UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
April 19, 2006
Date:___________________
Haimanti Roy
I, _________________________________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Doctor of Philosophy
in:
History
It is entitled:
Citizenship and National Identity in Post-Partition Bengal, 1947-65
This work and its defense approved by:
Barbara N. Ramusack
Chair: _______________________________
Martin Francis
_______________________________
Maura O'Connor
_______________________________
Laura D. Jenkins
_______________________________
_______________________________
Citizenship and National Identity in Post-Partition Bengal, 1947-65.
A Dissertation submitted to the
Division of Research and Advanced Studies
of the University of Cincinnati
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctorate of Philosophy
In the Department of History of the College of Arts and Sciences
19 April 2006
By
Haimanti Roy
M. A. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 1998.
B. A. Presidency College, Kolkata, India, 1996
Committee Chair: Barbara N Ramusack
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the Partition of Bengal in 1947 and its aftermath to 1965 to
examine how India and Pakistan legitimized and symbolically reproduced markers of national
identity. It argues that specific concepts of what constituted loyal citizens, Partition violence and
legitimate victimhood critically influenced the establishment of post-Partition states in the
Bengal region. Through the themes of national imagination, border politics, violence and refugee
rehabilitation, this dissertation explores the official and unofficial processes, which sought to
produce national identities of Hindus and Muslims as Indians and Pakistanis. These conflicting
attempts to homogenize national identities in religious terms were contested in the post partition
period, as identities based on region, language and culture competed for primacy.
The dissertation argues that on the eve of Partition despite increasingly communalized
spaces, multiple imaginings of nationhood existed. Political contingency rather than the
historical trajectory of “communalism” guided the decision to divide Bengal. The Partition and
nationhood are addressed through the examination of the social and economic impact of the new
border and the sporadic violence, both physical and psychological that especially targeted
minorities, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in West Bengal. Along with territorial
delimitation, minority citizens became intricately linked with the evolution of national identity,
self definition and legitimacy of each state. The dissertation also focuses specifically on the
trans-territorial relationship between the Indian state and Hindu migrants from East Pakistan who
strategically claimed to be “refugees” in order to demand Indian citizenship. Finally this
dissertation complicates normative discourses of national identity formation and the uncritical
understanding of “secular” India and “Islamic” Pakistan.
iii
Acknowledgements
This project, which began eight years back and has undergone many mutations
and digressions, would not have reached completion without the generous support of
many individuals and institutions. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, mentor and
friend Barbara Ramusack for her encouraging comments, meticulous reading, sharing her
vast knowledge of Indian history, teaching me the skills to become a good researcher and
most importantly, keeping me on track. She has provided both intellectual support as well
as a home away from home introducing me to the different facets of American academia
and life in general.
I am indebted to Maura O’ Connor, whose unbridled enthusiasm for my different
projects at the University of Cincinnati has been a constant source of inspiration. Her
friendship and support throughout my years in Cincinnati and beyond are deeply
appreciated. Martin Francis and Laura Jenkins, who also served on my dissertation
committee, provided incisive comments and suggestions that have greatly enriched this
dissertation.
I owe an intellectual debt to individuals in multiple locations and from different
points of the research. In Calcutta, my teachers at Presidency College, especially Rajat K
Ray significantly shaped my intellectual trajectory. Anjan Ghosh generously shared his
thoughts and his research with me. Gautam Bhadra encouraged me in early 1997 to look
at newspapers as a viable source for popular contemporary opinion. At Jawaharlal Nehru
University, my professors taught me to think beyond historical “facts and figures” for
which I am most grateful. I owe special thanks to Neeladri Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya, Rajat Datta and Susan Viswanathan for encouraging me to pursue a PhD.
iv
In Cincinnati along with the members of my dissertation committee, I have greatly
benefited from discussions with Man Bun Kwan, Willard Sunderland, Laura Jenkins and
Ann Twinam.
Institutional support for my project has come from various sources. A predissertation research grant from the Bangladesh Program of the Social Science Research
Council and another from the Cincinnati Chapter of the English Speaking Union
supported my initial forays to the archives libraries in Britain, India and Bangladesh. A
Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School at the University of
Cincinnati allowed me to research extensively in London, New Delhi, Calcutta (Kolkata
for those who are historically challenged) and Dhaka. A fellowship from the Charles
Phelps Taft Memorial Fund enabled me to write a substantial portion of the dissertation
without having to worry about material needs of the daily life of a graduate student. The
assistance and interest of the librarians at the Oriental and India Office Collections,
London, the Nehru Memorial and Museum Library, National Archives of India, Central
Secretariat Library in New Delhi, West Bengal State Archives, Government of West
Bengal Police Archives, SB Branch, National Library in Calcutta, Dhaka University
Library, Bangla Academy and the Bangladesh National Archives, especially Md.
Hashanuzzaman Hydari, are most appreciated. Hope Earls at the Department of History
helped in smoothing out the bureaucratic aspects of being an international graduate
student. Mikaila Corday at the Interlibrary Loan section of the Langsam Library at the
University of Cincinnati provided valuable help in procuring relevant materials from
other libraries.
v
In Britain, Bangladesh and India many scholars have put me in their debt for their
intellectual and emotional support. In Britain Joya Chatterji extended significant
suggestions about specific sources. In Bangladesh Shaukat Ali, Sonia Amin,
Anisuzzaman, Ratanlal Chakrabarty, Meghna Guhathakurta, Ahmed Kamal, Ameena
Mohsin and Badruddin Umar opened their hearts and homes to me. Irfat (Bithe) Ara
extended comradeship during the lonely hours at the Bangladesh National Archives.
Wajid Hasan Shah, Iftekhar Iqbal and Rizwana have become wonderful friends. The
Daulas and the Rays were generous and gracious hosts during my time in Dhaka and
introduced me to different aspects of Indian diplomacy and Bangladeshi politics. Willem
Van Schendel, Gautam Ghosh, Geraldine Forbes and Ian Petrie provided thoughtful
suggestions and unselfishly shared their knowledge about Bangladeshi society and
history and introduced me to their friends there.
Friends have been an important part of my life and this project by creating space
for diversions, volatile and non-volatile discussions and camaraderie through the rigors of
research and dissertation writing. Rahul Nair and Sayata Ghose have been constant
companions much before this project began. The J.N.U. cohort of Varuni Bhatia,
Shubhra Bhattacharjee, Sabyasachi Dasgupta, Sharatee Ghosh, Mahesh Gopalan, Alita
Nandi, Raisur Rahman and Aparna Vaidik provided intellectual and social adventures.
My life in Cincinnati became more interesting and lively because of my friends Anuradha
Agarwal, Amitava Bhaduri, Madhubanti Mukherjee, Meeta Sinha-Raghavan and
Priyanka Srivastava. Credit goes to the old Presidency gang, Hira, Koel, Ranjini,
Samarpita and Sangeeta for keeping in touch over the years. Thanks also to those friends
who defy neat groupings, Monica Bhattacharjee, Rajoshree Bhattacharya, Prasanta
vi
Chakravarty, Neeti Nair, Sharmadip (Toy) Basu, S. Sasikant and Samikhsa Sherawat for
making the research and writing period enjoyable. The last section of the dissertation was
written amidst a move to Cambridge, MA where Nandini Manjrekar, Jeff Ravel and
Cristelle Baskins made the transition to a new place a welcome experience. I am indebted
to David Ciarlo for the last minute technical help that ensured that this dissertation
became suitable for the digital age.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the love and
encouragement of my parents Haripada Roy and Gouri Roy and my sisters, Anindita Roy
and Priyadarshini Roy. In addition to their unconditional support, I have greatly benefited
from my father’s knowledge of the intricacies of the Indian bureaucracy. My family in
the U. S, the Nairs, Anupama, Rajiv, Puja and Vivek, have ensured I get all the love and
comforts of home away from home. My parents-in-law, late K. N. Syamasundaran Nair
and P. A. Sarojini, have always encouraged me to keep on writing even if it meant less
visits with them.
Last but not the least, I would not have come this far without the loving support of
Rahul Nair, who has been a constant source of suggestions, questions, criticisms and
inspiration. He has always been there, emotionally and intellectually, persuading me to
rethink some of my assumptions about traditions, histories and life in general and to
enjoy the process of becoming a historian.
vii
CONTENTS
Abstract
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Note on Terminology
iii
iv
ix
x
1.
Introduction
1
2.
Fractured Nations: The Demand for Partition
26
3.
The Making of National Borders
72
4.
Quest for Citizenship: Minorities and the Requisition of Property 117
5.
Ecology of Fear: Violence in Post-Partition Bengal
169
6.
Partitioned Identities and the Politics of Rehabilitation
218
7.
Conclusion
269
Bibliography
275
Appendix
290
viii
Abbreviations
AICC
AIML
BNA
BPCC
BPHM
BPML
CAP
CID
EBLA
DM
DUL
FIR
FR
GOEB
GOWB
GOI
HM
IB
ICS
IG
INA
KPP
NAI
NMML
OIOC
RCRC
SP
UCRC
WBPSB
WBSA
All India Congress Committee
All India Muslim League
Bangladesh National Archives
Bengal Provincial Congress Committee
Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha
Bengal Provincial Muslim League
Constituent Assembly of Pakistan
Criminal Investigation Department
East Bengal Legislative Assembly
District Magistrate
Dhaka University Library
First Information Report
Fortnightly Report
Government of East Bengal
Government of West Bengal
Government of India
Hindu Mahasabha
Intelligence Branch
Indian Civil Service
Inspector General
Indian National Army
Krishak Praja Party
National Archives of India
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
Oriental and India Office Collections
Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council
Superintendent of Police
United Central Refugee Council
West Bengal Police Special Branch
West Bengal State Archives
ix
Note on Terminology
After 1947, East Bengal formally changes its name to East Pakistan in 1956. It becomes
Bangladesh in 1971 and I have not used the term unless referring to the period after 1971.The
records use both names alternatively between 1947 and 1965. I have used East Pakistan and East
Bengal interchangeably. I have tried to be specific when it comes to the policies of the
Government of India and those of Government of West Bengal. However, records at the
Bangladesh archives, at times do not indicate whether the policies of the East Pakistan
government formulated at Dhaka were independent of inputs from the Government of Pakistan at
Karachi. Unless indicated otherwise I use Pakistan to alternatively mean East Pakistan.
I have used the old forms of Dacca and Calcutta to depict the cities of Dhaka and Kolkata
respectively.
x
Chapter 1
Introduction
Partition as the ‘other face of freedom’ remains an apocalyptic event within South Asian
popular imagination, reinforced by family and personal memories of violence, exile, movement
and resettlement. Within these memories, Partition lingers as an ‘inexplicable’ event, whose
heteromorphic violence and uprooting engendered the agonized transition from the old to the
new, and the search for security within one’s own country that had also become a foreign
country.1 Alternatively, national histories of India and Pakistan have sought to confine the
narrative of the Partition as a hypertext to the grand narrative of anti-colonial struggle and to the
creation myth of nation states, rehearsed periodically as an explanation of decolonization, of
political accommodation and the achievement of the most important political prize of all,
nationhood.
In Bangladesh, which came into being in 1971 from the erstwhile East Pakistan, the
Partition of 1947 has receded from both political and public memory to accommodate a seamless
history of Bengali/Bangladeshi national identity from 1905. Moreover, in contemporary South
Asia, Partition has become an easy accessory regularly brought out of the political closet to
explain inter-dominion tensions among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and to ascribe culpability
to the ‘other’ side of the border/s.
The dissonance between political, public and personal memory is amplified when
confronted with issues of territoriality, identity and citizenship. The specter of Partition continues
1
Amit Chaudhuri, “ Partition as Exile,” Editorial, The Telegraph, 9 July 2000:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1000710/editoria.htmhttp, Internet; Accessed 21 December 2001.
1
to be a primary signifier through which the nation states seek to negotiate territoriality and
national identity and through which refugees and minorities justify claims of belonging and
citizenship. Partition thus remains an ‘active category’2 which continues to define political,
social and popular lives of the people in the partitioned provinces.
The Partition of 1947 resulted in a truncated subcontinent dividing the provinces of
Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east along religious lines and marked the birth of the nation
states of India and a spatially fragmented West and East Pakistan. Partition also engendered the
largest recorded population transfer in history amidst horrific mass violence. Between 1946 and
1965, nearly nine million Hindus and Sikhs moved into India and approximately five million
Muslims moved to both parts of Pakistan.3 This dissertation focuses on the Partition of Bengal
and the subsequent re-ordering of national identities in West Bengal and East Pakistan. In post
Partition Bengal, the discourse over citizenship animated the project of ‘nationalizing the
nation.’4 Who were the rightful citizens of the new nations and how could such claims be made?
Did minorities, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in India, by crossing the international
border become refugees and have automatic rights to demand citizenship? I argue that the new
nation-states or their minorities did not assume such identities and issues of citizenship. Rather,
they were produced categories debated within the hallowed walls of officialdom in Delhi,
2
Ranabir Samaddar, “The Last Hurrah That Continues,” in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic ed.
Divided Countries, Separated Cities, The Modern Legacy of Partition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003),
21-35.
3
There are varying assessments on the exact numbers. According to Government of India estimates, 4.5 million
Sikhs and Hindus left their homes in West Punjab and migrated to India and 5.5 million Muslims moved from
different parts of India to West Pakistan. After Partition (New Delhi: Government of India, 1948), 50. In Bengal, the
Government of India’s Census of 1961 recorded around 3 million displaced non-Muslims from East Pakistan. A
million and half Muslims left West Bengal for East Pakistan in the two decades after the Partition. Joya Chatterji,
“Of Graveyards and Ghettos: Muslims in Partitioned West Bengal, 1947-67,” in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy ed.
Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005):
228, 222-249.
4
Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.
2
Calcutta and Dacca and given legal sanction through ordinances and laws debated and passed by
parliamentary and state legislations. Categories of identity such as evacuees, refugees, displaced
persons, aliens, and infiltrators became imbricated within the process of establishing postPartition national orders. Further, these identities were produced discursively, mediated through
the actions of petty officials located at the periphery of the nation, especially at the borders and
diplomatic missions. Refugee documents, border slips, passports thereby became the lingua
franca through which the Indian state sought to differentiate between the refugees, migrants,
aliens and its citizens.
This dissertation examines the different ways in which minorities in India and Pakistan
negotiated and contested the terrain of official policies that sought to ossify religious affiliation
and fix their citizens’ identity primarily as members of majority and minority communities. In
post-Partition Bengal, socio-political and economic tensions donned a communal color because
of the ready availability of the narrative of religious animosity which the official policies of India
and Pakistan reinforced. Colonial understandings of community identity through religion
continued to inform policy decisions after 1947 as both states sought to claim their rightful
citizens.
However, ‘tangible’ forms of identity implicitly demanded the intangible proof of
victimhood. Official perception of a specific paradigm of Partition violence which upheld the
large scale and cataclysmic riots in Punjab of 1947-48 as standard, informed and operated within
policy decisions. The small scale and chronic nature of violence in post-Partition Bengal thus
remained outside the plausible ambit of Partition violence and rendered the Bengal Partition as a
site of unwarranted and illegitimate victimhood.
3
In addition to victimhood, both Indian and the East Pakistani states formulated other
tangential methods to define citizenship within their respective boundaries. Property ownership
of the minorities became an intrinsic way to establish a minority citizen’s loyalty to the state.
Like victimhood, determination of such loyalty remained undefined and susceptible to contingent
political, social and economic contexts and was predicated on the successful negotiations
between minorities and the nation-states. On their part, minority Hindus in East Pakistan and
Muslims in West Bengal repeatedly contested such official attempts to define national space and
identity. They did this through persistent movement across borders, the maintenance of family
ties and the generation of new ones in partitioned Bengal.
Pre-histories of Partition
The extensive scholarship on the Partition remains problematic in several crucial aspects.
First, the Partition serves as a template for the re-invention of national histories of India and
Pakistan. Partition in these national narratives is represented as the momentous culmination of an
anti colonial national struggle that acceded to the division for the sake of a larger Indian unity or
as a unilinear movement towards national self –representations of distinct communities.
Paradoxically, while Partition persists as the ‘defining moment’ for those engaged in reinterpreting cultural and national identities in contemporary South Asia, Partition historiography
continues to remain trapped within a teleological and chronological barrier of 1947. In turn, this
axiomatic end-date for historical enquiry has led to the creation of ‘pre-histories’ of the
Partition,5 to an obsessive focus on the high politics that preceded the event in the attempt to
5
Gyanendra Pandey, “The Prose of Otherness” in David Hardiman and David Arnold, ed. Subaltern Studies,
Volume VIII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 188-221.
4
explain why it happened6 and to assign ‘responsibility’7 to either the negotiations between the
British and the major Indian political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim
League or to the actions of leading political figures such as Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru,
Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. 8 The contradictions within high politics in
India were sought to be resolved through the construction of Muslim separatism or
‘communalism’ as the evil doppelganger of ‘secular’ nationalism. Further, Partition in these
analyses remained embedded within competing paradigms of nationhood and decolonization and
failed to differentiate between the three Partitions of India, Punjab and Bengal.9
6
Fueled by the publication of the Transfer of Power Papers, historical scholarship on the endgames of empire and
the Partition began to emerge from the 1970s. For varied empirical analyses on the causes of Partition, see Anita
Inder Singh, The Origins of Partition of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987); David Page, Prelude to
Partition, Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control (New Delhi: Oxford University Press 1982); Robin
Moore, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1983); Ajit Bhattacharjea, Countdown to Partition, The Final Days (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1997).
7
Writing on the Partition began as early as 1947 itself, in the form of official inquiries, memoirs and eyewitness
accounts by British and Indian officials. For example see M. L. Darling, At Freedom’s Door (London, 1949); Sir
Francis Tucker, While Memory Serves (London, 1950); A. Campbell Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (London,
1951), P. Moon, Divide and Quit (London, 1961); G. D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning (New Delhi, 1949); V. P. Menon,
The Transfer of Power in India (Bombay, 1957); M. A. K Azad, India Wins Freedom (New York: Longmans, Green
and Co., 1960). Most of these books have received a new lease of life as reprints became easily available to the
public in South Asia in the late 1980s and 1990s. Their popularity confirms the idea that narratives of the Partition
continue to capture and inform the public imagination.
8
See Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge,
1985); B R Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (New Delhi, 1958), S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography
(1975). The Indian Government aided the project by the publication of personal writings of Gandhi. See Collected
Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1958-73), and S Gopal ed. The
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972); Z.H Zaidi, ed. Quaid-i-Azam
Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers (Islamabad: National Archives of Pakistan, 1993, Distributed by Oxford University
Press, 2000).
9
Few academic scholars find it problematic to use the Punjab experience as the quintessential Partition experience.
In recent years, some have problematized it briefly. See, Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries:
Women in India’s Partition (Delhi: Kali, 1998), 12; Mushirul Hasan, “Memories of a Fragmented Nation: Rewriting
the Histories of India’s Partition,” Economic and Political Weekly (10 October 1998), 2662; Pandey, Remembering
Partition, 18.
5
From the late 1980s historical enquiry on the Partition shifted its focus from the
‘national’ to the ‘provincial’ arena of high politics.10 But a shift in structural focus did not entail
a shift in historiographical focus that remained firmly directed at the level of high politics. In the
case of Bengal, such enquiry involved a reassessment of provincial identity politics in the 1940s
vis-à-vis national politics. The political dissensions between the All India platforms of the
Congress and the League and their provincial counterparts are now well documented.11 Scholars
such as Shila Sen, Bidyut Chakrabarty, Haroun or Rashid focus on different points within
Bengali politics that in their view marked the crucial turn away from anti-colonial nationalism
and led the path to ‘separatism’ or communalism.12
One of the paradigmatic problems that has haunted the historiography of the Partition is
the communal-national binary that seeks to explain communalism as the causal force which at
the expense of nationalism, marked the inevitable path towards Partition.13 Historians of both the
Nationalist and the Cambridge schools become strange bedfellows in sharing this binary.
Although the former undercuts their own emphasis on anti-colonial nature of different
communities by isolating the Muslim League as a ‘communal’ organization, the Cambridge
10
For the broad trends in the Partition historiography see Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Introduction: The
Place of Partition in South Asian Histories,” in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000),
1-28.
11
Jinnah’s control over Bengali politicians such as Fazlul Haq and HS Suhrawardy was tenuous at best. For
differences between the All India Muslim League and the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, see Shila Sen, Muslim
Politics in Bengal, 1937-1947 (New Delhi: Impex India, 1976) and Haroun or Rashid, The Foreshadowing of
Bangladesh: Bengali Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906-47 (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 2003).
12
The coalition politics that ensued after the All India Congress failed to capitalize on their win in the provincial
elections of 1937 has been seen also as a lost opportunity for Hindu Muslim unity in Bengal politics. Haroun or
Rashid argues that the failure of a Congress-League coalition after the 1946 elections prepared the ground for
increasing communal hostility.
13
For a detailed critique of ‘communalism’ see Ayesha Jalal, “Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Identity in
South Asia,” in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal eds. Nationalism, Democracy, and Development: State and Politics in
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997) 76-103.
6
historians fail to take cognizance of the quintessential nature of Indian nationalism that evolved
specifically as an anti-colonial struggle. However, the hegemonic ambit of Indian nationalism
depended on its ability to accommodate multiple sub-nationalisms that existed and contributed to
the larger imagined community. Nationalism thus advocated was inherently inclusive in its
attempts to encompass and project a plural nation irrespective of class, caste, religious, regional
or ethnic affiliations. However, the rules of the game began to change with the introduction of
separate electorates for different religious communities in 1909. The Morley-Minto Reforms or
the Indian Councils Act of 1909, which upheld the rights of separate representation, were
successful in politicizing religious identities.
By the 1930s, the Indian National Congress, the vanguard of the anti-colonial nationalist
struggle, faced opposition from the Muslim League that claimed to represent the interests of the
Muslim minority of the subcontinent. It is important to note here that the demand for Pakistan
that the Muslim League declared as its goal in 1940 did not indicate Partitioning of India as a
method of creating a separate Muslim homeland. Further, the geographical coordinates were
tactically kept vague in the hope that it would appeal to the largest possible constituency.14 In
Bengal, the League’s success depended not only on its ability to find an agrarian base but also on
the All India Congress’s refusal to form a coalition after the 1937 provincial elections that
fractured the possibility of Hindu-Muslim political unity. Further, Muslim politics in Bengal
during the 1930s and 1940s remained non-hegemonic in relation to the Hindu Bengali minority
reflecting its subalternity.15
14
Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, 119.
15
Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal” in The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political
Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 45.
7
In the case of Bengal, one of the main proponents of the communalism-nationalism
binary is Joya Chatterji, who explains the Bengal Partition as an event that Hindu communalism
engendered. She argues that the public demands for partition and a separate “homeland for
Bengali Hindus” on eve of partition reflected the end result of a decisive shift “from nationalism
to communalism” that had marked Bengal politics and identity from the 1930s.16 Chatterji
attributes a central role to elite Bengali Hindus in spearheading the campaign that led to the
fateful division of the province in 1947. Having identified the main actors in the promotion of
Hindu communalism, she then makes the problematic leap to make the case for all Bengali
Hindus who in her view were not “passive bystanders.” 17
Chatterji’s larger argument provides a convenient historical trajectory to this colonial
representation and seeks to explain the religious demographic calculations behind the Partition as
a process which reflected inherent divisions within Indian socio-political milieu. Partition thus
was inevitable not only because Indian leaders such as Nehru, Patel and Jinnah forced the British
hand, but also because of the intrinsic and age-old communal fault-lines. Not only do such
arguments tend to deflect the role of British politics in India, but also provide no space for the
examination of alternatives to the nationalism-communalism binary. Unfortunately, Chatterji is
not alone in upholding the primacy of communalism in Bengali politics. Suranjan Das, in his
study of communal riots in the first half of the twentieth century, argues for a successful
16
Chatterji traces the proliferation of communalism in Bengal thus, “Nationalism was directed against imperialism
and gave top priority to anti-British action. The communalism of the bhadralok was directed against their fellow
Bengalis. History for the one was the struggle against British liberation from the despotism of Muslims. Its key
political objective was to prevent this ‘despotism’ from returning when the British left India, and to deny that
Muslims could be Bengalis, and by extension Indians.” Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and
Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268.
17
In an attempt to provide agency to the colonized, Chatterji argues, “ Bengalis were not passive bystanders in the
partition of their province; nor were they victims of circumstances entirely out of their control, forced reluctantly to
accept the division of their ‘motherland’. On the contrary, a large number of Hindus of Bengal, backed up by the
provincial branches of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, campaigned intensively in 1947 for the partition of
Bengal inside an Indian Union.” Ibid., 227.
8
synthesis between elite and popular communalism in the Bengal countryside that found
culmination in the 1946 riots.18 Here too, is an argument for the uni-linear path of communalism,
this time of Muslim communalism that makes Partition inevitable.
That provincial politics in Bengal saw an increasing presence of elite Hindu and Muslim
communalism cannot be denied. As Sekhar Bandyopadhya contends, from the 1930s onwards
Hindu organizations began to mobilize lower caste groups, such as the Namasudras in Bengal
within the larger Hindu fold.19 The subsequent shifts in class and community relations were, in
Bandyopadhya’s view, crucial in garnering support for the partition. But Taj ul Hashmi reveals
that the Muslim peasantry in Bengal organized along communitarian lines that also involved
mobilization along class divisions.20 These factors do not necessarily indicate that public
discourse and political rhetoric in the 1930s and 1940s assumed a Hindu or Muslim identity at
the expense of anti-colonial nationalist agitation. Rather, nationalist leaders had strategically
deployed both Hindu and Muslim religious symbols in their efforts to incorporate the masses
since at least 1905. In this context, Sugata Bose argues “Anti-colonial nationalism of Hindus and
Muslims alike had always been influenced by their religiously informed cultural identities
embroidered with an array of religious symbols and empowered by religion as faith.”
21
Elsewhere, Bose makes the critical distinction between communitarian struggles of non-elite
social groups in which religion played an important organization role and the communal
18
Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).
19
Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947
(Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997).
20
Taj ul Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal 1920-1947
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).
21
Sugata Bose, “Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on Historiography of Nationalism in Bengal” in Sekhar
Bandyopadhya, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 288.
9
mobilizations within provincial politics informed by colonial constructions of politically
representative religious groups.22
Religion as the raison d’etre of the politics of Partition becomes problematic when the
focus shifts to the eastern part of Bengal. Anisuzzaman has argued that the East Bengal/East
Pakistan story gets subsumed within a broader schema of partition historiography that fails to
appreciate that for some Muslim Bengalis, the Partition was a way to emerge from Hindu
domination and experience cultural autonomy as a Muslim and a Bengali.23 However, such
explanations lead to yet another kind of pre-histories which seeks to explain the emergence of
Bangladesh in 1971 as a repudiation of arguments in favor of Muslim or Hindu communalism.
Unfortunately, the narrative of Bangladeshi nationhood has not only erased the Partition of 1947
from public memory there, but also created a space within the historiography, which locates the
birth of the Muslim Bengali ‘national self-consciousness’ from the first Partition of Bengal in
1905.24
This dissertation moves away from the national-communal binary and situates itself
within the contingent decisions that ultimately informed the Partition decision. the members of
the Bengal Legislative Assembly, in taking the political decision to divide the province depended
largely on contingent and strategic reasons. Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that the campaign
for and against partition involved small numbers of people and argues against any discursive
22
Sugata Bose, The New Cambridge History of India, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993) 142.
23
Anisuzzaman, Creativity, Reality, Identity (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1993).
24
The erasure of the Partition of 1947 is stark in its omission within the three volumes of Sirajul Islam ed. History
of Bangladesh 1704-1971 (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1997). The only essay within the first volume
which deals partially with the Partition is by Ahmed Kamal, “East Bengal at Independence.”
10
influence that public debates might have had on high politics.25 However, such public debates
provided a crucial space within which people of Bengal, albeit an educated and statistically small
group, articulated multiple visions of the nation. Religion provided a convenient basis and was
one of several factors in the articulation of such demands. I argue that rather than communalism,
we need to place the demands for and against Partition that animated public debates in early
1947 as evidence of a cognitive partitioning of the imagined community.
The debate on why Partition happened will be confined within a teleological trap and its
history continued to be narrated as the story of victims and villains so long as the focus remains
fixated at creating ‘pre-histories’ of partition. This dissertation argues that any analysis of the
Partition of Bengal needs to situate itself within what happened in its aftermath as well as the
early events of 1947. The uncertainty that Partition immediately created, both with regard to
nationality and territoriality, becomes comprehensible only when one moves away from high
politics and the narrative of the inexorable trajectory towards division. Partition thus should be
viewed as a process even though it remains genealogically embedded within a ‘moment of
rupture’.26
More significantly, this dissertation counters the histories that assume the reflexive
nationalisms of India and Pakistan as a foregone conclusion after 1947. By centering on the
decades immediately after the Partition, this dissertation examines the various state engendered
processes and their contestations by the different groups of citizens to argue against the ‘natural’
assumptions of contemporary South Asian geo-politics. In the succeeding years after the ‘paper’
Partition, India and Pakistan set in motion the complex development of actualizing the Partition.
25
Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 28.
26
Pandey, Remembering Partition, 1.
11
Critical within the regimen of post-Partition national order in India were the specific
understandings of violence, victimhood that questioned the legitimacy of each state. Further,
both India and East Pakistan implemented policies which identified and divided their citizens as
majorities and minorities and which linked loyalty to the nation with domicile. Within these
processes of state formation that a post-partition national order in India and East Pakistan took
shape and began to operate within the partitioned provinces.
Normative Histories of Violence and Refugee Rehabilitation
Recently academic scholarship has shifted attention away from the examination of the
politics of Partition to its immediate impact, from causality, to ‘lived experience’27 in order to
render a human and gendered narrative of the Partition and its aftermath.28 Ethnographic studies
focus on the period leading up to the Partition and its immediate repercussion on the experiences
of the displaced and on the narratives of the horrific acts of rape, violence and murder both
between and within communities in the Punjab. Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin have
highlighted the gendered nature of Partition violence that targeted women as symbols of their
community’s honor. Urvashi Butalia and Veena Das in their studies of Partition violence have
shown the myriad ways in which the collective and individual memories of violence are
mediated along caste class and gendered lines. The most important contribution of these writings
27
E. P. Thompson defines experience as “the mental and emotional response, whether of a individual, or of a
group, to many interrelated events or to many repetitions of the same kind of events.” The Poverty of Theory or An
Orrey of Errors (London: Merlin Press, 1995), 7.
28
Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, Mushirul Hasan ed. India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and
Mobilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993); Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the
Partition of India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Veena Das, Mirrors of Violence: Communities,
Riots and Survivors in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh,
eds., Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999); Suvir Kaul, Partitions of Memory, The Afterlife of the Division of India (New Delhi; Permanent Black,
2001).
12
have been to draw attention to the disjuncture between national histories of the Partition and
personal narratives of 1947 and to reveal the multiple ways in which the latter contest and
subvert the former. Similarly, Gyanendra Pandey examines how communities and local
traditions reconstituted themselves through the language of Partition violence that privileged a
particular reconstruction of the past.29 The historiography thus marks a shift in emphasis from
structural analysis of Partition violence to one that analyzes the modalities of memory and
forgetting.
Yet this focus on violence as a template to recapture the Partition experience has
intentionally or unintentionally created what I call ‘normative’ histories of the Partition. Such
histories center on Punjab region and privilege the cataclysmic violence as the primary
experience of the Partition. Although violence was integral to how the Partition affected people’s
lives, it was not, as recent studies have revealed, the only experience. 30 Moreover, Partition has
now become a template to test the relationships among nationalism, communalism and the
contemporary saffronization of Indian politics31 and/or where the intersections of gender,
citizenship and nation are tested.32
29
Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition.
30
In its examination of the Partition experience recent scholarship has broadened its enquiry to include the processes
which went into the making of post 1947 nation states. For example see Lucy Chester, Drawing the Indo Pakistani
Boundary During the 1947 Partition of South Asia (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 2002), Vazira
Zamindar, Divided Families and the Making of Nationhood in India and Pakistan, 1947-65 (Unpublished Ph.D.
Dissertation, Brown University, 2003).
31
Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1990); Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1995); Tapan Basu et al, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right (New
Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993).
32
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993); K. Jayawardena and M. de Alwis eds., Embodied Violence: Communalising Women’s
Sexuality in South Asia (London: Zed Books, 1996).
13
What is striking within these ‘normative’ histories is the perceptible silence of any voices
from the east, from East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh.33 The Bengal Partition with its low
scale, chronic violence fits awkwardly within this project to represent and produce a specific
sub-continental Partition experience. This is not to suggest that the Partition of Bengal has not
received any attention within academic scholarship. Rather, such attention has been exhaustibly
focused on the migration and rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan into India. The
movement of refugees became the center of this Partition historiography through sociological
explorations of their caste and class structures34, and attempts to connect the rise of the Left in
West Bengal in the 1970s to the preceding migration and rehabilitation.35 Studies of refugee
rehabilitation have focused on both spatial development of the Calcutta metropolitan region36 as
well as the development of official policies, or the lack thereof, in the face of continuing
migration in the succeeding decades after 1947.37 The focus on refugee rehabilitation has
expanded to incorporate the many ways in which refugees initiated, contested and negotiated
their rights of relief with authorities who conceptualized rehabilitation as a form of charity.38
33
Shelley Feldman, “ Feminist Interruptions: The Silence of East Bengal in the Story of Partition,”
Interventions 1, no. 2 (1999): 167-182.
34
Kanti B. Pakrashi, The Uprooted: A Sociological Study of the Refugees of West Bengal (Calcutta, 1971).
35
Prafulla Chakrabarty, The Marginal Men, The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal (Calcutta:
Lumiere, 1990).
36
Asok Mitra, “ Parting of Ways: Partition and After in Bengal” Economic and Political Weekly (3 November,
1990): 2441-2446; Pranati Chaudhuri, Refugees in West Bengal: A Study of the Growth and Distribution of Refugee
Settlements with the CMD, Occasional Paper No. 55 (Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, March 1983),
Jhuma Sanyal, Making of a New Space, Refugees in West Bengal (Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan, 2003).
37
Pradip K. Bose, Refugees in West Bengal, Institutional Practices and Contested Identities (Calcutta: Calcutta
Research Group, 2000).
38
Joya Chatterji, “ Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947-50” in Kaul
ed., Partitions of Memory, 74-110; Gyanesh Kudaisya, “The Demographic Upheaval of Partition: Refugees and
Agricultural Resettlement in India,” South Asia, Vol. XVIII, Special Issue (1995): 73-94; Also see an excellent
examination of refugee politics in West Bengal by Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children, East
Bengali Refugees and the Politics of Rehabilitation (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University, 1992).
14
Most importantly, the scholarship on refugee rehabilitation more recently has focused on the
modalities of reconstitution of the refugee self within the new nation states.39 These works
highlight the multiple instances of refugee agency and complicate our understanding of refugees
simply as ‘passive’ or ‘burdens’ of the state.
Similar to the focus on violence in the Punjab Partition, the focus on refugee
rehabilitation as a template to examine what happened in the Bengal Partition gives rise to
problematic essentialisms. Punjab remains the seat of definitive Partition violence even though
the riots of 1946 in Bengal and Bihar created the cognitive space for demands for Partition. Still,
the ‘unending trail’ of refugees has become metonymic to the experience of the Bengal Partition.
More importantly, I suggest such normative histories have uncomfortable resonances
with contemporary official views on the Partitions. That the Indian state, after 1947, had
differential policies for the rehabilitation of Punjabi and Bengali refugees is well documented. 40
Recently, Sarbani Sen has argued that the responses of the Indian government towards the
rehabilitation of East Bengali Hindu refugees were ad hoc due to the inability of that government
to accept the migration as a permanent phenomena.’41 However, the speedy and successful
response in the West, she argues, indicated an implicit acceptance of an exchange of population.
Similar arguments on policies of the Indian state remain limited in their inability to answer the
crucial question of why such policies operated differently. This dissertation examines the reasons
for this differential access to relief and rehabilitation that stemmed from the critical
39
Meghna GuhaThakurta, “Understanding the Bengal Partition Through Reconstructing Family Histories: A Case
Study.” The Journal of Social Studies, 76 (April 1997): 56-65; Manas Ray, “Growing Up Refugee,” History
Workshop Journal, 53, 1 (Spring 2002): 148-179.
40
Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta eds., The Trauma and the Triumph, Gender and Partition in Eastern
India (Kolkata: Stree, 2003); Pradip K. Bose, Refugees in West Bengal.
41
Sarbani Sen, “The Legal Regime for Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1946-1958,” in Ibid., 57.
15
understanding of violence as cataclysmic and physical and the attempt to define refugees as
victims of such violence. Refugee rehabilitation policies of the Indian state was influenced by its
understanding of Partition violence which hierarchized the Punjab experience over and above the
continuous, small-scale chronic violence in Bengal. The Indian state thus considered the
migration of Bengali refugees as unwarranted and consequently they were illegitimate candidates
for rehabilitation.
The scholarship on refugee rehabilitation itself remains problematic as it engages with the
category of the ‘refugee’ as an undifferentiated mass whose experiences of migration and
resettlement are homogenized. Further, these examinations assume that the Bengal Partition
generated a singular and automatic ‘refugee’ identity which was dissociated from the minority
question that engulfed public and political debates on citizenship after 1947. The reconstitution
of identities depended on a variety of factors, some of which were created in collusion with
official policies of the new nation states.42
Gautam Ghosh has asserted that religion played a crucial role in the re-structuring
refugee identities in West Bengal.43 Religion also plays a role in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s analysis
of the specific construction of the memories of Hindu Bengali refugees. These recollections,
Chakrabarty argues, defined the pre-Partition imaginary in Bengal as specifically Hindu where
the Muslim Bengali figured as a secondary character.44 This assumed cognitive partitioning of
the refugee mind played a critical role in negotiations with and alienation towards their new
42
Md. Mahbubar Rahman and Willem Van Schendel, “‘I am Not a Refugee’: Rethinking Partition Migration,’
Modern Asian Studies, 37, 3 (2003): 551-84.
