noakhali 1946
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F R I DA Y , O C T O B ER 2 6 , 2 0 1 2
October 2012: Have we forgotten
Noakhali 1946 Genocide of Hindus
?
R E M E M B E R I N G LA K S H M I P U J A I N B E N G A L !
The Truth Plagiarized in Noakhali
Worst of all was the plight of women.
Several of them had to watch their
husbands being murdered and then be
forcibly converted and married to some of
those responsible for their death. Thosewomen had a dead look. It was not
despair, nothing so active as that. It was
blackness.the eating of beef and
declaration of allegiance to Islam has
been forced upon many thousands of as
the price of their lives
This is what Miss Muriel Leister, member of a relief
committee sent to Noakhali wrote on 6th November,
1946,(V.V. Nagarkar Genesis p 446). The
words have an eerie similarity to the outburst of
Annie Beasant after the moplah riots but belong to
an entirely different holocaust. These riots had
started about a month earlier in Muslim dominated
twin districts of Noakhali and Tipperah. Since the
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Muslim League government was architect of the
riots, news was suppressed for as long as possible.
Amrita Bazar Patrika on 23/10/46 reported,
For the 13th day today, about 120
villages in Ramganj, Lakshmipur, Raipur,
Begumganj and Senbag thanas (police
stations) in Noakhali district with a Hindu
population of 90,000 and nearby 70,000
villagers in Chandpur and Faridganj
thanas in Tippera (Comilla) districtremained besieged by hooligans. Death
stares the people of these areas in their
face and immediate rushing of supply to
these areas with the help of military, who
alone could do it, would save the lives of
these people, most of whom have been
without food for the last few days.
http://hinduawaken.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/vultures-feeding-on-corpses-lying-abandoned-in-alleyway-after-bloody-roiting-between-hindus-and-muslims-calcutta-kolkata-1946-1.jpg -
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The riots had started on 10/10/1946, but the ML
government acknowledged the fact only on
15/10/1946, a criminal delay of five days in which
thousands of lives could have been saved and
women could have been saved from being raped by
gangs. Today, after six decades the present
secular governments have gone even further. The
deganga riots have gone totally unreported in main
stream media.
On 16/10/1946, The Statesman reported:
In an area of about 200 sq miles the inhabitants
surrounded by riotous mobs, are being massacred,
their houses being burnt, their womenfolk being
forcibly carried away and thousands being
subjected to forcible conversion. Thousands of
hooligans attacked the villages, compelled them
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(Hindus) to slaughter their cattle and eat. All places
of worship in affected villages have been
desecrated. The District Magistrate and the Police
Superintendent of Noakhali took no step to prevent
it.
Noakhali and Tipperah (Comilla)
The two neighbouring districts are present in the
present day Bangladesh and were a part of Bengal
before partition of our motherland. The province of
Bengal was under the rule of Muslim League. The
league had chosen these districts to teach Hindus a
lesson. This district was chose because of its more
then 80% Muslim population and it was far removed
from media glare of Calcutta. Likewise the
neighbouring Tipperah district had more then 77%
Muslim population.
The unknown riots
By the year 1946, the freedom struggle had been
totally hijacked by media savvy and opportunistic
politicians. These were lick spittles of the british
and for them the acts of Martyrs like Udham Singh,
Bhagat Singh, Ashfaqullah Khan were actions of
misguided youths and they hoped that 'that it will
not have far-reaching repercussions on politicalfuture of India'. To them the political future of India
meant their own political future. Neta Ji Subhash
Chander Bose, Veer Savarkar and Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee were sidelined.
These opportunists were good event managers and
were able to get the control of turncated India on a
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silver platter.
Most of the modern day Indians do not know what
happened few months before the partition of our
motherland. The reason is the systemic
whitewashing of our history to hide the horrendous
blunders of so called freedom fighters. These
include the khilafat movement, quit India movement,
the direct action day and noakhali riots and the
horrors of partition.
The Beginning
A meeting was conducted by ML leader Gulam
Sarowar, an ex-M.L.A. on 10th October at
Begumganj Bazar. He gave an inflammatory strong
anti-Hindu speech by quoting verses of Quran
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exhorting to kill the Kafirs and idolators during the
presence of the local Police Inspector who kept
mum. After the meeting came to an end the agitated
and excited Muslim mob in great numbers attacked
the Hindu shops in the market and set them to fire
after looting. Another group went to the house of
local Hindu leader and landlord Surendra Kumar
Bose. He was killed very cruelly and then the mob
set to fire his office and palace. Hundreds of
Hindus, men women and children had taken shelter
there after fleeing from various places. Most of
them were burnt alive. Those who could luckily
escape the fire of the burning house were chopped
down by the awaiting people outside.
The Valiant Warrior
The last gang went to siege the house of Noakhali
District Bar President and renowned Hindu
intellectual of Bengal, Rajendra Lal Roy in Karpara
village. But he was a real hero. Along with his sons
and brothers he united the local Hindus and gave a
strong resistance. The attackers fled for their life.
Angered at being pushed back they attacked the
local Hindu villages, burnt them and desecrated the
temples. Meanwhile Mr. Roy had informed the
Police station and sought protection but blatantly
denied. He sent his sons to see if there were anyescape route. They returned and described the
hopeless situation as the village roads were
patrolled by armed Muslims and all boats were
stopped from plying on the river. However they
pledged to each other that they will fight to the end.
Next day morning at 8 o clock a larger crowd came
to attack but the Hindus under the able leadership
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of Mr. Roy stood up once again and fired from guns
and threw stones and bricks like rain to drive them
away. Still no government relief came but their
ammunition of the besieged Hindus were used up!
Next the ferocious mob at being resisted again and
again came under the personal command of Gulam
Sarowar and first attacked Mr. Roy and killed him
mercilessly. All others panicked and stopped
fighting. Then one by one his relatives and the
other Hindus who had taken refuge there were
butchered
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 23/10/46).
The severed head of Rajendra Lal Roy
was gifted to Gulam Sarowar in a silver
plate. At Gulams order his two trusted
lieutenants took the two beautiful
daughters of Mr. Roy as the booty
(Binoy Bhusan Ghosh Two Nation Theory and
Bengalee p 68).
Only the youngest brother of Mr. Roy, Professor
M.L. Roy escaped the carnage as he was in a
Kolkata college and said:
Muslims wanted to convert whole
Noakhali into Islam so they targeted first
the Hindu leaders who could offer some
resistance. The cause of death of myentire family is only due to it
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 23/10/46).
Bengal Press Advisory Committee in its report of
October, 1946 mentioned all these and other
horrible conditions of Hindus in eastern Bengal
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after the murder of Mr. Roy. After the Hindus
became leaderless the torture on them increased to
boundless proportions. In Panchgao village of
Begumganj police station, lived a Brahmin family of
four brothers. On the day of Kurbani a cow was
sacrificed on their temple and the beef (forbidden
for Hindus) was sent to them. The family members
in pain and agony started vomiting. But the Muslims
cursed them and asked how the kafirs could reject
their sacrificial beef to Allah. They were taken for a
village judgement by the Moulavi of the local
mosque who was however very liberal and fined Rs
250 (a large amount in those days) to settle the
matter. B.P.A.C got those information by searching
the diaries in various police stations there. For
ensuring safety B.P.A.C did not mention the names
of many of the victims.
