I couldn't resist, being a garrulous old fool.
My father joined police service in the 40s, and served most of his early years as liaison officer with the military at Cox's Bazaar. He made friends with many officers in the XIV Army - a chicken-curry loving Brigade Major named Cariappa, a Captain named Osmani, among others - but when the war wound down and the Allied troops moved on into south-east Asia, he was posted back at Serampore. In 1946, at the time of the Great Calcutta Killing, when the Muslims attacked the Hindus during Direct Action Day, on the afternoon of August 16, after an inflammatory speech by Suhrawardy at the Calcutta Maidan in the morning, he was posted there but had come down to Calcutta on a personal visit. Reaching that morning, he found the city very quiet, with most attention on the meeting going on at the Maidan. He was surprised to find a lack of bundobast - none of the watchful police presence that the Calcutta Police, in those days a tightly-run force with very high esprit de corps, was famous, even notorious for. No mounted police, no watchful AC with a black Maria, no constables, no motor-cycle Sergeants, nothing. He went to Lalbazar, where he had a friend to meet, and found, to his surprise, a number of officers at the control room. He was told that trouble was expected and everyone was tense about it, but there were 'orders' not to move hastily and not to move without instructions. An hour or so later, having finished his meeting, on his way out, he found the crowd of officers hovering around remained there, but noticeably very tense and under strain. He was told that the CM was there, agitated, and something was going on.
The story that we were all brought up with, from external sources, and part of urban legend, was that Suhrawardy, the CM, had delivered an inflammatory speech that morning, the Muslim League thugs were ready to act on it, and arms had been collected and distributed immediately the speech ended, and rioting broke out on the 16th afternoon. Urban legend further has it that Suhrawardy visited the police control room and ensured that no police intervention happened. My father felt apprehensive about his own beat at Serampore, and hurried back to make sure that nothing happened there as a consequence of trouble in Calcutta.
In those days, all young men who wanted to be in society were members of a night club on Theatre Road known as the 300 Club; there was a sly allusion to the 'upper 300' of Calcutta society in that name. After Serampore, my father was posted as DC South, and came to live as a bachelor, with his parents and brothers, at 2, Loudon Street. The club was a popular place. One evening, there was a disturbance; some Bengali gentlemen had had one too many, and had noticed Suhrawardy there and wanted to inflict corporal punishment on the CM for his role in the riots the previous year. My father intervened, took the somewhat shaken CM out and put him in his car. Suhrawardy, it should be mentioned, was a bon vivant, and loved the good life, and was a very active member of the 300 Club. They became friends, and had a couple of other common friends besides.
It was from Suhrawardy that my father heard, one evening, an embittered version of what had happened on Direct Action Day. There had been a discussion about it with the Governor, who had been informed that a public meeting would be held, and that the Muslim League line would be put forth, in unmistakable terms, and the legitimate demands of the League forcefully reiterated. Suhrawardy was under the impression that given this very broad hint, there would be action taken to heighten the police presence during and after the meeting. To his consternation, after his meeting, when he was leaving, he noticed a distinct lack of police presence. He felt uneasy, and in the afternoon, as his own sources brought in information of Muslim attacks and Hindu retaliation, he went to see for himself what was happening at the control room, the best place to get news of events throughout the city before the days of 24 hour TV broadcasts. At the control room, there was nothing going on, everyone was present listening to phoned-in reports about violence reported here or there, largely, then, in the early afternoon, mainly thugs killing innocent people of the opposite faith, no fighting among armed men as such. His demand for action led to a few vans being despatched to the worst hit areas but no strong police effort. The next day, the 17th, the violence was horrifying. The Sikhs had got involved, and they were bringing in numbers of men, all armed to the teeth, in lorry-loads (General Tuker, then serving at Fort William saw this himself). By that afternoon, Suhrawardy, in his own account, feeling that the situation was spiralling out of control and that the civil administration was no longer in command of the situation, called in the Army. Tuker tells a tale of how the Army intervened and restored law and order, but there are numerous accounts of how the Army would not take action even if there was a killing or a mob gathered in the next street, and only dealt with what was happening in their immediate presence.
While the riots burned themselves out, it left everybody traumatised. There had been no killing on this scale before, and this was to be the model of much violence later. It left Suhrawardy's reputation in tatters, because the police inaction was thought to be his doing, the visit to the control room was seen to be an act of manipulation of the police to allow his side the maximum freedom, and the army being called in early, as early as the second day, in fact, was not mentioned nor seen in people's eyes as action taken by him.
When these conversations took place, it was precisely the time when Suhrawardy was in talks with Sarat Bose and Kiran Shankar Roy about a third way, a Bengal option, whereby Bengal would be a third Dominion, quite apart from Pakistan in the west and India throughout the rest of British India, with no partition. Jinnah knew of this plan and these discussions, and was unhappy but reconciled to dealing with the western portion alone. He had given up on Bengal, more or less. It was at that time that agitated sections in the Bengal Congress put pressure on the Congress working committee, leading to Nehru and Patel intervening, and summoning Bose and Roy to Delhi to scotch all such discussions taking place. According to Suhrawardy, there had been very candid and transparent discussions between the three of them, Suhrawardy himself, Bose and Roy, about the riots, and he had been asked in very great detail about events that had taken place. Again, according to him, he had cleared up his role and his actions to the others, and they were satisfied that he was not responsible for the killing. He was very surprised, and very bitter, that in spite of this, there were elements in the Congress who were intransigent, and demanded a partition of Bengal, insisting that they would not trust Muslims to treat them fairly. That, then, is what happened, and the birth of Bangladesh was postponed by a quarter century, and took place with a truncated Bengal, with the Hindu majority districts out of it.
What never emerged, and what neither Suhrawardy nor my father sought to explore, was the question of the invisible hand. If Suhrawardy was telling the truth, then someone, somewhere, more powerful and influential than the CM, had held back the police, and had held back the Army at a vital time, and had caused a slaughter on a mass scale. Tuker says that it was Army intervention that restored law and order. Eye witnesses say that the Army did precious little. Tuker says that he had reports of Sikhs entering Calcutta in truckloads, with arms, and getting into the riots. The question arises - where were these Sikhs coming from, since the closest centre to Calcutta with a collection of Sikhs, which had its own Sikh population, was Jamshedpur. Could they have been sent distress signals on the 16th, and could they have mobilised and reached the next day?
Postscript: Strangely, there was comparatively less tension during Partition. People have heard about the riots in Calcutta, and about Gandhi's intervention. Those who are reading this account might wonder what personal experiences my father had during that time. He was still the DC (South). The riots were confined to the north of the city, mainly to Beleghata and those parts. The south was unaffected. There was not a single death in the Park Circus area, and there was only minor unrest, no killings, only slogan-shouting, in Metiabruz and Watgunge.
A second post-script: the last time there was any possibility of a meeting between Suhrawardy and my father was in the 50s, when S was then the Prime Minister of Pakistan. My father got a call in his office in Calcutta one day, from a man who identified himself as the ADC to the Prime Minister, to say that the PM had stopped over at Calcutta on his way to Dacca, and wanted my father to join him at lunch at Firpo's (where everybody who was anybody turned up at some time during the week for lunch). He was horrified, and explained as best as he could that this would have to be cleared by his seniors, including possibly a reference to Delhi, and so lunch would not be possible. That was the last time he heard from Suhrawardy.
Partition of Bengal (1947) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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