43
Gautam Ghosh, “‘God is a Refugee’: Nationalism, Morality and History in the 1947 Partition of India,”
Social Analysis, 42, 1 (1998): 33-62.
44
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the
Aftermath of the Partition,” in D A Low and Howard Brasted eds. Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India
and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998), 133-152.
16
circumstances. Both Ghosh’s and Chakrabarty’s emphases on religion within the refugee
imaginary focus on a specific class of refugees, who were educated and formed the urban and
rural elite in East Pakistan and becomes problematic when confronted with the different caste
and class structure of the later migration.
The Nation’s Borderlands
The establishment of international borders was the sine qua non of the Partition enterprise.
However the study of border and its impact ironically remains liminal to Partition historiography
that concentrates on processes leading up to the establishment of the Boundary Commission and
within studies of post-Independent India and Pakistan that take the border as immanent and
peripheral to the creation of national identities.
The Bengal border was critical in creating a central space where the relationships
between state and citizenship, between nation and territory, were and are constantly being tested
and negotiated. Recent studies have focused on the uncertainty and confusion that were
fundamental to the establishment of the line of division. The impossible task of determining a
border to accommodate religious demography was delegated to Cyril Radcliffe, a British civil
servant with little knowledge of the Indian subcontinent, who chaired the five member Boundary
Commission. Gyanesh Kudaisya and Tai Yong Tan examine the varied issues that confronted the
Commission and reveal how it was hampered by unclear and contradictory terms of reference. 45
The conflicting claims of the leading political parties and a restricted schedule of six weeks made
their task more difficult. Lucy Chester argues that at the end of imperial rule in India the main
object of the British Government was to enable a smooth and quick transition of political power
45
Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, “The Making of South Asian Borders,” in The Aftermath of Partition in
South Asia, 78-100.
17
to the Indian and Pakistani leaders. Thus the accuracy of colonial maps or the basic realities of
the ultimate border mattered less than the façade that the Boundary Commission had deliberated
and resolved issues along democratic principles.46 The process of creating the border embodied
both the desire of an honorable withdrawal on the part of the British and the first steps among
Indian and Pakistani leaders to map the contours of their respective nations. Joya Chatterji
contends that “party-political, factional and personal ambitions” of the key players influenced the
decisions on the final award.
47
The Boundary Awards, published two days after August 15,
1947, did not satisfy anyone and unsettled the regional societies of Punjab and Bengal. The
demarcation and control of the border proved to be equally problematic as ecological shifts in
rivers created a moving boundary and movement of border dwellers time and again contested the
tested the irrevocability of political boundaries.
Here, at the periphery of the jurisdictional and territorial limits of nation states that
people experienced the actuality of Partition as they came to realize what it meant to be citizens
of different nation states. The ‘document’ regimen of the Permits, Passports, Visas and Refugee
Slips operated at the border. In the French and American context, John Torpey has identified the
evolution of the Passport as a way of controlling people that was central to the discourse of
citizenship.48 These documents claimed a monopoly of controlling and placing border-crossers
into different categories as a way of asserting the boundaries of the sovereign nation. In the case
of the Bengal border, conditions differed slightly. There was no ‘natural’ succession of laws to
control the border once the line had been drawn on the map. In contrast to the western boundary,
46
Chester, Drawing the Indo Pakistani Boundary, 41.
47
Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947-52,”
Modern Asian Studies, 33,1 (1999): 213, 185-242.
48
John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
18
Indian authorities at the center in New Delhi and Calcutta did not view an "open" border as a
threat to India’s security. The Bengal border thus evolved primarily as an economic frontier
immediately after 1947 and remained legally open to people till 1952. The chronic but
continuous migration of East Bengali Hindu refugees who demanded the ‘right’ to rehabilitation
from India led the Indian government to its piecemeal attempts to close the border in the east.
The need to control the ‘unending trail’ ensured that by the mid-1950s the border assumed
territorial sanctity in official discourse and action. This dissertation argues that the processes of
delineating the political and territorial jurisdiction of the nation-state enabled the emergence of
national identity as the principal axis of state control over mobility and citizenship.
Thus it was also at the border that the ‘imagined political community’ had to be
reconstituted to fit the needs of new nation states. Identities at the periphery had to
simultaneously negotiate the emergence of the South Asian region as a ‘unified’ entity49 as well
as the reflexive nationalisms that critically depended on each other for self-definition. Thongchai
Winichakul has identified, in the case of pre-colonial Siam, the origins of nation or as he terms it
the ‘geo-body’ as a construct which was manifested in the territoriality of the nation as well as
the collective understanding of the ‘self’ of the inhabitants of the nation.50 Such a formulation
occurred by the meeting of autochthonous spatial discourse with the modern technological
representation, the map. The historiography on colonial cartography has established that maps
were essential tools of knowledge and control, defining not only the topography but also the
49
Ranabir Samaddar, “ The History that Partition Creates,” in his edited Reflections on Partition in the East
(Calcutta: Vikas, 1997): 10-11.
50
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1994): 16-18.
19
conceptual nation.51 Ironically, maps within post-1947 South Asia play a crucial role by their
absence. Since their inception, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have placed severe restrictions on
the maps, even on some pre-1947 survey maps under claims of national security. Such
cartographic anxieties whose underlying fear is that of national disintegration are clearly a legacy
of the Boundary Commission. In the case of the Bengal border, there was no clear co-relation
between territory and national identity. Such identities were produced within the space created
by the India and Pakistan’s attempts to control their mutual border on the east, and the constant
repudiation of its impenetrability by citizens of both countries.
The porosity of the border has led M. Baud and W. Van Schendel to conceptually shift
the study of the border to the borderland as the unit of analysis. They argue that “there has
always been an enormous gap between the rhetoric of border maintenance and daily life in the
borderlands.”52 An examination of borderlands as a site of interaction and negotiation between
people from both sides serves as an important corrective to the unchanging and linear
representation of the border on maps. Further, the borderland defined itself as a vibrant site of
economic activity even as the new nation states endeavored to criminalize such activities. The
border simultaneously evolved as a barrier to work and a site of new employment for state
appointed officials, militias and armed forces to guard the new national frontiers. 53
51
Focusing on the British cartographic enterprise in early nineteenth century India, Mathew Edney argues that the
colonialists sought to describe an imperial conception of British India. “British India which was otherwise a quite
arbitrary entity was naturalized by the British to be a constant timeless ‘natural’ uniform geographical entity,
political nation and cultural state.” Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India 1765-1843
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997): 334.
52
Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World
History, 8, 2 (1997): 220.
53
See Willem Van Schendel, “Working through Partition: Making a Living in the Bengal Borderlands,”
International Review of Social History, 46 (December 2001): 393-421 and chapter 3 for details.
20
Creating Trans-territorial citizens
No easy coincidence between citizenship, religious identity and the territorial limits of
the nation existed. The demand for a Muslim homeland that had pervaded the countdown to
Partition and its tangible success embedded within the establishment of Pakistan meant that there
was an implicit understanding that Muslims would ‘naturally’ identify with Pakistan while nonMuslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and others, would automatically become part of India.
Consequently, minority Hindus and Muslims who continued their domicile in Pakistan and India
after 1947 became what Van Schendel defines as ‘proxy citizens.’54 Minority Hindus in East
Pakistan, though legally citizens of the Pakistan state, were categorized as putative citizens of the
Indian state which continued to express concern over their rights and security through
agreements and the establishment of institutions such Minority Boards. Similarly, newspaper in
East Pakistan consistently highlighted the plight of the Muslims in India. Such trans-territorial
concerns were integral to the project of nation building even as they belied the limits of distinct
nationhood and contradicted the project of secular identities.
For each newly independent state, the security of the minorities within India and East
Pakistan became the acid test of legitimate nationhood. Minority migration became central to the
game of numerical one-upmanship between India and Pakistan as each accused the other of
creating conditions that stimulated the protracted migration on the eastern border. Both countries
evolved processes which sought to quantify the human movement across their mutual border. At
one level the direction and magnitude of the migration indicated the successes and failures of
India and East Pakistan to establish their national order. In this game, India claimed a moral edge
as the Census of 1951 recorded more Hindus migrated from East Pakistan than did of Muslim
54
Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves,” Journal of Asian
Studies, 61, 1 (February 2002): 127, 115-147.
21
migrants who departed for East Pakistan. As India blamed East Pakistan of not being able to
guarantee minority rights, the latter countered by accusing India of creating ‘pull factors’ for the
East Pakistan Hindus which went counter to its proclaimed secular identity. Implicit within such
accusations was the question of legitimacy predicated on each state’s ability to guarantee equal
citizenship rights to their respective minorities.
For the East Pakistani authorities, migration of its minorities became a moot issue
reflecting an intricate weave of loyalty and territory that defined citizenship not by birth but by
domicile. Thus any movement across the border was interpreted as inherently disloyal,
destabilizing the new state and siphoning its minimal resources. The very real predicament of
establishing the infrastructure for the new East Pakistani state was a potent factor within this
equation. In 1948, the East Pakistan state legislated the Evacuee Property Act to assure its
minorities that authorities would guard their property and hand it back to them if they returned
from India. But by the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the East Pakistan government changed this
legislation, pleading wartime exigencies into the Enemy Property Act. As the name suggests, this
law usurped the very property that it had in the earlier decade claimed to protect. The historical
trajectory of this metamorphosis highlights the critical connections between state processes and
minority dislocation in post-Partition Bengal.
The chronic and prolonged nature of the migration from the east illustrates that even as
minorities in West Bengal and East Pakistan developed into trans-territorial citizens in the eyes
of each state, such identities remained negotiable at the individual level. Hindu and Muslim
minorities identified with the state of their co-religionists only under extreme circumstances
when they perceived that their territorial nation could not guarantee their citizenship rights in the
face of threats from extra-state actors. Thus for East Pakistani Hindus migration was not always
22
predicated on permanent uprooting but on the belief that they would be able to retain their
kinship and social ties with their ancestral homes. Thus they were also following the traditional
pattern of urban rural migration in the region during colonial times. In the past there had been the
possibility of return. However, the requirements of post-partition states to define their boundaries
and identify their loyal citizens made it almost impossible for the continuance of such ties.
Similarly, within the communally charged environment of India’s relations with the princely
states of Kashmir and Hyderabad in 1947-48, the issue of loyalty became controversial for the
minority Muslims of West Bengal. As members of a community, which had been closely
connected with demand for Pakistan, they easily became the usual suspects of anti- state
activities.
The Bengal Partition generated a unique form of trans-territoriality where national
citizenship was defined by domicile, but religious community defined proxy citizenship. This
duality reinforced their marginality as loyal citizens of their territorial nation. Rather than having
a ‘natural attraction’ to join their majority brethren on the other side, minorities became
casualties of nation building.55
Chapter Organization
In my second chapter, I examine popular and political rhetoric on the eve of
Partition to identify the multiple ideas of nationhood based on regional and socio-cultural ties
that continued to exist and negotiate for recognition within increasingly communalized spaces. In
early 1947 when the political and constitutional impasse between Indian leaders and British
officials made partitioning of India and of Bengal and Punjab a fait accompli, Bengalis advanced
55
See Chapter 4 for an analysis of the official rhetoric on the continuing migration.
23
their rationales for and against the Partition. Their demands reflect attempts to negotiate territory
within the imagined political community and not religious chauvinism.
The third chapter explores the cartographic problems that faced the Indian and Pakistani
officials in their attempts to create and define an international border in the east. The superficial
and sometimes arbitrary manner in which policy makers and political bodies carried out the
process stands out in contrast to the complexity and the fallibility of the process of nation
building. Practical realities of border life constantly questioned the sanctity of such territorial
demarcations. Although the border attempted to separate neighbors and create new citizens, the
continuation of sporadic and small-scale communal violence, both physical and psychological,
victimized minorities who continued to live in their natal homes.
The fourth chapter delineates the creation of a post-Partition national order in which
minorities of each state played a crucial role. As guarantors of legitimacy of nationhood, Hindus
in East Pakistan and Muslims in India also became ‘proxy’ citizens. However, citizenship within
their territorial nation remained contested. Minorities, who were also alternately evacuees and
refugees, became dislocated even as India and East Pakistan set into motion policies to fix their
physical location.
Chapter five analyzes the specific nature of violence as represented and mediated through
media reports and minority narratives that prompted many Hindu minorities in East Pakistan to
cross the border. Along with incidents of chronic small-scale violence, which targeted them in
particular, such images of violence served as templates upon which minorities constructed
narratives of persecution and victimhood to justify their displacement and consequent rights to
rehabilitation as refugees. Minority Hindus and Muslims in divided Bengal were thus enmeshed
24
in a Partition engendered vicious cycle within which they had to constantly juggle multiple
identities.
The sixth chapter focuses on the process of continued and chronic migration that created
a ‘refugee problem’ for India. Embedded within the Indian state’s official discourse of refugee
relief and rehabilitation was a specific construction of the Bengali refugees as ineffectual
migrants. Such assessments were based on the specific paradigm of what constituted Partition
violence and victimhood in which Punjab violence was the prototype. Denying violence served
the critical purpose of limiting the state’s obligation towards refugees from the east and masks its
failure to tackle the rehabilitation process.
25
Chapter 2
Fractured Nations: The Demand For Partition
On 23 April 1947, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, a widely read English language nationalist
newspaper published from Calcutta, featured the results of a Gallup poll with regard to the
Partition of Bengal. In reply to the Patrika’s question “Do you want a separate homeland for
Bengal Hindus?” an overwhelming 98.3% Bengalis voted in favor, and 0.6% voted against the
division of the province.1 The newspaper reported that of the 99.6% Hindus and 0.4% Muslims
who had replied to the poll, most had voted in favor of the Partition. The Patrika claimed the
results of the opinion poll were evidence of the people’s verdict favoring the partitioning of the
province.
This chapter focuses on the non-political public discourse on the possibilities of
independence and Partition in the months leading up to August 15, 1947. In examining the
different ways in which the educated middle classes voiced their ideas about the future of their
province and their country, it becomes clear that the public sphere in Bengal continue to
accommodate and provide space for alternatives to Partition that need not be read only in terms
of communal articulations. Although the growing popularity of the Partition movement to divide
Bengal may have been engendered due to political mobilization of communal parties such as the
Hindu Mahasabha and facilitated by the provincial League Ministry,2 evidence of ideas that
1
Amrita Bazar Patrika (henceforth, ABP), 23 April 1947, 1, 5. The newspaper published its intentions of conducting
a Gallup Poll to ascertain “ as far as possible, public opinion on the question of proposed partition of Bengal for the
creation of a separate homeland for Bengal Hindus” on March 23 1947. The polls closed on 15 April 1947, and the
results were published on 23 April. To maintain the credibility of the poll, the paper also published comments in
support from Surendra Mohan Ghosh, the president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee, and the reputed
Calcutta based charted accountant company of Messrs. Gupta and Mitra.
2
Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that the Bengal ministry was “crucial in segregating the two principal communities into
almost watertight compartments.” Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947, Contour of
Freedom (London: Routledge, 2004), 115.
26
provided different solutions exists. These points of view, published in leading newspapers and
expressed in personal letters addressed to political leaders, reflect multiple concerns about the
future of the Indian nation, identity and political citizenship. Although couched within demands
for or against Partition, they provide clear proof that the Partition story cannot be so easily read
as a projection of Hindu and Muslim communalism.
The results of the opinion poll of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, at one level, indicated the
complete reversal of some sections of the Bengali Hindu public opinion. Indeed, some historians
such as Joya Chatterji have argued that the public demands for Partition and a separate
“homeland for Bengali Hindus” on eve of Partition reflected the end result of a decisive shift
‘from nationalism to communalism’ that had marked Bengal politics and identity from the
1930s.3 In fact Chatterji attributes a central role to Bengali Hindus, mainly bhadralok4, in
spearheading the campaign that led to the fateful division of the province in 1947.5 This
argument has several problems, the least of which is that of a teleological trap which seeks to
explain an event by using that very event as a starting point. In this argument, the contingent
3
Chatterji traces the proliferation of communalism in Bengal thus, “Nationalism was directed against imperialism
and gave top priority to anti-British action. The communalism of the bhadralok was directed against their fellow
Bengalis. History for the one was the struggle against British liberation from the despotism of Muslims. Its key
political objective was to prevent this ‘despotism’ from returning when the British left India, and to deny that
Muslims could be Bengalis, and by extension Indians.” Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and
Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268.
4
Recent historiography on the bhadralok has identified the bhadralok as a heterogeneous social group. Tithi
Bhattacharya argues that “in their own perception the bhadralok situated themselves as a "middle class"
(madhyasreni, madhyabftta), below the aristocracy (dhanilok or abhijat) and above the "lesser folk" engaged in
manual labour and generally separate from the lower castes or Muslims. What distinguished them from both was
education of a particular kind, so much so that in commonsensical terms, the pronouncements about education
ultimately became the sole criterion for defining the bhadralok.” For details see Tithi Bhattacharya, “In the Name of
Culture,” South Asia Research, 21, 2 (2001): 163.
5
Chatterji, in an attempt to provide agency to the colonized argues, “ Bengalis were not passive bystanders in the
partition of their province; nor were they victims of circumstances entirely out of their control, forced reluctantly to
accept the division of their ‘motherland’. On the contrary, a large number of Hindus of Bengal, backed up by the
provincial branches of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, campaigned intensively in 1947 for the partition of
Bengal inside an Indian Union.” Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 227.
27
decision to Partition India, which really took shape in the last few months before Independence
becomes an event, engendered through deliberate communal processes that can then be traced
back to periods before British rule in India.6
British understanding of Indian society as
composed of distinct and antagonistic religious communities continued to manifest in the reasons
they put forward in support of partitioning India. Lord Mountbatten, Governor-General of India
from March 1947, along with other British officials stationed in India, strongly believed and
projected the idea that the partition of the country into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan was the
only way that the contemporary communal tensions could be resolved. The attendant loss of life
that might accompany such an event was accepted as an inevitable compensation for the greater
cause of granting India and Pakistan new national identities.
Chatterji’s larger argument provides a convenient historical trajectory to this colonial
representation and seeks to explain the religious demographic calculations behind the Partition as
a process that reflected inherent divisions within Indian socio-political milieu. Partition thus was
inevitable not only because Indian leaders such as Nehru, Patel and Jinnah forced the British
hand, but also because of the intrinsic and age-old communal fault-lines. Not only do such lines
of argument tend to deflect the role of British politics in India, but also provide no space for the
examination of alternatives to the nationalism-communalism binary.
That provincial politics in Bengal saw an increasing presence of Hindu communalism and
a growing paranoia amongst sections of the Bengali Hindu bhadralok towards ‘Muslim tyranny’
cannot be denied. However, these factors do not necessarily indicate that public discourse and
political rhetoric in the 1930s and 1940s assumed a ‘Hindu identity’ at the expense of anti-
6
C.A. Bayly, “ The Pre-history of ‘Communalism?’ Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860”, in CA Bayly, Origins
of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2005), 210-237.
28
colonial nationalist agitation. Rather, nationalist leaders had strategically deployed both Hindu
and Muslim religious symbols in their efforts to incorporate the masses since at least 1905.7
The campaign for and against partition in the early months of 1947 has to be framed
within the two key events that acutely influenced political demands. First, the arrival of the
three- member delegation of British Cabinet Ministers, comprising Lord Pethwick-Lawrence, Sir
Stafford Cripps and Mr. A. V. Alexander, in March 1946 to conduct negotiations with the Indian
political parties on the issue of transfer of power raised hopes of an independent India. The
initial talks between the Cabinet Mission and Indian leaders such as Nehru, Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad representing All India National Congress (henceforth AICC) interests and Jinnah
representing League interests could not resolve the central issue of whether India would remain
united or be partitioned to accommodate the demand for a constitutionally independent
Pakistan.8
The announcement of the Cabinet Mission Plan in December 1946 that the British
intended to transfer power to either a united or a divided India galvanized public politics in
Bengal. With independence at last in sight, Bengalis believed that processes that had led to this
7
In this context, Sugata Bose has argued, “ Anti-colonial nationalism of Hindus and Muslims alike had always been
influenced by their religiously informed cultural identities embroidered with an array of religious symbols and
empowered by religion as faith.” Sugata Bose, “Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on Historiography of
Nationalism in Bengal” in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (New
Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 288.
8
Abul Kalam Azad assisted by Nehru and Patel was the Congress representative and Jinnah represented the Muslim
League. The Congress was against Partition at this juncture and advocated cultural, economic and regional
autonomy of various regions. The Simla conference failed to resolve the League Congress differences and the
Cabinet mission in their May 16 1946 statement offered a three-tier constitutional solution to the problem. On the
top would be the Union of India constituted by all regions under British India and Indian states, responsible for
foreign affairs, defense and communications. The bottom tier would comprise provinces and states vested with all
residuary powers. The intermediate tier would include ‘groups’ formed by provinces to deal with certain common
subjects. The question about what and how the ‘grouping’ of the states would be constituted remained unresolved
and the Jinnah gave the call for ‘Direct Action’ to garner support for a constitutionally independent Pakistan. For
details on the Cabinet Mission Plan and the responses of the leaders of the Congress and Muslim League Working
Committee, see Nicholas Mansergh ed., The Transfer of Power 1942-7 Vol. VII (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary
Office), 1977.
29
decision now needed the final push for success in the form of their decision for and against
Partition. Public and political debates were informed mainly by assumptions that the juggernaut
of division was already on the roll, that under the circumstances the only recourse was in
determining and bargaining for specific sectional interests and trying to ensure a secure political
future within India or Pakistan.9 The decision of the Congress high command to accept the
possibility of partitioning Punjab in March 1947 forcefully triggered Hindu public opinion within
Bengal to demand a partition so that the Hindu minority would have a place outside the proposed
Pakistan whose territorial, legal and constitutional coordinates remained unclear. It is within this
immediate political frame that the campaign for and against the Partition of Bengal needs to be
placed.
Second, as the negotiations between Indian leaders and the Cabinet Mission consistently
ended in constitutional impasse, Jinnah decided to accelerate public support for a constitutionally
independent Pakistan and called for ‘Direct Action’ from all Muslim League supporters. It was
not clear what and how this ‘Direct action’ was to manifest itself in different parts of India. On
August 16, 1946, a massive communal riot broke out in Calcutta. The Bengal provincial
administration remained deliberately passive while Hindu and Muslim extremist groups wreaked
havoc on each other and on innocent citizens. The carnage lasted for three days and resulted in
the death of approximately five thousand people.10 Most members of the opposition in the
9
Partha Chatterjee points out that the campaign for and against partition involved small numbers of people, and the
political decision to partition the province taken by the members of the Bengal legislative assembly depended
largely on contingent and strategic reasons. He thus argues against any discursive influence that public debates
might have had on high politics. Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal” in The Present History of West
Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28.
10
While most scholars agree that at the individual level, the Bengal premier H S Suhrawardy was culpable of making
irresponsible communal statements before the riots and was grossly negligent in his efforts to quell the rioters,
historians differ in their emphasis on the causes of the riot. Haroun Or Rashid argues that the failure of a Congress
League coalition after the 1946 elections prepared the ground for increasing communal hostility. Harun Or Rashid,
The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906- 1947 (Dhaka: Dhaka
30
Bengal Legislative Assembly couched their grievances against the Muslim League government
within accusations of mismanagement of the riot situation and a deliberate inability to protect
minority Hindus. Some of their rhetoric against the Bengal government did take on communal
tones, especially given the fact that the League ministry was almost entirely composed of
Muslims, and the opposition was Hindu. The Calcutta killings triggered off riots in Noakhali in
eastern Bengal and Bihar in the succeeding months. The experience of the riots was crucial in
polarizing communities in terms of communalizing space and identities. As neighborhoods and
localities in Calcutta and the Bengal countryside grew communally inclusive and further apart
from each other, identifying themselves as the Hindu para (neighborhood) or the Mussalman
para (Muslim neighborhood), the prospect of partitioning the province began to appear to many
as the only solution.
In the chaotic conditions of 1946-47, the political future of Bengalis appeared uncertain
and out of their hands. Although for some middle class Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims,
religious identity circumscribed group and national identity, for many others the underpinnings
of the imagined community continued to be expressed within territorial and linguistic concerns.
It should be emphasized that public opinion during 1946-47 was divided on the question of
partitioning the province. Apart from overt communal justifications, the demands to Partition
were justified on the basis of continued existence within the Indian union. These expressions,
articulated within the demands for and against Partition, addressed the central issue of composite
nationalism, the existence of multiple identities within the larger national community.
University Press, 1987), 261. Joya Chatterji points out that since the 1930s and 1940s, Bengali Hindu youths had
been recipients of pseudo military training from organizations like the Bharat Sevasaram Sangha, a volunteer corp.,
associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, and the proliferation of neighborhood physical training centers in Calcutta
ensured that the Hindus were prepared when the riots broke out. Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 232-36. Suranjan
Das focuses on the conjunction between elite and popular communalism which ultimately manifested itself through
the Calcutta riots of 1946. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Delhi, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991), 160-206.
31
Moreover, some sections of the Bengali public who were opposed to the idea of Partition
on different grounds and advocated the establishment of a united Bengal that would have a
separate constitutional existence, outside of the proposed India and Pakistan.11 But, when Sarat
Bose and H. S. Suhrawardy formally launched the United Bengal Plan in April 1947, it found
few takers. The reasons for the early demise of this plan which sought to incorporate and
construct a Bengali nation based on socialist ideals lies in the fact that this proposal for a
sovereign Bengal did not provide realistic measures to end the current communalized political
impasse. Many Bengali Hindus feared that United Bengal with its Muslim majority population
could and would at a later date be persuaded to join Pakistan.
After the riots of 1946, elements of the Bengali Hindu middle class became concerned
about their political future in a Muslim majority province. The establishment of the Bengal
Partition League in December 1946 marked the increased effort on the part of the Bengal
provincial Hindu Mahasabha to align public support for the division. In the next few months, the
Congress high command and the Bengal provincial Congress leaders openly began to support
Partition for reasons of their own. However, in the public realm, demands and appeals for
Partition, even as they borrowed the contemporary tools of religious demographic identification,
did not express themselves as demands for a nation based on religion or even a Hindu nation. A
majority of the Bengali Hindus and some non-League Muslims demanded Partition to claim as
much territory as possible for India once it became clear that Pakistan was a distinct possibility.
The growing insecurity and increased compartmentalization of physical territories and
communal identities generated and provided the background in which people increasingly
identified with their locality as a microcosm of the nation or desh, and traditions as defining their
11
For details on the United Bengal Plan, see Bidyut Chakrabarty, “The 1947 United Bengal Movement: A Thesis
without Synthesis,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review. XXX, no. 4 (October 1993): 467.
32
cultural and historical roots. In the months leading up to the Partition, incorporation of these
localities within the desh or the nation involved assertions based social, cultural and economic
justifications. It is my argument that rather than religious validation, the demands for and against
Partition incorporated within themselves contestations and re-negotiations of spatial identities in
their attempt to answer the question of ‘belonging’ and the base for membership within the
imagined national community.
Multiple Meanings of the Nation
In Bengal, by the middle of 1940s, the imagined ‘national’ community had become fractured
because of long and short-term changes in Bengal’s political and social environment. In the early
twentieth century the nationalist movement broke out of its confines within Bengal and Bengali
leaders and spread to other parts of India. During the 1920s and 1930s mass mobilization became
a key instrument of nationalist struggle against colonial rule and leadership shifted from Bengali
bhadralok Congressmen to leaders from other parts of India such as Mahatma Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru. British administrative policies, especially implementation of separate
electorates in 1909 and the Communal Award of 1932 that had reserved seats for the minority
Muslim population, changed the equations within Bengal politics. Under the earlier
arrangements of Dyarchy in 1919, the Hindus had had a numerical advantage of 46 seats in the
Council to the 39 seats reserved for the Muslims. In 1932, by the new regulations of the
Communal Award, 119 provincial assembly seats in Bengal were reserved for Muslims and 80
seats for Hindus, rendering the latter a political minority. The Poona Pact also concluded in 1932
33
assured 30 seats to the Depressed Classes within the 80 reserved for General Hindu
constituencies. 12
Structural conditions within Bengal society also made it easy for parties to unite Muslims
under the banner of Islam against their Hindu landlords and oppressors. Marxist scholars have
for long argued that the inability of the provincial Congress leaders to resolve the tension in
agrarian class relations ensured that such tension express itself in terms of religious communal
conflict.13 To make matters worse, the All India Congress failed to capitalize on their success in
the provincial elections of 1937 as they refused to join a coalition with the Krishak Praja Party
(KPP) which had also won substantial number of seats. This oversight led to the formation of a
coalition government led by KPP and the Muslim League under Fazlul Haq. Muslim selfrepresentation in Bengal came to the fore in this period as the succeeding decade saw a series of
coalition governments with the Muslim League in a dominant position. The new politics of
coalition opened up possibilities of inter-communal government and the potential for united
political negotiations in the future.14
Although ideological impasses still existed, political leaders from both communities in
Bengal believed that the solution of the current communal problems lay within the province.
12
Bidyut Chakrabarty, Contours of Freedom, 60, 66.
13
Given that most of the Congress leaders hailed from the landed Hindu elite in Bengal and the peasantry mainly
comprised of Muslims, Marxian scholars tend to explain the Partition as a breakdown of Hindu Muslim unity due to
the inability of the provincial leaders to resolve this class tension. Further, this division, they argue, enabled the
British to manipulate the various Indian political organizations on the issue of Partition in Bengal. See Badruddin
Umar, Preface to Banga Bhanga o Sampradiyik Rajniti (Bengal Partition and Communal Politics) (Calcutta:
Chirayat Prakasan, 1987), 3.
14
In 1941, Bengal government comprised a coalition of sections of the Congress, KPP and the Hindu Mahasabha.
With the war from 1939, the Congress High Command resigned from office in protest and the provincial Congress
in Bengal did the same. Throughout the war, the Bengal Provincial League continued to remain in office although
they had been ordered to resign by the All India Muslim League. Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, the key leaders of the
Hindu Mahasabha by this time, did join the bandwagon for a short while in 1943 but this coalition soon broke down
in the face of irreconcilable differences.
34
Among the Bengali Muslim intelligentsia, writers such as Rezaul Karim and Wajid Ali
questioned and disagreed with the All India Muslim League’s foregrounding of religious
commonality among all Muslims in the subcontinent. Karim noted that “Muslims belong to the
same nation as do Hindus, Christians, Parsees, or Buddhists in India,” and that “there is no nation
in India called Hindu, nor one called Muslim, but we have religions here of these names.”15
Others within the political leadership of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League like Abul Hashim
(Burdwan), Fazlur Rahman (Dacca) and Mohammad Ali (Bogra) challenged Jinnah’s two-nation
theory. They argued that the regional and cultural characteristics of the Bengali Muslims
constituted a nationality distinct and separate from the Muslims of the north and northwest
India.16
In Bengalees of Tomorrow, S. Wajid Ali, a prominent Bengali litterateur, questioned
whether Islam could provide the basis of nationality. He advocated that Bengali Muslims could
simultaneously be both Bengalis and Muslims. There was no “inherent hostility between Islam
and patriotism and that territorial patriotism” was compliant with the ideals of Islam.17 Wajid Ali
claimed that in different parts of the subcontinent, Indian Muslims identified themselves first in
terms of territorial loyalty and second in terms of their religion but in Bengal the current
tendency had been to privilege religion as the primary mode of identification. The problem was
that upper class ashraf Muslims had no interest in the Bengali language and the lower class or
15
Rezaul Karim, “Bharatiya Musalmangan kon jati?” (“What nation are the Indian Muslims”) in his Pakistaner
Bichar (Trial of Pakistan) (Calcutta, 1942,) cited in Asim Roy, “Being and Becoming a Muslim,” in Sekhar
Bandyopadhyay, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, 221.
16
The schisms and differential trajectories between the All India Muslim League and the Bengal Provincial Muslim
League are clearly outlined in Abul Hashim, In Retrospection (Dhaka: Subarna Publishers, 1974). Also see Shila
Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal. Semanti Ghosh points out that a section of the provincial Muslim League
promulgated ideas that were based more on social and democratic ideas than on religion. Semanti Ghosh,
Nationalism and the Problem of 'Difference', Bengal, 1905—1947 (Unpublished Dissertation: Tufts University,
2000), 165.
17
S. Wajid Ali, Bengalees of Tomorrow (Calcutta: K.C. Dasgupta, 1945), 59.
35
atrap Muslims who spoke Bengali did not have the means to either read or write in the language.
According to Wajid Ali, “religion by itself is not sufficient to constitute a nation, for in that case
France Italy and Spain would have formed a single undivided nation.” Further, he declared that
‘race’ and ‘language’ taken in isolation could not provide a basis of common nationality.18
Rather “a common historical background and a longing to remain unified and to work together
for a common ideal of life are essential conditions of Nationality.”19
However, in noting the conditions for the creation of a nation, Wajid Ali disagreed that
the entire subcontinent with its multiple regional cultures could be a nation. Rather, he was an
ardent advocate of Bengali nationalism and in viewing Bengal as a nation that should be allowed
rights of self-government and join the Indian Union only for the purposes of joint defense.
Painting a glorious picture of mutual accommodation between Hindus and Muslims of Bengal in
the past, he noted, “there never has been any important riots between Bengalee Hindus and
Bengalee speaking Muslims. In the villages of Bengal Hindus and Muslims live peacefully side
by side and on the whole on very friendly terms. They eat the same food, they speak the same
language and they read the same literature.”20 Current communal problems that the British had
artificially generated did not reflect the ‘natural’ will of the Bengalees “whatever their religion,
[who] want to live and work together for the general welfare of the people of Bengal.”21
Wajid Ali, writing in the mid 1940s, was not alone in his advocacy of national selfidentity on the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity and common Bengali language and culture. In the
18
Ibid., 131.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 138.
21
Ibid., 139.
36
earlier decades, Bengali leaders such as Bipin Chandra Pal22, Rabindranath Tagore23 and Sarat
Chandra Bose24 had been vocal about their support for Bengal as a nation. Although their
arguments were often couched within regional idioms, little slippage existed between the
regional dimensions and valorization of the region and its identity as essential components of the
broader Indian nation. In his protest speech against the Communal Award of 1932, Tagore noted
that “The Partition (1905) was a mere geographical and physical partition, introducing a division
of territory. The Communal Award introduces a moral and spiritual division, and creates a
complete social cleavage between communities, making it impossible for them to ever come
together on the basis of common citizenship.”25 For Tagore, territorial coordinates remained
subsidiary to the national imagination and the Communal Award had severed this imagination
more permanently than any territorial division could possibly have done. Bipin Pal, an advocate
of composite patriotism, argued that
Nationalism in India, even if it works upon its legitimate composite character and
constitution, and makes the fullest possible accommodation of Islamic culture, as an
organic element of Indian, as distinguished from Hindu nationalism-would never mean
for the followers of Islam what nationalism means in Persia and Turkey for their Persian
or Turkish co-religionists.26
22
Pal was a well-known nationalist leader who was active in the agitation against the Partition of Bengal in 1905.
He also founded the newspaper Bande Mataram and continued to be an active Congress member until his death in
1932.
23
A Noble Laureate, Tagore was one of the most prominent intellectuals in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth
century. His ideas on nationalism emphasized the spiritual domain.
24
A prominent Congressman, Sarat Bose spearheaded the movement for United Bengal in the early months of 1947.
25
Bengal Anti-Communal Award, A Report (Calcutta: The Secretaries Bengal Anti-Communal Award Committee,
1939), 2. Rabindranath Tagore was the president of this committee, which included prominent Bengali intellectuals
such as B.C. Mahtab, the Raja of Burdwan, Radha Kumud Mookerji, Tushar Kanti Ghosh, Dr. Nalinakshya Sanyal
and Sir P.C. Ray.
26
Bipin Chandra Pal, Nationality and Empire, A Running Study of Some Current Indian Problems (Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink & Co., 1916,) 387.
37
Although Pal was writing in 1916, a decade after the first Partition of Bengal and addressed
mainly the growing trend of pan-Islamism as a parallel force to Indian nationalist ideals, later
nationalist leaders such as C. R Das and Sarat Bose subscribed to his advocacy of a plural nation
composed of different regions, religions and cultures.27
British rule in India continued to provide the main basis of unity for this composite
national ideal and it would be wrong to argue that Indian nationalism so defined had been
replaced by communal wrangling for power and territory. Even as late as January 1947, Abul
Hashim, a noted advocate of the United Bengal Plan, hoped that “When British interests in India
withdraw, the mutual hatred between Hindus and Muslims will vanish into thin air. The Cabinet
Mission plan has sown the seeds of dissension between us and the subsequent utterances and
activities of the agents of British imperialism are directly responsible for what happened in this
country.”28 There were several reasons why in the last two decades of imperial rule possibilities
of a Bengali nation did not turn to reality. Tagore died in 1941 and Sarat Bose was imprisoned
the next year until the end of the Second World War. Because of his disagreements with the
political elite within the All India Muslim League, Abul Hashim remained marginalized in
Bengal politics which increasingly showed signs of divisive power politics along communal
lines.
In the months leading up to the Partition, several issues were crucial. The demands for
and against Partition did not reduce the space for the articulation of identity based on territory
and region. In post-Partition Bengal, the ready availability of a communal rhetoric after the
27
On January 29, 1944, while in prison, Sarat Bose wrote, “ I conceive my country as a Union of Socialist
Republics-an immense melting pot in which the characters of all the races and nationalities comprised in it will be
mixed and out of which a new ‘worldism’ will arise which will recognize no frontiers, no races and no classes.”
Quoted in his Press Statement on 20th May 1947 at Calcutta. Sarat Bose, Selected Speeches and Writings, 1947-1950
(Calcutta: Thackers Press, 1954), 3.
28
ABP, 10 January 1947, 4.