Beasts unleashed
Phani Bhusan Sur was one of the few
from Noakhali who could escape and
took shelter in Bangabasi College at
Kolkata. He said that in his Hajiganj
village the riots were lead by Peshawari
Muslims. Each had long swords with
them and under their direction the
murders, loot and rapes were organized
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 22/10/46).
Journalists back from Noakhali reported that,
the heads of miscreants were Ex-
servicemen and they organized the raids
in military fashion. The people
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knew how to dig up roads and cut
communication
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 19/10/46).
Professionalism in its highest virtue was manifested
in Noakhali. So that Hindus couldnt escape, the
roads were dug, boats used to form barricade oncanals and rivers and through which areas there
were any slight chance of escape armed Muslims
were at guard
(V.P. Menon Transfer of Power p 322).
Mr. Simpson, I.C.S wrote on the incidents that
it has been known from authenticsources that at a place 400 and at
another 300 women were mass raped by
Muslims. To the Muslim crowd, violation
of the honour of Hindu women meant the
exposure of the most protected aspect of
the Hindu identity and religion
(Binoy Bhusan Ghosh Two Nation Theory and
Bengalee p 64)
A little refugee girl of Ramganj thana told
me the incident. On10th October morning
a crowd came to their house and
demanded Rs. 500 as subscription for
Muslim League and threatened that if
their demand was not met the entire
family will be butchered. Fearing life her
father paid the huge amount. After
sometime the crowd came again with
more people and when a certain guardian
of the family, a lawyer tried to calm them
he was beheaded before saying
anything. Then they killed the oldest
member, the grandfather of the girl. The
father of the girl was next laid on the
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dead body of his grandpa and when they
were about to kill him her grandmother
jumped on his body and begged mercy.
But this angered the mob and they hit the
old lady on the head with a rod and threw
her unconscious body away. The
terrorized girl by then was standing and
looking on but now to save her father
rushed out with her jewelry and Rs. 400
which was at home and putting all on the
hands of the killer pleaded to leave her
father. The person took the valuables
with the left hand and at once severed
the head of her father with the right hand!
(The Statesman, 26/10/46)
The Viceroy when asked to intervene, refused to do
so and when informed about the plight of Hindu
women, responded that:
Large scale abduction of Hindu women
(by Muslims) was quite natural since
Hindu women were more handsome than
Muslim women.
(Gandhi, his life and his thought, pp. 286)
When the correspondent of 'Amrit Bazaar Patrika'
S.L.Ghosh reached noakhali, he reported:
"The horror of the Noakhali outrage is
unique in modern history in that it was nota simple case of turbulent members of the
majority community (Muslims) killing off
helpless members of the minority Hindu
community, but was one whose chief aim
was mass conversion, accompanied by
loot, arson and wholesale devastation...
No section of the Hindu community has
been spared, the wealthier classes being
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dealt with more drastically. Abduction and
outrage of Hindu women and forcible
marriages were also resorted. The
slogans used and the methods employed
indicate that it was all part of a plan for
the simultaneous establishment of
Pakistan."
The earlier experiment of Muslim League in
Calcutta in the form of the 'direct action' day, started
on 16th August, 1946 had failed as the Hindus were
able to retaliate, despite the state machinery of the
League government clandestinely helping its
Muslim goons. Learning from this experiment,
Noakhali was chosen because it had anoverwhelming majority of more then 80% of
Muslims. Again to quote from Anand Bazaar
Patrika:
The four days delay in receiving the
news indicates at once the magnitude of
preparations of the lawless elements as
well as the criminal inefficiency of the
administration machinery. It took ten
days, fraught with horror, disgrace and
torture for nearly two lakhs of Hindus for
the Army to reach the neighbourhood of
disaster, another ten days for them to
move into the inner fringe of the disturbed
area, and over a month to comb the
interior of the devastated countryside."
Acharya Kriplani, the president of Congress, who
went to noakhali to assess the situation, after a few
days of the outbreak reported;
Next morning (October 22, 1946) we
visited the interior of one of the affected
areas. The place was Charhaim.
Charhaim village and the surrounding
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areas are occupied by Namasudras
(scheduled castes) numbering about
20,000. It was completely destroyed.
Most of the houses were burnt. People
were living in sheds, built from the ruins
of their houses. All their property had
been looted. Cash, ornaments, utensils
and clothes, and cattle also, had been
taken away by the raiders. All the males
and females had only the clothes they
were wearing. They had no food to eat.
Their condition was pitiable in the
extreme. There had been cases of
murder, but it was not possible during the
short time at our disposal to ascertain the
number of the killed. Cases of abduction
were reported to us. Even after looting
and arson the villagers were obliged to
embrace Islam; they had to perform
Namaz and recite the Kalma All
the images of the houses were broken
and temples looted and destroyed. The
conch-shell bangles of women and
vermillion marks, signs of their married
life, were removed. This was a fairlyrepresentative area.
Acharya Kripalani concluded in his report that:
1. The attack on the Hindu population in the
districts of Noakhali and Tipperah was
previously arranged and prepared fro. It was
deliberate, if not directly engineered by ML. It
was a direct result of ML propaganda. the
prominent league leaders had a large hand in
it.
2. The authorities had warnings about what was
coming. The warnings were conveyed to them
orally and in written by prominent Hindus in
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the area concerned.
3. The Muslim officials connived at the
preparations and a few encouraged. There
was a general belief among the Mussalmans
that the government would take no action if
anything was done against the Hindus.
4. The modus operandi was for the Muslims to
collect in batches of hundeds and sometimes
thousands and to march to Hindu villages or
Hindu houses in mixed population. They first
demanded subscriptions for the ML and
sometimes for the Muslim victims of the
Calcutta riots. These enforced subscriptions
were heavy, sometimes amounting to `10,000
and more. Even after the subscriptions were
paid, the HIndu population was not safe. The
same or successive crowd appeared on the
scene later an looted the Hindu houses. The
looted houses in most of the cases were burnt.
Sometimes before a house was looted, the
inmates were asked to embrace Islam.
However, even conversion did not give
immunity against loot and arson. The slogans
raised by the attacking Muslim crowds were
those of the ML, such as ' ',
' ', ', '
'('league Zindabad', 'Pakistan
Zindabad', Larhke lenge Pakistan, 'Markelenge Pakistan')
5. All those who resisted were butchered.
Sometimes they were shot, for the rioters had
a few shot-guns with them. Sometimes people
were killed even when there was no resistance
offered or expected I have on record cases
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where 50 to 60 members of one family were
brutally murdered. Some families lost all their
male members.
