension, the protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta.[20][21] More than 4,000 people died and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours.[3][4] The violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern day Uttar Pradesh), Punjab (including massacres in Rawalpindi) and the North Western Frontier Province.[22] The events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.
(Signs of 'ethnic cleansing') were also present in the wave of violence that rippled out from Calcutta to Bihar, where there were high Muslim casualty figures, and to Noakhali deep in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta of Bengal. Concerning the Noakhali riots, one British officer spoke of a 'determined and organized' Muslim effort to drive out all the Hindus, who accounted for around a fifth of the total population. Similarly, the Punjab counterparts to this transition of violence were the Rawalpindi massacres of March 1947. The level of death and destruction in such West Punjab villages as Thoa Khalsa was such that communities couldn't live together in its wake.