38
Partition reinforced by state policies at times displaced territory and local identity as the primary
signifiers of citizenship in the region. However, in 1947, the significant themes within public
discourse were territorial sovereignty and political representation – who belonged where and
why, and which political party would most likely be able to represent their political rights. In this
calculation, the Muslim League came up short since it had never identified itself as the party to
represent rights of non-Muslims. However British administrative policies ensured that religious
demography remain the only form of political differentiation in the 1930s and 1940s. The
peculiar political landscape of Bengal meant that the politics of representation also incorporated
issues of peasant rights and freedom from Hindu landlord domination and the cultural flowering
of Muslims who could and did re-invent the struggle of their identity within and outside the
national movement. For Hindus, such quotas for political representation meant that their political
power was curtailed. Although some nationalist leaders interpreted these measures as another
instance of the British strike against the nationalist movement, others, mainly sections of the
Hindu bhadralok, saw them as curtailments of their cultural leadership of Bengali society at
large.
The association between political and cultural leadership was not new. However, given
the politics of the time and the unique structural and demographic calculus of Bengali society,
the often narrow collapsing of national identity with religious identity became inevitable.
However, all through the 1930s and 40s, some Bengali leaders, both Muslim and Hindu,
continued to work together within a political structure based on religious ‘difference’. The issue
of joint electorates remained central to the public discourse during this period and even as late as
April 1947, sections of the Bengal Congress led by Sarat Bose hoped that some province-based
solution guaranteeing joint representation would be worked out at the political level.
39
For the All India Congress, the Muslim League’s claim to represent Muslims of the
subcontinent and their demand for a separate nation dramatically challenged the Congress’ claim
to be the sole representative of all communities. Further, the Pakistan demand was interpreted as
divisive and anti-national, at least against the Congress conception of a plural and composite
nation. Within Bengal, the provincial Congress remained divided on the issue of political and
regional representation. B. C. Roy and some others remained loyal to the All India Congress’s
commitment to a united India and no Pakistan, but Sarat Bose led a splinter group that began to
work for a province base solution.
Problems of political representation continued but two events immediately influenced and
hardened positions. The announcement of the Cabinet Mission Plan in March 1946 decisively
indicated British plans for transferring power to Indians. Although the Cabinet Mission was
projected within political circles as the last ditch effort to avoid Partition and Pakistan, its failure
to reach any consensus between the Congress and the League representatives assured the
possibility of Pakistan. Congress leaders in Bengal began to think seriously about partitioning the
province to assure their continued political prominence within free India. However, their support
was always predicated on the belief that their particular territorial constituency would become
part of India.29 The 1946 riots sealed their decision in favor of Partition.
By late 1946, many Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, were convinced that Pakistan
whatever its constitutional structure and spatial coordinates was inevitable. However, what needs
to be emphasized is the ideological confusion that accompanied such a conviction. For some
sections of urbanized Bengali Hindus, Pakistan had come to mean a permanent loss of political
29
For details on vote on the Partition Boundary, see Chapter 3.
40
sovereignty and their subjection to “Muslim tyranny.”30 For most, “Pakistan” continued remain
fuzzy, an idea which made no distinctive efforts to move away from its initial conceptualization
of a nation based on a religious majority.31 Concerns about the status of non-Muslims within a
purported “homeland for the Muslims” became a corollary for any discussion on the political
future of India.
For those invested with a unitary idea of the Indian nation, the Pakistan demand
continued to signify a “division” whose separation directly attacked the very definition of the
“nation”. One such advocate articulated these concerns about Pakistan in the leading Englishlanguage newspaper Hindustan Standard. Using the pseudonym ‘One nation-wallah’ the writer
directed his questions to Jinnah and asked “Will Pakistan have Islam as a state religion? Or will
it be a secular state? If the state will have Islam as its official religion how do you guarantee
freedom of religion to non-Muslims? Will non-Muslims have the right to claim selfdetermination in Pakistan territories as you claim for Muslims in India?” Moving away from the
issue of religious rights, the writer also asked “What are the territories of Pakistan and the
percentages of Muslims and non-Muslims in each of the territories claimed? In order to achieve
homogeneity would you agree to withdraw all Muslims from Hindustan and force all nonMuslims to leave Pakistan?”32 This future citizen raised relevant but difficult questions.
While discussions on the recent riots framed public discourse during the latter half of
1946, partitioning of the province along communal lines was yet to gain any currency. The riots
30
Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 232.
31
Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that Muslim politics in Bengal through out the 1930s and 1940s was singularly
non-hegemonic in relation to the Hindu minority in Bengal. This was due to the continuation of League politics in
Bengal as politics of the minority even while they were a majority within the province. Partha Chatterjee, “The
Second Partition of Bengal,” 36.
32
Hindustan Standard (henceforth, HS), 10 January 1946, 6.
41
had clearly identified in the minds of some Calcutta citizens, the ineffectual and “communal”
nature of the Muslim League administration in Bengal. The Hindustan Standard in its editorial
entitled “Need of the Hour,” accused the Muslim League of having descended to the “frank
hooliganism,” and had “consisted in the preaching of communal hatred against those who want
to see India free and maintain her unity.”33 Among the several letters to the Hindustan Standard
and Amrita Bazar Patrika, one demanded that,
We must rise up in one voice against all organized individual and mass murders,
hooliganism, loot, arson and crime and demand the immediate removal of a medieval
communal rule, which by its own actions, has forfeited every moral and political
sanction…. We emphatically deny the monopoly of any single community to rule over
Bengal…we shall not be isolated from the rest of India and shall tolerate no Pakistan in
any form or disguise. Bengal has been and shall be an integral part of India and shall
continue to be the homeland of all communities who inhabit the province.34
The letter writers were mainly educated Hindus but the newspapers also had quite a few
Muslim contributors. 35 These letters became a regular feature of public communication in the
months after the August riots. Their contents ranged from arguments to dissociate politics and
religion, the breach of duty on the part of the League government, the need for self-rehabilitation
after the riots, to identifying League brand of “communalism as the offspring of imperialism.”36
For the writers, Pakistan remains nebulous and at best a signifier of Muslim domination over
Hindus, but Partition as a possibility had yet to gain wide acceptance.
33
HS, 9 September 1946, 4.
34
HS, 26 September 1946, 4.
35
HS, 11 September 1946, 4. A large number of these letters were also written under pseudonyms which make it
difficult to quantify the religious demographics of the writers.
36
HS 29 September 1946, 4. Such letters were published almost daily throughout September 1946 until January
1947.
42
Even while targeting the Muslim League ministry, most of these letter writers
emphasized that the communal problem was an assault from the “outside”. The Bengali Muslims
who were of “honest hardworking” stock were not the culprits but rather people who were not
Bengali and had no association with its culture and language. The Hindustan Standard, in its
editorial of September 22, 1946, noted that,
We have nothing to say against the statement when it is made as a general
proposition that Muslims have no enmity with Hindus and they want to and in fact live as
brothers with their Hindu neighbors. We have known it to be a fact of the history of
Bengal for centuries and we know it to be a fact even today. We have no doubt that
Bengali Muslims –simple honest hardworking folk-who for generations have lived in
peace and amity with their Hindu neighbors has no taste even today for the blood of his
inoffensive Hindu neighbor. But the trouble is he is not allowed to function as a free
agent, not even as a conscious and intelligent human being by the unscrupulous agents of
the Muslim League.37
Fictional representations of the riots in later years continued to emphasize the sense of assault
from the outside, perpetrated by non-local Muslims.38
The association between the riots and the ‘communal’ League ministry also underscored
the immediate need for the separation of religion from politics within Bengal. Responding to an
editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika which was critical of the League ministry in Bengal, one
observer noted that,
For the last one thousand years, Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims have lived side by
side through many vicissitudes. They have both found it quite possible to live under the
same social set up. Today the Muslim League does not agree to living together … It has
brought communal hysteria to the pitch of exclusivism. If the Muslim League does not
agree to living together the only course open to the Bengal Hindus is to claim and enforce
by every means at their disposal a partition of the province.39
37
HS, 22 September 1946, 4.
38
See short stories by Achintya Kumar Sengupta, “Swakshar” (Signature) and Narayan Gangopadhya
“Izzat”(Honor) and in Manabendra Bandyapadhya ed. Bhed-Bhibed, Vol. I (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 1995), 126129, 210-220.
39
ABP, 18 January 1947, 4.
43
The identification of the League with the politics of exclusivism had been confirmed with the
appointment of Hasan Shaheed Suhrawardy, a well-known Bengali Muslim League leader, as the
provincial premier in April 1946. Suhrawardy, the Civil Supplies Minister during the Bengal
Famine of 1943, had long been identified as corrupt and responsible for the large number of
famine related deaths. Further, immediately after assuming power, he reduced the number of
Hindu ministers within the Bengal government to three out of a possible eleven. Out of the three,
two were from the Scheduled Castes.40 The political dominance of the League ministry, and its
inability (and culpability in the eyes of some) to control the riots of 1946, ensured that significant
elements of the public demanded the removal of the League from power. Kiran Sankar Roy, a
Congressman and leader of the opposition in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, submitted a
memorandum to the British Government outlining the misgovernment of the League ministry41.
The main charges were that of corruption, discrimination against Hindu minorities in politics and
education and the lack of proper scientific development of the province. However, the politics of
the time required religious affiliation as the primary method of political representation which
meant that the opposition of the League ministry in Bengal was composed entirely of minority
Hindus. Claims for a change in administration thus couched itself within religion and had to play
by the colonial rules of separate electorates. Thus Kiran Sankar Roy’s criticisms consistently also
took into account the ‘communal’ nature of the League ministry.
40
Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 230.
41
“Maladministration of League Government in Bengal: Letter and Memorandum from Kiran Sankar Roy, Bengal
Congress Assembly Party Leader,” dated 25 April 1947. File: L/P&J/7/12231 7749, April May 1947, Oriental and
India Office Collection (henceforth OIOC), London.
44
Demands for Partition: To divide or not to divide
The establishment of the Hindu Mahasabha sponsored Partition League in December
1946 signaled the emergence of a organized movement among Bengali Hindus that demanded a
“separate homeland for the Hindus.” Joya Chatterji notes that the members of the Partition
League were mainly from the Hindu bhadralok of the Hindu majority areas of the western
Bengal. 42 Moreover, Partha Chatterjee has argued that that in terms of mass mobilizations of the
time, the movement to partition Bengal was not only small scale but also involved proponents
who were not key political players. Further, all the pleas and petitions were sent to leaders in
Delhi and reflected an inherent inability to take charge of their own political future.43 Although I
agree with Partha Chatterjee on the inability of the public discourse in Bengal to translate their
demands into political reality, he too assumes that such demands had the clear, unified goal of
partitioning Bengal. Rather, as we shall see, the public opinion in the period prior to the Partition
voiced multiple concerns that were not always in favor of division.
Even as the Bengalis realized that they had little power to decide their political futures,
they consistently wrote to the major leaders, newspapers and magazines and published pamphlets
hoping to influence their political representatives. Some of their articles and booklets reflected
the growing paranoia and strengthening of religious identity for a section of the Bengali
bhadralok, who resided mainly in western parts of Bengal and in urban centers, especially
Calcutta and Dacca. For other members of the educated Bengali elite, the linguistic and territorial
unity of Bengal and its place within India were main issues of the day. Within the claims and
counterclaims of identity and culture and contestations of space, the demands also reflected the
42
Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 240.
43
Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 38.
45
extreme confusion and doubts about the future status of Bengal. A cartoon in the Amrita Bazar
Patrika published in May 1947, graphically captured the doubts and confusion in people’s
minds.44 It showed four key public and political figures, H. S. Suhrawardy, Shyamaprasad
Mookerjee, the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, M. A. Jinnah, and M. K. Gandhi each with a
placard with their respective propositions. Thus Suhrawardy holds “United Bengal in Divided
India,” Mookerjee “Divided Bengal in United India,” Jinnah “Divided Bengal in Divided India,”
and Gandhi holds up a sign with “United Bengal in United India.”45 Presented with multiple
choices within a limited time frame for independence and/or partition, Bengalis changed their
political positions contingent upon the mercurial political situation within Bengal.
Within the Bengali Hindu public, the issue of partitioning the province became the center
of heated debate. The Hindu Mahasabha’s political platform of a separate Hindu homeland found
an echo within the demands to partition in order to remain within “nationalist India.” In over four
hundred petitions addressed to the district and provincial Congress leaders, Bengalis mainly from
western parts of the province urged for inclusion. Most of the petitions duplicated each other in
their language and format. Their structure was thus,
Subject: Demand for the formation of a separate West Bengal Province. With
respectful prayers: We wish to remain subject to the Independent Indian Federation. We
inform you of the demand for a proposed ‘West Bengal Province.’ This province will
remain within the Independent Indian Federation.46
44
See Appendix I (a) of this dissertation.
45
ABP, 6 May 1947, 5.
46
File: G-54/1947,Part I; CL-14 (A)/ 1946; CL-14 (B)/1946-47, All India Congress Committee (henceforth AICC)
Papers, Nehru Memorial and Museum Library (henceforth NMML), New Delhi.
46
Two things immediately stand out when reading these petitions. First, clear evidence that the
campaign to Partition was well organized,47 but limited to mainly the western parts of the
province. Second, the language of the petitions frames their demands around inclusion within
India which at no point is seen as a “Hindu homeland.” Although these petitions paralleled the
Hindu Mahasabha demands to partition the province, the nuanced differences between the two
has to be taken into account in a study of communalism in Bengal.
Many urban, middle class Hindu citizens of Calcutta and Dacca advocated Partition in the
name of “saving” the Hindu religion and culture. In a letter, Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, evoked
the glorious past of the Hindus to question whether it was mere “cowardice” on their part, which
restrained them from taking appropriate action. He wrote,
Are we the inheritors of a culture that has produced some of the greatest minds of modern
times, some of the great sages and seers and savants who are rightly hailed as the makers
of Modern India? Are we to perish and disappear from the face of the earth for want of
political vision and for want of courage to face the stark and grim realities of the present
political situation? 48
The only remedy in Mookerjee’s view was Partition and the creation of a new province that
would give the Bengali Hindus, “salvation…save the priceless heritage of their culture, and a
safe haven of refuge.”
Major General A. C. Chatterjee, the President of the provincial wing of the Azad Hind
Fauj (Indian National Army) echoed this theme of masculinity and cultural territory. In
December 1946, he reputedly declared that,
The Bengalee Hindus are now faced with a new danger- the danger of total
extinction and being reduced to the position of Jews. We believe that Hindus and
47
Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 248.
48
ABP, 21 January 1947. Although the writer of this particular letter is Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, it is not clear if he
is the same person as the Hindu Mahasabha leader of the same name.
47
Muslims belong to the same racial stock, language and culture and their economic
interests are identical. Rightly or wrongly Muslims have been aligned against Hindus and
placed in a position of absolute authoritarianism with no check with the results we all see
today. Therefore, the partition is a move to self-defense particularly necessitated by the
fact that neither the Congress nor any other national political organization has been able
to carry the Muslim masses with them.49
Such arguments turned the Muslim League’s claim of “freedom from Hindu economic and
cultural domination” on its head by arguing that the Bengali Hindus, by virtue of being
minorities within Bengal, needed political freedom from being ruled by a “brute’ majority. Such
a brand of communal ideology, on the one hand, exorcised the ghosts of Muslim tyranny and
medieval theocracy in Bengali life, which itself was projected as essentially Hindu and portrayed
the Bengali Hindus as victims and minorities. On the other hand such arguments highlighted the
reputation of the Hindu Bengalis as economic, social and cultural leaders who needed the
partitioning of the province for their continued prominence.
In addition to political organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha, several others also
capitalized on the fear of the “Muslim barbarian” in articulating their demands for a separate
Hindu homeland. At a conference in Birbhum, western Bengal, organized by the district Hindu
Mahasabha, Maharaja Srischandra Nandy of Cossimbazar, a major zamindar, asserted that there
was a “vile conspiracy towards making the Bengal Hindus politically impotent.”50 In describing
the “true” meaning of a country, he pointed out, “The term “country” is not simply a
geographical connotation. Education, culture and civilization all go to form a country.” It was
this very definition of country that was, in his view, under attack. “Due to Muslim League
oppression, not only our system of education, culture and civilization, but even the honour of our
49
ABP, 21 January 1947, 4.
50
HS, May 27, 1947, 5.
48
women is at stake.”51 The demand for Partition was thus “self-defence.” By equating,
“impotency” and “women’s honour” with the “patriotic need” to defend one’s country as
embodied in its culture and education, Srischandra directed attention to the core feelings of
emasculation within certain sections of Bengali Hindus. Ironically, colonial perceptions about
the essence of the Bengali Hindu male also played on the theme of emasculation and effeminacy.
The Bengali male was thus claimed to be essentially without vigor, lethargic and physically
weak which contributed to his lack of moral backbone.52
In a booklet published in early 1947, Bhupendra C. Lahiri articulated the immediate need
to have a “Hindu nation” in Bengal. After pointing out that in the current state of affairs, the
Hindus’ efforts to enter and influence the politics, education and the workforce had been stymied
by communal reservations, Lahiri argues that the Partition of Bengal into Hindu majority and
Muslim majority provinces was not only possible in terms of geographical division but was the
only way to ensure that the Hindus of eastern Bengal could be saved. In Lahiri’s view rather than
undertaking a messy population exchange, “If the Hindus of eastern Bengal are ensured the
support of the 3 crore Hindus of independent Bengal, the former would be much strengthened as
a race than they are currently…The only way to save the Bengali Hindus is to ensure the
preservation of the glory of Hindus in Western Bengal.”53
Similarly, another writer, using the pseudonym “Fairplay,” wrote, “ Bengali Hindus must
face the grim reality before them. If they do so, then they will see how the good deeds done by
patriotic Bengalis in an earlier day are gradually being nullified by the Muslim-dominated
51
Ibid.
52
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The "Manly Englishman" and the "Effeminate Bengali" in the Late
Nineteenth Century (New York: Manchester University Press, 1995).
53
Bhupendra Chandra Lahiri, Bange Hindu Rashtra Chai (The Need for a Hindu Nation in Bengal) (Calcutta: No
Publisher, 1947), 119.
49
administration of the province.” 54 The writer, like Lahiri detailed the various economic and
social opportunities which had been lost to the Bengali Hindus since the Communal Award, and
argued that “For smooth running of the future administration of the province of Bengal in free
India the formation of a separate province consisting of West Bengal and North Bengal and the
Bengali speaking districts of Bihar is absolutely necessary… The Bengali Hindus must have a
home where they will be able to preserve their culture and adjust its administration to their
needs.” Thus the perceived cultural threat to the “Hindu nation” could only be resolved through
territorial separation.
The correlation between religion, culture and territory was not new. However, several
other strands of argument were interwoven in the case for Partition. The extinction of the Bengali
Hindu “race” was a recurring motif which was evoked by some writers. One Charu Chandra
Sinha from Howrah, West Bengal, argued that the Bengalis had been “politically, socially, and
economically maimed.” While he echoed the arguments about maladministration of the League
Ministry in the political and social field, he also pointed out that existing scarcity of food in
Bengal specifically targeted the Bengali Hindu race. He claimed that “ There is no vitaminous
[sic] food sustaining the life of the masses with the result that they are deteriorating in health day
by day proving the truth of the theory that the Bengalis are going to be an extinct race.”55 The
only way to save the situation was the creation of a separate homeland for the Hindus in Bengal.
Responding to anti-Partition stance of the Azad Hindu Fauj, Hemanta K. Sarkar, the
General Secretary of the provincial committee, identified the aims and objects of the movement
for a Hindu homeland as not communal. Rather, it was in accordance with the ideal of Hindu
54
ABP, 17 January 1947, 4.
55
HS, 20 June 1947, 4.
50
Muslim unity in order to achieve complete independence of India. “We propose to fall in line
with the rest of nationalist India to achieve that object by separating west Bengal as a province
where the nationalist forces from all over Bengal may rally and strive instead of being throttled
by a reactionary communal government in present Bengal conspiring to wipe out our very
existence. Our aim is to create one more province in addition to the already numerous provinces
of India the oneness of which remains as before.”56 Another writer from Dacca spoke in favor of
the Cabinet Mission plan that, “The partition of Bengal does not imply a division of India or the
acceptance of Pakistan. On the contrary, the constitution of West Bengal into a separate
Congress province that will join group A is the most effective means to prevent the partition of
India.”57 Sakti Ranjan Bose in his letter to the editor of the Hindustan Standard offered yet
another interesting reason for demanding the Partition. “I do not have to emphasize that our
ambition is not to create a separate homeland for Hindus but to increase the territories under the
Indian union. Why we want a separate state in the west is not because the majority is Hindu but
because the majority population would like to form itself in a state, which is connected with the
center.”58 Partition for these advocates was necessary to ensure the continuation of their
citizenship within India.
Not all Hindus in Bengal subscribed to the view that there was a need to create a new
province. The fault lines of the debate on the Partition of the province are captured clearly in the
writings of Naresh Chandra Gupta and D.N Sen. In “An appeal to Sons and Daughters of
Bengal,” Naresh Gupta urged the Bengalis not to be swept away by propaganda in favor of the
56
ABP, 19 January 1947, 4.
57
ABP, 21 January 1947, 4.
58
HS, 29 March 1947, 4.
51
partitioning the province. He pointed out that “Hindus of Bengal have suffered terribly of late
though Muslims too could not but suffer to a larger extent.” However, Gupta asserted that
partitioning the province along communal lines was not a remedy at all. 59 Rather, “the
continuance of a united Bengal freed from the canker of communal electorates and a communal
ministry, continuing as a member of the Indian union” was a better option and urged his fellow
Bengalis to “strive and toil and fight for that rather than to seek a partition of the province which
but forty years ago people considered to be an intolerable calamity?” The persistent struggle by
the Bengalis had “unsettled the settled fact” earlier. For Gupta, like Gandhi, an advocate of a
united Bengal within the Indian Union, Partition was the very anti-thesis of nationalist ideals.
The ongoing proposal for a ‘homeland for Bengali Hindus’ was in Gupta’s view
fallacious as “Bengal Hindus are not like Jews, wanderers in foreign lands, they have their
homes in land which is their own and which generations of ancestors have made their own…the
promise of this homeland which seeks to pluck them out of the land to which they are rooted in
tradition and sentiment of centuries.”60 The allusion to Jews searching for a homeland became a
recurrent motif in the refugee discourse in the post Partition period. For example, Jadunath
Sarkar, a well-known historian of Bengal, compared the socio political situation of East Bengal
under the majority Muslim government with Palestine before “the Jews…turned the dessert into
a garden.”61
On the other side of the coin, D. N. Bannerjee, a professor at the Dacca University,
argued that Partition was the “only solution.” He argued,
59
HS, 23 April 1947, 4.
60
Ibid.
61
Jadunath Sarkar, “Brothers from Over the River,” in Modern Review (henceforth MR), September 1948, Vol. 84,
236. Also see, Salil Sen‘Natun Ihudi’ (The New Jew) reprinted in Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, eds.
The Trauma and the Triumph.
52
The whole future of the entire Hindu community of Bengal is in serious peril
today, that this community which has suffered so tremendously during the last sixty years
for building up Indian nationalism and for the freedom of India is in the imminent danger
in view of the impending constitutional changes of being reduced to absolute political
impotence and even abject slavery; that there is a great probability of an admittedly
medieval theocratic state being established in Bengal with all its consequences; and that
because of their questionable slight inferiority of number the lot of the Hindus in Bengal
may soon become, unless timely action is taken that of mere hewers of wood and
drawers of water for a people who are by their own admission inferior to them in so
many respects.62
The call for Hindu “culture in danger” had long been a part of the Bengal political landscape and
was recurrently evoked at moments of political crisis.
Although Bengali Muslims generally supported the demand for Pakistan, within the
political leadership of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League and the Krishak Praja Party, a
socialist peasant party, there was no consensus on the meaning and program of the virtual
Pakistan. The historiography on Muslim politics has conclusively shown that in Bengal, the
Pakistan idea had moved away from its central focus on religion as the basis of unity and had
metamorphosed into a more socio- democratic ideal resulting in a myriad of “Pakistans.”63 The
multiple promises of Pakistan, from being a peasant utopia to a nation based on socio democratic
principles and a nation free from Hindu domination, found favor not only with the illiterate, poor
and less informed Muslim peasantry in rural areas, but also within groups of highly literate and
politically aware urban Muslims principally based in Dacca and Calcutta.
However, inspite of the democratic socialist stance of some of the Muslim leadership in
Bengal, they remained limited in their ability to bring the minorities in Bengal within their
political ambit. Abul Hashim, the secretary of the Bengal provincial Muslim League, promised
62
HS, 1 May 1947, 4.
63
For an elaboration of this issue see, Taj-ul- Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class
Politics in East Bengal 1920-1947 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); Semanti Ghosh, Nationalism and the Problem
of ‘Difference.
53
that the “ Free state of Eastern Pakistan will be ruled and governed by the entire people on a
basis of universal adult suffrage” and assured that the minorities in Muslim majority provinces
would be safe. However, even as he pointed out that “Muslims will have no special rights for
themselves except to govern their own society according to the principles of their own religion”
and “no political and economic safeguards will be granted to the Muslims [in the new state]” he
and his colleagues in the ministry remained unclear about how such proposals would materially
affect the minorities and their rights.64
Even among Bengali Muslims, some questioned the rights of the All India Muslim
League and its Bengal branch to represent Muslims of the region.65 Several letters to the
Hindustan Standard stressed the common cultural and linguistic background of the Bengali
Hindus and Muslims. The current divide, according to these writers was due to colonial
machinations. In May 1947, a Bengali Muslim that outlined meaning of Pakistan thus,
By keeping silent over the details of economic and political structure of the
contemplated Pakistan our leaders have allowed the Mahomedan mass to believe that it
will be a land of milk and honey. But Pakistan as it is already in the offing, does not
seem to be a cheering prospect to us, the Bengal Mahomedans. Firstly, Mahomedans of
different provinces are infiltrating into Bengal. These immigrants thinking themselves of
a noble descent cherish a most contemptuous attitude towards the Bengali Mahomedans
most of whom are illiterate peasants and as it is low born converts. These immigrants
have a smattering of English and are out to dominate the Bengali Mahomedans both
politically and intellectually. They will form the Mahomedan middle class in Bengal by
monopolizing all the government jobs. An examination of the Muslim League high
command and the coterie of Muslim members of the interim government points to the
future domination of Moslem India by non- Bengalis. Secondly, Pakistan means, it is
clear, the greatest advantage of the Muslim capitalists and business magnates. None of
them are Bengalis. Hence Bengali mahomedans will have very little to hope from them.66
64
Abul Hashim, “Why This Hindu Muslim ‘Hatred’, British Imperialism 100 percent Responsible,” ABP, 10
January 1947, 4.
65
See letters to the editor in HS, 11 September 1946, 4; 17 September 1946, 4; 5 December 1946, 4; 17 December
1946, 4.
66
HS, 17 May 1947, 4.
54
The writer, who identified himself only as a “Bengali Mahomedan,” questioned the hegemonic
ambitions of the Pakistan demand to represent all Muslims of the subcontinent. He further
questioned the ability of the Muslims, who were culturally and linguistically different than the
Bengali Muslims, to represent or respond to regional concerns. The idea of Pakistan for this
particular writer thus did not hold out the promise of a socialist revolution whereby the Bengali
Muslim peasantry could also be free of the “capitalists and business magnates.” In some ways,
his concerns seem prophetic in the light of the trajectory East Bengal followed after 1947.
Opinion among the scheduled caste leadership within Bengal was also divided. Although
Jogendra Nath Mandal, the leader of the Scheduled Caste Federation which was politically
aligned with the Muslim League, voiced his support against the Partition of Bengal, other leaders
such as Radhanath Das, a member of the Constituent Assembly, and Birat Mandal, the leader the
All India Depressed Class Association argued that the League could not guarantee safety for the
scheduled castes in eastern Bengal and the interests of the group would be best served within a
divided Bengal.67 In a press conference at Delhi, Mandal pointed out that the Partition of Bengal
would not solve the current problems and would in fact reduce the Hindus of East Bengal to an
insignificant minority. Further, he pointed out that in the event of an exchange of population, the
Scheduled castes of eastern Bengal, comprising mainly the poorer sections of the Hindu
community, would not have the means to make the move across the borders.68 Mandal had some
support from scheduled caste groups such as the North Bengal Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity
which passed a resolution against the Partition on April 27, 1947 at Rangpur in northern Bengal.
67
Jagadishchandra Mandal, Banga Bhanga (Calcutta: Mahapran Publishing Society 1977), 39-42.
68
The Statesman, 17 May 1947, 5.
55
However, scheduled caste leaders such as Radhanath Das, whom Jogendra Mandal had
defeated in the 1940 Calcutta Corporation elections, argued that “If we ask our Namasudra
brothers in Noakhali to come to West Bengal and the government of West and North Bengal will
provide them with shelter and other economic requirements, then I am prepared to swear that
Jogen babu [Jogendra Mandal] will not able to keep a single one of his caste brothers in
Noakhali.” Further, he argued that it would be easy for the scheduled castes to move precisely
because “ in terms of their homes, they only have small huts, which they would not have much
compunction or problem in leaving” and moving to western Bengal.69
In response to Das, Dwarikanath Barori, who sided with Mandal, argued, “it’s a novel
discovery [on Das’s part] that the scheduled castes’ attachment to their home would be less
because they lived in huts,”70 and added that in reality a majority of that community owned
substantial property. Clearly, the main issue in the debate on partitioning Bengal, at least for this
group of community leaders, was whether the new province in the west would be able to
guarantee economic opportunities for the scheduled castes.71
Land ownership and other economic factors were central to several citizens of eastern
Bengal as they wrote to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee requesting him to ensure their economic and
cultural security in the event that the province was divided. They argued that,
The monied [sic] men of the district [Noakhali] who have business in Calcutta and
elsewhere and who have sufficient means for their removal are now earnestly supporting
the question of partition of Bengal. But it is a question for the middle and depressed class
Hindus of East Bengal to think over the matter seriously…under the present
69
Jagadishchandra Mandal, Banga Bhanga, 43.
70
Ibid. 45.
71
When the issue of Partition was put to vote in the Bengal Assembly, only five of the thirty scheduled caste
members voted against the Partition.
56
circumstances it can very safely be said that their position will be more worse [sic] by
such partition.72
The writers of these petitions then provided a solution to their communal and economic dilemma
in eastern Bengal by requesting that uncultivated land belonging to Hindu zamindars in western
Bengal, be requisitioned by the provincial government and allotted to them in the name of saving
their co-religionists. The fact that such land were already being used to rehabilitate Muslim
refugees from Bihar after the 1946 riots only helped strengthen the communal facade for a
demand for economic restitution.
Between February 20 and June 20, 1947, a mere four months from the announcement of
the British decision to leave India to the Bengal Assembly’s vote for partitioning the province
and the western half joining the Indian Union, the Partition discourse reached a fevered peak.
The acceptance of the Punjab Partition by the All India Congress at the national level clearly
indicated for the people in Bengal that Partition of their province was not only plausible but also
imminent. The Hindu Mahasabha, which had initially advocated the idea of an “Akhand
Hindustan” (Unbroken India), changed its stance after the riots of 1946 and focused on retaining
as much territory as possible for a “Hindu India.” In February 1947, it appointed a Working
Committee to report on “the feasibility and desirability of having a separate province for
securing a homeland for Bengal Hindus.”73 At a conference at Tarakeshwar, Mahasabha workers
passed a resolution to begin a campaign to “retain East Bengal Province…within the Indian
Union.”74
72
Petition dated May 7, 1947, File: 32, S. P. Mookerjee Papers, NMML, New Delhi. Most of the signatories (around
20) were from the eastern district of Noakhali.
73
Hindu Outlook (New Delhi), 11 February 1947, in File: 102, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Papers, II-IV Installment,
NMML, New Delhi.
74
Ibid.
57
In the following months, as the Hindu Mahasabha deployed their cadres, the Bengal
Congress also jumped onto the bandwagon for Partition, albeit for different reasons. Veteran
Congress leaders such as Nalini Ranjan Sarkar and Kiran Sankar Roy publicly voiced their
reasons for supporting the movement. In a series of public lectures and essay in major
newspapers, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, a veteran of the 1905 anti-Partition movement, assured those
Hindus who would surely become part of Pakistan in the event of the division that, “In a divided
Bengal those Hindus who might be left in East Bengal should have this satisfaction that West
Bengal as a separate province would be there as a safe home for Hindu culture and economic
interests.”75 Using the metaphor that the Bengali Hindus were “living in a house on fire,” Sarkar
dissociated the call for Partition as a consequence of the Cabinet Mission Plan and stressed that
the demand was due to intrinsic problems within the Bengal body politic. “The Hindus have been
forced into this position by extreme circumstances” whose roots lay in the ‘communal
administration’ of the Bengal Muslim League. He then described in detail the “separatist
tendencies” not only in the field of political representation but also in fields such as education
and trade and industry. He emphasized that,
If the present policy of the League in Bengal had undergone a real change and in
accordance with that change a constitution was evolved which made it possible for all
sections of people to be imbued with the idea of a common citizenship overriding
communal distinctions and thereby ruling out any communal domination, then indeed I
believe the Hindus of Bengal would not think it necessary to press for a divided Bengal.76
Thus the demand for Partition, from Sarkar’s point of view had little to do with “saving one’s
religion” but was a necessary step towards achieving the “nationalist” goals of Bengal. Similarly,
Kiran Sankar Roy, in a forty-page memorandum to the British Prime Minister and Secretary of
75
Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, “Partition Demand not outcome of Cabinet Mission Plan,” ABP, 15 March 1947, 4.
76
Ibid.
58
State, drafted by Bengal Congress party, charged the League administration of corruption,
discrimination against Hindus and the cause for the general retrogression in the province.77 In
addition it held the League singularly responsible for “spreading the virus of communalism” in
Bengal’s politics and culture. Although Kiran Sankar was a partial advocate of the United
Bengal Movement promoted by Sarat Bose, Abul Hashim and Suhrawardy, he, like other
members of Bengal Congress, ultimately argued in terms of the political necessity for Partition to
ensure the survival of the Indian state.
Those who had hitherto been against the partitioning of the province in April 1947 began
to see it as a necessary evil and to justify it in terms of historical necessity. Using several
biological metaphors of “canker” for Pakistan that needed to be removed for the general health
of the Indian body politic, Partition now became the solution to the contemporary communal
problems. For Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar, a Congress member of the Bengal Legislative
Assembly, the issue at stake was not religion but “how to save Indian nationalism in Bengal
against the dark forces of politico communal reaction.” He urged the people not to split over the
issue of Partition, but to form “patriotic Councils of Action” comprising both Hindus and
Muslims to combat “League tyranny.”78
Some went on to argue that Partition would again be annulled once the Bengali Muslims
realized that they could not survive alone. Krishnaprasanna Sinha, in a provocatively titled letter,
“Kill Pakistan,” wrote that,
If Bengal is divided it would be impossible for the Muslim League to carry on with only
Eastern Bengal as a separate Muslim state…if only Calcutta is taken out it would be
impossible for the Muslim state to function. It need hardly be emphasized that Calcutta is
77
“Maladministration of League Government in Bengal: Letter and Memorandum from Kiran Sankar Roy, Bengal
Congress Assembly Party Leader,” dated 25 April 1947. File: L/P&J/7/12231 7749, April May 1947, OIOC.
78
HS, 4 March 1947, 3.
59
definitely a Hindu city, not merely by the standard of its Hindu population but also by the
standard of lands and houses, which are mostly owned by the Hindus. West Bengal with
Calcutta will be more self-supporting than merely east Bengal can every hope to be. If
Muslim League is confronted with the two alternatives viz. to join the All India Union in
the right spirit or form East Bengal as a separate Muslim state the Muslim League would
prefer the former. The Bengalee Hindus must however make it quite clear that either the
whole of Bengal joins the all India union or they separate.79
Although the claim for Calcutta led Sinha to identify it as a ‘Hindu city’ notwithstanding the
sizeable Muslim and Christian population, a similar claim was not laid out for Dacca whose
population was, by Sinha’s standards, predominantly Hindu. Thus the religious identity of
Calcutta camouflaged the economic motives in Sinha’s demand for the inclusion of the city in
West Bengal.
Similarly, Kalipada Mukherjee, Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee,
at a conference in Jessore in May 1947 publicly declared, that the Congress demand for Partition
did not intend to abandon “Hindus and other national forces in East Bengal but it is believed and
in no distant future it would be able by their strenuous efforts, to bring about the situation under
which East Bengal should be forced to join the Indian Republic.”80 Although this conjecture did
not agree with the official policy of the Bengal Congress, like Mukherjee, others believed that
this Partition would also be annulled, as had the 1905 Partition.
For some groups Partition was a “necessary step” in the path of India’s progress towards
freedom. Bhabadev Bhattacharjee, a professor of political philosophy at Ripon College in
Calcutta, used the metaphor of a joint family system to explain to his readers their current
political reality. “If the joint family system has broken up as a result of impact of selfish ideas,
how much is the danger of a country beset with warring creeds. Brothers have maintained better
79
ABP, 4 March 1947, 4.
80
ABP, 20 May 1947, 4.
60
relations by living separately in many cases than most of those who outwardly profess
brotherhood and are compelled to eulogize on united life even though in their heart of hearts they
have realized the hollowness of the actual situation. To fight the movement for Pakistan in the
most practical way is to cry for partitioning of Bengal. A Muslim Bengal without Hindu Bengal
is a hopeless idea.”81 Another writer, similarly argued that the
Moral partition of Bengal is already complete and notwithstanding the tender
sentiments for an undivided Bengal. Constitutional partition is inevitable unless the
Muslims in this province unequivocally repudiate the communal electorates and
communal politics and unseat their present leadership which works against the
emergence of a strong independent and progressive union of India to take her rightful
place in the community of other great nations of the world.82
For those who still remained uncertain about their views on partitioning the province and
found the current demand in contradiction to the earlier movement to annul the Partition in 1905,
arguments about the continuation and preservation of nationalist ideals had more appeal than
religion. Major General A. C. Chatterjee thus urged the nationalists to “attach themselves firmly
with the rest of nationalist India.” This goal could only be possible with the creation of a new
province which did not subscribe to the Pakistan ideal and thus ensured that it be part of
nationalist India. Chatterjee argued that the nationalist goals that had led to wide ranging protests
against the first Partition of Bengal in 1905 had not changed in 1947. In his view, the creation of
a new province was being urged along similar lines and intended to “preserve the solidarity and
integrity of the people who were nationalistic in outlook and who consider their language
tradition and civilization as one, facts denied by the Muslim Leaguers.”83
81
HS, 25 March 1947, 4.