6. (Is about the description and habitat of those
who indulged in these crimes.)
7. Even after looting, arson and murder the
Hindus in the locality were not safe unless
they embraced Islam. The Hindu population
therefore to save themselves had to embrace
Islam en masse All the images of gods
in Hindu houses were destroyed and all the
Hindu temples of the affected area were looted
and burnt.
8. There have been cases of forcible marriages.
There have been cases of abduction.
9. For obvious reasons it was not possible for me
to ascertain the cases of rape. But women
complained to Mrs. Kirpalani of having been
roughly handled, their conch-shell bangles, the
symbol of their married life, having been
broken and vermillion marks removed. At one
place they were thrown on the ground by the
miscreants who removed their vermillion marks
with the toes of their feet.
10. about post riot conditions.
11. about post riot conditions
12. about post riot conditions
13. about post riot conditions14. The police did not function during the riots.
They are doing merely patrol duty now. They
say that they had and have no orders to fire
except in self-defence. The question of
defending themselves never arose, because
they did not interfere with the rioters.
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The areas visited had already been devastated
and all that I could see were burnt houses and
helpless Hindu villagers whether converted or not.
Scouting any suggestion that the trouble may be
economic the Acharya added,
Not a single rich Muslim house had beenlooted. To me it appeared to be
absolutely communal and absolutely one-
sided.
The Congress Working Committee meeting came
soon after at Delhi, and its resolution on East
Bengal contained the following observations:
Reports published in the press and
statements of public workers depict a
scene of bestiality and medieval barbarity
that must fill every decent human being
with shame, disgust and anger.
British correspondent of The Statesman remarked,
Experience of the second world war has
made my nerve quite strong. But even
war is not such barbaric. It is middle age
type insanity. And it was given a horrible
shape
The Hindu retaliation and the Political
chameleons
When Shyama Prasad Mukherjee urged Nehru on
18/10/1946 to intervene at Noakhali, explaining that
the police was not helping the victims, his demand
was rejected under the pretext that law and order
was a state subject. As a result the carnage of
hapless Hindus continued for months.
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The Bengal government tried its best to hide the
carnage and ultimately when the news came out,
the nation was shocked. On 29/10/1946, major
newspapers announced that on learning the
atrocities in Noakhali, Hindus and Sikhs in Bihar
retaliated and started paying back the Muslims in
the same coin. Now, the same Nehru, came to
Bihar along with Liaqat Ali (who became the first
premier of Pakistan) and started threatening the
Hindus in his 'peace' speeches. He said,
"Some people believe they are takingrevenge for atrocities in East Bengal. It
was bad enough. Culprits must be
punished immediately. The government
had to follow such a course by firing
machine guns and bombing the people.
No government could tolerate such
lawlessness.
Just 25 days earlier, the same Nehru was talking ofnot intervening into state matters but now had
changed his colours like a chameleon.
Today, his great grand son, uses the same forked
tongue in defaming Hindu organisations. Men of
Security forces are getting killed at the hand of
Islamic fanatics but that will never invite a statement
condemning 'Islamic terror' or 'Green terror'.
How could Gandhiji 'our apostle of non violence' be
left behind in this magnum opus. After all he was a
veteran of encashing such religious sentiments
since the time of khilafat riots, which led to the
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petition of malabar ladies to lady reading.
On this very day, i.e. 29/10/1946, he had arrived in
Calcutta to express his solidarity to the sufferers of
Bengal riots. He was planning to visit Noakhali,
probably for the benefit of media but on hearing the
trouble in Bihar, he immediately abondoned his visit
to Noakhali and instead reached Bihar. According
to Kripalani, he had faith that Hindus would listen to
his words and stop attacking Muslims. He did not
stop the government from using force in the name
of non-violence. Rather he asked the center and
provincial government to do everything they could
do to control the situation. (J.B. Kripalani - Gandhi,
His Life and Thought - p 260).
Contrast this with what he had done earlier when
Hindus were being butchered and their women and
daughters gang raped. On 24th October at Dalit
meeting in Harijan Colony in Delhi a large
procession of Hindu Mahasabha approached
Gandhi to take steps to prevent Hindu genocide in
Noakhali and elsewhere in eastern Bengal. But he
rejected the demand as usual citing that there
would be unnecessary blood spill if Muslims were
to be resisted! So Mahatma the true one advised,
To get killed, but not to kill (Amrita Bazar Patrika
25/10/46).
If the readers are wondering as to why such a major
tragedy has not come to light, they should thank
Nehru and subsequent Congress governments.
Ignoring world renowned and respected historians
like R.C.Majumdar, all educational institutions like
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NCERT & ICHR have been given to Marxists and
Muslims like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Gopal
Krishan and R.S.Sharma. Their common
qualification is their hatred for Hindu dharm and
everything that it stands for.
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 8:21 A M
NO COMMENT S:
W E DN E S DA Y , M A Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 2
1946 : The Great Calcutta Killings
AND The Noakhali Genocide
1946 : The Great Calcutta Killings
ND The Noakhali Genocide
---A Historical Study
by Dinesh Chsndra Singha and Ashok
Dasgupta
Please visit the following link for this
well researched document
http://www.eastbengal.org/bengal194
6_calcutta_noakhali_killing.pdf
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 1:51 PM
NO COMMENT S:
T U E S D A Y , A U G U S T 2 , 2 0 1 1
Noakhali riots: Truth sacrificed
The Truth Plagiarized in Noakhali
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Worst of all was the plight of women.
Several of them had to watch their
husbands being murdered and then be
forcibly converted and married to some of
those responsible for their death. Those
women had a dead look. It was notdespair, nothing so active as that. It was
blackness.the eating of beef and
declaration of allegiance to Islam has
been forced upon many thousands of as
the price of their lives
This is what Miss Muriel Leister, member of a relief
committee sent to Noakhali wrote on 6th November,
1946,(V.V. Nagarkar Genesis p 446). The
words have an eerie similarity to the outburst of
Annie Beasant after the moplah riots but belong to
an entirely different holocaust. These riots had
started about a month earlier in Muslim dominated
twin districts of Noakhali and Tipperah. Since the
Muslim League government was architect of the
riots, news was suppressed for as long as possible.
Amrita Bazar Patrika on 23/10/46 reported,
For the 13th day today, about 120
villages in Ramganj, Lakshmipur, Raipur,
Begumganj and Senbag thanas (police
stations) in Noakhali district with a Hindu
population of 90,000 and nearby 70,000
villagers in Chandpur and Faridganjthanas in Tippera (Comilla) district
remained besieged by hooligans. Death
stares the people of these areas in their
face and immediate rushing of supply to
these areas with the help of military, who
alone could do it, would save the lives of
these people, most of whom have been
without food for the last few days.
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The riots had started on 10/10/1946, but the ML
government acknowledged the fact only on
15/10/1946, a criminal delay of five days in which
thousands of lives could have been saved and
women could have been saved from being raped by
gangs. Today, after six decades the present
secular governments have gone even further. The
deganga riots have gone totally unreported in main
stream media.
