Oh no no. I am not neglecting the violence which happened after the violence which happened after the first day. Even in my initial post I said dad was the precursor to all the violence that was bout to follow the next days or in 47' on either side.
There are reports that after killings started from the Hindu side from the second day afterwards Suhrawardy appeal for army finally started to come in some areas and totally under control by end of third day. The numbers dead also include in people killed in Noakhali as you mentioned and also the violence in Bihar against Muslims who were targetted wrt to Noakholi. As a whole in the next2 months due to direct action day more Muslims were killed. On the first day in due to their League preparation lots of Hindus were killed. And with respect to this thread I was just pointing out uneducated Muslims too wanted an Islamic homeland with league support in Bengal. For me I still couldn't understand the concept of killing the same people who are your compatriots despite having the same culture for centuries.
There are certain specifics.
In Calcutta in 1946, the killing started with the hoodlum element; Calcutta politics, in a more general sense, West Bengal politics is inextricably mingled with gang warfare. Examples may help; the hoodlums under the Congress deserted in significant numbers to the CPM after the Congress defeat in 1966, but some were not accommodated. The Left Front and the CPM were still taking a virtuous stand in those early days. These left-out elements then became the knife arm of the Naxalites, thereby hop-scotching their CPM enemies one step to the left. After their defeat, they were left bereft of leadership, until the TMC emerged. Having originally been Congress hoodlums, they found it easy to become TMC hoodlums. Now the CPM hoodlums found themselves isolated. When the BJP took advantage of the accommodative West Bengal culture having allowed large settlements of Biharis (both Hindu and Muslim, mainly originally jute mill workers, afterwards people with no visible source of income) to make a bid for a presence in West Bengal, earlier an unheard of proposition thanks to the CPM, these dispossessed CPM hoodlums shifted to the BJP.
Hoodlums do not articulate party politics. They eliminate their opposite numbers and create local area superiority for the intelligent party cadres to indoctrinate large settled areas, to keep an eye on the electoral tactics of the opposition parties, and, wherever possible, 'manage' the individual booths. So to be a BJP hoodlum today, after having been a CPM hoodlum yester-year, was nothing that a hoodlum would not take nonchalantly in his stride.
In Calcutta in the 1940s, the Suhrawardy brothers, Hasan and Husseyn, were in control of the central Calcutta hoodlum population, centred around the strong element of Muslims in Dharamtollah Street, around the Tipu Sultan Mosque, bounded north and south by the Nakhoda Masjid, the Colootolla Masjid, the Jama Masjid, right out to the Narkeldanga Masjid, and in the south by Noori, Noor, and several others. There are also outliers in Park Circus, Mominpore, Kidderpore and Watgunge. It was this cadre at their disposal that gave them their strength in the street, and it was this strong-arming cadre that led the riots. They never expected the sharp Hindu+Sikh reaction, and, to respond to your surprise, they did not mingle with the local population. These were not Bengali Muslims.
In Noakhali,it was different. There we had Bengali Muslims, but they were different from those elsewhere. There the aggression was led by the heirs of various dargahs, who to this day continue their aggressive policies towards Hindus. In 1947, it was not a single, isolated incident; it was the continuation of a campaign that had lasted decades before that. That makes it all the more miraculous that Gandhi's efforts had any effect whatsoever.
My sole point in defence (as an undisputed fact) is that after the establishment of universal suffrage, no Pan-Indian Muslim party emerged ever in 70 years, why?
They put all their eggs in one basket, the Congress basket, and guarded it. Then in 1984 Rajiv Gandhi arrived, and that trust was lost. Some said it was lost irretrievably. It was not. Now that it is clear that Muslims will be second-class citizens, hewers of wood and drawers of water, under the BJP, sentiment has started shifting back to the Congress.
My sole point in defence (as an undisputed fact) is that after the establishment of universal suffrage, no Pan-Indian Muslim party emerged ever in 70 years, why?
The Muslim vote-bank was a completely synthetic concoction of the politicians that would not stand up to a moment's scrutiny by even an idiot, thereby giving us a yardstick by which to measure the IQ of politicians. Muslims voted exactly as their situational requirements dictated; sometimes, it was for reservations for the children, or job opportunities, sometimes it was the banning of Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, sometimes it was for or against some half-witted attempt at social engineering by an oversmart political party....the list goes on.