82
HS, 29 March 1947, 4.
83
HS, 3 April 1947, 3.
61
At a conference in Jalpaiguri in northern Bengal, attended by 500 delegates from that
region, Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra, a member of the Legislative Assembly, noted that there
were three courses open to Bengali nationalists,
First was an abject surrender to the Muslim League. Hindus could not think of it. The
second course was the violent method or a bloody civil war. Nationalist Hindus did not
want to adopt this barbarous cruel path which was destructive of civilization. The third
course was the creation of a new province, a homeland for the nationalists which would
be linked with the Indian union and would remain within that union. 84
Maitra then contended that the imminent freedom of India from colonial rule was due to the
sacrifice of Bengali Hindus who had now been forced to ask for a division because of “the
irresistible logic of events and communal misrule which had sought to curtail the rights and
privileges of the Hindus since its very inception.” By collapsing nationalist goals with religious
identity, Maitra and others hoped to convince those who continued to doubt their political
representative’s demands for Partition.
Between February and June 1947, representations from political units such as the
Municipal and Union Boards, civil groups like District Bar Associations and Zamindars
Associations, and local clubs flooded the offices of the Hindu Mahasabha and the AICC voicing
their demands for Partition.85 A front-page cartoon in the Hindustan Standard depicted the
Viceroy being overwhelmed by nearly 10, 000 telegrams demanding the Partition of Bengal.86
Most of these petitions asked for the formation of a separate province of West Bengal that would
remain within the Indian Union. 87
84
HS, 18 May 1947, 5.
85
File: G-54/1947, Part I, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.
86
HS, 17 May 1947, 1. See Appendix I. (b) of this dissertation.
87
Joya Chatterjee has conclusively argued that the movement for partition was well orchestrated. Similarly, Sekhar
Bandyopadhya has shown that there was also some amount of organization and plans to mobilize among the
62
The demand for partitioning the province spread to the districts and mofussil towns as
leading newspapers continuously printed local resolutions. In addition to the usual justification to
safeguard “the lives, properties, honor and culture of the Hindus and other minorities,”88 these
resolutions argued that Partition was in keeping with the nationalist core of Bengal and India. For
instance, Muktagachi, a municipality in Mymensingh in eastern Bengal, passed a resolution by
municipal commissioners who belonged to both communities. It noted that “in consideration of
the present situation of the country and the move taken by the nationalist Bengal, the Partition of
Bengal has been essentially necessary in order to frame a constitution or free and nationalist
India.”89 Similarly the Dacca District Congress Committee passed a resolution on 15 May 1947
that stated,
The members of the Executive Committee have belief in the united India and the
united Bengal as a unit of the Indian union. In case the division of India becomes
inevitable on account of the unreasonable demand of the Muslim League as a natural
corollary they claim that a separate unit with those districts of Bengal willing to join the
Indian union is to be formed.90
Civil groups also put forward similar requests for inclusion within the Indian Union. A group of
barristers based in Calcutta called for Partition, describing it as necessary to maintain an “organic
relationship with the Indian Union” and as the only “rational chance of national salvation and of
freedom from further torture and persecution under a communal regime.”91 Several petitions to
schedule castes of Bengal. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras
of Bengal 1872-1947(Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997).
88
Resolution passed by Hindu citizens of Rajshahi. Most newspapers like HS and ABP published such resolutions,
which ranged from district political organizations to neighborhood meetings of non-Muslim residents of the area.
HS, May 23, 1947, 7.
89
File: G-54/1947, Part I AICC Papers, April-May 1947, NMML, New Delhi.
90
Ibid.
91
ABP, 14 May 1947, 4.
63
Acharya Kripalani, the president of the AICC in 1947, were from industrial companies such as
the India Cycle, Mackintosh Burn and Bharatia Electric Steel and local associations such as
Bally Sadharoni Sabha Milan Sangha, Chakraberia, Howrah, all of which passed resolutions in
support of the Partition.92
Even at this late date, dissenters remained against the idea of any division of the
province. One group led by Sarat Bose and Abul Hashim promoted the idea of a United Bengal,
which would not be constitutionally part of India or Pakistan but have an independent identity. In
a letter to Sardar Patel, Sarat Bose specified that “It is not a fact that Bengali Hindus
unanimously demand Partition. As far as East Bengal is concerned, there is not the slightest
doubt that the majority of Hindus were opposed to partition…the demand for Partition is more or
less confined to the middle classes…Future generations will, I am afraid condemn us for
conceding the division of India and supporting the partition of Bengal and Punjab”93 This plan
did not find much support within the political ranks of the Bengal Congress or the Muslim
League. The Bengali public already inundated by Mahasabha propaganda was wary of the
possibilities that Bengal as an independent entity might in the future join Pakistan.
A number of letters anthropomorphized India as a “motherland” and urged the readers to
be patriotic sons in preventing the vivisection of their mother. 94 While one writer questioned, “
Is there none in Bengal to challenge this spurious census95 on which the Muslim League’s citadel
of Pakistan is being built? It was the patriotic sons of Bengal who nullified the 1905 partition; is
92
File#G-54/1947, Part I, AICC Papers, NMML.
93
Letter dated 27 May 1947, in Durga Das ed. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945-50, Vo. IV (Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 45-6.
94
HS, 11 June 1947, 4.
95
The Census of 1941 was at the center of controversy during this period as it was the key document determining
the areas based on religious demography.
64
there none to follow them to nullify the infernal Pakistan,”96 another urged, “No true Indian
should entertain such absurd unreasonable and foolish ideas and all must cooperate to keep India
united.”97 Jnanjan Pal, in a critical analysis of the future of a divided Bengal, identified several
problems. He specified that,
By making our demand for a partition of the province on the basis of
denominational religious communities we are likely to cloud the real issue. India cannot
be communally divided, nor Bengal nor any other part of it. That will smother our
progress; we will be going back to a perverted type of religious medievalism, absolutely
unacceptable in the modern world…. A homeland for Bengali Hindus is therefore
ideologically separated from the Indian union.98
As a solution to the communal issue, Pal urged a separation between religion and politics and an
effort to achieve a complete secularization of political life. Such a process would be amply aided
by implementing a common electorate on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The only way to
solve Bengal’s problems was also to keep “ties with the other parts of India and with the Center
or the Union firmly secured not for communal movies, but for essential political and economic
advantages.” Pal was not an advocate of the United Bengal Plan. In his view, “Bengal’s
sovereignty so called that is dissociated from the Indian Union, is thus fraught with immense
mischief for India as also for Bengal.” However, if the political majority did not agree to the
principles of democracy and common electorate, Partition would be forced upon all Bengalis.
Pal, however, hoped that the “Partition would be temporary in nature and would last till the
communal madness had blown over.”99
96
HS, 25 March 1947, 4.
97
HS, 11 June 1947, 4.
98
HS, 19 May 1947, 7.
99
Ibid.
65
A group of Hindu residents of Barisal opposed the Partition proposal on the grounds that
such a division would “disrupt the ancient unity and solidarity of Bengalee Hindus.”100 Several
leaders within the Bengal Congress such as Akhil Chandra Datta, Leela Roy and Kamini Kumar
Datta, publicly declared that it would be “improper, suicidal for them to lend support Pakistan”
and that “partition amounted to the acceptance of the basic principle of Pakistan namely the
territorial division or re-adjustment on the basis of community or religion.”101 In April 1947,
Sarat Bose along with Kamini Kumar Datta formed the All Bengal Anti-Pakistan and AntiPartition Committee. At a conference, the members of this committee passed a resolution noting,
“The proposed partition on a religious basis would be in direct conflict with the principles of
nationalism. That it would be a concession to the demand of Pakistan and that it would put
Hindus in eastern and northern Bengal districts in a desperate position.”102 In addition, the
members decided to mobilize public opinion against Pakistan and Partition.
The Scramble for Territory
The Partition of the Indian subcontinent became inevitable when Indian leaders from both
the Congress and Muslim League publicly accepted and endorsed Governor General Lord Louis
Mountbatten’s Plan of June 3, 1947. According to this Plan, the Muslim majority provinces of
Bengal, Punjab, Sind, the NWFP and Baluchistan would chose either the existing constitutional
100
HS, 4 March 1947, 3.
101
HS, 26 March 1947, 4. In several public meetings where anti partition resolutions were passed, Leela Roy
repeatedly demanded “Our demand is that not a single Bengalee whether a Hindu or a Muslim must leave his
homeland- whether he be in the eastern or the western part of Bengal. HS, 16 April 1947, 7.
102
ABP, 26 April 1947, 4.
66
assembly to frame their future constitution within a united Indian Union or a new and separate
constituent assembly. 103
The certainty of Partition significantly changed the tenor of public discourse. Bengali
Hindus and Muslims began to couch their support for Partition within the specifics of territorial
coordinates. Satish Chandra Roy asserted,
Nationalist Bengal should include the entire presidency and Burdwan divisions and the
districts of Malda, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling parts of Rajshahi, Pabna Rangpur
districts to maintain the link between Bengal and Assam, thus uniting the easternmost
province (i.e. Assam) of the union with the union of India. It would be better to include
the entire north Bengal and the districts of Faridpur and bakerganj in the newly formed
province which could give it a natural defence on the east by the rivers Jamuna, Padma,
and Meghna.104
Similarly, the territorial coordinates of the new province of West Bengal was clearly outlined in
the Jatiya Banga Sangathan Samity’s resolution as constituting “Burdwan Division, Calcutta,
Presidency Division and Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Dinajpur in north Bengal and such other parts
of Bengal whose inhabitants desire to remain within the Indian union.”105
Inclusion within India both in terms of territory and citizenship became the moot issue of
the day. Thus several groups and petitioners unsure whether their locality would be part of India
or Pakistan, evoked their contribution and sacrifices for the Indian freedom struggle, which they
argued, should guarantee their inclusion in the free Indian state. Satish Chandra Roy argued that
Hindus in eastern Bengal were and would remain loyal to united India and that they “should be
given rights of citizenship in the newly created province of Bengal and the union of India as
well. They shall be eligible to services, trade education etc. in the province of Bengal and also in
103
For details see Gyanesh Kudaisya, Aftermath of Partition, and Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning a Frontier.”
104
HS, 17 April 1947, 4.
105
HS, 28 April 1947, 4.
67
the union government.” 106 Roy contended that if the Hindus of East Bengal were recognized as
Indian citizens, then “Pakistan will be compelled to give them their due share in the
administration of East Bengal” and “even though they reside outside the union and be entitled to
the full protection of the union government.”107
Roy was not alone in voicing his concern about the fate of the Hindus whose homes were
most likely to be part of Pakistan. A deputation from Noakhali, one of the eastern most districts
of Bengal, wrote to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee pointing out “If Bengal is partitioned no doubt the
Hindus of west Bengal will be saved, but what will be the position of the east Bengal Hindus
under the Pakistan government? The Hindus of East Bengal paid as much for the present
political improved state of affairs as for the independence of India. They sacrificed much and
above all the lives of their boys and girls to fight out the Britishers from India.”108
Narendranath Biswas of Magura, a scheduled caste, had an ingenious solution to the
problems affecting his community. He urged that the community, instead of living in different
districts of Bengal, move their residence to the district of Jessore, and back their demand for
inclusion within India with numerical strength.109 As one of the five districts whose future would
be decided by the Boundary Commission, Jessore’s position was critical in Biswas’ demand for
relocation. He wanted to ensure that when the time came for the decision, the district would have
a numerical majority of non-Muslims to justify its inclusion within India.
The Bengal Legislative Assembly met on June 20, 1947 and voted to join the Indian
Union. In a separate ballot they voted to partition Bengal into East and West Bengal. On both
106
HS, 17 April 1947, 4.
107
Ibid.
108
Letter to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, datd 7 May 1947 in File: 32, SP Mookerjee Papers, NMML, New Delhi.
109
HS, 15 May 1947, 4.
68
issues, the voting was divided along communal lines although the representatives had no way of
knowing whether their respective areas would be in east or west Bengal. The representatives of
the Hindu majority districts voted to join the Indian Union and to partition Bengal to that effect
while the representatives of the Muslim majority districts voted for a separate union and against
the Partition of Bengal.110
After the vote, the overarching issue was to ensure that one’s own locality continued to
remain within one’s perceived nation and one continued to be an Indian or a Pakistan. Bengalis
now wrote letters and passed resolutions providing rationales for the inclusion of a particular
locality within India. The reasons mainly focused on economic, religious and cultural issues. For
example, the Student’s Library of Howrah framed their support for the division in the following
terms,
Although it believes in the existence of a united Bengal within united India, in
order to protect the civil liberty of the people, the honour of women, the culture and
tradition of Bengal and to form a separate and nationalist Bengal under the Indian Union,
comprising of the parts of Dinajpur and Malda districts, and such other parts as are
willing to come under the Indian Union and a regional ministry for the area should be set
up immediately.111
After June 20, as it became clear that the Hindu majority districts of western Bengal
would continue to remain within India, the focus of debate on inclusion and exclusion shifted to
the eastern parts of Bengal. Religion continued to be one of the primary reasons of inclusion and
religious contiguity was demonstrated by any means necessary. Thus the Natshal Young Men’s
Association, defined the eastern boundary of West Bengal as “the Padma and the Yamuna river
on the eastern side of the Pabna and Faridpur districts and from the Jamuna right up to the Atrai
110
The provisional West Bengal Legislative Assembly voted by 58 votes to 21 that the province should be
partitioned and that West Bengal should join the existing Constituent Assembly.
111
File: G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.
69
river in the Jalpaiguri districts through the districts of Pabna Rajshahi and Dinajpur” 112 and
urged the authorities, both British and Indian, and the newly constituted Boundary
Commission113 to ensure that “the whole of Faridpore, Maldah Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling
districts, the whole of Burdwan and Presidency division, the western part of Barisal” be
included within West Bengal. Their demands for maximum territory were couched in the earlier
terms of preservation of Hindu culture and civilization.
In the scramble for territory, the city of Calcutta, seat of Bengali urban culture for both
Muslims and Hindus, became the most sought after because of its logistical, industrial and
business infrastructure. A detailed petition to Lord Listowel, from S. M. Usam, ex-Mayor of
Calcutta, Mr. Abdus Sabur Khan and Mr. Mahisuddin Ahmed, the President of the Bengal Jute
Grower’s Association, couched their demands for Calcutta in economic terms. The petition
began by indicating that “East Bengal is the homeland of Jute and Calcutta is the byproduct of
the marriage of Bengal jute with Hoogly river and it is for this reason Calcutta is rightly called
the city of jute and port of jute.” Jute, the petitioners reminded, was produced solely by East
Bengal Muslim peasants and Scheduled classes. Such an organic connection between Calcutta
and its eastern hinterlands would be severed in the case of Partition and if Calcutta was awarded
to West Bengal.114 Thus the petitioners, as representatives of not only the Muslim farmers but
also the port and industrial workers in Bengal, urged the British authorities to re-think and rework their decision to partition Bengal. On the other side of the coin, D. N Banerjee, a professor
112
Ibid.
113
For details see Chapter 3.
Letter to Lord Listowel from S M Usam, Ex Mayor of Calcutta and President Indian National Maritime Union,
Mr. Abdus Sabur Khan, MLA, and Mr. Mahisuddin Ahmed, President and Vice President, Bengal Jute Growers
Association, Calcutta, in protest against any scheme of partitioning of Bengal, dated 22nd May 1947 (approx.) in
File: L/P&J/7/12068 6076, Jan 1947-Jan 1948, Political Department, OIOC, London.
114
70
at Dacca University, noted, that Calcutta, by virtue of its population which was predominantly
Hindu, should be part of West Bengal.115
Conclusion
In the months leading up to the Partition, demands for and against the division of Bengal
were based on multiple concerns and contingent decisions influenced heavily by fast paced
changes in the negotiations between the British and Indian leaders. Even after the June 20
decision, Bengalis had little idea how and what the Partition would entail. As we shall see, the
confusion continued to plague both Indian and Pakistani State’s attempts to establish a postPartition national order and in the actions of those directly affected by such a project, the new
minorities and those living at the newly demarcated borders.
115
HS, 7 May 1947, 4.
71
Chapter 3
The Making of National Borders
The Boundary will be an international boundary, separating two independent
sovereign states. Such boundary marks the limits of the region within which a state can
exercise its sovereign authority, and with its location, various matters relating to
immigration and restriction on visitors, imposition of custom duties and prevention of
smuggling and contraband trade, are bound up. The boundary should undoubtedly be
drawn up in such a manner as would obviate chances of friction and clashes in
peacetime.1
Once the vote in favor of Partition of India and the Partition of Bengal was
announced in June 1947, political and public concern in Bengal shifted to the territorial aspects
of how and where the Partition would actually take place. The predicament of the division
became real as Congress, Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha leaders entered into intense and
often fractious negotiations to determine which areas of Bengal would fall within their
constituencies. In addition, educated Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims sent in suggestions and
requests for inclusion and exclusion, hoping to influence the decision of their political
representatives. The discourse on the border reflected both territorial concerns and provided the
space for the articulation of putative national identities.
This chapter focuses on the delineation, establishment and the control of one of the
actualities of the Partition decision, the international border. The confusion generated at its
creation did not disappear after the publication of the Boundary Commission report on August
17, 1947. Rather, the border between India and East Pakistan continued to be a contested zone
both in terms of territorial demarcations and within the project of defining who could and could
1
Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, File: Misc.B-1/1947, Home Political (Secret), Proceedings before
the Boundary Commission, 1947, West Bengal State Archives (henceforth WBSA), Calcutta, 13.
75
not be their citizens. In the process, the border became a site invested with security and honor of
the respective nations.
As both countries outlined and implemented legal and administrative mechanisms to
control and guard their mutual border, ambiguities of national identity constantly challenged the
respective post-Partition nationalist projects. The border remained permeable with continuous
legal and illegal movement of people and goods reflecting pragmatic and at times expedient
negotiations between states’ agents and its liminal citizens.
Genesis of the Border
a) Territorial Wrangling
Once the Indian political Parties accepted the decision to Partition, the next step was the
constitution of a Boundary Commission to draw up the ‘real’ border. Mountbatten’s June 3rd
Plan had brought forward the Independence of India from the earlier date of July 1948 to August
15, 1947, which meant that Boundary Commission had less than six weeks to come up with a
plan. The Boundary Commission with its four sub-continental members and a British Chairman,
Sir Cyril Radcliffe, was in line with the British aim to maintain the appearance of an arbitrator
rather than a ruler, especially on the eve of decolonization. Radcliffe headed both the Bengal and
Punjab Boundary Commissions and had the deciding vote within each Commission.
In keeping with the rational judicial façade of the whole process, the members of the
commission were all judges. The Bengal Boundary Commission thus consisted of well-known
judges, B. K. Mukherjee, C. C. Biswas, Abu Saleh Muhammed and S. A. Rahman. 2 However,
2
The Punjab Commission consisted of Justices Din Mohammad, Muhammad Munir, Mehar Chand Mahajan and
Teja Singh. Radcliffe was the Chairman for both Boundary Commissions. After Partition, Publications Division,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Delhi: Government of India, 1948), 22-3.
76
the fact that the Congress and Muslim League nominated them, made it difficult to maintain
impartiality once the deliberations begun. The appointment of Cyril Radcliffe was itself
problematic. As Lucy Chester points out, “In agreeing to Radcliffe’s selection as chairman the
Muslim League and the Congress leaders seem to have taken a peculiar view that ignorance of
India could be taken as a guarantee for objectivity.”3 Radcliffe neither had local knowledge nor
had any previous association with any kind of boundary making process. He was not objective
either; Radcliffe’s main loyalty was to the British government and it impelled him not only to
take up such a job but also to finish it as demanded despite chaotic conditions.4
The terms of reference for the Bengal Boundary Commission were simple enough; “to
demarcate the boundaries on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims
and non-Muslims, and in doing so take into account also other factors.”5 Further, where a clear
contiguous majority or minority became difficult to establish, the ‘other factors’ would assume
primacy. What comprised the ‘other factors’ remained undefined, giving Radcliffe room for
maneuver.6
The major political parties were required to submit depositions to the Boundary
Commission outlining their claims and suggestions on the border. For this purpose, the
Congress, Hindu Mahasabha, Indian Association and the New Bengal Association together
formed a Central Boundary Coordination Committee with barrister Atul Chandra Gupta as
3
Chester, Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary, 107.
4
ibid. , 73-114.
5
N Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942-7 Vol. XII (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1977) Appendix
1, 488.
6
Pro-British writers argue that the Partition Council deliberately desisted from attempting to define specific
considerations since there were too many issues to deliberate upon and they had little time. See Anthony Read and
David Fisher, The Proudest Day: India’s Long Road to Independence (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1998), 483.
77
Chairman. In addition, each party also set up their own Boundary Committees which asked the
public for their suggestions. Some like the New Bengal Association handed out questionnaires
seeking facts and figures in justification for inclusion within India.7
A close examination of the claims put forward by the major political parties shows that
the main issue at stake was not communal autonomy of either the Hindus or Muslims but
territorial sovereignty.8 The demands to Partition Bengal in the earlier months had not clearly
outlined where the line should be drawn. Further, the campaigns for Pakistan had tactically
remained vague when it came to a territorial definition of the new state. So given less than six
weeks to produce a geographical outline, the claims of both the Central Coordination Committee
and the Muslim League reflect a scramble for territory, at times regardless of the basic terms of
reference. In this respect, they made liberal use of the ‘other factors’ clause to demand areas
which were non contiguous and to make a claim for Calcutta, the capital of undivided Bengal.
For the Muslim League, the demand for territory other than Muslim majority districts was
based on two factors. First they insisted that that unit of partition should be either a union or
more appropriately a subdivision9 which was “self-contained administrative unit”, rather than
thanas, police stations, which were smaller units defining criminal jurisdictions.10 Such a
method, League representatives claimed would yield a straighter and less complex boundary
7
HS, 25 June 1947, 3.
8
Joya Chatterji, “The Making of a Borderline: The Radcliffe Award for Bengal” in Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh
ed. Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).
9
In the colonial administrative structure, a Presidency or province was divided into a number of Divisions each
comprising of a number of districts. Each district was again divided into a number of talukas or tehsils. Three to four
talukas together constituted a subdivision.
10
Report of Justice Akram and Justice Rahman, Proceedings before the Bengal boundary Commission, 1947,
WBSA, 1-26.
78
between the two states. Although such an argument had its merits, a division based on
subdivisions would also give more territory to East Bengal.11
Second, the League insisted that the principle of contiguity should be limited to areas
within Bengal. This meant that if an area were contiguous to other non-Muslim majority areas in
India but was not contiguous to any such areas within Bengal, and then it should automatically
be assigned to East Bengal. Using such a definition, the League demanded that the non-Muslim
majority districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling belonged to the future
Pakistan. To bolster their claims on Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the League pointed out that these
districts were the catchment areas of the Tista river system and control of this area was necessary
for the ‘physical and economic health’ of East Bengal.
The League maintained that the city of Calcutta and its surrounding areas should be taken
as one entity, and the decision to award it to either state should not be based on the fact that the
city had an overwhelming non-Muslim population. Consequently, Calcutta as the economic and
commercial center of the entire province of Bengal should go to East Bengal to ensure continuity
in the linkages between the jute mills in the city and the jute producing hinterland in East Bengal.
Further, assigning Calcutta to east Bengal would not only balance the revenues in proportion to
the population but also ensure that East Bengal was self-contained with its own ordinance
factories, military installations and railway networks. Such arguments allowed the League to
claim nearly four fifths of the territory of the Bengal province.12
11
Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, Proceedings before the Bengal boundary Commission, 1947,
WBSA, 1-65. The non-Muslim members of the Boundary Commission pointed out that the census population
figures were only available for the thanas and not for unions thus making it difficult to accede to the League
definition.
12
Report of Justice Akram and Justice Rahman, 24-25.
79
For the Central Coordination Committee, the aim was not much different. S.N. Modak,
the Chairman of the boundary committee of the New Bengal Association, “I may assure my
country men, specially those residing in the border line districts that we are fully conscious of
their anxiety and of the responsibility that has been placed on us. We shall leave no stone
unturned in our effort to incorporate in the New Bengal province as many areas as we are
reasonably entitled to.”13 To this end, the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, New Bengal
Association and Indian Association demanded, in addition to the non-Muslim majority districts
of Burdwan, Midnapore, Birbhum, Bankura, Howrah, Hoogly 24 Parganas, Khulna, Darjeeling
and Jalpaiguri, the two Muslim majority districts of Malda and Murshidabad. They also claimed
some thanas in Jessore, Faridpur and Rajshahi on grounds that these areas had a numerical
majority of schedule castes or the namasudras.14 Their demand would have included about 57
percent of the land for 46 percent of the population in West Bengal.
Atul Chandra Gupta, the chairman of the Coordination Committee, cautioned against
such an extravagant demand. Instead, he proposed that the Coordination Committee should put
forward two separate sets of plans to the Boundary Commission. The first, known as the
‘Congress Scheme’, outlined the actual claims of the Congress. The second plan known as the
‘Congress Plan’ was based strictly on contiguous majorities. Gupta argued that the actual
13
HS, 25 June 1947, 3.
14
The namasudras were one of two main scheduled caste groups in Bengal, the other being the rajbanshis. Known
as Chandals of Bengal, they inhabited the mainly the eastern districts of Dacca, Bakrganj, Faridpur, Mymensingh,
Jessore and Khulna. Sekhar Bandyopadhya has argued that in the context of Partition politics, ‘religion’ replaced
‘caste’ solidarities as the scheduled castes joined the Hindu nationalist groups to agitate for a Hindu homeland. For
details see Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 18721947 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997).
80
demands of the Scheme would easily be acceded once the Boundary Commission was made
aware of the shortcomings of the second plan.15
In their Scheme, the Congress advocated two cardinal principles. First, Partition must be
effected so that there may be as many non-Muslims as possible in West Bengal and similarly as
many Muslims in East Bengal.16 Such distribution should also ensure that the proportion of
Muslims in East Bengal to the total Muslim population of the province should not be unduly
lower or higher than the proportion of non-Muslims in West Bengal to the entire non-Muslim
population of the province.
To achieve this goal, the Coordination Committee advocated the use of the thana as the
basic unit of enumeration. Although more skillfully crafted than the proposal of the Muslim
League, the Congress demand also reflected a demand for territory. In addition to contiguity of
non- Muslim areas, the Congress claimed the Muslim majority district of Murshidabad arguing
that awarding the district to East Bengal would disrupt not only the Hoogly river system but also
hamper the activities of the Port of Calcutta and hence the economy of West Bengal. They also
insisted on the inclusion of the Sunderbans within West Bengal, claiming that it did not have any
resident population. Since it was uninhabited, it should be attached to Khulna, a non-Muslim
majority district that was contiguous to West Bengal. In the case of Murshidabad and the
Sunderbans the Congress concern for land and economic factors took priority over the basic
terms of reference.17
15
Although the other parties in the Coordination Committee voted against such a complicated tactic, the Congress
high command endorsed it and both plans were submitted to the Boundary Commission. For internal schisms within
the Coordination Committee see Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning a Frontier”, 206.
16
Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, 3.
17
Ibid. , 34-35.
81
b) Popular Demands: Culture and Tradition in Danger
In the current historiography, the process of boundary making is described as a top down
political and administrative process devoid of any inputs from the people themselves.18 However,
this ignores the public dimension of the process where educated individuals hoped that their
proposals would influence the outcome. Their suggestions provide us with crucial evidence on
the formation of putative national identity that sought inclusion within specific imagined
communities. Although there was no opportunity for them to present their individual cases
directly to the Boundary Commission, concerned individuals could send their suggestions and
requests to the major political groups. In fact, once the decision to Partition was announced, the
Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha set up district associations that invited representations with
regard to the boundary from the general population. For instance, local representatives of the
Congress in the district of Khulna constituted a Boundary Consultative Committee to collect and
present facts and figures before the Central Coordination Committee.19
Furthermore, the educated Bengali middle class voiced their concerns and suggestions in
the public sphere through newspapers and by writing to their representatives. In most of these
letters and opinion pieces, it was the religious identity of each community which was used as
basic justification for inclusion within India or Pakistan. The primacy of religion was in keeping
with the raison d'être of the Partition announcement, which demanded that people identify first
and foremost as Hindus or Muslims. However, a close reading of their depositions show multiple
concerns beyond religious identities, predicated on social and cultural ties.
18
Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier” and Willem Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderlands.
19
Also see Petition submitted by Magura Sammilani, Chittagong Hill Tracts People’s Association. HS, 26 June
1947, 3.
82
For instance, the non-Muslim population of Gournadi police station in Backerganj
District in East Bengal submitted a memorandum to the Lord Mountbatten, which detailed why
their area should form a part of the Indian Union. The petition noted that Gournadi had fifty
seven percent Hindus out of its total population making it a Hindu-majority area according to the
requirements of the Boundary Commission. In addition, the memorandum highlighted Gournadi
as an important seat of Hindu culture with the largest number of Sanskrit tols or village schools,
and temples in the district. If such arguments failed to convince the British Government, the
memorandum pointed out traditional social and economic ties with Calcutta and the intricate
connections to the Gopalganj subdivision by “ties of marriage”.20 The demand here was not for
the entire district of Backerganj, but only for the thana of Gournadi which according to the
memorandum contiguous to the non-Muslim majority subdivision of Gopalganj.
In keeping with the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission, the aim was to find
a neighboring area with non-Muslim majority and then demonstrate a case for contiguity. An
editorial in the nationalist newspaper Hindustan Standard also appealed for the inclusion parts of
Faridpur and Backerganj even though they did not “pass the strict test of contiguousness” since
this area in West Bengal would provide a natural boundary of the river Padma between the two
Bengals. Further, the editorial urged the need for at least half the territory of the Bengal for the
new province of west Bengal because “it seems certain that sooner or later the Hindus of East
Bengal will have to be accommodated in West Bengal and provided with honest means of
livelihood.”21
20
Ibid. , 7.
21
HS, 11 July 1947, 4.
83
This claim was echoed at the national level. Some members of the Constituent Assembly
such as M.N. Mahalonobis and Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra jointly published a statement
where they demanded that not less than half of the area and population of Bengal be placed
within the West Bengal cum north Bengal province. “This demand …is modest in view of the
size of non-Muslim population and the property owned by it. Every effort should also be made to
include within the province the most important places of Hindu pilgrimage and the seats of
Hindu religion and culture.”22 Concerns about Hindu culture were one of the key factors
interweaving public demands of inclusion within India. For Tinkari Bagchi, the Commissioner of
Nabadwip Municipality, a center of the Vaishnava sect, it was imperative that his district of
Nadia be awarded to India. He elucidated that,
Apart from the fact that the two most important subdivisions (in the district) namely the
Sadar and Ranaghat being Hindu majority areas, Nabadwip and Santipur are the two
famous historic towns which have for several centuries been the seat of Hindu learning
and culture. 23
Like Bagchi, many felt that the continuation of their cultural traditions would be disrupted with
the border which “was not the demarcation between two provincial units under one constituted
authority” as had been the case in the Partition of 1905, but “a clear cut line between two
independent sovereign states, viz. the Indian Union and Eastern Pakistan.” Inclusion of their area
within India would ensure the preservation of their religion and cultural traditions.
Joya Chatterji has argued that these demands for inclusion and concern about Hindu
culture are indicative and constitutive of a widespread Hindu communal movement demanding
22
Statement by Dr. P. N. Bannerjee, former leader of the Nationalist Party, Pandit L K Maitra M N Mahalonobis, P
R Thakur, B C Mukherjee, ‘Hindu Bengal: Question of Determining Right Boundary,’ HS, 7 June 1947, 4.
23
Tinkari Bagchi, Letter to the Editor, HS, 12 July 1947, 4.
84
territory for a ‘Hindu homeland.’24 The Hindu Mahasabha was the key mobilizing force
demanding division of the province. Such mobilizing efforts were not confined to the middle
class, but encompassed a substantial portion of the scheduled castes in Bengal, who on the eve of
Partition identified themselves as part of the Hindu minority.25 These scholars also contend that
the Bengali Hindu demands of inclusion within India on the eve of Partition are indicative of the
fact that religious identity had transcended the cultural linguistic boundaries and evolved a
broader spatial association.
However, such arguments fail to highlight the contingency of political negotiations,
which influenced Bengali public opinion in 1946-47 and the dynamic shifts in position within
public discourse. Further, the concept of Pakistan remained non-hegemonic when it came to the
Bengali Hindus as Muslim League propaganda in the 1940s alternated between the vague
territoriality and the specificity of the Pakistan idea as land for the Muslims. Partitioned India
with its claims of inclusion of all communities irrespective of religion may have seemed a
familiar extension of the earlier imagined political community. Demands of inclusion and its
corresponding spatial definitions have to be placed within such historical contingencies.
c) Reactions to Boundary Award
The Boundary Commission announced its award on August 17th 1947, two days after the
declaration of independence. Although the award was ready by August 12th, Mountbatten,
fearing civil strife, had arranged for its publication only after the British had relinquished
constitutional control over India. The award assigned 36.36 percent of land to accommodate
24
Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided.
25
Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity.
85
35.14 percent of population to West Bengal, while East Bengal received 63.6 percent of land to
accommodate 64.85 percent of the population. The two states had an equal proportion of
majority and minority populations in a ratio of approximately 70: 30. However, the award was
inequitable in its distribution of the minority population within each area as West Bengal
contained 16 percent of the total Muslim population of Bengal while East Bengal retained 42
percent of the total non-Muslims of undivided Bengal.26
The boundary line divided the five districts of Nadia, Jessore, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and
Malda.27 The Boundary Commission acceded to the Congress argument regarding Murshidabad
being crucial to the survival of the Hoogly river system and assigned it to West Bengal. Khulna,
which had been included in West Bengal under the provisional boundary, was granted to East
Bengal. Subsequent vociferous protests against the award fueled the belief that the district had
been exchanged for Murshidabad. The Radcliffe award failed to meet people’s expectations.28
At the official level the division did not resemble what either the Congress and the
Muslim League had proposed to the Boundary Commission. At a popular level the Award
initiated confusion and a sense of betrayal among Hindus and Muslims. N. C. Chatterjee, a
prominent member of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, protested against the award by
describing it as “an outrage on the principle of self determination and all canons of political
morality” and it had “ignored the cultural and economic needs” of the people of Bengal.”29
26
After Partition, 31.
27
See Appendix 1. (c) of this dissertation.
28
Press comments after the announcement ranged from “ A departing kick of British imperialism” (Amrita Bazar
Patrika), “Self Contradictory” (Hindustan Standard), “Territorial Murder” (The Dawn). Reported in D. F. Ebright,
Free India: The First Five Years (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1954), 25.
29
Speech by N. C. Chatterjee, a prominent Hindu Mahasabhite, at University Institute Hall, reported in HS, 24
August 1947, 4.
86
Bengalis sent telegrams and letters to various political leaders and British officials
requesting that the boundary be revised so that their respective areas would then be included on
the ‘right’ side of the border. For instance, Sarat Das, a member of the Khulna District Congress
Boundary Committee, sent telegrams to the Clement Atlee, the British Prime Minister, and to
Lord Addison, Secretary of Common Wealth Relations, and even to King George VI declaring
that the boundary award was “unsatisfactory, unreasonable, objectionable, inconsistent, arbitrary,
illegal, absurd, ultravires, unconstitutional” and needed immediate rectification.30 Such petitions
sent to British officials as late as October 1948 reflect not only a continuing association with
British rule on the part of the senders, but also a faith in the “prayer and ‘petition” methods of the
moderate nationalists of earlier decades to redress grievances against colonial rule. Similarly,
representative Muslim groups such as the Muslim National Guards of Pabna were upset that the
award did not include more of Bengal in Pakistan.31
The case of Khulna, a Hindu majority province awarded to Pakistan, and Murshidabad, a
Muslim majority province awarded to India, captured the betrayal that the general population felt
with the announcement of the award. Citizens of Khulna declared that they had been sacrificed at
the altar of division and been exchanged for Murshidabad. While the Khulna Congress
representatives petitioned the Congress High Command that their district be included in the
Indian union even if it meant an exchange with Murshidabad, local Hindu leaders of
Murshidabad appealed against such a potential exchange and accused the Khulna Hindus of
30
Telegrams postmarked 18, 23, and 26 August 1947, and 6 October 1948, File: L/P&J/7/12465 9920, Boundary
Commissions of Punjab and Bengal: Petitions, Memoranda, Telegrams, and Protests, Aug 1947-Oct 1948, OIOC,
London.
31
Ibid. , Telegram postmarked 26 August 1947. Other Muslim groups like the District Muslim Welfare Society of
Noakhali also sent petitions urging a change in the award. Telegram postmarked 26 Aug 1947.
87
being selfish.32 The Boundary Award had divided not only Hindus and Muslims but also
members within a single community.
People interpreted Mountbatten’s June 3rd Plan in different ways. Although leading
newspapers carried the details of the provisional plan to partition, the public had little
understanding of how it would translate into reality. The Award was to follow the principle of
contiguous majority areas but it was not the only consideration for the division. The general
public was unaware of the specifics of these other considerations until after the award was
announced. Thus the local Muslim League in Malda, which had several Muslim majority thanas,
had hoisted the Pakistan flag on 15 August only to find that most of Malda had in fact been
awarded to India.33 Similarly Hindus in Khulna had hoisted the Indian flag in anticipation of
inclusion within India.34
The confusion that engulfed the people of Bengal on the eve of Partition is aptly
portrayed in Satinath Bhaduri’s short story ‘The Champion of the People.’35 Situated in a small
village on the border between Purnea and Dinajpur, in north Bengal, the villagers in the story did
not know whether they were part of India or Pakistan. The narrative begins with Munimji, the
local black marketer announcing that the village of Titlia, would be awarded to Hindustan and
Mirpur to Pakistan. Pora Gossain, the leader and priest of the rajbanshis36 of Titlia is elated at
32
Letter from Ramgopal Banerjea to Acharya Kripalani, dated 10 September 1947, File: G 33/1947, AICC Papers,
NMML, New Delhi.