On 16/10/1946, The Statesman reported:
In an area of about 200 sq miles the inhabitants
surrounded by riotous mobs, are being massacred,
their houses being burnt, their womenfolk being
forcibly carried away and thousands being
subjected to forcible conversion. Thousands of
hooligans attacked the villages, compelled them
(Hindus) to slaughter their cattle and eat. All places
of worship in affected villages have been
desecrated. The District Magistrate and the Police
Superintendent of Noakhali took no step to prevent
it.
Noakhali and Tipperah (Comilla)
The two neighbouring districts are present in the
present day Bangladesh and were a part of Bengalbefore partition of our motherland. The province of
Bengal was under the rule of Muslim League. The
league had chosen these districts to teach Hindus a
lesson. This district was chose because of its more
then 80% Muslim population and it was far removed
from media glare of Calcutta. Likewise the
neighbouring Tipperah district had more then 77%
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Muslim population.
The unknown riots
By the year 1946, the freedom struggle had been
totally hijacked by media savvy and opportunistic
politicians. These were lick spittles of the british
and for them the acts of Martyrs like Udham Singh,
Bhagat Singh, Ashfaqullah Khan were actions of
misguided youths and they hoped that 'that it will
not have far-reaching repercussions on political
future of India'. To them the political future of India
meant their own political future. Neta Ji Subhash
Chander Bose, Veer Savarkar and Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee were sidelined.
These opportunists were good event managers and
were able to get the control of turncated India on a
silver platter.
Most of the modern day Indians do not know what
happened few months before the partition of our
motherland. The reason is the systemic
whitewashing of our history to hide the horrendousblunders of so called freedom fighters. These
include the khilafat movement, quit India movement,
the direct action day and noakhali riots and the
horrors of partition.
The Beginning
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A meeting was conducted by ML leader Gulam
Sarowar, an ex-M.L.A. on 10th October at
Begumganj Bazar. He gave an inflammatory strong
anti-Hindu speech by quoting verses of Quran
exhorting to kill the Kafirs and idolators during the
presence of the local Police Inspector who kept
mum. After the meeting came to an end the agitated
and excited Muslim mob in great numbers attacked
the Hindu shops in the market and set them to fire
after looting. Another group went to the house of
local Hindu leader and landlord Surendra Kumar
Bose. He was killed very cruelly and then the mob
set to fire his office and palace. Hundreds of
Hindus, men women and children had taken shelter
there after fleeing from various places. Most of
them were burnt alive. Those who could luckily
escape the fire of the burning house were chopped
down by the awaiting people outside.
The Valiant Warrior
The last gang went to siege the house of Noakhali
District Bar President and renowned Hindu
intellectual of Bengal, Rajendra Lal Roy in Karpara
village. But he was a real hero. Along with his sons
and brothers he united the local Hindus and gave astrong resistance. The attackers fled for their life.
Angered at being pushed back they attacked the
local Hindu villages, burnt them and desecrated the
temples. Meanwhile Mr. Roy had informed the
Police station and sought protection but blatantly
denied. He sent his sons to see if there were any
escape route. They returned and described the
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hopeless situation as the village roads were
patrolled by armed Muslims and all boats were
stopped from plying on the river. However they
pledged to each other that they will fight to the end.
Next day morning at 8 o clock a larger crowd came
to attack but the Hindus under the able leadership
of Mr. Roy stood up once again and fired from guns
and threw stones and bricks like rain to drive them
away. Still no government relief came but their
ammunition of the besieged Hindus were used up!
Next the ferocious mob at being resisted again and
again came under the personal command of Gulam
Sarowar and first attacked Mr. Roy and killed him
mercilessly. All others panicked and stopped
fighting. Then one by one his relatives and the
other Hindus who had taken refuge there were
butchered
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 23/10/46).
The severed head of Rajendra Lal Roy
was gifted to Gulam Sarowar in a silver
plate. At Gulams order his two trusted
lieutenants took the two beautiful
daughters of Mr. Roy as the booty
(Binoy Bhusan Ghosh Two Nation Theory and
Bengalee p 68).
Only the youngest brother of Mr. Roy, Professor
M.L. Roy escaped the carnage as he was in a
Kolkata college and said:
Muslims wanted to convert whole
Noakhali into Islam so they targeted first
the Hindu leaders who could offer some
resistance. The cause of death of my
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entire family is only due to it
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 23/10/46).
Bengal Press Advisory Committee in its report of
October, 1946 mentioned all these and other
horrible conditions of Hindus in eastern Bengal
after the murder of Mr. Roy. After the Hindus
became leaderless the torture on them increased to
boundless proportions. In Panchgao village of
Begumganj police station, lived a Brahmin family of
four brothers. On the day of Kurbani a cow was
sacrificed on their temple and the beef (forbidden
for Hindus) was sent to them. The family membersin pain and agony started vomiting. But the Muslims
cursed them and asked how the kafirs could reject
their sacrificial beef to Allah. They were taken for a
village judgement by the Moulavi of the local
mosque who was however very liberal and fined Rs
250 (a large amount in those days) to settle the
matter. B.P.A.C got those information by searching
the diaries in various police stations there. For
ensuring safety B.P.A.C did not mention the names
of many of the victims.
Beasts unleashed
Phani Bhusan Sur was one of the few
from Noakhali who could escape and
took shelter in Bangabasi College at
Kolkata. He said that in his Hajiganj
village the riots were lead by Peshawari
Muslims. Each had long swords with
them and under their direction the
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murders, loot and rapes were organized
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 22/10/46).
Journalists back from Noakhali reported that,
the heads of miscreants were Ex-
servicemen and they organized the raids
in military fashion. The people
knew how to dig up roads and cut
communication
(Amrita Bazar Patrika 19/10/46).
Professionalism in its highest virtue was manifested
in Noakhali. So that Hindus couldnt escape, the
roads were dug, boats used to form barricade on
canals and rivers and through which areas there
were any slight chance of escape armed Muslims
were at guard
(V.P. Menon Transfer of Power p 322).
Mr. Simpson, I.C.S wrote on the incidents that
it has been known from authentic
sources that at a place 400 and at
another 300 women were mass raped by
Muslims. To the Muslim crowd, violation
of the honour of Hindu women meant the
exposure of the most protected aspect of
the Hindu identity and religion
(Binoy Bhusan Ghosh Two Nation Theory and
Bengalee p 64)
A little refugee girl of Ramganj thana told
me the incident. On10th October morning
a crowd came to their house and
demanded Rs. 500 as subscription for
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Muslim League and threatened that if
their demand was not met the entire
family will be butchered. Fearing life her
father paid the huge amount. After
sometime the crowd came again with
more people and when a certain guardian
of the family, a lawyer tried to calm them
he was beheaded before saying
anything. Then they killed the oldest
member, the grandfather of the girl. The
father of the girl was next laid on the
dead body of his grandpa and when they
were about to kill him her grandmother
jumped on his body and begged mercy.
But this angered the mob and they hit the
old lady on the head with a rod and threw
her unconscious body away. The
terrorized girl by then was standing and
looking on but now to save her father
rushed out with her jewelry and Rs. 400
which was at home and putting all on the
hands of the killer pleaded to leave her
father. The person took the valuables
with the left hand and at once severed
the head of her father with the right hand!
(The Statesman, 26/10/46)
The Viceroy when asked to intervene, refused to do
so and when informed about the plight of Hindu
women, responded that:
Large scale abduction of Hindu women
(by Muslims) was quite natural since
Hindu women were more handsome than
Muslim women.
(Gandhi, his life and his thought, pp. 286)
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When the correspondent of 'Amrit Bazaar Patrika'
S.L.Ghosh reached noakhali, he reported:
"The horror of the Noakhali outrage is
unique in modern history in that it was not
a simple case of turbulent members of the
majority community (Muslims) killing off
helpless members of the minority Hindu
community, but was one whose chief aim
was mass conversion, accompanied by
loot, arson and wholesale devastation...
No section of the Hindu community has
been spared, the wealthier classes being
dealt with more drastically. Abduction and
outrage of Hindu women and forcible
marriages were also resorted. Theslogans used and the methods employed
indicate that it was all part of a plan for
the simultaneous establishment of
Pakistan."
The earlier experiment of Muslim League in
Calcutta in the form of the 'direct action' day, started
on 16th August, 1946 had failed as the Hindus were
able to retaliate, despite the state machinery of the
League government clandestinely helping its
Muslim goons. Learning from this experiment,
Noakhali was chosen because it had an
overwhelming majority of more then 80% of
Muslims. Again to quote from Anand Bazaar
Patrika:
The four days delay in receiving the
news indicates at once the magnitude of
preparations of the lawless elements as
well as the criminal inefficiency of the
administration machinery. It took ten
days, fraught with horror, disgrace and
torture for nearly two lakhs of Hindus for
the Army to reach the neighbourhood of
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disaster, another ten days for them to
move into the inner fringe of the disturbed
area, and over a month to comb the
interior of the devastated countryside."
Acharya Kriplani, the president of Congress, who
went to noakhali to assess the situation, after a few
days of the outbreak reported;
Next morning (October 22, 1946) we
visited the interior of one of the affected
areas. The place was Charhaim.
Charhaim village and the surrounding
areas are occupied by Namasudras
(scheduled castes) numbering about
20,000. It was completely destroyed.Most of the houses were burnt. People
were living in sheds, built from the ruins
of their houses. All their property had
been looted. Cash, ornaments, utensils
and clothes, and cattle also, had been
taken away by the raiders. All the males
and females had only the clothes they
were wearing. They had no food to eat.
Their condition was pitiable in theextreme. There had been cases of
murder, but it was not possible during the
short time at our disposal to ascertain the
number of the killed. Cases of abduction
were reported to us. Even after looting
and arson the villagers were obliged to
embrace Islam; they had to perform
Namaz and recite the Kalma All
the images of the houses were brokenand temples looted and destroyed. The
conch-shell bangles of women and
vermillion marks, signs of their married
life, were removed. This was a fairly
representative area.
Acharya Kripalani concluded in his report that:
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1. The attack on the Hindu population in the
districts of Noakhali and Tipperah was
previously arranged and prepared fro. It was
deliberate, if not directly engineered by ML. It
was a direct result of ML propaganda. the
prominent league leaders had a large hand in
it.
2. The authorities had warnings about what was
coming. The warnings were conveyed to them
orally and in written by prominent Hindus in
the area concerned.
3. The Muslim officials connived at the
preparations and a few encouraged. There
was a general belief among the Mussalmans
that the government would take no action if
anything was done against the Hindus.
4. The modus operandi was for the Muslims to
collect in batches of hundeds and sometimes
thousands and to march to Hindu villages or
Hindu houses in mixed population. They first
demanded subscriptions for the ML and
sometimes for the Muslim victims of the
Calcutta riots. These enforced subscriptions
were heavy, sometimes amounting to ` 10,000
and more. Even after the subscriptions were
paid, the HIndu population was not safe. The
same or successive crowd appeared on the
scene later an looted the Hindu houses. Thelooted houses in most of the cases were burnt.
Sometimes before a house was looted, the
inmates were asked to embrace Islam.
However, even conversion did not give
immunity against loot and arson. The slogans
raised by the attacking Muslim crowds were
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those of the ML, such as ' ',
' ', ', '
'('league Zindabad', 'Pakistan
Zindabad', Larhke lenge Pakistan, 'Marke
lenge Pakistan')
5. All those who resisted were butchered.Sometimes they were shot, for the rioters had
a few shot-guns with them. Sometimes people
were killed even when there was no resistance
offered or expected I have on record cases
where 50 to 60 members of one family were
brutally murdered. Some families lost all their
male members.
6. (Is about the description and habitat of those
who indulged in these crimes.)
7. Even after looting, arson and murder the
Hindus in the locality were not safe unless
they embraced Islam. The Hindu population
therefore to save themselves had to embrace
Islam en masse All the images of gods
in Hindu houses were destroyed and all the
Hindu temples of the affected area were looted
and burnt.
8. There have been cases of forcible marriages.
There have been cases of abduction.
9. For obvious reasons it was not possible for me
to ascertain the cases of rape. But women
complained to Mrs. Kirpalani of having beenroughly handled, their conch-shell bangles, the
symbol of their married life, having been
broken and vermillion marks removed. At one
place they were thrown on the ground by the
miscreants who removed their vermillion marks
with the toes of their feet.
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10. about post riot conditions.
11. about post riot conditions
12. about post riot conditions
13. about post riot conditions
14. The police did not function during the riots.
They are doing merely patrol duty now. They
say that they had and have no orders to fire
except in self-defence. The question of
defending themselves never arose, because
they did not interfere with the rioters.
The areas visited had already been devastated
and all that I could see were burnt houses and
helpless Hindu villagers whether converted or not.Scouting any suggestion that the trouble may be
economic the Acharya added,
Not a single rich Muslim house had been
looted. To me it appeared to be
absolutely communal and absolutely one-
sided.
The Congress Working Committee meeting came
soon after at Delhi, and its resolution on East
Bengal contained the following observations:
Reports published in the press and
statements of public workers depict a
scene of bestiality and medieval barbarity
that must fill every decent human being
with shame, disgust and anger.
British correspondent of The Statesman remarked,
Experience of the second world war has
made my nerve quite strong. But even
war is not such barbaric. It is middle age
type insanity. And it was given a horrible
shape
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The Hindu retaliation and the Political
chameleons
When Shyama Prasad Mukherjee urged Nehru on
18/10/1946 to intervene at Noakhali, explaining that
the police was not helping the victims, his demand
was rejected under the pretext that law and order
was a state subject. As a result the carnage of
hapless Hindus continued for months.