33
Telegram postmarked 23 Aug 1947, Petitions, Memoranda and Telegrams and Protests.
34
Ibid. , Telegram postmarked 22 August 1947.
35
Satinath Bhaduri, “Gananayak” (The Champion of the People) in Manabendra Bandyapadhya ed. Bhed-Bhibed,
108-125. Reproduced and Translated in Alok Bhalla, ed. Stories about the Partition of India Vol. I (New Delhi:
Harper Collins, 1999).
36
The rajbanshis or koch are a caste group of the Cooch Behar state forming 60 percent of the total population.
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series, Bengal Vol. 2 (Calcutta: Usha Publishers, 1984), 431.
88
such news and so is Achchimaddi, a Muslim resident of Mirpur. Shortly after Munimji’s
declaration, the villagers, who had hitherto maintained peaceful co-existence, put up the
Congress and League flags in Titlia and Mirpur respectively. Hindu refugees from Mirpur leave
their hearth and home and set up camp on the other side. However, when the Boundary Award is
finally published, the residents of Titlia found that their area had been awarded to Pakistan. For
Pora Gossain, being a part of Pakistan means that “I am going to be buried when I die. They
won’t even let me go to the temple.” Similarly for Achimaddi, Indian citizenship means, “we
will be forced to pray facing east, and they won’t let us kill chicken.” 37 For both characters, the
main concern was culture and their spatial identification of the imagined nation of India and
Pakistan. The story ends with Munimji making the maximum financial gain from the confusion.
Both Bengali Hindus and Muslims caught in areas where they were a minority felt
betrayed and pleaded with respective leaders to be included with their majority brethren on the
other side of the border. They continued to evoke cultural and economic ties as reasons for
inclusion. The ‘other factor’ clause in the Mountbatten plan was now key to such arguments. The
Hindus of Khulna petitioned Lord Listowel, the last Secretary of State for India in London, for
inclusion to India on grounds that the district included important Hindus religious sites that
needed protection.38 A memorandum from the Hindu residents of the thanas of Porsa, Patnitola
and Damurhat in Dinajpur urged the Boundary Subcommittee to include them within the Indian
Union even though they were part of a Muslim majority area. They contended, “It is the
economic incongruities of a boundary demarcation based on purely communal issue which
should be the subject matter of negotiations for an agreed revision of boundaries between the
37
Bhaduri, “The Champion of the People,” 270-71.
38
Telegram postmarked 23 Aug 1947, Petitions, Memoranda and Telegrams and Protests.
89
authorities of two dominions.”39 The memorandum elaborated on the various economic
difficulties that would befall the residents of these areas under the present line of demarcation.
Border disputes where the line went through common water bodies and severance of the trading
center of Nitpur in India from the rice growing hinterland in Pakistan areas were a few of the
projected grievances of the people in these thanas. The memorandum also underlined the
sacrifices of the residents in the national struggle for Indian independence if their arguments for
economic contiguity failed to convince authorities to redraw the boundary.40
Delimiting the Nation
a) Locating of the border
Although contemporary texts on boundary making warned against relying solely on maps
and advocated supplementary field surveys, the Boundary Commission had no time to undertake
such measures. 41 District administrators who had intensive local knowledge never had the
opportunity to provide any input. Colonial district maps aided the deliberations of the
Commission. In addition to maps, the Boundary Commission also depended on the controversial
1941 census to locate and divide the population according to majority/minority communities.42
The Congress representatives to the Commission argued that the 1941 census had been
conducted at a time when political power and representation depended on an increase in
39
Memorandum dated 12 Sep 1947, File # G 33/1947, AICC papers, NMML, New Delhi.
40
Ibid.
41
Stephen B Jones, Boundary Making: A Handbook for Statesmen, Treaty Editors and Boundary Commissioners,
Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945.
42
The Muslim League defended this census as authoritative. Lucy Chester, Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary,
70-71.
90
numbers. So they claimed that the Muslims had deliberately skewed the census in their favor
bending administrative boundaries to show more Muslim majority areas.
Although the Boundary Award for Bengal seemed precise and detailed on paper, in
reality, people had little idea of its actual delineations. Further, the parameters by which the
Boundary Commission operated was bound to create confusion and border disputes between
India and East Pakistan. By 1953, about 3,500 kilometers of the border remained undemarcated,
and by 1965, 1500 kilometers had yet to be settled.43 Even as late as 2004, certain parts are yet to
be surveyed, and India and Bangladesh have inherited the legacy of disputes, which began with
the 1947 Partition. Such disputes continue due to the non-availability of maps as in the case of
the Dumabari sector in the Tripura-Sylhet border.44 In cases where old maps are available, the
disputes center on the validity of these maps that do not take into consideration ecological
changes such as shifts in the course of rivers.45
When he drafted the boundary, Radcliffe based it upon pre-existing administrative
boundaries between thanas and districts. However, realities on site were very different from
mapping the border on paper. The boundaries between districts were not always physically
defined and one had to consult out of date survey and settlement maps to determine the actual
lines of demarcation. As one astute Indian police official remarked,
There is nothing to demarcate the boundary line except an imaginary one supported by
settlement maps showing the border of villages. In the event of encroachment the matter
43
Van Schendel, “Working through Partition,” 402.
44
The Dumabari sector was part of the Sylhet revenue district, now in Bangladesh. Both India and Pakistan insist
that the maps are with the other country. Naunidhi Kaur, “The Dividing Line”, Frontline, 18, no.10 (May 12 - 25,
2001), http://www.flonnet.com/fl1810/18100270.htm
45
Ibid. A section of the Tripura-Noakhali border lies along the Muhuri River, which is known to have changed its
course. While Bangladesh insists on using the survey maps of 1893 which would then give it 44 acres more than it
would have if the boundary follows the current course of the river. India insists on using the river course as it was
during the Partition and as agreed upon later in 1974.
91
will remain disputed until it is amicably settled by both dominions or decided by a court
of law by reference to the Settlement documents which may or may not be accepted by
both dominions46
Radcliffe also used natural features such as rivers as boundaries. However, these rivers
by changing their course over time led to confusion amongst border dwellers and border officials
alike. Again some of these rivers were perennial and would remain dry except during monsoons
when they would flood their banks obscuring the borderline completely. The Mathabhanga,
which formed the border for the northwestern part of Nadia, India, illustrates the confusions that
arose out of such ecological issues. The dated Bengal Government Press map that Radcliffe had
consulted did not chart the new course for the river Mathabhanga that formed a crucial part of
the new border.47 Consequently, almost 500 sq. miles of territory went to Pakistan instead of
India.48 Organizations such as the New Bengal Association, took up this particular issue in their
demands for boundary readjustments in the post Partition period.
Radcliffe’s use of rivers as boundary lines created other problems. In April of 1957, the
District Magistrate of 24 Parganas reported some Pakistani policemen had seized a country boat
belonging to an Indian national and loaded with grocery goods when it was plying along the
midstream of the river Ichamati49. Although this incident seemed similar to other cases of
trespassing into Indian and East Pakistani territory, what made this one of particular significance
46
Inspector’s Report on Border Intelligence of Nadia District, dated 23 April 1948, File no. 1238-47, Government of
Bengal Intelligence Branch (Nabadwip) Quoted in Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning of a Frontier” 221.
47
Although Radcliffe used a map prepared by the Bengal Drawing Office in 1944, the map itself was drawn on the
basis of a Survey in the year 1915-16. Decisions of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal, 1949,
Government of India, 1958, 19.
48
Letter dated 11 September 1947 from Secretary, New Bengal Association, Mehrpur, and Nadia to Acharya
Kripalani. This issue was resolved with the Algot Bagge Award of 1950 where the starting point of the river was
fixed at a point in the Ganges south west of Jalangi River. File: G-33/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.
49
Secret Fortnightly report of first half of April 1957, Reports and Returns: Fortnightly reports of West Bengal1957, File: 4/2/57-Poll-II, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1957, National Archives of India, New Delhi (henceforth
NAI).
92
was the fact that only parts of the river Ichamati fell in Pakistan territory.50 The authorities of
both dominions decided that the entire width of the navigable river between Sodepur and
Bhatchhala would be unused by the boatmen of both sides in the interest of border peace and
Indo-Pakistani trade.
The new border was ecologically challenged due to chars, alluvial plains that existed in
the middle of large rivers like the Ganges and the Padma. The Padma River, which divided
Murshidabad, India from Rajshahi, Pakistan, was dotted with chars which at times were large
enough to have entire villages built upon them. Immediately after Partition, the alleged East
Pakistani ‘occupation’ of Char Sarandaspur, one of the biggest char areas on the Padma,
provided the background for the deployment of military forces of India and Pakistan at the
border.51 Inter dominion talks at the highest official level managed to diffuse the situation and
both countries agreed to treat this area as no man’s land, and withdraw their armed forces five
miles away from the Char.
However, such claims to national territory became part of routine border disputes in the
subsequent years. After the monsoons of 1957, some Pakistani nationals and policemen
attempted to take possession of new char lands that had appeared on the other side Murshidabad
Rajshahi border, claiming them to be Pakistani territory.52 The issue was resolved with the
agreement that Pakistan would stop sending patrols to the disputed area and the Indian patrol
party would not cross the river just below the disputed char.
50
Ibid. The report pointed out that “the main stream of the river between Sodepur in the Indian union and
Bhatchhala in East Pakistan passes through Pakistani territory at the time of the ebb-tide due to the formation of a
char near the Sodepur side of the river and that during ebb tide all river craft plying in the river have to go along
midstream on the Pakistan side.”
51
HS, 1 January 1948,1.
52
Secret Fortnightly report of first half of November 1957, Reports and Returns.
93
The disputes over the char lands cropped up not only in terms of boundary demarcation
but also in terms of territorial sovereignty as expressed in the right to tax the char inhabitants.
When news reached Indian authorities that East Pakistani officials were carrying out unilateral
surveys of villages within the boundaries of Murshidabad district and detaining crops grown by
Indian cultivators on their own char lands, the Indian government decided to take over the rent
collection and khas mahal (Government owned land) management of these chars immediately.53
In addition the inhabitants were informed by the beat of drums that char lands were part of
Murshidabad, and the producers were free to bring back their paddy “by any means within their
power and that if they do not assert their rights we [Indian government] shall not be responsible
for their starvation.”54 Since most of the inhabitants in this border region were Muslims, such
statements called onto them to prove their loyalty by resisting the Pakistani authorities. Willem
Van Schendel argues that India and Pakistan in the post Partition period developed transterritorial nationalisms where both states saw themselves not only in charge of their own citizens
but also of a group of citizens still residing in the other dominion. Thus Muslims in Pakistan
were citizens in that country but Muslims in India were proxy citizens of Pakistan. The question
of loyalty of these proxy citizens was central to creation of national identity.55
National identity was one of the key issues at the border. The Lalbag Mahakuma
Rashtriya Samiti (Lalbag National Union Association), Murshidabad wrote to ask Premier
Jawaharlal Nehru to define the boundary demarcations for char Sarandaspur, Bhasgara and the
char lands of Jangipur sub division and officially to declare them to be part of the Indian Union.
53
Radiogram dated 27.7.48 (draft) to East Bengal from West Bengal, File: P184/48, Home Police Confidential
Records, Government of West Bengal (GOWB), 1948.
54
Ibid. Letter to BK Acharya, Addl. Dy Secy to GOWB Home, from AS Roy, Camp Nimtita PS Suti, dated 22.7.48.
55
Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia.”127. For elaboration on the question of loyalty, see Chapter 4.
94
Their letter emphasized that they had been actively agitating for inclusion within India, and
thereby, had incurred the displeasure of East Pakistan. Unless and until Nehru took steps to right
the wrongs done to them, these inhabitants could not return to their land without fear.56 Implicit
in the above demands of boundary readjustments were demands of citizenship and national
identity and government protection.
Demands for boundary re-adjustment, along with concurrent inter dominion border
disputes led to the formation of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal in December
1949. Headed by Algot Bagge, member of the Supreme Court of Sweden, this tribunal
adjudicated on the actual location of the boundary where the Ganges acted as the border. The
Radcliffe award had stated that “the line shall then turn south east down the river Ganges along
the boundary between the districts of Malda and Murshidabad; Rajshahi and Nadia; to the point
in the north western corner of the district of Nadia where the channel of the river Mathabhanga
takes off from the river Ganges.”57 The Pakistani member of the tribunal, Justice M. Shahauddin,
judge on the Dacca High Court, interpreted this to mean that the border would be a fluid one,
shifting with the course of the river. The Indian member, N. Chandrashekhara Aiyer who was a
retired judge of the Madras High Court, however pointed out that the Radcliffe award also
clearly stated, “the district boundaries and not the actual course of the river Ganges shall
constitute the boundary between East and West Bengal.” Thus Aiyar noted that Radcliffe had
intended the boundary to be a permanent, fixed line.
56
Letter dated 15th March 1948 from Jitendranath Roy to J Nehru, File: 12-12/48, Pak I: Ministry of External
Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.
57
Decisions of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal, 19. The tribunal also deliberated on boundary
disputes between East Bengal and Assam.
95
Like the Boundary Commission before it, the decision on the boundary was ultimately
left in the hands of the chairman. Justice Bagge agreed with Aiyar and announced that the
boundary should be the fixed along the district boundary line of Murshidabad and Rajshahi. The
Bagge Award was not the end of the story but just the beginning as subsequent years witnessed a
number of negotiations and transfer of territories across the between India and Pakistan.58 Border
disputes and claims of territory continue to be a regular feature of national life in both countries.
b) National Identity at the Periphery
For those living on the borderland, the new boundary disrupted their daily economic
activities for decades after the Partition and criminalized routine occupations. As a zone of
continuing transnational linkages, this border presented both states with problems of securing
and maintaining the border from ‘infiltrators’. Often such security concerns would translate into
cases of harassment by state agents at the border.
In March 1957, Indian authorities noted,
Five Pakistani armed policemen of Rajshahi district trespassed into our (Indian) territory
at Harirampur in police station Kaliachak of Malda District and kidnapped one of our
nationals who had gone there to sell eggs. He was assaulted and case and other articles
were snatched away from him.59
Officials of both India and Pakistan were prone to investigate such border crossings, whether to
attend the weekly market, cultivate paddy or visit family on the other side as potential antinational activity. Dr. Gaur Chandra Ray of Fulbari, India illustrates how the border created
barriers in the pursuit of one’s occupation. Dr. Ray resided in India while his dispensary fell in
58
The Indo- Pakistan Agreement of 10 September 1958, awarded portions of Beruabari Union to East Pakistan, and
came to an agreement on the exchange of the Coochbehar enclaves. For details on the enclaves along the India East
Pakistan Border, see, Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia.”
59
Secret Fortnightly report of second half of March 1957, Reports and Returns, NAI.
96
Kushtia, Pakistan. On 12 March 1948, while returning home with some medicines, two
constables of Kazipur Police camp arrested him and robbed him of his belongings. He was
ultimately released upon payment of bail of Rs. 2000.60
More frequently, the border severed villages from the markets that served them, forcing
villagers of one dominion to cross the border to access items for their daily use. At times, going
to the market could be construed as anti national which happened with some villagers at the
Sylhet border. At a public meeting, the local Muslim League passed a resolution that condemned
the situation in which the villagers had to travel across the international border to the local bazaar
at Dawki to purchase pan (betel leaf), orange pineapple, rice saplings and consequently to face
harassment from the Indian border officials61. Again the Government of India heavily taxed the
shopkeepers from Pakistan area. The resolution cited the case of Idris Ali, a tea stall owner, who
had been arrested by the Indian police on the accusation that he was a Pakistani spy. In response
and as a solution, a local bazaar at Tambil was started and the Additional District Magistrate of
Sylhet ordered the villagers from the Pakistani not to go to the Dawki bazaar.
However, the problem again arose when the official order was cancelled and people
started frequenting the other bazaar across the border. In another instance, Kalu Muhammad
Chaudhuri, a potato dealer from Jagirpara, Dinajpur (Pakistan) had given the Pakistan Police and
Muslim National Guards Rs. 15 to be allowed to cross to the Sarbamangla Hut in India.62 The
routine exercise of going to the market had now assumed international and national significance.
60
Incident on March 12, 1948, File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, Bangladesh
National Archives (henceforth BNA).
61
Resolution dated 3 April 1948, File: 5M-4/1948, Home Political B Proceedings 402 -408, July 1949 BNA.
62
Incident on 24 March 1948, File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, BNA.
97
The border dwellers developed ways and means to get around state mechanisms for controlling
their movement either by bribing officials or moving their goods clandestinely.
Because of the border’s physical as well as administrative distance from the central
authorities, official opinion within the Indian Government often suspected citizens in this region
of their loyalty to the nation. Such suspicion was fuelled by fears of loss of territory due to the
settlement of Muslims from East Pakistan. Muslim citizens of India in these border areas, who
continued to maintain ties with his/her kith and kin across the border, became the primary
surveillance targets for state intelligence officials. The severe food and unemployment crisis in
East Pakistan induced a number of Muslim citizens, along with the Hindu minorities, to make
use of such ties and seek food and shelter in India. When B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of West
Bengal observed in 1948 that a large number of Muslims were entering the border districts of the
state, he claimed that such migration might be for economic reasons or for social visits. Still, he
added that these Muslims might be “deliberately infiltrating into this province to act as fifth
columnists in an emergency.” Given the volatile situation in Kashmir and Hyderabad, he feared
that “these immigrants might well turn out to be a great source of danger.” 63
Roy was not alone in his concern about “unauthorized Muslim immigrants.” In fact,
several high level officials including Sukumar Sen, the then Chief Secretary, alleged that the East
Pakistan government had taken steps “to eliminate all Hindus from a depth of about 10 miles
from the (East Pakistani) border.”64 In addition, intelligence reports noted that there was a
“deliberate movement to import Pakistani Muslims and settle them in the (Indian) border areas
63
No File Number, Conference of District Magistrates held at Calcutta West Bengal, Home Political (Secret),
September 1948, WBSA.
64
File: JDM 868/49, Home Political (Secret), 1949, WBSA, 3. A high level official meeting took place on 4
November 1949 in Shillong on the subject of restricting immigration of persons from East Bengal to Assam.
Participants included N. Gopalaswami Ayyengar, Sri Prakash, Governor of Assam, B C Roy, Chief Minister of West
Bengal, G N Bardoloi, Chief Minister of Assam, Sukumar Sen, Chief Secretary of West Bengal and others.
98
in that the Muslim preponderance here might, later on, be urged as a ground for annexing these
areas to Pakistan.” As preventive measures, the West Bengal government often externed those
Muslims who, they felt, had deliberately encouraged the immigration of Muslim from East
Bengal. Further, in some cases where Muslims had transferred land to Muslim newcomers from
the east, the West Bengal government had requisitioned the land for the purposes of resettling
refugees (Hindu) from East Bengal.65
Such allegations were often directed towards the seasonal migration of Muslim laborers
from East Pakistan who usually crossed the border to work on the paddy and jute fields or the tea
gardens of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. The West Bengal government’s policy with regard to such
migration was clear. As long as the border crossers were casual laborers who entered India for
work and then returned home to East Pakistan after a certain period of time, the government did
not challenge them. However, it became a security issue if these laborers decided to settle on the
Indian side. The case of some Pakistani Muslim laborers working in tea gardens owned by one
Janab (Nawab) Musharraf Hussain illustrates the complexities of such fears. Trouble started
when the Deputy Commissioner of Jalpaiguri, a border district where Musharraf Hussain owned
four tea gardens, found that the latter was ostensibly “importing” Pakistani Muslims under the
guise of casual laborers and settling them in vacant land in his estates.66 Although the officials
acknowledged that even in pre-Partition days, tea garden laborers tended to settle in the areas
they worked in, such a practice could not now be “viewed with complacence.” When Musharraf
Hussain protested to higher authorities in Calcutta and Delhi, claiming that such a curb on
65
Ibid., 3.
66
No file number, Proceedings of the Conference on Influx of Pakistani Muslims held at the Cabinet Room, 12
September 1949, Home Political (Secret), WBSA. Conference members included the Chief Secretary, Home
Secretary, Inspector General of Police, and the district magistrates and sub divisional officers of the border districts
of West Bengal.
99
recruitment would affect the production of tea, the West Bengal government pointed out the easy
availability of Indian laborers from Bihar who worked in the tea gardens in high numbers and
“who can be depended upon to be loyal to the state.”67 The Indian government made it clear that
the “question of security in the area is however vitally involved…and vastly outweigh the
alleged interests of production of a little more tea.” 68
Concern over the migration of Muslim citizens from East Pakistan into West Bengal and
Assam continued influence the Indian government’s policies on border issues and the granting of
citizenship rights.69 Even when it became clear that the Muslim migrants rather occupying vacant
lands and claiming ownership were more likely to be absorbed within the labor force and
existing kinship networks, the Government of India remained suspicious of their intentions.70 In
1950, the Assam government passed an ordinance to order the removal of any persons who was
deemed to have come to the state from outside of India and “whose stay in the State is
detrimental to the interests of India.”71 Sure enough, this ordinance targeted only Muslim
emigrants and its discretionary powers were exercised towards the Hindu emigrants from East
Pakistan. This controversial ordinance aimed to remove all those who had come before or after
the ruling, and was soon embroiled in the ongoing politics of the state.
67
Sukumar Sen, Letter to CC Desai, dated 6 September 1949, ibid. , 5.
68
Ibid. , 4.
69
In the first session of the Parliament in 1950, Gopalswami Ayengar, the minister for Transport and Railways in
the Central government admitted “nearly four and half lakhs of Muslims have entered into the state of Assam alone
between 15 August 19 and beginning of November 1949.” Parliamentary Debates Official Report (Questions and
Answers) Part 1, 1 February 1950 – 13 March 1950 (GOI, 1958), 20.
70
In answering a query by parliamentarian B S Man, on whether Muslim emigrants from East Pakistan had occupied
any lands, Gopalswami Ayengar replied that “ There is no particular part of territory which these people have
occupied….they have come in driblets, and nothing like an invasion across the border all along the line has taken
place.” Ibid., 20.
71
Ayengar, ibid.
100
The Partition created a borderland within a territory whose inhabitants had
hitherto been residing in the heartland of Bengal and had little contact with the state machinery.
Almost overnight neighbors had become citizens of different nations, and their respective
governments expected the border to determine who would be co- citizens and who should be
regarded as foreigners. Although they were at the periphery of the nation, their existence in the
eyes of each government was hardly liminal.
Controlling the Border
a) Policing the economic frontier
Initially, the border was supposed to define only the political line of division between
India and Pakistan. The Standstill Agreement, concluded before the Partition, sought to ensure
that there was no disruption in trade and flow of goods from one region to the other.72 Such a
policy of free trade stipulated that the two Dominions should not establish any customs barriers
or impose prohibitory excise taxes on goods before they agreed on long term trade policies with
each other. There were also no restrictions imposed on the movement of people across borders
immediately after Partition. In an effort to normalize the post- Partition communal situation and
to prevent the hurried migration of refugees, official policy allowed Bengalis, both Hindus and
Muslims, to retain their titles to land on either side of the border. At the Inter-Dominion
Conference in Calcutta in April, 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and Liaqat Ali
Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, agreed to set up Evacuee Management Boards on both
72
“The complementary nature of the economies of the two Dominions therefore renders it necessary that, pending
the negotiations of long term agreements, steps should be taken by both Governments to ensure that supplies of
goods are distributed throughout the two Dominions more or less as they are at present when they form part of a
single state.” Report on Standstill Agreement with Pakistan, in S. L. Poplai ed. India1947-50, Select Documents on
Asian Affairs, Vol. II (External Affairs) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 124.
101
sides of the Bengal border to safeguard evacuee property until the rightful owners returned to
claim them.73 Officials hoped that the migration of minorities was a temporary phenomenon and
thus sought to ensure their free movement across the border. Both governments allowed their
respective citizens to cross the Radcliffe Line to conduct their economic and personal business
on the other side. In February 1948, representatives of East and West Bengal agreed to “allow
nationals of one state to move the produce of his land lying in another state in the border
areas.”74 Such a policy meant that the Bengal border was a political frontier, and citizenship had
yet to be defined in terms of residence and property ownership. Initially, people living at the
border exercised these rights guaranteed to them. For instance, many agricultural laborers from
Pakistan crossed over to Malda, India during harvesting season, and returned after their work
was done.75 Immediately after Partition, official policy thus tried ensuring that there was little
disruption in the lives of people living at the borderlands.
However, it was difficult to translate this official policy of a peaceful but porous border
into practice. With the expiry of the Standstill Agreement in February 1948, the Indian and
Pakistani governments declared that they would regulate all trade between the two countries. To
this effect, both countries set up departments such as Customs and Excise, providing
employment opportunities at the border railway stations. The Indian government set up 39 land
customs offices on the Bengal border and 22 on the Assam border with East Pakistan.76 By 1949,
Pakistan had increased the number of border outposts on the North Bengal border from 85 to
73
No file number, Proceedings of the Inter-Dominion Conference held at Calcutta, 15-18 April 1948, Home Political
(Secret) 1948, WBSA.
74
File: 62/1948, Conference of Representatives of the Governments of East Bengal and West Bengal at Dacca on
the 14th of February, 1948, Home Political (Secret), 1948, WBSA.
75
Conference of District Magistrates of West Bengal, WBSA.
76
Editorial, HS, 6 March 1948, 4.
102
162.77 The Standstill Agreement had cautioned against placing land customs barriers on a border
that had no natural boundary lines and had yet to be actually demarcated in certain parts. Further,
it had noted that it would be a difficult task to employ and train staff required to prevent
smuggling across a border that was 1350 miles long and traversed with innumerable waterways,
railways and roads. However, the new nation states did not heed such warnings and declared that
for the purpose of customs taxes, the other country would be considered “foreign” territory. The
imposition of customs barrier had the immediate effect of creating confusion among traders,
especially those who dealt in perishable items such as fish, eggs, milk and vegetables. The
Sealdah Fish Aratdars Association made a representation to the local customs authorities on the
enormous difficulties experienced by the fish trade due to customs barriers.78 Calcutta, one of the
main clearing centers, usually received more than half of the fish from East Pakistan. In addition
to customs barriers, the requisite permits for export licenses, which could only be issued from
Delhi, compounded the problem. Such a lengthy process meant that the fish and other perishable
items languished at train stations. In an effort to solve the problem, the Indian government
quickly declared the perishable items exempt from customs duties.
The change from a policy of free trade to one of regulation made the Radcliffe Line an
economic frontier zone that classified traditional economic activities into legal and illegal. Such
regulations contradicted with the policy of allowing borderland citizens to continue to buy and
sell essential items across the border. The establishment of border outposts and land customs
barriers ostensibly brought the state’s presence to the periphery. However the state could not
77
Van Schendel, “Working Through Partition.” 408.
78
HS, 5 March 1948, 3.
103
inspire or ensure loyalty among the customs officials and border militias who often ended up
harassing border crossers for pecuniary gains to supplement their meager incomes.
The peculiarities of the border in certain places also made things difficult for the
agricultural wage laborers. One April 25, 1948, the West Bengal police fired upon some wage
laborers of Rajshahi, in East Pakistan when they crossed the border to cut paddy in a piece of
char land which was under the criminal jurisdiction of Murshidabad, but its khasmahal or
revenue management was being carried on by the Rajshahi collectorate. Government Press
reports outlined the ongoing dispute over territorial jurisdiction and accused each other of illegal
actions.79
Given conflicting policies of both governments, the border officials had considerable
latitude to apply their own judgment in specific cases. In fact, the Government of West Bengal
“desired the District officers to use their discretion and expected that they would use such
discretion with imagination and tact.”80 However, border officials were usually harsh in dealing
with border crossers, sometimes using harassment as a means to personal gains. When Murari
Mohan Dey and Amulya Chandra Dutta were transporting two boats loaded with bell metal
utensils from Nawabganj, Pakistan to Malda, India from the 16 to the 18 March 1948, Pakistani
military patrolmen arrested them despite of the fact that they had a legal government permit to
export their merchandise. They and their goods were released only after they paid Rs. 500 to the
commander of the patrol station.81 Some cobblers from West Bengal who went to Pakistan to
work had a worse fate waiting for them as they attempted to return home on 4 April, 1948. First
79
HS, 1 May 1948, 7. The East Bengal government’s Press note on the incident appeared in the Indian newspapers
later. See HS, 20 May1948, 2.
80
Conference of District Magistrates of West Bengal, WBSA.
81
Report dated 24 March 1948 File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, BNA.
104
the Pakistan border police arrested them and released them only after receiving a bribe. Then the
Muslim National Guards arrested them again and demanded another bribe.82 In order to stop
such harassment, the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Pact of 1950 stated, “ There shall be no harassment by
the Customs authorities. At each Customs post agreed upon by the governments concerned
liaison officers shall be posted to ensure this in practice.”83 Thus Indian liaison officials would be
responsible for the Hindu minority residents of Pakistan and vice versa for Pakistan officials.
Concern for minority citizens of the other country was a key feature in Inter-dominion relations
in the post Partition period.
One did not have to live near the border to face harassment. Hindus and Muslims, who
tried to cross to India and Pakistan respectively, faced ignominious body searches. At times,
border officials would confiscate luggage without much pretext. Letters written to the major
newspapers described personal experiences of such harassment. Sasanka Bose, like many others,
wrote about his grievances to the major newspapers hoping for redress from the concerned
ministries. He pointed out that at Sealdah station no list of commodities that were allowed with
the passengers traveling to East Pakistan was available. Further although they were legally
allowed to carry ten yards of cloth, the officials “were disinclined to allow even a single yard.”84
Bose also claimed to have witnessed the seizure of such mundane items as soap and razor blades
from passengers. One intelligence official on the Indian side reported that the harassment had a
modus operandi: “Guards would threaten to search only the women members of the evacuee
group trying to cross the border. To avoid the humiliation of their women, male members among
82
83
84
ibid., 3.
File# 1/41/61-FIII, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1961, NAI.
Sasanka Bose, Letter to the Editor, HS, 3 November 1948, 4.
105
the evacuees then purchase exemption from such a search by giving away to them their cash
jewellery and other valuable moveable property.”85
b) Smugglers vs. Border patrols
One of the immediate consequences of delimitation and regulation of economic goods
was the rise in smuggling across the border. Partition had placed seventy one percent of jute
growing lands in East Pakistan and all the hundred and four jute mills and bailing presses in
India.86 Sustenance of the jute mills created a severe demand for the raw material, which was
further accentuated by India’s imposition of customs duty on that item. Second, both India and
Pakistan suffered from severe food shortage in the years after the Partition and were keen not to
allow food grains such as rice to cross the borders. Subsequent trade agreements continued to
place restrictions on the trade of both rice and jute. These commodities thus were the most
frequently smuggled from respective countries.
While rice, cloth, kerosene oil, and salt were smuggled from India, jute, betel nuts, and
chillies were the main products smuggled from East Pakistan.87 In addition to inter-dominion
trade agreements, the administrative officials of the border districts in India implemented several
measures to check the smuggling of items such as cloth and sugar to Pakistan. The District
Magistrate of Nadia issued a directive which forced cloth dealers to sell their merchandise only
in the presence of an authorized officer, and in addition prevented them from selling to persons
without ration cards and permits.88 Similarly, when the Nadia district officials discovered that
85
Note dated 30.4.64, File: 396/64(II), 1964, West Bengal Police, Intelligence Branch Archives, Calcutta.
86
HS, 1 August 1948, 4.
87
Fortnightly report for the first half of May 1957, Reports and Returns, NAI.
88
HS, 9 May 1948, 6.
106
women of Ranaghat were smuggling sugar by carrying it on their head at night, they prohibited
all sale of sugar at night in that area.89 Although the state undertook such drastic measures to stop
the illegal traffic of goods, for some villagers living at the borderlands smuggling provided an
economic opportunity that they exploited to the hilt. As border dwellers, living within ten miles
of the border, they were legally allowed to carry all kinds of goods between India and Pakistan.
Indian intelligence officials observed in 1964 that smuggling had become a “normal affair” and
“people living in both sides of the border very often indulge in smuggling which has been a very
lucrative avocation for them.”90 The report concluded that the smuggling was “carried out under
the tacit support of the police.” Border dwellers thus had an ambivalent relationship with the
local agents of the state. Although the presence of these officials created an obstacle to normal
trade, by enlisting the tacit support of these officials through bribes and other favors, the border
residents subverted the state structures aimed to control their activities.
Understandably India and Pakistan were distressed at the loss of revenue and launched an
extensive anti-smuggling drive to stop such activities. Prafulla C. Sen, the Civil Supplies
Minister in the West Bengal Government, issued a stern warning to all producers and traders of
surplus areas that smuggling of food was a serious crime and it was their “patriotic duty” not to
undertake such activities.91 Similarly, S M Afzal, the East Pakistani Food Minister, in December
1948 warned smugglers in the border districts “they would meet their fate at the hands of the
military and civil patrols posted along the borders and for such people there should be no
89
ibid.
90
Note dated 30.4.64, File 396/64(II), 1964, West Bengal Police, Intelligence Branch Archives, Calcutta.
91
HS, 5 March 1948, 3.
107
sympathy shown in any quarters.”92 Prevention of smuggling now became associated with one’s
national duty, and the border citizens were asked to prove their patriotism by putting a stop to it.
Besides government officials, some citizens of West Bengal also voiced their grievances
against smugglers and urged strict actions against them. Shyamapada Bhattacharjee, a MLA
from Behrampore, Murshidabad combined communal issues with the phenomena of smuggling
in that district. He pointed out that while essential goods such as cloth and sugar were not
available in Indian markets, such commodities were available in “good quantities in areas of
Pakistan bordering the Indian Union…these goods are being mostly smuggled by people who
style themselves as citizens of the Indian Union.” These smugglers showed a “total indifference
and lack of patriotism” and were “shamefully denuding the union of its wealth”. Seventy five
percent of them belonged to the majority community in the district that was a Muslim majority
area.93 Similarly, S.M. Siddiqui, a petty merchant based in Dacca, appealed the East Pakistan
Prime Minister to stop the smuggling, arguing that such activities were not only weakening the
country financially but would ultimately result in forcible union with India. The primary duty of
every Pakistani citizen was to stop smuggling and the prime minister could prove his credibility
by focusing his attention on this problem.94
Apart from declaring smuggling as “anti- national” and “unpatriotic,” India and East
Pakistan took some concrete measures to curb such illegal activities at the border. As a part of
the National Defense Planning, the Government of West Bengal (GOWB) proposed the
construction of three aerodromes in the border districts of Nadia, 24 Parganas, and Murshidabad,
92
HS, 17 December 1948, 6.
93
HS, 1 April 1948, 4.
94
File: 3L-3/1951, Home Political B Proceedings 529 -555, April 1952, BNA.
108
and a road connecting Calcutta to the border. Government officials claimed that these measures
when implemented would “provide better facilities of easy communication between the capital
and the border regions of the province and put Government in a better position to stop smuggling
of various commodities.”95 Further, concrete pillars would be placed along the border and
riverbanks to demarcate the boundaries of the two states. In addition, East Pakistan and West
Bengal set up private militias to tackle the problem of smuggling as well as instruct border
citizens of their patriotic duties. The GOWB announced plans to raise an army of 15,000 men by
the middle of 1948 to guard the 600 frontier posts of the province permanently in order to check
smuggling and subversive activities and a special battalion to guard the 50-mile natural barrier
along the river Ganges.96 B. C. Roy announced that such arrangements were also “for training
villagers in border areas to defend themselves and to act in collaboration with the police in the
neighborhood to assist them in stopping smuggling.”97
Moreover, a semi military volunteer corps came into being under the patronage of
prominent individuals including Uday Chand Mahtab, the Maharaja of Burdwan. Initially
registered as the Bangiya Jatiya Rakshi Dal (Bengal National Protection Brigade), this nonofficial association sought to train youths of the seven border districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri,
West Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, and 24 Parganas, to “protect the frontiers of West
Bengal from any Aggression by evil minded persons.”98 A training center was established at
95
HS, 28 January 1948, 1.
96
HS, 4 January 1948, 1.
97
The Statesman, 4 February 1948.
98
No file number, Memorandum of Association of Bangiya Jatiya Rakshi Dal, , Home Political (secret), GOWB,
1948, WBSA.
109
Kanchrapara under the permanent officer of Government with war experience.99 The number of
volunteers trained in 1948 was 1982. The period of training was fixed for sixty days but later was
extended to seventy-five days. During training, recruits were eligible to receive free
accommodation and meals, uniforms, medical treatment. In addition the state would also pay
them an honorarium of Rs. 5 per month making this a lucrative employment for some. Later in
the year, this Brigade was incorporated into the West Bengal National Volunteer Force, which
the Government of India funded and required to function in collaboration with the police, in the
maintenance of law and order in the province.
In East Pakistan, the state carried out an extensive recruitment campaign to form the
Ansar Bahini in early 1948. The name ‘Ansar’ was adopted as “expressing within itself the
historical and religious significance, the whole ideal of voluntary service to the community and
to the nation,” while ‘Bahini’ literally translates to army.100 Although membership to this
organization was open to all male Pakistanis between the age 18 to 45, volunteers mainly
consisted of Muslim youth who had been in the recently demobilized Muslim National Guards.
At its core, the Ansar Bahini was a voluntary group recruited to help maintain the safety and
security in rural areas as well as to mobilize resources to expand the local infrastructure. Then
again, at a time when East Pakistan’s civil structure had yet to come into full force it meant that
there was a break of communication between higher authorities at Dacca and those operating at
the local and rural levels. This disjuncture often led lower echelons of the Ansar Bahini to use
their police powers in an arbitrary and exploitative manner.
99
File No. 10/19/49- Police I, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.
100
James Buchanan, “First Annual Report on the Ansars” 1948, File: P10A-76/49, Police, GOEP, quoted in Van
Schendel, “Working Through Partition.” 407.