The Bengal government tried its best to hide the
carnage and ultimately when the news came out,
the nation was shocked. On 29/10/1946, major
newspapers announced that on learning the
atrocities in Noakhali, Hindus and Sikhs in Bihar
retaliated and started paying back the Muslims in
the same coin. Now, the same Nehru, came to
Bihar along with Liaqat Ali (who became the first
premier of Pakistan) and started threatening the
Hindus in his 'peace' speeches. He said,
"Some people believe they are taking
revenge for atrocities in East Bengal. It
was bad enough. Culprits must be
punished immediately. The government
had to follow such a course by firing
machine guns and bombing the people.
No government could tolerate such
lawlessness.
Just 25 days earlier, the same Nehru was talking of
not intervening into state matters but now had
changed his colours like a chameleon.
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Today, his great grand son, uses the same forked
tongue in defaming Hindu organisations. Men of
Security forces are getting killed at the hand of
Islamic fanatics but that will never invite a statement
condemning 'Islamic terror' or 'Green terror'.
How could Gandhiji 'our apostle of non violence' be
left behind in this magnum opus. After all he was a
veteran of encashing such religious sentiments
since the time of khilafat riots, which led to the
petition of malabar ladies to lady reading.
On this very day, i.e. 29/10/1946, he had arrived in
Calcutta to express his solidarity to the sufferers of
Bengal riots. He was planning to visit Noakhali,
probably for the benefit of media but on hearing the
trouble in Bihar, he immediately abondoned his visit
to Noakhali and instead reached Bihar. According
to Kripalani, he had faith that Hindus would listen to
his words and stop attacking Muslims. He did not
stop the government from using force in the name
of non-violence. Rather he asked the center and
provincial government to do everything they could
do to control the situation. (J.B. Kripalani - Gandhi,
His Life and Thought - p 260).
Contrast this with what he had done earlier when
Hindus were being butchered and their women and
daughters gang raped. On 24th October at Dalit
meeting in Harijan Colony in Delhi a large
procession of Hindu Mahasabha approached
Gandhi to take steps to prevent Hindu genocide in
Noakhali and elsewhere in eastern Bengal. But he
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rejected the demand as usual citing that there
would be unnecessary blood spill if Muslims were
to be resisted! So Mahatma the true one advised,
To get killed, but not to kill (Amrita Bazar Patrika
25/10/46).
If the readers are wondering as to why such a major
tragedy has not come to light, they should thank
Nehru and subsequent Congress governments.
Ignoring world renowned and respected historians
like R.C.Majumdar, all educational institutions like
NCERT & ICHR have been given to Marxists and
Muslims like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Gopal
Krishan and R.S.Sharma. Their common
qualification is their hatred for Hindu dharm and
everything that it stands for.
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 8:50 A M
NO COMMENT S:
LABELS: NOAKHALI RIOT S: T RUTH SA CRIFICED
F RI D A Y , M A Y 7 , 2 0 1 0
Noakhali's Darkest Hour
ndrew Whitehead
Indian Express
-------------------
On the outskirts of the once mainly Hindu village of
Jayag is a zamindar's house,
ringed by fish ponds and patrolled by monitor
lizards so large that the hens
squawk in alarm at their approach. The house is
now an ashram - the centre of
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social development programmes, of handicrafts,
and community schemes. Every
morning and evening, people gather for a prayer
meeting in a room which still
contains mementoes of Gandhi's visit here in
January 1947. It's a living memorial
to the most remarkable of Gandhi's partition peace
missions.
Jayag lies in Noakhali district of southern
Bangladesh. That name, Noakhali, holds
a sombre place in the annals of India's
disintegration. When the Calcutta tinderbox exploded in August 1946 the sparks alighted on
this poor, remote region which
exported labour to the provincial capital. From
Noakhali, the flames spread to
Bihar and on to the killing fields of Punjab.
The toll in Noakhali was modest compared to the
barbarity of the Great Calcutta
Killing, and the Hindu backlash which followed in
Bihar. But the communal
bitterness, the rapes, the migration of capital and
the forced conversions made a
deep impact across India. The frenzy unleashed bythe Muslim League's Direct
Action Day in Calcutta was proving to be not an
aberration, but part of a pattern.
Jharna Chowdhury, the one-woman Gandhian
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dynamo who now runs the ashram, was nine
years old and living a Noakhali village when the
rioters surrounded her home. It
was mid-October 1946. "In the morning at around
nine o'clock, hundreds of people
came to our house with flaming torches. They were
shouting 'Allah-oh-Akbar'. We
fled and hid in a nearby garden. Then they set the
house on fire. There were so
many attackers. But I remember that among them,
I saw people from my own village,
people whom I knew."
The large Hindu minority in Noakhali at that time
included most of the big
landlords, the lawyers and moneylenders, the
Government babus and the businessmen.
There is little doubt that the economic
marginalisation of local Muslims was the
root cause of the riot. And local politicians triggered
the violence.
Talking today to the elderly in Noakhali's villages
and bazaars, Hindus and
Muslims alike - Hindus make up close on 10 per
cent of the population here, as
across Bangladesh - one name crops up repeatedly.
Ghulam Sarwar was an elected
member of the provincial assembly, a member of a
much revered Muslim religious
family, and a mesmerising figure.
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By all accounts it was this pir whose fiery speeches
about the pogrom of Muslims
in Calcutta encouraged local villagers to take
revenge.
Chandra Pal, now 74 and still living in Noakhali,
hurried home from Mymensingh
when he heard news that Hindu homes had been
ransacked. "My parents' house had
been attacked and looted, but luckily, lives were
spared. But our neighbours'
houses, the big zamindars' houses, and those of the
big business families - those
houses had been looted like anything, people had
been massacred, and their women
taken away. That happened on a massive scale. It
seemed the rioters wanted
vengeance against those with money and power."
"Many people jumped into ponds to save
themselves," recalls M. K. Majumdar, a
retired school teacher. "They tried to hide under the
water hyacinths. But the
attackers killed them with fishing spears. Therioters were very organised.
There was the Ghulam Sarwar group, then there
was the Hashmi group. And another
group of rioters, the Akbar Fauj, came up to our
house and tried to loot it. They
were given some money and went away."
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For weeks, Hindu men were forced to offer namaz
and adopt Muslim names. Some had
beef stuffed into their mouths. There were attempts
to marry off eligible Hindu
women to Muslim grooms. Ashoka Gupta, whose
husband was then a judge serving in
Chittagong, was among the first outsiders to reach
Noakhali to provide relief -
she remembers above all the fate of one village
woman. "Every night she was being
carried away by the same group of men. Her
husband said: I am so helpless, pleasehelp me. I went to the police station, but I was not
able to help her at all."
Gupta was at Chandpur when Gandhi arrived in
Noakhali by boat. "We rowed along in
a small boat to that steamship and we were allowedto board. And we attended
Gandhi's prayers. Later, Gandhi told us all: 'I
understand that you a want to
work, but have you thought of what caused this?