110
The respective governments used these militias to deter smugglers, to protect the border,
and to imbue the border citizens with the ideals of national citizenship. However, such ideals
were often interweaved with communal antagonism. Allegations were hurled back and forth
between India and Pakistan that respective border militias were inducing minority citizens to
migrate to the other country. The East Pakistan government claimed that the santhals101 of
Jagannathpur, Pakistan had been induced by some Hindus of the Congress to leave their homes
and cross over to India where they would be given Muslim houses. 102 After conducting a local
investigation, the Indian government denied such allegations. It in turn accused the Pakistani
border militia of oppressing the santhals who were then forced to temporarily evacuate their
homes. It is impossible to untangle what actually occurred but the above incident provides an
insight into the confusion and antagonism that prevailed at the border. The Ansar Bahini were
responsible for burning Muslim evacuee houses on the West Bengal side of the border so that
Hindu refugees would not be able to use these for rehabilitation. In addition, this ensured that the
Muslim evacuee from India would not be able to come back to his home in the future, making
his/her decision to migrate to East Pakistan a permanent one.103
c) The Paper Route: Passports and Visas
During the first five years after Partition, official policy in India and East Pakistan sought
to keep their mutual border ‘open’ even while regulating the flow of migrants. The Indian
Government had different policies with regard to movement on its western and eastern borders.
101
One of the main tribal groups in Bengal.
102
File: II-228/1948, Home Political B Proceedings 361-369, July 1949, BNA.
103
Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier,” 237.
111
Indians wishing to travel to West Pakistan required a permit, but if they wished to travel to East
Pakistan, no such permission was necessary. Similarly, the Indian government also promulgated
the Influx from Pakistan (Control) Ordinance, 1948, which made it mandatory for border
crossers from West Pakistan to acquire a permit.104 Those crossing the border from East Pakistan
did not require this permit. This permissiveness reflected the official belief that refugees from
East Pakistan would return to their homes once local situations improved. For India, refugee
rehabilitation on its eastern borders was a financial strain on the provincial and central
economies. For Pakistan the migration of the Hindu refugees signified its inability to provide
security to its minorities. By keeping the border open, both governments hoped to restore
confidence in the minds of the minorities and induce them to return to their homes.
However, official policy of a porous border did not last long. Faced with the continuous
flow of migrant refugees, Nehru and Liaquat Ali concluded a treaty in 1950 which sought to
guarantee security to the minorities on both sides. This treaty, concluded after the 1950 riots in
Khulna and Calcutta, failed in its projected aim of assuring the rights of minorities and 1950 –51
saw the highest peak in migration for both Hindu and Muslim minorities. The institution of
passport and visa regulations in October 1952 thus marked increased efforts on both sides to
monitor and prevent the migration of their respective citizens.105 Cross border commuting was
now filtered through a system of permits and migration certificates, allowing both governments
more power over who they would allow to cross their borders. Pakistan issued category A visas
for Indian nationals “who live in Indian territory within ten miles of the East Bengal border and
who normally earn their livelihood by working in Pakistan territory within ten miles of the East
104
HS, 4 November1948, 4.
105
The passport system came into force on October 15, 1952 for India and on October 17, 1952 for East Pakistan.
112
Bengal border.”106 This visa was valid for a maximum period of five years and limited the areas
to which an Indian national could venture in the Pakistan territory. Similarly, India agreed to
issue visas to Pakistani citizens who lived along the border. Pakistani cultivators with land
situated in an Indian village contiguous to Pakistan, shopkeepers and petty traders with
businesses across the border and agricultural producers dependent on markets in the Indian
villages along the border, were all required to provide rent receipts of their individual concerns to
be eligible for such visas.107 In the definition of both States, such a borderland stretched ten
miles east and west of the actual line of division. While recognizing and allowing border
dwellers to continue their cultivation and other traditional occupations, these regulations
arguably were intensified efforts to identify the citizens of the respective nations.
From October 1952, residents of India and Pakistan were required to obtain a passport if
they wished to travel outside the country of their residence. The passport as a document of valid
citizenship to one country was an imposition to those who remained uncertain whether they
would opt for India or Pakistan. The Indian passport scheme declared that those residents of
undivided India, who had migrated to Pakistan since March 1 1947, were not citizens of India
and hence would not be eligible for Indian Passports. Further, Pakistani nationals would not be
able to enter India without Pakistani passport. 108 Such requirements were in themselves
problematic and contradictory. For those, mainly Muslims, who had migrated to Pakistan after
Partition and after the 1950 riots, but now wished to return to India, the passport system made it
impossible by denying that they were ‘citizens’ of India. Again for the Hindu minorities in East
Pakistan who had hitherto traveled to and fro across the border to India without any paperwork,
106
File: 2B-17/1952, Home Political B Proceedings 968-972, March 1953, BNA.
107
The Statesman, 17 October 1952, 1.
108
Ibid., October 15, 1952, 1.
113
the passport system now required them to declare their citizenship to Pakistan first before they
could attend to business in India. By October 1952, both states tried to ensure that the choice of
migration and residency become irreversible for these minorities. Further, by attempting to fix
their citizenship the states hope to put an end to the continuing movement of these migrants.
The ‘closing’ of the border acted as a catalyst for the Hindus and the Muslims and the
days leading up to the introduction of the passport system witnessed large-scale migration from
East Pakistan to India. The Statesman, a pro- newspaper published from Calcutta, published
figures of migration for the month of October when migration from East Pakistan to India
through a single border outpost, Bongaon, averaged around 1000 persons daily.109 It also
reported that “among the immigrants, is a fair sprinkling of Muslims who appear to be as anxious
as Hindus to adopt Indian nationality before it is too late. This fact is interpreted to indicate that
the exodus is not altogether occasioned by communal tension.”110 The same newspaper carried a
telling photograph of the near empty border outpost of Petrapole, India, on the first day when the
scheme became operational to show the success of the scheme in curbing the refugee flow.111
Understandably the Scheme did not find support among the Hindu minorities in East Pakistan
who viewed it as yet another obstacle in maintaining their economic and social ties with India.
Bhabesh Chandra Nandy, member of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, asserted that the
Passport Visa Scheme did not solve any border security issues in East Pakistan because “the
boundary line sometimes divided the same house, the outer portion coming within Pakistan and
109
Ibid., October 8, 1952, 8.
110
Ibid., 1.
111
Ibid., October 16, 1952, 1.
114
the inner portion of the house falling in the Indian Dominion.”112 Further, the reduction in the
number of migrants also affected the local economy in the border region. “In every railway and
steamer station such as Goalondo, Chandpur, Narayanganj, thousands of passengers used to
come and go and hundreds of people as porters or business men were earning their livelihood.
Some were running small hotels and restaurants, some were selling pans (betel leaf), cigarettes
and bidis (indigenous cigarettes), and some were working as coolies. Now as the number of men
going by steamers and trains have reduced …these people have lost their earning and are now
starving.” For Nandy, the introduction of the scheme thus was “impracticable and a most costly
project.”113
To “alleviate the hardships” of minorities due to the introduction of the Passport and Visa
Scheme, the Indian government initially announced that migrants from East Pakistan would not
require a Pakistani passport but only needed to have obtained a ‘migration certificate’ from the
Deputy High Commissioner for India in Dacca. To acquire such a certificate, the intending
migrant would have to write to the visa officer in Dacca, providing details about himself and his
family members and the reasons for migration to India. In addition, to prevent impersonation, he
was required to provide photographs of himself and all his family members who would be
migrating with him.114 The process promised to be simple, and cost effective by not needing the
applicant and his family to travel to Dacca. However, by 1956 several anomalies in the system
became evident which highlighted the contradictory concerns within the policymakers with
regard to the East Pakistan migrants.
112
Constituent Assembly (Legislature) of Pakistan Debates, Vol. 1. No. 14 (Government of Pakistan, 25 March
1953), 716.
113
Ibid. , 717.
114
The Statesman, Oct. 15, 1.
115
The issue of migration certificates depended on the discretionary powers of the migration
officers stationed at the High Commission in Dacca. In pursuance of the Indian government’s
policy, these officials were instructed that “facilities for migration should be given in all genuine
cases but should not be available to every member of the minority community regardless of the
merits of the case.”115 This meant that those who had landed property or any business in East
Pakistan were not entitled to procure a migration certificate “unless there was a danger to their
life,” or in cases involving “danger to the honor of women folk.” Economic distress was not a
valid reason for migration since it was not confined only to the minority community but affected
all Pakistan citizens. Further, the Indian government argued that if “the members of the minority
community were to be encouraged by us to migrate because of economic distress in the country
(East Pakistan) we will only be providing justification for Pakistan propaganda that the Hindus in
East Bengal are only “shadow Pakistanis.”116
However, for some Indian officials, such a policy was too narrow in definition and
requirements for intending migrants. A. C. Guha, the Minister for Revenue and Defense
Expenditure pointed that East Bengal had been suffering bad harvests and critical food crisis in
the past few years, which made it difficult for the petty land or business owners to maintain their
families. He claimed that East Pakistani government was being differential in its dispersal of
relief measures towards its Hindu and Muslim citizens such that “ The middle and lower class
Hindus have now got no means of livelihood. The only alternative for them to save their life is to
migrate.”117 Although Guha was making a clearly communal argument, it struck a chord within
115
Memo dated 27 August 1956, File# 1/22/56-FIII, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1956, NAI.
116
K M Kannampilly, 27 August 1956, ibid.
117
A C Guha, “Note on the Migration from East Bengal” 22 August 1956, ibid.
116
the higher authorities in Delhi. The Indian government did not change its policy but instructed
its High Commission to relax its guidelines and issue migration certificates where it would
remove genuine hardship.
The bureaucratic regulation of the border gave rise to a cottage industry of preparing false
visas, passports and migration certificates in Dacca and Calcutta. In an attempt to curb such
practices that prevented the governments from identifying their legal citizens, photographs
became a key requirement for issue of such official documents. However, for many of the
applicants, who resided in rural villages of East Pakistan, such a requirement often involved long
treks to the nearest town and additional expense to those who often had limited means. In an
attempt to relieve intending migrants from such problems, the Indian government proposed that
migration certificates should limit their requirements to photographs of only the male members
of the family thereby sparing the women. Such gendered concerns were also embedded in the
process of acquiring passports in East Pakistan. The Pakistani passport scheme had a separate
provision for mainly Muslim women who observed the purdah by excusing them from having to
submit photographs. A passport officer in Faridpur, East Pakistan noted however that a “ number
of Hindu gentle men were coming up with the request that their women folk should be exempted
from the necessity of submitting photographs because they were pardanashin.”118 The officer
pointed out in his memo to the higher authorities in Dacca that very few Hindu women in East
Pakistan observed purdah. The concern expressed by the Hindu men was only because they
wished to avoid the expenditure on photographs for passports.
Thus the passport and visa regulations of 1952 had a two-fold aim. Not only did they try
to count and control the number of people who would be allowed into India, but by issuing
118
Passport Officer, Faridpur, memo no. 74-PF dated 6 November 1952, File: 18P-54 /1952, Home Political B
Proceedings 253-255, July 1953, BNA.
117
migration certificates to the potential evacuees, the Indian state had the power to identify who
would be allowed to cross the borders. Further, the migrant was required to carry three copies of
the migration certificate, handing one to the Pakistan outpost, another to the Indian outpost, and
the third to passport authorities in India. Such a process was one of the rites of passage that the
migrant had to undergo in his/her quest for Indian citizenship. It was at the border first and
foremost that he or she had to declare his intent and renounce his citizenship of Pakistan.
Conclusion
The India-East Pakistan border as it evolved from a rough and ready border in 1947 to an
international border by the 1960s, reflected the dynamic spatial and political differences between
the two countries. At its inception, the border reflected the diverse ideals of the members of the
Boundary Commission. Although both the Congress and Muslim League were keen to wrest as
much more territory for their respective nations, Radcliffe was concerned about making a
decision that the international world would perceive to be fair. At no point in the deliberations of
the Boundary Commission was there any concern about how the line would affect the people in
the new borderlands.
Within months of the announcement of the Boundary Award, India and Pakistan were
engulfed in the project of establishing, maintaining and controlling the border. The actual act of
delineation was severely hampered by ecological problems and the existence of enclaves. The
peculiarities of the border in some parts where it divided houses or separated cultivators from
their lands compounded the problem. Territorial disputes continue to checker the history of this
border even as the present Indian and Bangladesh government negotiate the delineation of the
last 6.5 km stretch.
118
In addition to defining the political limits of the two nations, this border also became the
economic frontier, restricting the free flow of bulk goods as well as items of daily use. The
establishment of the border with its regulatory institutions such as the customs outposts and
border check posts also led to the development of a subversive economy at the borderland.
Smuggling became rampant, its continuance despite state efforts to curb it, constantly
undermined the territorial and jurisdictional limits of the nation. Often citizens at the periphery
participated in the smuggling of goods even as both states tried to instill in them the virtues of
moral citizenship.
It was at the border that competing nationalist projects met and the inhabitants at the
border were drawn into the center of the post colonial endeavors of national identity formation.
Although their respective states sought to identify them as Indian and Pakistanis, the border
citizens often had ambivalent attitudes towards such impositions. The new border, for these
citizens at the periphery, became an embodiment of disruption and harassment. It sought to
divide the cultivators from their fields, businessmen and consumers from their markets and
separated families from their kith and kin. With time, these citizens evolved ways to bypass the
official restrictions on the movement of goods and people by entering into symbiotic relationship
with the state agents at the border. This ensured that this border continued to remain ‘open’ in
actuality.
119
Chapter 4
Quest for Citizenship: Minorities and Requisition of Property
The outcomes of Partition were swiftly translated in the realms of identity formation.
Almost overnight, Bengalis had spawned another set of identities, which demarcated them as
Indians and Pakistanis, determined mainly by their continued residence on either side of the
Radcliffe Line. As people began to come to terms with their new identities, both states implicitly
began to demand loyalty to their respective nations. In the absence of any clear indicators on
how such loyalties could be assured, religious demographic identity, which had been the key
basis for the division, continued to be the main defining factor. In popular and often in official
perception, a Hindu was expected to move to India while a Muslim was to move to the newly
created East or West Pakistan.
Within the first year of statehood, both states began to produce a linear equation between
loyalty to the nation and citizenship. In such circumstances, those Hindus in Pakistan and
Muslims in India who continued to defy implicit expectations that they would migrate became,
on the one hand, necessary political subjects whose continued residence in their natal countries,
provided their countries with authentication for their secular aspirations. On the other hand, these
minorities had to re-negotiate their public and private interactions in their daily lives as their
routine actions were now automatically put under the microscope of national allegiance. Under
such interrogations, minorities by virtue of their religion were assumed guilty of disloyalty till
proven otherwise.1
1
Gyanendra Pandey indicates the important distinction between ‘nationalist Muslims’ and Muslims in the years
immediately preceding the Partition. After Partition, the question that animated the debates within India was whether
the Muslim could also be an Indian. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition, 152-160.
117
This chapter examines the interstices between legal citizenship and notions of belonging.
Although Partition had divided the physical nation into two, citizenship, especially for minorities
on the wrong side of the border was not immanent. The debates within India, on what constituted
the moral nation, tended to identify Hindus and Sikhs as “natural” citizens and by default the
Muslim minorities as ‘naturally’ belonging to Pakistan.2 In Pakistan, especially in its eastern
wing, Hindus were deemed to have a “natural attraction” to India. Migration of minorities,
initially temporary, thus reflected their attempts to find security and negotiate this “natural”
ascription of their identities as national citizens. However, for those minorities who continued to
stay behind in their ancestral homes, citizenship remained imbricated within layers of past social
and economic relations. Loyalty, for these minorities, was an attendant corollary to continued
residence.
In the decades after 1947, those who continued their residence as minority citizens in
either India or Pakistan frequently encountered metaphoric acid tests that demanded tangible
proofs of their loyalty to the nation. Migration across the border seemed easier albeit a
temporary remedy towards such prejudicial demands. Both India and Pakistan guaranteed
citizenship rights to their minorities and passed several laws to protect minority property of those
who had crossed the border. Initially, minorities retained legal ownership of their propertied
wealth and maintained close ties with their extended family members who had remained behind.
However, such legal and bureaucratic measures circumscribed the citizenship rights of the very
minorities that they sought to protect and in their implementation created potential “evacuees”
and “refugees” out of minority citizens.
The first section of this chapter focuses on the policies of India and Pakistan towards
their respective minorities. Both states were apprehensive of the unofficial migration of
2
Ibid., 164-68.
118
minorities, which engulfed the Punjab region in 1947-48. India instituted a permit system on its
western border in 1948 ostensibly to regulate the flow of migration to India. But the permit
system primarily targeted those Muslim evacuees who left India during the 1947 disturbances
but then returned. India policies on its eastern border were predicated on the understanding that
the lack of violence there, as compared to Punjab, would not necessitate large-scale migration of
minorities. Thus the Government of India did not institute a permit system in the east because of
economic and social considerations and continued to regulate the border through local channels
till the institution of the Passport and Visa Scheme in October 1952. Although both states were
against any exchange of population and publicly guaranteed equal rights to its minorities, they
transferred official personnel. Consequently their respective minority officers had the right to
choose the country in which they wanted to serve.
The second section of the chapter focuses on the legislation surrounding the protection
and requisitioning of properties belonging to those minorities who, despite government
measures, had either temporarily or permanently moved across the border. In the process of
migration, these minorities came to be termed as evacuees in their home countries and refugees
or displaced persons in the country of their relocation. Official efforts to protect evacuee
property often became entangled with rehabilitation measures for refugees. Thus evacuee
property legislation and refugee rehabilitation measures often pitted “evacuee” rights against
“refugee” rights. Minorities, who were first evacuees and then refugees, suffered from the
inability of their home governments to either keep their promises to protect their property in one
country and their receiving governments to ensure economic rehabilitation. Under such
circumstances, it was often easier to couch their frustrations with official measures within the
rhetoric of minority persecution.
119
From the Partition’s Womb: Minority Citizens
Because of the religious demography of pre-partition Bengal, Bengali Hindus and
Muslims here were familiar with the political economy of being minorities. Although Bengali
Muslims had been declared a political majority within Bengal in the Communal Award of 1932,
they remained imbricated within the existing minority politics of the All India Muslim League.
But Bengali Hindus, although part of the majority within all-India politics, had adopted the
political tactics of minority politics within their home province. On the eve of Partition, Bengal
politics exhibited two distinct elements divided along religious lines. Partition, widely seen as a
“solution” to the communal predicament, created new problems.
Indian and Pakistani leaders in 1947 confronted a key issue regarding the position of
minorities in their new nation states. After the decision on June 20th to partition Bengal, the
future of the Bengali Hindus in east Bengal became the focal point of public debate. Between
June and August 1947, Calcutta newspapers began to publish letters, from concerned individuals,
mainly residing in eastern Bengal, that reflected the prevailing uncertainties.3 A letter from
Faridpur urged the exchange of population and questioned higher authorities, “ What will be the
position of the Hindus in Pakistan Bengal? If they are given the right of citizenship of the
Hindustan union they will be treated as aliens in Pakistan Bengal. There is the same risk if they
accept the right of citizenship of Pakistan dominion.”4 The condition and status of Hindu
minorities in a declared Islamic state stimulated apprehension. In July 1947, Kiran Shankar Roy,
a Congress leader in eastern Bengal at that time, wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru describing such
3
See Hindustan Standard, “Task before Hindus in East Pakistan,” 21 June, 1947, 4; “The Fate of East Bengal
Hindus,” 26 June, 1947, 4; “Future of East Bengal Hindus in Government Services,” 1 July, 1947, 4; “Minorities in
East Bengal,” 15 July 1947, 4; “What the East Bengal Hindus Feel,” 15 July 1947, 4; and see similar letters and
articles in HS 17 July, 1947, 4; 20 July 1947, 7; 23 July, 1947, 4; 25 July 1947, 4; 5 August, 1947, 3; 8 August,
1947, 4; 28 August, 1947, 4.
4
HS, 15 June, 1947, 4.
120
apprehension as “legitimate fear” among the minority community in East Pakistan. In Roy’s
opinion minority Hindus were worried that they would be subjected to unfair discrimination in
employment and expected interference or restrictions on their religion and culture.5 As a
solution, Roy urged Nehru to ensure that these minorities not be regarded as aliens in India, even
though they resided in East Bengal. In his reply to Roy, Nehru assured him that “the members of
the minority communities in Pakistan should not be treated as aliens in India.” Nehru claimed
that for these East Bengali Hindus, the question of being aliens did not arise while India had
dominion status, and once “dominion status ends [that] nationality will have to be defined rather
precisely. You can rest assured that we shall give every facility to minorities in Pakistan.
Essentially however, this will be a provincial matter.”6 In an article published in the Hindustan
Standard in July 1947 Nalini Ranjan Sarkar asserted that
Hindus in this part of Bengal are labouring under the notion, rightly or wrongly that the
elemental security of life and property is not assured to them in the future East Bengal
state. They also do not feel sure about their economic security or their honor. Last but not
the least, they are afraid of their cultural and religious life being lost and merged into the
culture and religion of the majority community.7
He then cautioned against mass migration because of the lack of land that would be necessary to
support the ten million or more refugees from East Bengal. Regional Congress leaders such as
Sarker, a veteran of the 1905 Partition, repeatedly urged the Hindu minorities in East Bengal to
remain there and pledge allegiance to the Pakistani state. They emphasized that the Hindus in
future East Bengal would comprise around thirty percent of the population, sufficient to form a
sustainable political opposition to any detrimental action from the Muslim majority.
5
Letter dated 18 July 1947 in S. Gopal ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 3 (New Delhi:
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1990), 188.
6
Ibid.
7
HS, 27 July 1947, 4.
121
Nevertheless, Hindus in East Bengal remained skeptical of such assurances. Hemendra
Kumar Deb, a resident of Brahmanbaria district in East Bengal, noted,
The real issue is not whether the east Bengal Hindus would be allowed to live in peace in
Pakistan but the issue is whether they would live as aliens in their own lands or would
enjoy the same freedom which the rest of India are going to enjoy… The minds of east
Bengal Hindus are not perturbed over possibilities of future communal riots but their real
apprehension is for their future political status.8
Clearly, once freedom from British colonial rule had been assured, the next question in the minds
of the Hindu minorities was their political and social standing in Pakistan.
In the days before Partition, contingency and confusion were the two catchwords
defining the lives of minorities in Bengal. Individuals wrote to local and regional Congress
leaders, seeking answers to their queries about their future status, and these local branches sent
similar queries to Congress headquarters in New Delhi. Nikunja Behari Saha, President of the
Nagarpur Congress Committee in Mymensingh district, anxiously enquired of the AICC,
What will be the future relation between the Congress committees lying in the
Eastern Pakistan with the AICC? Will they run as before? How is it possible? Who shall
we follow? What will be our present work? The minority of Pakistan has been much
terror stricken not only that some of them have already left for West Bengal; others are
seeking opportunity [sic] villagers very often flock together and asks our advice. What
advice and consolation can we render to them?9
Sadiq Ali, the General Secretary of the AICC, was unable to provide any concrete assurances
and lamented that, “The questions you have raised are before us but it is not possible for us to
reply to them at this stage. When we have before us the full picture of the Pakistan state, as it
will finally emerge, we shall be in a position to consider the questions you have raised.”10
8
HS, 23 June 1947, 4.
9
Nikunja Behari Saha to Sadiq Ali, 4 July 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.
10
Sadiq Ali to N. B. Saha, 10 July 1947, ibid.
122
Although Hindus in East Bengal made a concerted demand for a transfer of population,
Nehru and Jinnah were against any mass population exchange, recognizing the economic burden
such a process would engender. On the one hand, Jinnah, at a gathering of defense and civilian
personnel at Karachi on 11 October 1947, declared that if the “ultimate solution of the minority
problem is to be mass exchange of population, let it be taken up at governmental plane and not
be left to be sorted out by blood thirsty elements.” 11 On the other hand, Nehru thought that an
exchange of population would “upset the economy of India,” and that “we will sink as a nation
without any resources with a starving and dying population.” 12 However, the minorities in East
Bengal did not accept the possible economic consequences. A group of east and north Bengal
Hindus petitioned the AICC on 15 August 1947 demanding an exchange of population as their
historic right as nationalist freedom fighters. They advocated the need for effective planning and
disputed Nehru’s contention arguing, “Why should it be absurd and foolish, an Empire of over
thirty crores with vast wastelands, resources, brains, industrial prospects certainly can
accommodate two crores more (of East and North Bengal, and West Punjab), a family of 15 may
surely accommodate one more.”13
Nonetheless, immediately after 15 August, both Jinnah and Nehru publicly assured their
respective minorities of their citizenship rights and the continuation of their religion and culture.
In the first session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Jinnah promised the Hindu
minorities that they had nothing to fear and would have citizenship rights equal to those of the
majority Muslim citizens. He declared,
11
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Speech, quoted in S. Gopal ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 148 fn.
12
Ibid., 148.
13
“East and North Bengal Hindus,” 15 August 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.
123
Much has been said against it [the Partition], but now it has been accepted, it is
the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honorably act according to the
agreement which is now final and binding on all… If you change your past and work
together in a spirit that everyone of you no matter what community he belongs to, no
matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what his colour, caste or
creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and
obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.14
He further affirmed that, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to
go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to
any religion caste or creed- that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” In later years,
both Pakistani officials and Indian authorities often quoted this speech; first to provide assurance
to their minorities that Pakistan was not a theocratic state and second as an indictment of unkept
promises.
Similarly, when he addressed the annual Congress Working Committee meeting on 15
November 1947, Nehru asserted that
The Congress wants to assure the minorities in India that it will continue to
protect to the best of their ability, their citizen rights against aggression. The central
government as well as the provincial governments must accordingly make every effort to
create conditions wherein all minorities and all citizens have security and opportunity for
progress. All citizens must also on their part not only share in the benefits of freedom but
also shoulder the burdens and responsibility that accompany it, and must above all be
loyal to India.15
Implicit within his guarantee was the notion that minorities specially had to ensure that their
loyalty to the nation was above suspicion.
During the summer and autumn of 1947 local and national Congress leaders began to
articulate an explicit hostage theory whereby the safety of the minorities of one state would
14
Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, Vol. 1 (2) (Karachi: Governor General’s Press and Publications, 11
August 1947), 19-20.
15
Congress resolution moved by Nehru at the AICC meeting, New Delhi, 15 November 1947, File no. ED-7 (Part
II) 1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML. Emphasis added
124
guarantee the security of the other. In July 1947, when urging Hindus to remain in East Bengal,
Nalini Ranjan Sarkar boldly declared that “I have absolutely no doubt that in West Bengal and in
the Indian Union the Muslims would get a fair deal, and this cannot but react favorably on the
Hindu minorities in Pakistan.” 16 Addressing the annual AICC meeting on 15 November 1947,
the Congress Working Committee President, Jivatram Kripalani noted,
We should frankly tell the League minded Muslims that though we, Congressmen and
our governments are determined to protect them, we can’t do so merely on the strength of
our police and army…. The safety of the Muslims must come from their Hindu neighbors
who form a majority of the population and from whom the majority in the ranks of the
police and army must come. These will not be active in affording protection unless they
know that their co-religionists in Pakistan are getting a fair deal.17
Another well-known Congress member and a Muslim, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad,
acknowledged that,
It was being openly said in the Congress circles that Hindus in Pakistan need not have
any fears as there would be 45 millions of Muslims in India and if there was any
oppression of Hindus in Pakistan, the Muslims in India would have to bear the
consequences… It implied that partition was being accepted on the basis that in both
India and Pakistan, there would be hostages who would be held responsible for the
security of the minority community in the other state.18
The parallel riots that engulfed Punjab immediately after the Partition confirmed such a
perception in the public mind. Reminiscing in 1968 on the Partition period, Pravash Chandra
Lahiry, a Hindu Congress leader in East Bengal, noted that the Bengali Muslims became
apprehensive as news of butchering of Hindus in West Punjab reached West Bengal. According
to Lahiry, such obvious correspondence was a direct outcome of the Partition that had created
16
HS, 27 July 1947, 4. Also see, HS Editorial, 15 July, 1947, and Letters to the Editor in the same, 17 July, 1947,
where the writers’ prophesized that the condition of Hindu minorities would depend on reciprocal treatment of
Muslim minorities in India.
17
Congress Resolution at AICC Meeting in New Delhi, File no. ED-7 (Part II) 1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.
Italics in original.
18
M.A.K Azad, India Wins Freedom, 232.
125
minority populations who, almost overnight, had became responsible for the actions of their coreligionists across the border.19 Lahiry contended that in Bengal, Mahatma Gandhi who had
arrived in Calcutta in September 1947 to calm fears of the Muslim minorities in West Bengal had
forestalled violence in the aftermath of Partition.
Minorities as ‘hostages’ may have acted as a deterrent to large-scale violence on the
eastern border, but they also introduced some basic and difficult questions on citizenship and
belonging within the new nation states. For example, Azad noted that on the eve of
independence, “Jinnah left for Karachi with a message to his followers that now that the country
was divided they should be loyal citizens of India.” Such suggestions had left Muslim leaders in
minority provinces such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which remained part of India with a sense of
deception and loss. Azad remarked that “strange fact that these Muslim Leaguers had been
foolishly persuaded that once Pakistan was formed, Muslims whether they came from a majority
province would be regarded as a separate nation… they at last realized that they had gained
nothing but in fact lost everything by the partition of India.”20 Having been numerically and
politically weakened, the minority Muslims in India had to confront the difficult question of
national loyalty.
Similarly Pravash Chandra Lahiry’s initial reaction to the Partition was one of personal
failure and stark alienation. He noted in his memoirs, “I was a freedom fighter of the Indian
nationalist movement. I used to feel proud to be an Indian. But today I still exist but not as an
Indian – my identity is that of a Pakistani! There is only one question in everyone’s mind – Will
19
Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Ruparekha (Outline of India and Pakistan) (Chakdah, Nadia: Shyama
Prakashani, 1968), 51-2.
20
M.A.K. Azad, India Wins Freedom, 243-44.
126
we be able to live in a theocratic state with honor?”21 Samar Guha, the secretary of the East
Bengal minorities’ association, also lamented that Hindus in East Bengal were ‘no longer
Indians’.22 Letters to West Bengal newspapers also indicated this sense of confusion over their
political identity. Sailendranath Roy from Dhaka wrote, “A large section of people in eastern
Bengal cannot reconcile themselves to the idea that they are no longer Indians or even Bengalis
but merely Pakistanis.”23 Although Partition had engendered two new nations, it had yet to bring
about clear definitions about national identity24.
The primary issues were twofold. First, was it possible for Hindus living in East Pakistan
to identify themselves with India even while maintaining residence in East Pakistan? Secondly,
was it possible for minority Muslims in India who had hitherto identified with the Pakistan
movement to acquire not only legal but also moral citizenship of India? Although the Constituent
Assembly of India, instituted in December 1946 to debate the legal dimensions of nationhood
and citizenship and to draft the Indian Constitution, decided to grant equal rights to all citizens
irrespective of caste and creed, they tacitly required citizenship to be based on residency.
Consequently Hindu minorities whose residences became part of Pakistan were expected
to acquire Pakistani citizenship. But minorities in East Pakistan hoped for a different declaration.
After the June 20th Declaration, the local branch of the Hindu Mahasabha in the Munshiganj
district of Dacca passed a resolution demanding “the right of citizenship or equal rights and
privileges be conceived to the Hindu population of Eastern Pakistan in the West Bengal
21
Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Rup Rekha, 36-7.
22
Samar Guha, Non-Muslims Behind the Curtain, 37.
23
HS, 19 November 1947, 4.
24
Nehru announced at a Press Conference on 15 December 1947 in Calcutta that, “Even though Pakistan is a
separate and independent country- and we must treat it so- I find it a little difficult to think of it as alien to India and
of its people as anything but Indians.” Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 214.
127
province[sic], as such no passport be required for Hindus of eastern Pakistan to go to Indian
union.”25
This question of nationality and national identity for minorities residing on the ‘wrong’
side of the border was fundamental both in the debates leading up to the Partition and in the
public mind after the division as respective governments attempted to articulate clear guidelines.
Amrendra Nath Mukherjee, in an article published a month after Partition in the Modern Review,
a nationalist journal published from Calcutta, debated whether Indian nationality should be
conferred on the basis of jus soli (law of soil) or jus sanguinis (law of blood).26 He argued that all
minorities, especially the Hindus in East Bengal, should not be deprived of their Indian
nationality on the basis of their residence outside of the new political boundaries. Rather
minority Hindus should be accorded a ‘double nationality.’ Although Muslims of Pakistan
should also be allowed to adopt Indian nationality, Mukherjee assumed that “ Muslims of
Pakistan feel glory in their separate nationality and would reject any offer of Union (Indian)
nationality even if it was conferred upon them.” But the Hindus in Pakistan “would feel glory in
their mother State…and submit to Pakistan nationality with reluctance and under pressure of
circumstances.”27 If hostilities occurred between the two countries, Mukherjee continued that
persons with such dual citizenship would declare their loyalty to one country even if they may
reside in the other. Such a declaration of allegiance would suffice to prevent any accusations of
treason.
25
Resolution dated 30 June 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.
26
A. N. Mukherjee, “Nationality in the Indian Union,” MR, Vol. 82 (September 1947), 203-4.
27
Ibid., 204.
128
Mukherjee was not alone in advocating such simplistic formula ensuring Indian
citizenship to the minority Hindus in East Bengal. In a letter to the Amrita Bazar Patrika of
Calcutta, a correspondent identified only with the initials C.L.C, demanded that the Constituent
Assembly should ensure that “the people of minority communities in Pakistan if they so choose
can elect India citizenship by virtue of their citizenship of pre-partition India, while residing in
Pakistan and will thus forfeit their claim to Pakistan citizenship…” Although this legislation
would result in making the minorities “aliens in their country of residence, the statutory
provision will create the necessary psychological atmosphere by removing their sense of being
left in the lurch.” Further, the writer asserted that such a provision would enable India “to
intervene through constitutional means in case Pakistan continues in its policy of persecution of
minorities who by virtue of their electing Indian citizenship will then be Indian nationals.28 For
both these individuals, a seamless interface between national identity and loyalty to the nation
did not involve a change of address. Pre-Partition social ties and residence rather than postpartition domicile were the determining factor in attaining Indian citizenship. However, for
minorities in West and East Bengal who continued to reside in their ancestral homes, such
ingenuous formulations of nationality became complicated with residence and property
ownership.
Nehru, at the plenary session of the Congress in 1948, vetoed the theoretical possibility
that Hindu minorities could remain in East Bengal but become citizens of India, as impractical
and disastrous. Rather, he clarified “The only right course for those who live in the Indian
dominion is to be loyal to the Indian dominion and similarly this should apply to the other side,
28
ABP, 8 April 1948, 4.
129
because there is no other way of approach to the problem.”29 Nehru’s declaration contradicted
the hopes of Hindu minorities in East Bengal for whom inclusion within the imagined national
community through constitutional means was not based on their current residence.
For those who were on the ‘right’ side of the border, becoming Indians and Pakistanis
respectively, after Partition, did not elicit a similar dilemma between their national identity and
citizenship. However, for those who became minorities, especially those living in the partitioned
provinces such as Bengal, nationality became a key issue determining not only residency but also
loyalty. For Muslims in West Bengal, the communally charged environment of India’s relations
with the princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad assured that they became the quintessential
representatives of the whole community in their localities.30 As members of a community, which
had been closely connected with demand for Pakistan, the Muslim minority in India became the
usual suspects of anti- state activities. A letter to the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika is
emblematic of the general feeling towards the Muslim minorities in the region. Written in the
aftermath of the riots of 1950, the author, S. C. Chatterjee, asserted that,
Muslims having achieved their first objective – Pakistan, are busy making preparations
in that state for the attainment of their next objective, namely Pakistanization [sic] of India…we
find organized efforts are being made by some Muslims in India to help Pakistan in many ways.
This is not unnatural for them... They have been advised to keep themselves ready for the
appointed day of liberation…the soft hearted treatment of all Muslims irrespective of their real
attitude towards India, and the stern attitude towards the Hindus which seem to mark the present
administration of our country are all but disconcerting to many sane people. It is as if the time
honored maxim of administration namely, controlling the wicked and protecting the good
citizens has been reversed for the time being.31
29
Jawaharlal Nehru, “Towards Amity between India and Pakistan.” Speech at the plenary session of the Indian
National Congress, Jaipur 19 December 1948. The Hindustan Times, 20 December 1948.
30
For an elaboration of the condition of minority Muslim in West Bengal after the Partition see Joya Chatterji, “Of
Graveyards and Ghettos.” Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition and Vazira Zamindar, Divided Families have
made similar arguments on the western side.
31
S C Chatterjee, Letter to the Editor, ABP, 13 March 1950, 4. Emphasis added.
130
In addition to arguing that the minority Muslims were inherently disloyal, Chatterjee deployed
the stereotype of the ‘wicked’ and aggressive Muslim against the ‘good citizens’ who by
implication are the Hindus.
The discourse on Muslim disloyalty to the Indian nation was echoed at the national level,
especially at the Constituent Assembly sessions after Partition, as Indian leaders debated the
issue of minority rights. Any demand for separate electorates or reservation of legislative seats
for the Muslim minority was interpreted as reminiscent of pre-Partition League politics.
Vallabhbhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister of India indicated, “Those who want that kind of
thing (separate electorates) to have a place in Pakistan, not here… We are laying the foundations
of One Nation, and those who choose to divide again and sow the seeds of disruption will have
no place, no quarter here.”32
Nehru was aware that the minorities in the new nations would be the first to confront the
issue of notional citizenship. At press conference in Delhi in October 1947, he noted “there are
people for whom the question is not decided in their own minds, and we do not want to force a
decision on them. A Hindu for instance, may be in Karachi; I cannot tell him that he cannot
become an Indian citizen; if he wants he can be one and we will accept him. But if you live here
you owe loyalty to the state you live in.”33 Nonetheless, he went on to qualify that “an Indian
citizen may live in Pakistan, but he owes allegiance to us and he is not a citizen of Pakistan.”
Although at first glance his utterances may seem contradictory, it is evident that for Nehru the
primary criterion for citizenship was loyalty to the state, even if one’s residence remained on the
32
Constituent Assembly Debates (henceforth CAI), Vol. VIII (New Delhi: Government of India, 16 May to 16 June
1949), 271.
33
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 148.
131
‘wrong’ side of the border. He was, however against any ‘dual citizenship’ arguing that once
both countries became politically stable, national citizenship would follow suit.34
Muslim and Hindu minorities of Bengal who had the means to migrate sought to end
their predicament by moving across the border. They hoped that such a move, influenced by
unsettled political circumstances, would resolve the immediate differences between legal and
moral citizenship. Those who did not migrate had to negotiate the semiotics of religious identity
in their daily lives. An editorial in the Morning News, published in Dacca, East Bengal, and
claiming to represent the viewpoint of the Muslim minority in West Bengal, questioned, “ Do
Muslims live here by right or on sufferance? If the Government wants them to live like shudras
it should not fight shy of saying so, and in that case there would be no need for the Muslim
members to pollute the West Bengal Assembly by their unwanted presence.”35 It is significant
that the editor, in indicated the discrimination towards the Muslim minority, adopted the
terminology of the caste system in which lowest rung comprised the shudras. On another
occasion Fazlur Rahman a resident of Calcutta wrote to his friend in Dacca in early 1948
describing the situation in Calcutta as no longer conducive towards Muslims. According to
Rahman, Muslims in West Bengal could not “even move freely by wearing a lungi.”36 Further at
the time of Holi, “colored water was thrown on Muslims and Europeans by saying that those
who want to live in Hindustan should have to observe all the Hindu festivals otherwise they may
34
Ibid., 147.
35
Morning News, 14 February 1948.
36
A piece of colored or checkered cloth wrapped around the lower part of the body. In the communal climate of the
Partition, the lungi signified both class and religion as it became associated with lower class Muslim attire. In
contrast, the dhoti, mainly white, became symbolic of upper class Hindu elite. For the semiotic significance of
clothing in the colonial period see, Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters, Dress and Identity in India (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1996).
132
go to Pakistan.”37 Another anonymous writer described how the Muslims going to East Pakistan
were “thoroughly searched and those carrying cloth or other prohibited articles are arrested. This
is another way how this Hindu government harasses Muslims …I understand that restrictions are
going to be tightened and the public, particularly the Muslims who are the target, will be put to
great trouble. In these circumstances he is wise who gets aside before the storm comes with full
blast.”38 Minorities who continued to remain in their ancestral homes thus prepared themselves
for flight across border at any hint of trouble.
The Case for Optees: Divided Loyalties?
The Partition was not only a physical and constitutional division but entailed a
splitting up of financial assets, administrative police and military resources, even prisoners and
inmates of mental asylums. Ostensibly such a division of resources, determined by population
and economic requirements, would allow each country equal footing as they began their journey
into nationhood.39 Administrative personnel, especially the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS)
officers, had the ‘option’ to choose the country in which they wanted to continue their service.
However, the general assumption, in India and Pakistan, that religion would be the basis of the
choice ensured that Hindu and Sikh officers were expected to serve in India and Muslim officers
37
Fazlur Rahman, Letter dated 1 April 1948, File PM 119-48, West Bengal Police, Special Branch (henceforth
WBPSB), 1948.
38
Anonymous, Letter dated 10 March 1948, File PM 119-48, WBPSB, 1948.
39
The question of division of the sterling balances and moveable assets remained unresolved till November 1947,
when Vallabhbhai Patel and Muhammad Ali reached an agreement whereby Pakistan received 17.5 percent of the
cash and sterling balances and in return covered the same proportion of India’s national debt. India and Pakistan
would divide the remaining moveable assets in the ration of 4: 1 respectively.
133
in Pakistan.40 These Optees, as they were called, were given the right to opt permanently or
provisionally. Those who decided to exercise the latter option were given the right to revise their
decision within six months, and both states guaranteed that they would take back those who
revised their provisional decisions. The element of choice was often illusory as the communal
logic of the Partition played a primary role in forcing such decisions. For these minority civil
servants caught between serving the state and serving the nation, their decisions to migrate were
taken not only because of a general feeling of insecurity but often under coercion from neighbors
and co-workers.41
Yet, both states could not officially “induce” the Hindu and Muslim civil servants to
choose between their state of residence and inclusion within their prospective majority
community. One was free to remain a minority within India or Pakistan as long as he or she was
loyal to the state. Those personnel who were indecisive about their choices quickly faced several
problems. For example, Safdar Ali Khan, a Muslim guard in Moradabad, in Uttar Pradesh, India
initially submitted his application to move to Pakistan. He changed his mind and decided to
remain in India claiming that the move was too laborious and difficult. He claimed that his
earlier decision had been ‘forced’ upon him by his co-workers and noted, “It is useless and self
contradicting if I claim to be a patriotic son of India which I have blundered [sic] in favor of
Pakistan. Really speaking, as I have stated above, the decision was not my own but I made under
compulsion. I am an Indian first and an Indian last. I want to live in India and die in India. So I
40
Not everybody supported this division of the civil services on a communal basis. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
suggested that “officials from West Punjab, Sind, or East Bengal, whatever their community, should remain in
Pakistan. Similarly service men who belonged to the Indian provinces should serve India regardless of whether they
were Hindus or Moslems… Adminstration would thus be free of communal poison and the minorities in each state
would feel a greater sense of security.” M.A. K Azad, Indian Wins Freedom, 237.
41
Joya Chatterji alludes to “a systematic campaign of intimidation launched to ‘persuade’ Muslims in government
service to quit West Bengal and go to Pakistan.” in “Of Graveyards and Ghettos,” 230.
134
must serve in India.”42 Moreover, his ailing mother did not want her son to leave. However, the
Government of India judged his petition within the narrowest terms of the law. The authorities
indicated that Safdar Ali Khan was seeking to revoke his final option after having been given six
months to ponder on his decision. Thus he had crossed the appointed period and by law could not
be allowed to change his option. In the government’s view, decisions about residency and
citizenship needed no longer than six months. If one changed his decision, then the newly
formulated rules would determine the response.
In Bengal Prafulla Ghosh, the chief minister of Bengal in 1947 announced that all Hindu
officers of East Bengal would be given the option to choose India as their base of operation. Out
of the nineteen Muslim ICS officers in Bengal, eighteen opted to join the Government of
Pakistan.43 All of the Hindu ICS officers opted to serve in India.
In effect, for Bengal, which had a high percentage of Hindu officers in the civil bureaucracy,
this signified a quasi-state sponsored official exchange.
Not surprisingly, Ghosh’s announcement did not find favor with some of the minority
Hindus in eastern Bengal who realized that such a transfer would result in significant
concentration of Muslims within higher ranks thus skewing communal equation against them. At
a meeting held on 23 July 1947, some representatives of the Hindu community passed a
resolution requesting the West Bengal Government to revise their policy. Similarly, a letter to
Hindustan Standard urged “Even at the risk of being misunderstood, the West Bengal
government ought to make it clear at once that no Hindu officer who is a permanent resident of
East Bengal will be allowed to serve in West Bengal as long as it can be shown that his service
42
S.A. Khan to A.K. Azad, September 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. 4, 421.
43
Saroj Chakrabarty, With Dr. B. C. Roy and Other Chief Ministers; A Record upto 1962 (Calcutta: Benson’s,
1974), 45.
135
interest will be safe in the hands of the East Bengal government.” 44 The writer feared, “It is
reported that as a result of the choice of the Hindu government employees for West Bengal, the
new government of East Bengal will be short of officers in the BCS (Bengal Civil Service) and
the BPS (Bengal Police Service) cadres by more than two hundred which deficiency will be met
by recruitment of Muslims from outside of Bengal.” He noted that the decision to join the West
Bengal government was ‘unpatriotic’. In a similar vein, a pamphlet showcasing the minority
Hindus’ plight in East Bengal claimed that the policy of transferring officials had isolated the
community even further.45
When each state implicitly conflated an officer’s loyalty to the state of his choice with his
religion, the difficulties increased. For example, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, the premier of
the Sind province in West Pakistan, allegedly circulated a private note that identified the existing
leakages of confidential information with the non-Muslim members of the Pakistani Criminal
Investigation Department. He stated that, “I feel compelled to the necessity of placing only
Muslims in confidential branches and also in the CID staff.” 46 Similarly in India, Govind
Malaviya, the youngest son of the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a prominent Hindu nationalist
and a member of the Central Legislative Assembly, echoed some perceptions about those
Muslim officers who had decided to remain in India. In a letter to Vallabhbai Patel, he voiced his
misgivings about these officers,
I have been worried over the report in the newspapers that the personnel of the
services are receiving enquiries as to whether they would prefer to remain in Pakistan or
in India. Is it contemplated that Muslim officers (and who does not know the part they
have been playing during these several months in the secretariat and other offices?) will
44
HS, 27 July 1947, 4. Parenthesis mine.
45
“East and North Bengal Hindus,” Pamphlet dated 15 August 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML,
New Delhi.
46
Note, 30 September 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. IV, 433.
136
be allowed to remain with us if they choose to do so? It is a terrible price we have paid
for getting rid of this curse of divided loyalties and fifth columnism! Have we still to
carry this load round our neck? It may sound a little hard, but the only right and safe
course will be that we should ask them without reservation or exception to move onto
their own area.47
Patel replied that once India became independent on 15 August,
the service rules and regulations will be strictly enforced and no disloyalty will be
tolerated. The oath of loyalty to the Indian government will first be administered to all,
and anyone found to have other sympathy or loyalty with any outside agency or
organization will have to leave service. You may therefore rest assured that proper action
will be taken to see that all such people are weeded out from here.48
But how did a minority officer show his loyalty if he had decided against migration and
remained in his home? Was it even possible to design a process that would measure loyalty to
the nation? Nazir Hussain Rizvi, a well-educated Muslim lawyer from Lucknow, proposed an
innovative if fantastic idea to counter the “atmosphere surcharged with suspicion and distrust” in
his hometown. In a letter to Patel he declared, “I come forward to assert my loyalty to my
motherland and in proof whereof I beg to offer not only my services but also my life
unreservedly and unconditionally in the cause of my country. I am ready to do anything, whether
directed against any foreign power or person of my religion. As a guarantee of my sincerity and
truthfulness of my assertion I offer my mother and three unmarried sisters as hostages to be held
by the Government.”49 Rizvi’s pledge implicitly objectified the women in his family as
guarantors of his personal honor. As expected, Patel certified that the Government of India
would not take “hostages” to guarantee loyalty and indicated that Rizvi could give “positive
proof of (his) loyalty” in other ways.50 Although Rizvi’s proposal may seem farfetched, it
47
Govind Malaviya to Sardar Patel, 4 July 1947, in Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. 4, 411. Emphasis added.
48
Patel to Malaviya, 7 July 1947, ibid, 413. Emphasis added.
49
Nasir Hussain Rizvi to Patel, 15 October 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. IV, 437-8.
50
Ibid.
137
illustrates the confusion that plagued people’s minds with regard to their citizenship and identity
in post-partition India.
Residence and Citizenship
The relationship between residence, national citizenship and loyalty remained unresolved
and continued to complicate the daily lives of those individuals who tested its parameters with
their unique circumstances. In the absence of any tangible guidelines on what constituted legal
citizenship, residence and property ownership became key sites which determined one’s
citizenship within the state. Population movement across borders, however, complicated this
issue of residence. The primary question that confronted both states and their minority citizens
was whether the residence and property ownership implied nationality and/or notions of
belonging. Could a person who had left the jurisdictional boundaries of one nation where he
owned property continue to be the legal owner even though he may have adopted a foreign
nationality? More importantly, could an evacuee continue to remain loyal to the country of his
birth?
These were central questions for the employees of the Government of East Bengal who
had opted to join service in East Bengal while retaining their properties in West Bengal. Low pay
in Government service and the lack of housing in Dhaka had ensured that these Optees had to
leave their families in West Bengal and continue to supplement their incomes from their
properties there. However, by 1953, the imposition of border control through passports and visas
had made it difficult for the continuance of family ties. Further, the Evacuee’s Property Act in
138
India, promulgated in 1950 to protect the property of minority Muslims who had fled to Pakistan,
was widely perceived as a method of legal dispossession of such property.51
To address these issues, the East Bengal Secretariat Association, formed in 1947 in
Dacca, framed a memorandum to the East Bengal authorities in September 1953 that reflected
the persistence of confusion with regard to property ownership and national citizenship. Their
memorandum began by emphasizing that “The Government employees who opted to serve East
Bengal at the time of Partition have become Pakistanees [sic] irrespective of the fact that some of
them originally belonged to territory now falling in India…”52 There was no contradiction
between being Pakistani citizens and property ownership in India. They stressed that, “…when
the Optees came to serve the Government of Pakistan the Optees naturally expected that this
would not jeopardize their right and title to their properties in India…” However, “ Muslims are
not getting a fair deal” in India. The authors of the memorandum urged the East Pakistan state to
provide facilities which would enable them to dispose or exchange their property in India and to
take steps to counter the “propaganda not to purchase Muslims property” in India.53
The matter became complicated, as the memorandum pointed out, in the case of the
family members of deceased Optees, who having no recourse to income were forced to return to
India. However, “the door to returning to India…has now virtually been closed with the
introduction of Passport system as a Pakistani Muslim can never expect a fair deal and scope to
resettle in India on return from Pakistan particularly in the absence of any guardian.” In effect
the memorandum was requesting the East Pakistan state to act as the male provider to the family
51
For operation and impact of the Evacuee Property regulations on Muslims of Delhi, see Zamindar, Divided
Families, Chapter 4.
52
File: 8A-28/52, B Proceedings 1298-99, Home (Political), Government of East Bengal, April 1953, BNA.
53
Ibid.
139
of deceased Optees. Although the introduction of the Passport and Visa Scheme on the eastern
border did not legally discriminate between Hindu and Muslim Pakistani citizens, the latter’s
return was usually subject to suspicion.
The Indian Government had in 1948 introduced a Permit system on its western border to
stem the flow of migration from West Pakistan, especially the return exodus of Indian Muslims.
An official publication justified such a step thus “The return of Muslims will impose a heavy
strain upon the economy of the Dominion [India]. Cognizant of this danger, the government of
India has recently introduced the permit system to check this movement.”54 The argument of
strained rehabilitation resources of the Indian government was soon turned on its head as an
editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika equated the particularities of the “one way traffic” with
threats to the national security of India. The editorial noted in no uncertain terms,
The return journey of two thousand Muslims on the average per day has been
going for at least the last six months. By this time several lakhs of Muslims must have
arrived from Pakistan. It is quite possible that many of them are sincerely repentant for
having left their homes in India for Pakistan. But it is as likely that not a few of them
have arrived to strengthen the forces of fifth columnists.55
Migration of Muslim minorities thus evinced two essential conclusions which would continue to
influence their residence in India. First, they were perceived as a homogenous group and
identified as inherently pre-disposed towards Pakistan. Hence their migration on the one hand
was perceived as legitimate but on the other hand, disloyal to India, where they had resided till
the Partition. Secondly, their return migration signified their lack of confidence in the Pakistan
state itself. But more importantly, their migration to Pakistan had clearly laid out their loyalty to
another state which their return could not erase. A few days later, another editorial in the same
54
After Partition, 74.
55
ABP, 10 July 1948, 4.
140
newspaper categorically stated that, “ A non-Muslim finds it impossible to adjust himself to the
political pattern of the ancient Shariat. We do not know how a Muslim in his heart of hearts
reacts to the Indian Union.”56 According to the editorial, the introduction of the ‘rule of the
Shariat’ in Pakistan thus provided a legitimate basis for the Hindu minority in Pakistan to feel
alienated whereas, the returning Muslims already familiar with India was taken to be inherently
disloyal. Their migration had, forever, branded the Muslim minority as fifth columnists.
The members of the East Pakistan Secretariat Association in Dacca framed their petition
within such prevailing assumptions. In their memorandum to the authorities they noted that
although by choosing to serve in East Pakistan, “they had burnt their boats and they did not want
to go back,” they were also prepared to “ try to get Indian nationality in the interest of their
properties in India…”57 Clearly, nationality had its utilitarian aspects.
More importantly, the efforts of both India and Pakistan to establish elaborate legal
machinery to control and fix identities of their citizens had created the space for debates on
national identity and loyalty to the nation. Further, the project of establishing post-Partition
national orders continued to demand such identification in terms of inclusion and exclusion
within majority and minority national communities. The consequent uncertainties provided the
impetus for minority migration. However migration itself did not solve many of the existing
problems and generated new issues.
Requisition of Property
56
ABP, 15 July 1948, 4.
57
File: 8A-28/52, B Proceedings 1298-99, Home (Political), Government of East Bengal, April 1953, BNA.
141
There has been little scholarly focus on the projects of nation building and how Hindu
and Muslim minorities in Pakistan and India respectively were implicated within such projects.58
The rehabilitation of the refugees from East and West Pakistan has occupied the central space
within academic research in India. However rehabilitation efforts of both states operated not only
through relief and economic resources to re-establish refugees as citizens, but also through the
requisition and protection of evacuee property which aimed to induce refugees to return to their
ancestral homes.
Both India and Pakistan established complex structures headed by a Custodian General59
in each country to protect minority properties and guaranteed the return of such property to the
rightful owners upon their return. Both states agreed to set up Evacuee Property Management
Boards in the areas of East and West Bengal that had experienced mass migration.60 It was
clearly stipulated that these Boards would function only on the definite request of individual
property owners. However, such ‘management’ of property soon became intertwined with the
nation-building project, especially in East Pakistan where forthcoming Requisition of Property
Acts would influence protection of evacuee property.61 Through the operations of these laws
58
Vazira Zamindar examines the promulgation and operation of Evacuee property Laws in Punjab and their effects
on Muslim property in India. See Vazira Zamindar, Divided Families.
59
In response to incidents of looting and illegal occupations of houses left behind by evacuees, the Joint Defence
Council in 29 August 1947, created the office of the ‘Custodian of Refugee’s Property’ to protect the properties of
the displaced. ‘The Property of Refugees’, Minutes of the Joint Defense Council, 29 August, 1947, MP File 128,
OIOC, London.
60
Inter=Dominion Conference, 6-15 December 1948, New Delhi, reproduced in Muhammad Ghulam Kabir,
Minority Politics in Bangladesh (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980), 100-05.
61
Restricted access to sources in the National Archives of India in Delhi and the police records of the Intelligence
Bureau in Calcutta have prevented a detailed examination of how the Evacuee Property legislation operated and
affected the lives of the Muslim minority in West Bengal. However, a recent article on the condition of Muslim
minorities in West Bengal is provides an excellent description on the marginalization of the community. See Joya
Chatterji, “Of Graveyards and Ghettos,” 222-249.
142
both States sought to quantify loyalty to the nation by associating it closely to property
ownership.
This section focuses on the controversial legislation surrounding the operation of
Requisition of Property Acts in East Pakistan between 1948 and 1965 as a template for
examining the dynamic processes of identity formation. The situation in East Pakistan is
significant for several reasons. First, the requisition of houses was embedded within the larger
project of nation building. The property left by evacuees became a crucial focal point in the
requisitioning process. Second, the successful operation of the legislation called for an explicit
demonstration of the citizen’s loyalty to the state and the nation. Authorities interpreted any
refusal on the part of the property owners to comply with the regulations as being anti national.
Third, during the two decades after the Partition, the laws governing the requisition of evacuee
property changed radically. By 1965, what had begun as legal protection of evacuee property had
metamorphosed into a mechanism that enabled the complete appropriation of the property. Not
surprisingly, East Pakistani citizens, especially those belonging to the minority Hindu
community, perceived these regulations as forms of state intervention that robbed them not only
of residential space but also of ownership rights. Minority Hindu citizens who continued to
reside and maintain ties with their ancestral homes, identified their citizenship within the East
Pakistan state with such physical ties. Requisitioning of houses where some family members
resided was then perceived as the state’s lack of faith in its minority citizens or as attempts to
oust them. In fact both the East Pakistan state and its minority Hindu citizens identified propertyownership as proof of citizenship. But the requisition process complicated such identifications.
Initially to be in effect from 1948 until 1951, the East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of
Property Act (Act XIII of 1948) gave the provincial government power to acquire on either a
143
temporary or permanent basis any property it considered necessary for the establishment of
offices and residences for the officials of the new state. Hindu political leaders in East Bengal
such as Monoranjan Dhar, Pravash Chandra Lahiry and Ganendra Chandra Bhattacharjee
strongly criticized the Act as a tool of minority persecution both in the East Bengal Legislative
Assembly and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.62 By 1951, authorities admitted to
misjudging the provisional aspect of the law. In a private memo the Joint Secretary of the
Finance and Revenue Department (Requisition) admitted that the estimate of three years had not
been adequate to rebuilding the Provincial and Central government buildings. He indicated that
“it is found now that schemes for construction of permanent buildings for their offices and
officers have not been taken up seriously yet by many of the Departments concerned.”63 Further,
the memo continued,
About 5,000 premises have already been requisitioned in the province and
demands are still coming from different Government departments for further
requisitioned accommodation. But there is no scope for further requisition in any district.
All the available accommodation has already been requisitioned and there is on the other
hand, persistent demand and clamour from the owners of the requisitioned houses
specially from returned emigrants, the Muhajirs (Muslim refugees from India) who have
acquired houses here by purchase or by exchange with their residential house in West
Bengal and the business community for immediate release of the houses here by
purchase or by exchange with their residential house in West Bengal and the business
community for immediate release of the houses for their own residence and business
purposes. In most cases their demands are found to quite reasonable and equitable and a
great hardship is being caused to them by the operation of the Requisition Proceedings.64
62
Assembly Proceedings, Official Report, EBLA, Third Session, Vol. 3, No. 4, 55-73; Also CAP Debates, Vol. 1(8
and 9), March 1948, 219, 286 quoted in M. G. Kabir, Minority Politics in Bangladesh, 20.
63
Memo no. 6127 (50), 18 July 1951, File: 1L-3 of 1951 B Proceedings 272, Finance and Revenue (Requisition)
Department, Government of East Bengal, May 1952.
64
Ibid.
144
Given that such a situation was “detrimental to the normal development of the province,”
authorities directed civil departments and private companies to build alternative accommodations
within the next six months.
Such a short time limit was unrealistic and the East Bengal authorities decided to
continue the earlier law under a new name and with slight modifications in its terms of operation.
Under the East Bengal Evacuee Property (Restoration of Possession) Act 1951 a person
(including his legal heirs) who was ordinarily resident of East Bengal and left for any part of
India owing to the communal disturbances or fear thereof after August 15, 1947 would be
considered an “evacuee.”65 An “evacuee” was a “person ordinarily resident in East Bengal, who
owing to communal disturbances, or fear thereof leaves or has, on or after prescribed date, left
East Bengal for any part of India and includes the legal heirs of such person.”66 The East Bengal
authorities neatly classified the property belonging to an evacuee as “moveable” and
“immoveable” items. This law remained in force from 1951 ostensibly to protect and manage the
property of those evacuees, mainly minority Hindus, who had left the country. The Government
of East Bengal set up an Evacuee Management Committee that could take charge of any
abandoned property, either on the basis of an application from the owner or by its own volition.
This Committee had the authority to grant leases or to rent such properties as it deemed
necessary. For the first time, the district civil court was restricted from challenging any order or
any action that the Committee undertook.
65
Ashraf Mohammad, Evacuee & rehabilitation laws, containing up to date central & provincial acts and
ordinances ... with rehabilitation resettlement scheme Punjab ... & inter-domain agreements regarding evacuees
(India & Pakistan) (Lahore: All Pakistan Legal Publications, 1957), 368.
66
East Bengal Evacuee Property (Restoration of Possession) Act, 1951, reproduced in Ashraf Mohammad, Evacuee
& rehabilitation laws, 368-78. The prescribed date in this case was 1 January 1950.
145
Following the riots of 1964 which engulfed large sections of West Bengal and East
Pakistan including the capital cities of Calcutta and Dhaka, the Act emerged in the form of an
ordinance under a new name, Disturbed Persons Rehabilitation Ordinance Act of 1964. Although
enacted to provide quick aid to the victims of the riots, it also created restrictions on the transfer
of immovable property belonging to the minority Hindus without permission from the East
Pakistan authorities. The seventeen deputy commissioners in the province were empowered to
allow transfer of agricultural land amounting to only two acres or a maximum limit of one fourth
of the total land holding.67 These government officials could sell other properties such as
buildings but only at market prices not exceeding five thousand rupees. The outbreak of war
between India and Pakistan in 1965 resulted in the promulgation of the Defense of Pakistan
Ordinance (Ordinance XIII of 1965) that authorized the East Pakistani authorities to acquire
emergency powers in the defense of the state. A key component under this ordinance was an
executive order titled The Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order II of 1965.68 The
immediate impact of this ordinance was on the properties of those minority citizens who had
migrated to India, either temporarily or permanently, and had hitherto continued to retain their
rights of ownership. All such property was now identified as ‘enemy property’ and rights of
ownership was transferred to the state.69
67
Abul Barkat Ed. An Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh
through the Vested Property Act: Framework for a Realistic Solution (Dhaka: PRIP Trust, 2000), 19-20.
68
India was declared an enemy country. The Custodian of Enemy Property took over all interests of the enemy (i.e.
nationals/citizens of India, those residing in the territory occupied/captured/controlled by India) in firms and
companies as well as in the lands and building situated in Pakistan for control or management. The benefits arising
out of trade, business, or lands and buildings were not to go to the enemy, so as not to affect the security of the state
of Pakistan or impair its defense in any manner.
69
The act had clear communal overtones. An official circular specified that Muslims residing in India including
those who were Indian citizens would be excluded from the category of the ‘enemy’. Further, the properties of such
Muslim owners would be handed over to them or their legal heirs upon demand. Although the war ended by
September 1965, this act continued to be in force in later years and finally culminated in the Vested Property and
Assets Order of 1972 passed by the new Bangladesh government.
146
Loyalty to the nation was an unwritten demand within these regulations. For example, by
1953 India and Pakistan had clearly defined the parameters of what constituted moveable
property. Representatives of both governments in a meeting at Karachi decided that evacuees
would be allowed to remove all “personal and household properties” to the other country without
having to pay custom duties or export-import duties.70 However, evacuees could not move
machinery or machine parts71, merchandise and trade goods, unsown cloth that was in excess of
personal needs, cattle, cash in excess of permitted quantities and bullion. For all these items,
evacuee owners were allowed six months from 1 March, 1954 within which to claim restoration
or dispose of their moveable property within the country of their original residence.
Evacuees who carried more money than the stipulated amount were deemed to be shifting
capital from one country to the other, sometimes perceived as a deliberate effort to sabotage East
Pakistan. Such suspicions were voiced even before the Partition. An article in the Dawn, a
Muslim League paper, published from Karachi, claimed that minority Hindu business men had
shifted approximately two hundred crores in capital to India by early July 1947. The article
identified this alleged transfer of capital as “Hindu hostility… motivated by a desire to hit the
Pakistan Exchequer by denying it a big source of revenue.”72 Although the prescribed amount of
money changed over the years, the perception that the minorities were complicit in such “antinational” transport of capital gained ground, especially as migration continued unabated over the
next three decades.
70
Ibid, Press Note on Moveable Properties of Displaced Persons, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 562-3.
71
Ibid., Machines such as typewriters, sewing machines, bicycles, refrigerators, radios, cars, gramophones, musical
instruments electrical goods and professional apparatus, instruments were allowed for removal to the other country,
562.
72
Dawn 11 July 1947.
147
Citizens or Evacuees
Although laws had clear definitions and guidelines for the protection of evacuee property,
their terms were open to interpretation at the level of implementation. As the local authorities
went about identifying ‘evacuee’ property and houses that could be requisitioned, they exercised
their power and judgment that sometimes bordered on the indiscriminate. Identifying abandoned
houses of minorities, as “evacuee” property and taking control of it “to protect” the property till
the evacuee’s return was the first step in the requisition process. An appointed government
official would personally inspect the property and conduct local enquiries regarding the owner’s
intention to return home. Subsequently, the local authorities served a notice of requisition and
earmarked the property to house government offices or officials.73 Such a notice of requisition
did not require anyone to be present within the house as long as the notice was affixed “to some
conspicuous part of the premises in which he [the owner] is known to have last resided or carried
business or personally worked for gain.”74
Such a process did not provide any opportunity for direct enquiry of the evacuee owner’s
intentions until the requisition notice had been served. The property owners were given only
fifteen days from the publication of the requisition notice to appear before the local district
authorities to state their objections to the requisition or to claim their compensatory rent for the
property. Furthermore, the East Bengal government expected all minorities to return to their
residences within six months.75 Failure to return was taken as a sign of the evacuees’
73
The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, 1948, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial
Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950, BNA.
74
Ibid.
75
The time limit of six months was measured from the date on which the Provincial Government made a
proclamation in the Official Gazette that normal conditions had been restored in the province.
148
abandonment of their property and their preference for residence across the border. Manoranjan
Dhar, a member of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly, protested against the imposition of the
time limit for the return of evacuees arguing that the essence of the Bill “is how to get evacuees
back.” Moreover, he warned, “some evacuees who want to come back to East Bengal may find
that they have no accommodation to take shelter, because most of their houses have been
requisitioned or disposed of.”76 Anticipating the bureaucratic hassles that they would have to
undergo to regain ownership of their requisitioned property, many Hindu owners began to entrust
their houses to the care of close relatives, tenants or caretakers. Although clear guidelines
prevented evacuee property from being requisitioned if family members or caretakers were
present, a definite disjuncture between prescription and practice existed.
Complaints against the wholesale requisitioning of property quickly accumulated after
the promulgation of the law in 1948. Sometimes East Pakistan authorities requisitioned houses
when the owners had gone to India to attend social functions or for medical treatment. For
instance, Gour Chandra Chakrabarty, a retired government servant of undivided India, who had
become a pensioner of the Pakistan government after 1947, found his only residence in
Kaliajury, Comilla requisitioned during a temporary absence. 77 His petition began with the
assertion that he was a “loyal subject of the Pakistan government” and outlined in detail the
reasons for his absence. He had gone to Kharagpur in West Bengal to perform the marriage of
one of his daughters, and subsequently had become ill and vacationed in Puri, Orissa, to recover.
Meanwhile, the local authorities had requisitioned his house, allegedly without notice. When
76
Assembly Proceedings Official Report, Vol. 3, No. 4 EBLA, Third Session, 5 April 1949, Dacca: East Bengal
Government Press), 57.
77
Petition, 15 February 1949, File: Tr-9/49 B Proceedings 966-981. Finance and Revenue Department, August
1954, BNA.
149
Chakrabarty returned to his home, it had already been allotted to a government servant. He
assured the district authorities that he intended to “spend the rest of his life at his village home at
Kaliajury and God willing, to die here.” Chakrabarty hoped that such a promise of continued
residence would elicit a favorable response. However, after an enquiry, the district magistrate
noted that, “It does not appear that he [Chakrabarty] has any bonafide intention to stay in
Comilla as it is understood from local evidence that he had removed all his moveable belongings
to West Bengal.”78 An additional factor meditating against the return of his property was that
both of Chakrabarty’s sons worked in West Bengal. The house remained requisitioned and
probably Chakrabarty was forced to live with his sons in West Bengal.
Again in 1950, immediately after the Khulna Barisal riots, another petitioner found his
house in Kishoreganj, Mymensingh district, requisitioned when he temporarily visited Calcutta
to for medical treatment. Ironically, Suresh C Barman and his brother K. C. Barman, the deputy
secretary of Land and Land Revenue Department in West Bengal, a department intimately
connected with refugee rehabilitation and requisitioning of property, jointly owned the house.
While Barman had opted to join the civil service in West Bengal after 1947, Suresh had
continued to reside in their ancestral home. When Suresh and his wife went to Calcutta for the
latter’s medical treatment, local authorities deemed the house to be vacant and available to be
requisitioned even though the couple had left a caretaker, Sivacharan Das.79 Although the East
Pakistani authorities in an attempt to normalize the situation after the riots had promised the
78
Ibid., District Magistrate to Deputy Secretary, GOEB.
79
Barman also alleged “50 houses in Kishoreganj, about 30 houses at Bajitpur and a large number of houses in
Netrokona and Mymensingh have been similarly requisitioned inspite of the fact that most of them were occupied by
the owners or their members/men.” File: My-55/50 B Proceedings 518-529, Revenue (Requisitioning) Department,
August, 1954, BNA.
150
returning evacuees80 that their houses would be de-requisitioned, Suresh Barman did not regain
his house. The sub divisional officer of Kishoreganj reported, “The brothers are evacuees… the
story that Suresh went only for the treatment of his wife cannot be believed. Not a single member
of the family was in the house.”81 Continued physical residence in one’s property was the
required proof of ownership.
These complaints were not protests against the law itself. Rather the petitioners
challenged the discretionary implementation of the law when officials identified occupied houses
as evacuee property. Another petition highlights the arbitrariness of the requisition process.
Nirmal Kumar Choudhury, a correspondent for the Ananda Bazar Patrika who was stationed in
Patna, read about the requisition of his property in the newspaper. The Hindustan Standard in
July 1950 reported that,
With 24 hours notice the residential house of Shri Bimal Kumar Choudhury of
Panchbibi (Bogra) has been requisitioned by the Pakistan Government. Bimal Babu’s
mother and sister are living in the house. They have got a few hundred maunds (around
82.6 pounds) of paddy in their ‘gola.’ They and the other gentlemen of the locality
prayed for time but the Circle Officer who came to take possession of the house is said to
have given them a rude reply advising them to move the higher authorities.82
To the readers in India, Choudhury’s predicament was yet another sign at best of East Pakistani
State’s inefficiency and at worst another instance of minority persecution. However, in his letter
to his friend A. M. A. Azim of the Associated Press of Pakistan in Dacca, Nirmal Choudhury
showed complete faith in the process that in his view had mistakenly requisitioned an occupied
80
In Press Note issued from Dacca in August 1950, the government of East Pakistan had assured minorities that “it
is not the intention of government to requisition any houses in which the owner or relatives of the owner are still
living, and if a migrant who has left after the disturbances wishes to come back to reside in the province, his house,
if requisitioned by the government will be derequisitioned forthwith.” Ibid.
81
Extract from report of SDO Kishoreganj to District Magistrate Mymensingh, 19 August 1950, ibid.
82
HS, 12 July 1950.
151
house.83 He assured the authorities that his brother had temporarily gone to West Bengal for
medical reasons and had already returned home. In this case, the problem arose from the
government’s interpretation of “family” that did not take into account the presence of an
extended family in residence.
A common thread that runs through these three petitions that represent more than a
hundred retained in the files of the Revenue Department is the intentions to stay inspite of the
political partition. Although many of these migrants may have in reality fled their homes in the
wake of the riots and political uncertainty, their migration was temporary. Most of the petitions
cited “medical leave” as the reason for their absence that implied the short-term nature of their
decisions. The petitioners left behind family members or caretakers to prevent heir properties
being declared “evacuee” property and they returned once they felt that the political climate had
stabilized or their medical treatment was completed.
Further, there had been a tradition of migration from rural eastern Bengal to the urban
centers of West Bengal, mainly Calcutta to obtain higher education or work.84 Although Partition
divided this region into two new states, such patterns of temporary migration and divided
families continued within the existing networks of kinship relations and economic associations.
Traditionally family members had continued to remain in the ancestral home while the urban
educated males worked in western Bengal and returned home during family celebrations and
religious holidays. After 1947 such patterns of mobility became invested with signs of
83
Br-24/50, B Proceedings, 3040-3046, Revenue (Requisition) Department, August 1954, BNA.
84
Several memoirs of well-known Bengali intellectuals allude to the traditional economic connections between
eastern Bengal and Calcutta. See, Nirad C Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Bombay: Jaico,
1951);Tapan Raychaudhuri, Romanthan Athaba Bhimratipraptar Paracharitcharcha (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers,
1993).
152
citizenship whereby the very act of leaving one’s residence, for whatever the reason, was
interpreted as intent to migrate.
The East Pakistan authorities faced with the scarcity of housing for their new government
and its employees frequently assumed intent to evacuate as indication of permanent departure.85
The Government of Pakistan debated on creating a further category of ‘intending evacuees’,
comprising of minorities whom officials perceived to be at risk of flight. To avoid being labeled
as such, one had to provide a written statement of one’s intention to stay to local district
authorities. The linkages between evacuee property and requisition of property ensured that the
intentions to migrate continued to influence decisions of local authorities in East Bengal. The
operation of the requisition laws created, sui generis, the category of “evacuees.”
Requisitioning property was a primary means by which resident/citizens became
evacuees. When the evacuees returned and demanded their homes from the government, their
requests became entangled within the nation building project and definition of national loyalty.
The issue debated within official circles was whether these returning evacuees were petitioning
their homes for continued residence or for financial gain through the sale of their property to the
highest bidder,86 or worse, as an attempt to somehow sabotage the state building process. The
East Pakistan government did de-requisition some property. But a substantial portion was not derequisitioned because the government could not build alternative houses and office buildings as
quickly as needed. Moreover, some officials in East Pakistan, thought that it was only a matter of
time before the minority Hindu citizens migrated to India. During the riots of 1950, Surat Lal
Roy, a resident of North Nawabpur in Dacca, had moved his family to another part of the city for
85
Constituent Assembly (Legislature) of Pakistan Debates, 6 April 1951, 897-923, Dhaka University Library,
Dhaka.
86
File Da-321/50, B Proceedings 1574 – 1584, Revenue department, Requisition, August 1954, BNA.
153
safety. After the political environment had stabilized, he found that the Government had
requisitioned his house. To make matters worse, some unauthorized muhajirs were living in his
house. After petitioning for de-requisitioning, he succeeded in obtaining his residence.87
However, in his report, A Khaleque, the local police sub-inspector who had conducted the local
enquiry to establish the validity of Roy’s petition, suggested that “Order may kindly be passed to
return the house to the petitioner after taking an agreement that if he goes away to West Bengal,
the house may be surrendered to the Govt [sic].”88 Therefore requisitioning houses of Hindu
residents was one step in a process seen as leading to ultimate evacuation.