Have you come only to help the
Hindus? I'm going to the interior, and I'll find out
what was the real cause andhow I'll be able to help."'
Gandhi visited dozens of villages in his four months
in the area. The trouble had
largely burnt itself out by the time he arrived in
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early November. But there's no
doubt that his calming presence and message, the
concern he showed for both
communities, and the sight of India's foremost
leader, barefoot, negotiating the
narrow bamboo bridges, had an immense impact.
Abdul Rauf took me to the spot just outside his
small hamlet where he watched
Gandhi pass by more than half a century ago. "I was
standing right here," he said
with a sense of pride. "Gandhi came from that
direction, from the north. I
remember he was wearing two pieces of khadi cloth,
and there was a watch at his
waist. He took support from the shoulders of two
women. All the Muslims were
pleased to see him, and respected him."
But Raufs own testimony suggests that not all in
Noakhali welcomed the Mahatma.
Goats were provided to keep Gandhi supplied with
milk. "In another nearby
village," he says, with a giggle, "local Muslims stole
that goat. And ate it!"
Some of Gandhi's disciples stayed behind in Jayag
after the Mahatma left. They were the nucleus of
the Gandhi ashram and for decades endured the
suspicion and worse of first the East Pakistani and
then the Bangladeshi authorities.
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Jharna Chowdhury, dressed in white khadi and
irrepressibly cheerful, says things
are much better now. The ashram's programmes
are encouraged by officials. But
many of the local Hindus admit to some lingering
sense of apprehension - how
ustified or otherwise, it's impossible to say.
One man showed me round the ruins of a Hindu
mandir in the market town of
Dattapara, pulled down in retaliation to the
Ayodhya demolition. "It looks like
one crime has given way to ten other crimes," he
bemoaned. "As the days are going
by, worse and worse things are happening. There's
nobody to protest, nobody to
resist such things."
Fifty years after Gandhi's peace mission, Noakhali
is still not at ease.
(Andrew Whitehead has made a BBC Radio series
on partition)
20 May 1997
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 1:13 PM
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M O N D A Y , D E C E M BE R 2 8 , 2 0 0 9
Qut Noakhali Or Die, Gandhi
Warns Hindus
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QUIT NOAKHALI OR DIE, GANDHI
WARNS HINDUS
----------------------
New Delhi, April 7 (AP)
New York Times--April 8, 1947, Tuesday----Page 23, 148 words
Mohandas K. Gandhi, who has been attempting to
insure communal peace in the Bengal and Bihar
areas, said today religious strife in the troubled
Noakhali section of bengal seemed to call for
Hindus to leave or perish "in the flames offanaticism."
Meanwhile, a one-day strike of workers throughout
Bombay Province appeared likely to be called by the
Provincial Trade Union Congress to express
sympathy with the two-week-old strike of 8,500
transport workers in the city of Bombay.
Mr. Gandhi halted his walking tour of Bengal and
Bihar at the invitation of the new Viceroy, Viscount
Mountbatten, for discussions on departure of the
British from India by June, 1948. Today he released
telegrams from COngress party workers in
noakhali, which is predominantly Moslem, in which
they described attempts to burn Hindus alive.
http://www.eastbengal.org/april8_1947.pdf
(Source : The New York Times)
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 11 :58 AM
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S U N DA Y , J A N U A R Y 4 , 2 0 0 9
Refugees Tell of Terror in Bengal
As Hindu-Moslem Rioting Goes On
Refugees Testify to Bengal Terror
Special to The New York TimesCalcutta, India, Oct. 18 (London Times
dispatch)--
Unofficial reports reaching Calcutta indicate that
acts of violence are continuing on an alarming scale
in the districts of Noakhali and Tippera. This is
despite the local Government's assurance that the
communal situation in eastern Bengal had shown
some improvement during the last twenty-four
hours.
Hundreds of refugees have reached Calcutta from
these districts and they have a grim picture of the
happenings there during the last eight days.
They say that a hundred villages have been burned
by hooligans, that hundreds of persons have been
butchered or maimed and destitute. They report
that both districts are infernos of communal fury,
and that unless the Government urgentlydispatches more troops and police whole minority
populations will be wiped out.
[In new Delhi Mohandas K. Gandhi repeated his
declaration to Indian women that they should
commit suicide rather than submit to dishonor.]
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Both Noakhali and Tipperah are predominantly
Moslem areas. The total population there is just
over 8,000,000 and of these only 2,000,000 are
Hindus.
The latest reports show that the scenes of the
disturbances since yesterday have been moving
from Noakhali into Tippera and that they are
concentrating in the Chandpur subdivision of that
district.
The capital town, Chandpur, is a large railway and
river junction toward which refugees are fleeing in
an attempt to escape into western Bengal. But most
of the roads and the river exits are being guarded by
armed rowdies and a large population of the
evacuees has cut into the jungles and swamps to
avoid molestation.
Thus far police and military action in the affected
areas has been confined to about six firings. The
casualties from this source are about twenty killed
and an equal number injured.
The total casualties from the riots will perhaps
never be known. Official sources [Moslem in
Bengal] remain silent over this point but unofficial
reports variously estimate the totals between 5,000and 6,000 killed and 1,500 to 2,000 injured. It is
reported that a further 50,000 to 60,000 have been
forcibly converted ot another faith or abducted.
There is grave public anxiety in Calcutta over the
inadequacy of the police and military forces
dispatched to the stricken areas by the Bengal
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Government. So far only two companies of troops
are known to have been sent to an area covering
several hundred square miles. During the August
Calcutta riots had at their disposal about 45,000
troops to protect the city.
Food is another urgent problem. With both railway
and river communications seriously dislocated and
trade completely at a standstill in most parts of
Noakhali and Tippera, thousands face starvation.
Local leaders have made urgent representations to
the Government to fly food to the starving villages.
They have also telegraphed to the Governor of
Bengal and the Chief Minister, who at present at
the hill resort of Darjeeling, jointly to visit the
affected areas.
The Secretary of the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha
party has just received from the Governor's private
secretary a message that the Governor proposed to
visit Noakhali soon.
Gandhi Advises Suicide
New Delhi, India, Oct. 18 (AP)-
Mohandas K Gandhi, "spiritual leader" of the
Hindu-led Congress party, again today advised
women in eastern Bengal to take their own livesrather than submit to dishonor. In Bombay the
provincial Congress party chief called for halting of
all business activity as a demonstration of sympathy
for riot victims.
Mr. Gandhi said he felt a "call" to go to the trouble
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areas as soon as the situation in new Delhi
permitted. He said that at his request Acharya
Kripalani, newly elected president of the Congress
party, and Sarat Chandra Bose, recently retired
member of the interim Government, had gone to
investigate the riot reports.
He was most emphatic in his instructions to
women, insisting it was "not an idle idea" and he
meant every word he said.
Last night he advised women to suffocate
themselves by holding their breath, but he said
tonight that he had been told by physicians that
suicide by that means was impossible.
"The only way known to medicine for instant self
immolation is strong poisonous doses," he siad he
was told. He added: "If this is so I would advise
every one running the risk of dishonor to take
poison before submission to dishonor."
http://www.eastbengal.org/oct19_1946.pdf
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 7:22 PM
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S A T U R D A Y , J A N U A R Y 3 , 2 0 0 9
NOAKHALI - The Past is PresentIt's difficult to imagine past horrors today,
says SUDEEP CHAKRAVARTI, but the
reality that almost defeated Gandhi--and his
mission--has not faded away.
It's a little joke between them. Sometimes, when
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Jharna Dhara Chaudhury receives visitors curious
about the past at the Gandhi Ashram in Jayag, a
small village deep inside Noakhali, she packs them
off to see Pirjada Syed Golam Hakkani Hussaini.
His father, she says by way of introduction, Golam
Sarawar Hussaini, an MLA from Noakhali for the
Muslim League in the undivided Bengal Assembly,
was the man who started it all off. The slaughter
that began with the killing of the Hindu landed
gentry in one of the worst affected areas of Bengal
in October 1946. It was the sordid second chapter to
a sordid first chapter in communal violence that
was scripted in August of that year with a burst of
mayhem that some history books still call, capital
letters blaring, The Great Calcutta Killing.
"Ask him about his father," she urges, this five-ft-
nothing lady who was all of 10 when Gandhi came
here that November by way of Calcutta to cool the
fires long after a way of life had burnt to ashes.
Retaliatory riots sparking off in Bihar even as he
wound his way to Noakhali.
"Jharnadi has sent you, has she?" chuckles
Hakkani saheb. "She's always trying to get me into
trouble." I have made my way to his vast estate in
Shampur village, an hour over dirt tracks turned to
slush with rain, snaking through impossibly green
fields of paddy, in a part of Bangladesh so
conservative that many women in burqa sometimesstill carry an umbrella to prevent strangers from
looking at them. "I wasn't even born then, but in
1952," drawls the hereditary pir who not too many
years ago was better known as a theatre personality
in Dhaka, often sunning himself by the pool of the
local Sheraton. "I have inherited a pirhood, but not
my father's politics."
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Noakhali was the sordid second
chapter to a
sordid first chapter scripted in
August 1946 in Calcutta.
"The past is a fact," he carries on in a rush, sitting in
a room where Gandhi spent some hours those
many years ago, come to make peace with a
politician. "It was a moment of anger. A lot of
people were not even clear about why they were
doing what they were doing. But I believe it was
good Gandhi came. Things cooled down after that."
For a while, perhaps for the first time in his life,
Gandhi himself was ready to give up. There is no
record of exactly how many people died in Noakhali
and in adjoining Tipperah district (now the state of
Tripura, and some districts in Bangladesh) --
estimates range from 500 (League sources) to
50,000 (other sources). Jharnadi, who now runs
the Gandhi Ashram, relates it bluntly -- "More
Muslims died in Calcutta, more Hindus died inNoakhali" -- but violence caught up with the ageing
Mahatma like nothing else.
Even before he reached Noakhali, he had written to
Nehru: "My inner voice tells me 'You may not live
to be a witness to this senseless slaughter. If people
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refuse to see what is clear as daylight and pay no
heed to what you say, does it not mean that your
day is over?'" At practically every point of his
whistle-stop journey into Bengal's darker side -- at
Kushtia, Srirampur, Dattapara, and a string of
places where he collectively spent more than a
month -- the man who found his way out of
numerous problems with fasting and steadfastness
gave in to feelings of helplessness. "Oldest
friendships had snapped," he wrote in a dispatch.
"Truth and ahimsa by which I swear and which
have to my knowledge sustained me for 60 years,
seem to fail to show the attributes I ascribe to
them." His chronicler at the time, Nirmal Kumar
Bose, wrote later of seeing the Mahatma mutter to
himself: "Main kya karun? (What can I do?)"
It was a lifetime ago. Yet, wandering through the
old Noakhali district, now broken up into three, the
past can still come alive; but it's surreal, clashing as
it does with a slice of today's Bangladesh -- Hakkani
saheb is never far away -- itself created from blood
of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims. In places
where some of the worst atrocities happened,
Karpara, Dattapara, Ramganj, Haimchar, there are
remnants of buildings, many with still wary people
living in them.
In Baruipara, Mohamad Lakiutullah, a farmer who
has lived in the house of the local zamindar since
the family fled in 1946, clams up when I ask
questions. The irrelevance of asking them these
many years later strikes me when his son,
Mohamad Shahabuddin, a Forest Department
officer in Chittagong, starts discussing Malthus
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with me. Mrinal Krishna Majumdar of Dattapara,
among a handful of Hindus who remained in
Noakhali after 1946, still hasn't recovered from the
horrors he has seen. But his son, Jiban, is building
his electronic item repairs shop and a house, next to
the destroyed one his father refuses to leave.
I get an earful from Mahbub-ur-Rahman, a former
professor, now 85, who claims to have argued with
Gandhi about unity and disunity. "I told him, if
Pakistan was being created for Pakistanis, then
Muslims staying in India wouldn't be safe or united.
And if Muslims were so strong that they got the
British to create a country for them, then how could
they be weak in India?" Prolonged cackle. "Gandhi
had no answer." Do you have an answer for why it
happened? I ask. Wasn't it easy for landless Muslim
peasantry to get totally incensed with wealthy
Hindu landlords? "Yes, it was easy. But the riots
were not consequential, they were created." As
everywhere. In Dattapara, at the site of one of the
largest refugee camps in Noakhali -- now a girls
school -- I discuss Bangladesh's independence
struggle with H.B.M. Shamshul Basher, a 24-year-
old sociology graduate with no interest in a past
beyond 1971. We're in a teashop, the walls crowded
with revealing posters of local female stars: Samira,
Saabnoor and Mou. A tape recorder blasts theBengali version of Macarena from the latest remix
album by Sylvia Khan and 'Jewel' Mahmud,
Explosion. "The past is over," Basher tells me. "I
want a job. That's all that matters."
This is now. Noakhali lives as much off the land as
some of its people once killed for, but also on
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Older Posts
remittances from the Gulf. The moderate Muslim
government in Dhaka worries about the
conservative bastion of Noakhali. The need to own
a satellite telephone stands out as much as a school
to practice swordcraft.
And Gandhi? He couldn't have asked for more.
Muslim children attend a school run by the
ashram's trust, Muslim farmers buy fish seed from
its hatchery, the trust provides tubewells and
toilets. A Bangladesh flag flies in front of the
ashram, and after singing Raghupati raghav raja
ram every morning and evening, the indefatigable
Jharnadi leads her small band of ashramites to
intone: Bismillah-i-rahman-e-rahim. The past? I
don't think so.
http://www.indiatodaygroup.com/itoday/18081997
/noakhali.html
POSTED BY EAST BENGAL FOUNDAT IONAT 9:50 AM
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