The needs of the state sometimes circumvented the rights of ownership as properties that
were not ‘empty’ were served with requisition notices. The petition of the Sutradhar family in
Comilla illustrates the complexities involved within the process at the local level. The story
began in October 1948 when the district government at Comilla requisitioned the Royal Hotel,
situated in the town center, in order to establish a police club within its premises. Prabud
Chandra Sengupta, the owner, filed an objection towards this requisition noting that although the
authorities had provided him with an alternative building for his hotel, relocation would be a
financial drain. He emphasized that his boarders, both Muslims and Hindus, were already in
residence and it would be difficult to move them.89 Superficially here is another instance of the
local authorities acting arbitrarily. However, matters were complicated when the district
authorities requisitioned the house that the Sutradhar family jointly owned, as the alternative
accommodation for the Royal Hotel. Not only had the family been residing in their house, they
87
File: Da-327/50, B Proceedings 1585-1599, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, August 1954, BNA.
88
Report dated 2 August 1950, ibid.
89
Petition to Deputy Secretary, Revenue Department (Requisition) dated 31 October 1948, File: Tr 1/49, B
Proceedings, 938-954, Revenue Department, Requisition Branch, July 1954, BNA.
154
also conducted a successful timber and furniture business from within the compound of the
house. In her petition protesting the requisition, Ashubala Sutradhar, noted that she had to
support her ailing husband and her 80-year-old mother in law, who were both residents of the
house in dispute. Moreover, their second house, which was situated outside of Comilla
Township, had already been requisitioned earlier, leaving the family without any residence.
Ashubala also sent her petition against the requisitioning to the district minority committee,
seeking some political support. The district authorities discredited her petition arguing that her
husband’s illness “is neither recent or acute. At least it has not prevented him from moving
about.” In addition, the land acquisition officer reported that the Sutradhars had begun their
business after the requisitioning notice had been served “for the purposes of defeating the
requisition.” For local officials, her petition was yet another instance of minority citizens raising
objections on “false or fictitious grounds” to disrupt the formation of the new government.90
Fortunately for Ashubala, Tafazzal Ali, then the minister in charge of the Revenue
Department, took up her case. Ali noted that the East Pakistan government had issued a ban
against the requisition of houses for non-officials. The district authorities should have applied for
permission from the government before they decided to requisition Ashubala’s house for
relocating Prabud Sengupta, the owner of Royal Hotel. Concluding that the district magistrate
had acted in a prejudicial manner, Ali approved the de-requisitioning of the house.
One did not have to be a property owner for the long arm of the requisition law to
displace a minority resident. Amrita Lal Bhowmick, an accountant in the Chittaranjan Cotton
90
The district magistrate wrote, “We are facing the same difficulty in taking possession of the houses under
requisition. There are 402 cases of requisition of which only 80% of the houses were taken over possession and the
rest could not be taken over due to objections after objections on false or fictitious grounds. It is the habitual
tendency of the owners of the houses under requisition, inspite of realizing that these houses were being
requisitioned under the painful necessity of the government to provide officers with accommodation.” Ibid.
155
Mills in Dhaka and a tenant in a non-owner occupied family house in Gandaria, Dhaka, found his
quarters requisitioned in July 1950. 91 He had been a resident in Dhaka since 1947 and had been
residing in the house with his family. Bhowmick, a relative of the owner had been allowed the
use of the property while the owner, searched for a suitable property to exchange or a buyer for
his property. On the particular day of the requisitioning, authorities had arrived at the house
while Bhowmick was at his office, served his maid the notice of requisitioning and locked up the
house. When he returned home, Bhowmick could not enter his house, nor could he collect his
clothes or money. Bhowmick successfully petitioned to the higher authorities and the property
was temporarily derequisitioned.92
A narrative of suffering and a debate on the rights of residence was embedded within this
success story. When his house was requisitioned, Bhowmick had supplied the authorities with
rent and municipal tax receipts and provided details on his ration card that proved his tenancy.
However, the authorities concluded that his personal relationship with the owner made him a
caretaker of the house rather than a tenant. This was a critical distinction. At one level, such
difference alluded to the fact that the actual owner had intentions to evacuate providing the
pretext for requisitioning. Second, the differentiation between Bhowmick as caretaker rather than
a tenant enabled the local authorities to project themselves as the official custodians of this
evacuee property. Consequently, in this particular case, the act of requisition would not involve
the disenfranchising a tenant.
The Government of East Bengal had defined guidelines for the compensation of both
moveable and immoveable property that was requisitioned. Both the government and the owner
91
File: Da-302/50, B Proceedings 1550-1557, Revenue Requisition Department, August 1954, BNA.
92
Ibid.
156
were to agree on the compensation. If such agreement was not reached, the East Bengal
government would nominate a person having expert knowledge on the property to be acquired.93
The owner could also appoint his own assessor and a government- appointed judge would
arbitrate the case in the district high court. The market value of the property was fixed to equal to
its value on or before 14th June 1947. This assessment applied to all houses within a radius of
twenty miles from the New Government House at Ramna, in the capital of Dacca, and within
twenty miles from the Court in the district of Chittagong. However, the rules for compensation
were not clear for requisitioned houses that were beyond the twenty-mile radius of these two
cities and in other districts of the province.
Over the years it became difficult to transfer the rent to the owner, who may have moved
to India, then the rent had to be channeled through bureaucratic institutions that regulated the
transfer of money between the two countries. For example, in his petition for adequate
compensation for his house in Dacca, N. C. Chakravarti, a civil servant in the West Bengal
government and then a resident of Calcutta, noted that he had been earning Rs 50 as rent before
his house had been requisitioned.94 He protested against the official estimation of rent at Rs. 30
which, along with an exponential rise in municipal taxes after the Partition, meant that he “was
denied any practical benefit.” Moreover, he requested the government to send his rent by money
order to Calcutta since the “cost of the journey will exceed the compensation.” Although his rent
was revised and raised to Rs. 50 it is unclear whether the East Bengal government was prompt in
sending any money order to Calcutta. Most likely, Chakravarti, like the cases cited above, had to
wait years to obtain any compensation for his property.
93
The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, 1948, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial
Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950, BNA.
94
Da- 52/49, B Proceedings, 99-101, Revenue (Acquisition) Department, July 1954, Revenue, BNA.
157
Some minority Hindus did not perceive any problems between their citizenship in one
country and ownership of property in another. Some of those who had moved permanently to
India now requested the Indian government to ensure that they received compensation from the
East Pakistan government for their requisitioned property. An anonymous letter writer outlined
his grievances and demands to the editor of Hindustan Standard thus, “Our house was taken up
in August 1947, another August has passed and the year is drawing to a close, yet we have not
received any sum by way of compensation.”95 After sending a number of letters to the East
Bengal government enquiring how and when the owner could collect compensation, he had
received a short letter noting that the rent had been fixed at Rs 25 instead of the earlier rent of
Rs. 40. The writer exhorted the West Bengal government that “ It is the incumbent duty of the
state to offer protection to our properties in foreign lands i.e. Pakistan. This is not a new or
abnormal demand, nor is it being prompted by sabotage motive [sic].” Rather, the writer urged
the West Bengal government to advise all the new citizens to apply for compensation to the High
Commissioner of Pakistan to assuage any suspicions of disloyalty.
Although the requisition drive and petitions protesting its operation created a space for
the articulation of citizenship rights through ownership and proof of residency, the issue of
compensation introduced a new factor in the negotiations. This new element concerned the rights
of arbitration as some minority Hindus began to send their petitions to the Indian High
Commission at Dacca. East Pakistani authorities viewed such actions on the part of their citizens
as undermining their authority. Aziz Ahmed, the Chief Secretary to the East Bengal Government,
in his letter to Muhammad Ikramullah, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, noted, “There is an almost
95
HS, 24 November 1948, 4. The concern over properties left behind and whether they would get any compensation
was central in the minds of those who migrated to India and reported regularly in Indian newspapers. See, HS, 28
June 1948, 4; 3 September 1948, 7; 8 November 1948, 4.
158
universal tendency on the part of the Hindus in this province to look upon the Deputy High
Commissioner as a sort of appellate authority and a protector of their interests - an impression
which the Deputy High Commissioner himself does little or nothing to discourage.”96 Ahmed
was only stating what was a common perception at the time. He went on to clearly stake a claim
on East Bengal’s minority citizens by urging the Indian High Commission to forward only cases
that concerned Indian citizens. On his part, Santosh Basu, the Deputy High Commissioner of
India, clarified that most of the petitions directed towards Indian authorities in Dhaka were from
those who had migrated to India and their petitions were postmarked from that side of the border.
Further, he cited the recent Inter Dominion agreement reached between representatives of both
countries in Delhi which provided space for both countries to create “ possible conditions which
would infuse confidence into the minds of those citizens who have migrated to the other
dominion with a view to their return to their original homes.”97 Hence, according to Basu, rather
than undermine East Pakistan, in taking up cases of non-payment of compensation, Indian
authorities were only assisting evacuees to enable them to return to their original homes.
However, for Ahmed, East Pakistan’s jurisdiction continued to extend to those who had migrated
to India but not yet adopted Indian nationality. This debate on rights over minority citizens was
crucial to the evolving self-definition of both India and Pakistan.
A Discourse of Dispossession: Religion vs. Citizenship
The arbitrariness of the requisition operation had the immediate effect of producing a
perception of minority oppression. The fact that most requisitioned houses belonged to Hindus
96
Letter dated 7 March 1949, File: 11-241, B Proceedings 8-9, bundle 49 Home Political Department August 1949,
BNA.
97
Ibid.
159
led to the belief that the East Pakistan state was deliberate in its attempts to dispossess its
minority citizens.98 For example, Bimalananda Dasgupta, the ex-chairman of the Dhaka
Municipality, in outlining the different problems generated because of requisition laws, stated
“Enough has been said and ventilated through the press over this procedure of the Pakistan
government to oust people who sincerely want to cling to their paternal homesteads but it seems
yet very little or no impression has been made on the authorities.”99 Similarly Samar Guha
claimed, “ For East Bengal, Pak [sic] Government is not likely to undertake any large scale
scheme for house building as requisitioning of Hindu houses serves their double purposes,
ousting of undesirable middle class Hindus from the urban areas and housing the Muslims in
them.”100 This hypothesis of calculated dispossession found ready reception within the evolving
discourse of persecution that by now included protests against gun control, forcible donations for
the Jinnah Fund, and arbitrary jailing of some prominent leaders on charges of anti-state activity.
The East Bengal government, aware of the dangerous potential for religious
discrimination within the requisition process, had clearly outlined in its promulgations that
places of worship would be out of bounds of requisitioning. Thus while the government had full
powers to requisition any property deemed necessary for state building, it also provided that “no
property used by the public for the purpose of religious worship shall be requisitioned.”101 In
98
Shyamaprasad Mookerjee was the most vocal critic of the alleged efforts of the East Pakistani state to “squeeze
out” Hindus. See his letter to B. C Roy, 22nd August 1950, SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File
no, 39, Index vol. 1. Interestingly, he also used the same term in his appeals for complete rehabilitation of refugees
from East Pakistan. In this case, he interpreted the limited efforts of the Indian government towards rehabilitating
Hindu refugees from East Pakistan as “efforts to squeeze (them) out back into Pakistan.” See his note “Statistics on
Migration,” SPM Papers, File No. 33, SPM Papers, “Refugees and minorities,” 1949-50, NMML.
99
HS, 19 December 1947.
100
Samar Guha, Non Muslims Behind the Curtain, 22.
101
The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial
Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950.
160
their multifarious attempts to counter the requisitioning process, minorities found this clause
useful as it became common practice to associate one’s residence with one’s places of worship.
For instance, when Nagendra Saha, a resident of Jessore, sent an express telegram. in March
1949, to the chief secretary of East Pakistan, he worded his protest thus, “ Our residential
building at Lakshmipasa with family deity installed temple inside for years requisitioned under
orders of district magistrate for circle officers residence daily worshipping by permanently
retained purohit [priest] will be stopped family members stranded without shelter pray
intervention.”102 Saha’s telegram identifies the loss of access to the ‘family deity’ as primary
reason for his objections to the requisitioning order. In an attached letter, Saha also pointed out a
set of other grounds for objection such as continued residence of family members and that the
family had no other alternative residence in the area. In support of Saha’s petition, the President
of the District Muslim League, Narail, Maulavi Abdul Aziz gathered more than twenty-five
signatures from prominent men of the area, most of who belonged to the local branches of the
Muslim League. Aziz, in his petition to the Tafazzal Ali, who was also the Chairman of the East
Pakistan Minority Board, noted that due to the requisition order, not only had Nagendra Saha and
his family been left without a residence, but they also had no access to the “Siva temple” situated
within their house. Such a situation “had created great unrest amongst the Hindu and Muslim
citizens of the locality.”103 Thus Aziz urged Ali to take action in favor of the derequisitioning of
Saha’s house in the interest of maintaining communal harmony.
102
File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.
103
Ibid., Letter 8 March 1949. Translations mine.
161
Saha’s example was one among many instances of disputed requisitions.104 The official
response was to discredit the grounds of his petitions. Local authorities reported that only three
members of the Saha family were residing at the house at the time of requisition, “ the other 4
brothers, Haren Babu, Jiten Babu, Anil Babu and Susil Babu were all living in the Indian Union
with their family and all belongings since the birth of Pakistan.”105 In the eyes of officials this
fact of a divided family established intent to migrate on the part of Nagendra Saha and
accordingly justified the requisition. To add insult to injury, the officials also stated that contrary
to rules, the family had removed a DBBL gun and a radio to the Indian union, and upon being
informed about the requisition order, the family imported a “good number of women and
children”106 to contest the requisition order. Thus not only had the Saha family been engaged in
what could be interpreted as seditious acts, but had moved family members to their residence for
the purposes of contesting the official order. A confidential memo to the district magistrate of
Jessore argued that “there is no temple in the house in the true sense but there is a small
memorial of the deceased parents of Nagen Babu, where photos and a siva linga are placed.”107
Since the memorial was situated away from the main building, local authorities proposed fencing
off the area to separate it from the requisitioned house and thereby ensure continuation of
worship. Such a resolution, would answer any contentions on grounds of religious rights and still
allow for the requisition of the house. Inspite of multiple petitions, the requisition of Saha’s
house remained in force in 1949.
104
See files of the Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, volumes 1-4, BNA.
105
Memo No. 342, 13 April 1949, File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition)
Department, July 1954, BNA.
106
Ibid.
107
Memo No. 113C, dated 26 March 1949, File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue
(Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.
162
Religion and requisition became visibly entangled with well-publicized cases such as the
one concerning the requisition of property of the Raja of Bhawal.108 East Pakistani authorities
had requisitioned the Jaidebpur Palace in January 1948 to accommodate the Office of the
Government Forms and Stationeries. Although Kumar Ram Narayan Roy Chowdhury, the Raja
of Bhawal, had objected to the requisition claiming, “there are temples of our family deities in
different parts of the Palace compound,” his petition to Nazimuddin was not successful. Given
that a requisition was fait accompli, Ram Narayan then called “on your [Nazimuddin’s] personal
assurance as a premier, for protection of our interests, during our last meeting, we as loyal
subjects of the state co-operated with the government and handed over the possession of the
rooms requisitioned in the Palace.” However, problems cropped up immediately after the
requisition because, contrary to expectations, sections of the Palace was also converted into a
boarding house for the employees of the Forms and Stationeries Department. RamNarayan
claimed that the occupants “often cause troubles during the performance of the daily pujas of the
deities,”109 and also “do not take care of the house and owing to their willful negligence the
Palace has been greatly damaged and made filthy.”110 Thus not only had the East Bengal
government reneged on its promise that despite the requisition, normal religious activities at the
Palace would continue but had also used the building for different purposes than stated earlier.
The allegation that the boarders were deliberate in their neglect of the Palace can be read
as an expression of communal antagonism. Such communal rhetoric may seem misplaced given
108
The Bhawal estate was situated 22 miles north of Dhaka city, within the Madhupur Forest region. It was one of
the largest zamindari estates in Dhaka although much of the land was not as productive as those of the riverine
estates. For more details see, Partha Chatterjee, A Princely Imposter, The Strange and Universal History of the
Kumar of Bhawal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 15-31.
109
The main cause of complaint was the earlier communal issue of playing of music during daily worship. File Jr21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.
110
Ibid.
163
the demographic statistics of the area. Muslims comprised nearly sixty percent of the population
and the rest were of lower caste Hindu peasants, rajbanshis and a tribal group called banua.111
But given the active mobilization of lower caste groups along communal lines before the
Partition, RamNarayan’s letter and newspaper reports easily made the connections between
communal identity and citizenship in East Pakistan.
Matters came to a head when the Ananda Bazar Patrika reported an incident of cow
slaughter (Bhowal Prashadey Garu Jabai) within the Palace grounds. The report also alleged
that on June 8, 1948 “the meat of the slaughtered cow was cooked and served to the Muslim
boarders. In this way, they [the boarders] had defiled the most ancient Hindu zamindari. The
adjacent pond, whose water was used for the Puja, had also been defiled.”112 This report
projected all the cultural and religious fears of the Hindus onto a physical institution. The “cow
slaughter” incident gained additional importance because of where it took place and became
symbolic of all real and perceived minority persecution within East Bengal. Accordingly, the
Ananda Bazar Patrika reported that the “Hindus of Bhowal have again become frustrated and
panicky” as a result of this incident.113 For Ram Narayan, this incident provided the pretext to
request the de-requisitioning on the grounds that the East Bengal state had reneged on its
promises to guarantee minority religious rights.
After investigating incident, M. Siddiqui, the Under Secretary to the Government of
Pakistan at Karachi, confirmed that some “laborers” had indeed slaughtered a cow within the
palace premises.114 They had been “severely warned” against repeating such an incident.
111
Chatterjee, Princely Imposter, 16.
112
File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.
113
Ibid.
114
Memo dated 22 January 1949, ibid.
164
However, Siddiqui perceived anti-state rhetoric within the complaint made by the manager of the
estate and noted,
Either allegations made by the manager of the estate, as indicated in the enclosure
to the above letter, regarding interference by the Press staff with religious performance
during Puja, conversion of major portions of the palace into a boarding house, and
damage to the property are not correct and appear to have been brought up along with the
'cow' incident merely for the sake of propaganda against Pakistan government. The
Pakistan government therefore refutes these allegations and would request the provincial
government to send a note to this effect to the property owner, if there is no objection.115
Any complaint, which centered on minority and hence religious issues, was, as in this case,
interpreted as a criticism of the legitimacy of the Pakistan state.
As the East Pakistan state tried to resolve the debate on whether the state would be a
democracy or theocracy, the requisition process, more than any other factor linked the issues of
citizenship and religious rights. Notions of belonging and citizenship were embedded within
one’s place of residence in the pre-partition era. However, specifically for the minorities, the
requisition process intruded and tore apart this association. In such circumstances, their petitions
interwove their dispossession within rhetoric of loss of religious rights and diminished cultural
citizenship within the nation. Most petitions thus repeatedly identified individual homes as the
abode of the kuladevata (family deity).116 Thus when Amrita Lal Bhowmick protested against
the requisitioning of his house, he added that “the room in which sits my family deity has also
been locked up and I have thus been stopped from my daily Puja.”117 Not only had he become
displaced within his original locality but his words reflected a cultural dispossession.
115
Ibid., Emphasis added.
116
See, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department Files: Da-346/50, B August 1954, Proceedings, 1647-1654;
Da-71/50, B July 1954, Proceedings, 271-292; and Home Political Files: 1I-293 of 1948, B May 1950, Proceedings,
16-24.
117
File: Da-302/50, B Proceedings 1550-1557, Revenue Requisition, August 1954, BNA.
165
Why did minorities intersperse their complaints with such religious associations? These
demands may indicate a continuation of Hindu communalism at play. However, in the project of
creating national identities both India, a declared secular state, and Pakistan, an Islamic
Republic, continued to identify their citizens in terms of “majority” and “minority” citizens.
Rather than an inherent identification with religion, the petitioners’ use of religion was a tactical
measure to strengthen their claims within the dynamic political and social environment after the
Partition. This alliance between religious identity and residence contributed to the discourse of
religious persecution that circumscribed the nation-building project in both countries.
It maybe fruitful to examine whether the East Pakistan state made any deliberate attempts
to dispossess its minority citizens. Certain elements within the local administration definitely
harbored anti-minority attitudes and/or interpreted the law to justify indiscriminate requisition.
However, in general the East Pakistan government was fully aware of the ramifications of such
requisitions where the majority of property owners were Hindu, especially in the new capital of
Dacca. In general, the government recruitment targeted all property owners irrespective of their
religion. The B Proceedings of the Revenue and Finance Department, which contain petitions
relating to the requisition process, reveal that several Muslim property owners faced similar
problems to those of their Hindu counterparts. The following table gives a sample distribution of
requisitioned houses between 1947 through 1950 in the three main administrative divisions of
Chittagong, Rajshahi and Dacca.118
118
Hindu
Muslim
Chittagong
487
156
Rajshahi
105
23
Dacca
345
57
Thanks to Irfat Ara for helping me with the compilation.
166
Source: Finance and Revenue (Requisition) files, Bundles 1-5, BNA.
The above table does not aim to be a comprehensive account nor does it include these
petitions surviving in official files uncritically. However, it indicates that the requisition process
targeted houses rather than religions. The needs of state formation rather than minority
persecution accounted for its arbitrariness. The Pakistan state viewed these houses as potential
infrastructure that could speed up the establishment of the new nation. However, the owners of
these properties regarded these spaces as their symbolic homeland and private property to which
they alone could stake a claim. Thus embedded within these petitions are the negotiations
between personal and official claims to what constitutes ownership. Homeowners, irrespective of
their religion, viewed the state’s inefficiency with regard to paying rent or the very randomness
of the requisition process as an infringement of their citizenship rights. For minority Hindus, as
the table indicates, such insecurities, generated by the requisition process, easily dovetailed into
the existing rhetoric of minority persecution. Simultaneously, these petitions, in addressing their
grievances to the Pakistani authorities, acknowledged the legitimacy of the new State rather than
undermine it.
Conclusion
Being members of the minority community was nothing new for Hindus and Muslims in
undivided Bengal. Prior to 1947, the minority experience was focused on the political sphere in
demands for representation in provincial and local legislative bodies. After Partition, the new
nation states adopted policies geared towards defining who would be their citizens. The
minorities came under special focus as articulators of a not only each nation’s secular façade but
also as counterweight for mistreatment of minorities on the other side. Moreover, minorities and
167
their concerns were the primary basis of inter Dominion communications between India and
Pakistan in the early years after the Partition.
Although a large number of minorities moved across the border to join the majority on
the other side after Partition, many did so with the intention of returning. Even when they
migrated across the border, they continued to keep ties of landownership and kinship relations.
Further, a large number continued to remain in their ancestral residences. That the Bengal
Partition engendered a chronic refugee migration lasting nearly two decades was a response to
official state policies after the Partition. Changing patterns of border control, introduction of new
systems of surveillance such as the passport and visa scheme, and the arbitrary requisitioning of
property emphasized, especially to the minorities on both sides of the border, that these
restrictions would cease only with migration. Paradoxically, although prominent leaders in both
countries urged each other to create conditions of safety and security in the minds of their
minorities, their efforts at nation building were counter productive to such rhetoric. The evacuee
property and requisitioning laws in East Pakistan are a prime example of such a process. The
physical dispossession engendered by these laws fused easily with incidents of small-scale
violence to contribute towards a growing rhetoric of minority persecution. Media depictions of
minorities as ‘fifth columnists’ added fuel to the fire making it difficult for minorities to remain
in their homes.
Questions on loyalty towards one’s nation was laid first squarely at the feet of minority
citizens in each country. However, migration did not provide any solution to their difficulties. As
“refugees” they not only had to adjust to alien environments and indifferent communities, but
also had to continuously struggle with the State for legal recognition as citizen.
168
Chapter 5
Ecology of Fear: Violence in Post-Partition Bengal
Bengal remained relatively peaceful during and after the announcement to partition the
province. Although the Noakhali and Calcutta riots of 1946 provided the immediate backdrop to
the decision to partition, the division itself witnessed no major incidents of communal skirmishes
as in Punjab. The announcement that Bengal would be divided on the basis of communal
majority population, and the later publication of the Boundary Award was received with mixed
feelings1 but did not result in any large-scale violence in the region. Then why examine violence
in the Partition of Bengal?
This chapter analyses the nature of violence and its representations to underline the
continuing effect of Partition as a process on the lives of Hindu and Muslim minorities which
influenced their decisions to seek security across the border. Violence in the region manifested
itself through stray incidents of stabbing, looting, abduction of women and murder. The
continuation of such incidents in the years after the actual event of Partition threaded together the
persistence of Partition in the lives of minorities on both sides of the border. If Partition is
viewed as a historical process, rather than an event with a specific date, then such incidents of
violence and their narrative representations acquire a significant role in the process of identity
formation in the new nation states. What differentiated and identified these incidents from prePartition incidents of communal violence was that such acts sought to identify Hindus and
Muslims in East Pakistan and India respectively as minorities and question their legitimacy as
1
Anti-Partitionists such as H.S. Suhrawardy, Sarat Bose and Abul Hashim evoked the common Bengali socio
cultural ties and advocated for an independent Bengal. The supporters of Partition comprising the bulk of the
Congress leaders and the Hindu Mahasabha argued that the violence of 1946 had rendered these ties asunder. They
claimed that the minority Hindus needed a ‘homeland’ appended to the Indian Union and separate from the proposed
Pakistan.
169
citizens of the country of their residence. The continuance of such small scale and sporadic
violence in East Pakistan and in West Bengal also contributed to the postcolonial debates on the
practical interpretation of such categories as nationalism and secularism. Representations of such
incidents in newspapers fixed minority identities as victims of majority-community violence.
Although some of these incidents of petty theft and loot involved for economic factors, their
portrayal in the media immediately colored them with communal overtones.2 Even the riots of
1950, which began as a communist insurrection of a handful of peasants against the East
Pakistan state, were interpreted as communally inspired, and were quickly coded as communal
riots in West Bengal. The aftermath of these riots witnessed a new peak in post Partition
migration of minorities.
Violence during the process of Partition in Bengal needs to be examined for
another reason. As an important corollary to any articulation of minority rights, demands of
refugee rehabilitation and citizenship, representations of violence were a necessary ingredient in
the narratives of victimhood. In the minds of insecure citizens, ‘threats’ of violence acted in
similar ways as actual violence. National and family honor continued to be important signifiers
influencing minorities in East Pakistan and India to decide to migrate even when there was no
personal experience of physical abuse. Refugees, especially the Hindus from East Pakistan,
tended to identify as incidents of violence those instances of transgression which not only
targeted their physical bodies, but some thing even greater – their religion, culture, honor and the
embodiment of all these – their women. Although official first information reports (FIR) on such
small-scale incidents are still classified, available letters and memorandum from minorities,
2
For example, when a longstanding feud between two landlords in Nilambar Patty in Manickgunje, East Pakistan
erupted again on February 29, 1948 with tenants of one attacking the tenants of the other, this incident was depicted
as a ‘communal riot’ in some Indian newspapers. The East Bengal Government immediately issued a press report
outlining that it was a local dispute with no communal aspects. ABP, 6 March 1948, 1.
170
propaganda leaflets, and newspaper reports represent such violence as ubiquitous in the lives of
these minorities.
In their analyses of pre-Partition violence in Bengal, Suranjan Das and Patricia Gossman
consider the historical trajectory, which culminated in the creation of political blocs of Hindus
and Muslims on the eve of Partition. Das traces the changes in the nature of riots in Bengal
between 1905 and 1947 from being relatively spontaneous and manifestations of class
differences to being planned, organized and attaining an overtly communal tone.3 In his
assessment of communal violence, he outlines the conjunction of elite and popular
communalism, which he argues ultimately manifested itself through the Calcutta riots of 1946.
Patricia Gossman examines the means by which violence became ritualized and was constitutive
of the process of identity formation in Bengal during the same period. She argues that in addition
to colonial authorities, Hindu and Muslim political leaders were instrumental in articulating the
narratives of communal riots by constructing “facts” out of every incident. Such representations
through numerous repetitions helped to “freeze popular perceptions of identity”.4
Such “frozen” identities continued in the post Partition period but with a significant
modification. Identities after the Partition, along with religion, had to incorporate ideals of
citizenship. Although in theory each state could and did define their citizens by birth and by their
willingness to continue to live in the region they found themselves in after Partition, in reality
citizenship was an evolving and much contested category. Between the period of 1947 and 1956
when both India and Pakistan outlined elaborate rules and regulations concerning citizenship,
minorities in both countries had to continuously negotiate the tension between their state of
3
Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal.
4
Patricia Gossman, Riots and Victims of Violence and the Construction of Communal Identity Among Bengali
Muslims, 1905-1947 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), 104.
171
residence and their religion. Communal incidents not only involved acts between “oppositional”
binaries, between Hindus and Muslims, but also between loyal citizens and perceived fifthcolumnists. In addition to their religion that identified them as minorities in India and East
Pakistan, Muslims and Hindus respectively, were targets of violence because of their decision to
continue in their ancestral residence instead of joining their co-religionists across the border. As
symbolic representatives of the majority community across the border, the loyalty of minorities
in West Bengal and East Pakistan was under close scrutiny.
Research on violence during the Partition has focused on large-scale, concentrated riots
during specific historical moments.5 Further, much of the horrific violence took place in Punjab
where in addition to communal politics, structural factors such as the presence of demobilized
army personnel contributed to the severity of the riots during 1947 and 1948. Although Bengal
witnessed large-scale riots in 1946, the transfer of power and division of the province the
following year did not elicit any severe forms of violence.6 However, it would not be accurate to
say that Partition in Bengal was peaceful. Rather, in post Partition Bengal, violence persisted
over the next two decades and was mediated through minor incidents of communal violence in
everyday life. Refugee migration in Bengal in the post-Partition period also continued in a
chronic manner, its numbers closely following the peaks and curves of violence in the region.
The small scale, intermittent nature of incidents of violence that continued in divided
Bengal was specific in its target of minorities within each nation and performed the significant
5
Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, Gyanendra
Pandey, Remembering Partition, Veena Das, Mirrors of Violence.
6
Max Jean Zins has argued that the Calcutta killings of 1946, in which brutal violence on women was first
perpetrated on a large scale, provided the impetus and emulatory model to the later Punjab Partition riots. Max Jean
Zins, “The 1947 Vivisection of India: The Political Usage of a Carnage in the Era of Citizen-massacres,” in
Mushirul Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato, eds., The Unfinished Agenda, National Building in South Asia (New Delhi:
Manohar, 2001), 49-77.
172
task of questioning citizenship rights. Such violence did not always manifest itself in physical
forms but also on a psychological plane through verbal threats, rumors, and occasionally thinly
veiled state propaganda and political speeches. Minorities, both Hindus and Muslims, uncertain
whether to join their majority brethren across the border or to continue to remain in their
ancestral region, became even more insecure under such psychological assaults. Such
psychosomatic violence did not operate in isolation but was bolstered by media coverage, lack of
protection from authorities, and deteriorating inter-dominion relations. Indian newspapers
consistently portrayed East Pakistan as a region of pervasive violence which targeted not only
the wealth and property of Hindu minorities but also their culture and women. Similarly, East
Pakistan media capitalized on the Indian Government’s difficulties with the integration of
Hyderabad and Kashmir, both Muslim ruled princely states, and interspersed their coverage with
incidents of persecution of Muslim minorities and destruction of Muslim holy places within
India. The continued persistence of such an ‘ecology of fear’ found physical justification and
legitimacy in the riots of 1950 after which a large number of Hindu and Muslim minorities were
uprooted and crossed the new international borders.
The Ecology of Fear
a) Urban and Rural Violence
Although the Muslim League had been able to form a government in Bengal in the 1940s,
this did not reflect the cultural and economic power structure of Bengali society, in which the
bhadralok, intellectual urbanites, businessmen and money lenders, all of who were
predominantly Hindu, still dominated. This elite Bengali society included the Muslim upper
classes, the asrafs, who were Urdu speaking and proudly traced their lineage to the Mughals.
173
Asrafs were consistent in their efforts to differentiate themselves from the “indigenous” Bengali
Muslim peasantry whom they regarded as ‘converts’.7 Most of the bhadralok were residents of
urban areas, especially Dacca and Calcutta, and were absentee landlords, owning substantial
property in rural East Bengal.8 Their rural linkages were maintained through the appointment of
naibs (managers of estates), qanungos (revenue record-keepers) and gomastas (agents) who were
predominantly Hindu.9 These zamindars and moneylenders were not partial in their treatment of
their Hindu and Muslim tenants and exploitation of labor and resources were designed to secure
economic and personal benefit.
Still the majority of the Hindu zamindars could easily be represented as the oppressors of
the bulk of the Muslim peasantry for communal as well as economic motives. In a climate of
increasing communal polarization of the 1930s and 40s, internal stratification and differences
within each community gave way to representations of communal homogeneity. In describing
the Hindu-Muslim relationship in pre-1947 Bengal, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, an archetypal colonial
subject and Bengali intellectual, recalled, “In the first place, we felt a retrospective hostility
towards the Muslims for their one time domination of us, the Hindus; secondly on the plane of
thought we were utterly indifferent to the Muslims as an element in contemporary society;
thirdly we had friendliness for the Muslims of our own economic and social status with whom
we came into personal contact; our fourth feeling was mixed concern and contempt for the
7
Remarking on the fragmented nature of the Muslim community in Bengal, Rafiuddin Ahmed points out “The
distance between the Urdu- speaking elite and their Bengali-Urdu speaking rural counterparts, the mofussil
landholders (who, despite their somewhat closer contact with the rural masses shared the social pretensions of the
urban ashraf), on the one hand, and the Bengali speaking Muslim peasantry, on the other, was often wider than the
gulf separating the latter from their Hindu neighbors.” Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906, A Quest
for Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 6.
8
The Census of 1901 recorded 67.1% Hindus within the urban population of Bengal province. Census of India,
1901, Vol. 1A, II (Tables), Table V (Calcutta: Superintended of Government Printing, 1903), 20-23.
9
Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengali Muslims, 2.
174
Muslim peasant, whom we saw in the same light as we saw our low caste Hindu tenants, or in
other words, as our live stock.”10
The quest for a separate Muslim identity throughout the first half of the twentieth century
made trenchant use of such class differences and increasingly projected it through the prism of
communal difference. For the Muslim peasantry of rural Bengal, the demands for Pakistan, by
1947, promised emancipation from the manipulation of the landlord-jotedar (rich peasant)moneylender triumvirate. After the Noakhali and Tipperah riots of 1946, and the consequent
mass exodus of the Hindus from the villages in that region, an elderly Muslim peasant is said to
have remarked that they had achieved Pakistan as the region between Feni and Chandpur had
been liberated.”11 The Hindu elite who remained behind became, almost overnight, a minority
not only in numerical terms but also found their hegemonic power diminished as the Muslim
peasantry believed itself to be ‘liberated’ once Pakistan became inevitable.
In the post Partition period, sporadic attacks on the property of the Hindu elite continued
both in urban and rural areas. Such attacks often accompanied by religious slogans and at times
involving destruction and defacement of religious icons, at one level reflected the continued use
of communal rhetoric to achieve economic gain. At another level, such incidents also called into
question the rights of citizenship and nationality of the minority Hindus in East Pakistan. In rural
East Bengal, although the peasantry was diverse in terms of religion, they had, in previous
decades, often united along class issues related to landlord and jotedar oppression. However,
immediately after Partition, a number of communal incidents involved the usurpation of rural
10
Nirad C Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),
233.
11
Cited in Taj ul Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal
1920-1947 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 254.
175
landholdings belonging not only to the migrating Hindu population but also of to the minority
Hindus who had decided to remain in East Pakistan. Among the targets were scheduled caste
peasants who with their Muslim counterparts had in previous decades fought for peasant rights
and supported Fazlul Haq’s Krishak Praja Party. Although the scheduled castes in rural Bengal
had been traditionally outside of the Hindu caste system, class-based politics in the 1930s and
1940s had closely aligned their identities with the dominant Hindu ideology.12 In the post
Partition aftermath, their class alliances with the Muslim peasantry continued to splinter along
communal lines.
Immediately after the Partition, in August 1947, the majority Muslim population of a
village in Noagaon in Sylhet district attacked the section of their village where scheduled caste
kaibartas lived. The official report noted that this attack was foiled as the villagers had been at
home and had thus “been able to give a heroic defense which had baffled the Muslim mob who
had been waiting for an opportunity ever since.”13 Such an opportunity presented itself six
months later on the midnight of 11 February 1948, when “a mob of a thousand or twelve hundred
Muslims attacked Kaibarta Hati… and burnt down the whole village … the mob used slogans of
Allah ho Akbar, and used crackers to scare away people.”14 The success of the second attack was
greatly facilitated since most of the male members of the kaibarta community were away on a
fishing trip. The official investigation after this incident reported substantial economic damage
but no loss of human lives. Further, the report concluded that the last attack had been well
planned and preceded by sporadic incidents of dacoity. The removal, in January 1948, of official
12
Sekhar Bandyopadhya, “ Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, 18721947” in Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem Van Schendel eds. Bengal: Communities,
Development and States (Delhi: Manohar, 1994), 90-119.
13
File: 27C-4 of 1948, Home Political, B Proceedings 207-234, October 1950, BNA.
14
Ibid.
176
armed guards who patrolled the locality after the first attack, suggested the complicity of local
authorities. Purnendu Kishore Sengupta, a member of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly,
who investigated the incident, indicated that such riots had produced a sense of insecurity among
the Hindus of the area and some had already migrated to India. He concluded that the only way
to restore confidence among the minorities was for the East Bengal government to take prompt
action against the miscreants.15
The victims of such small-scale violence had two options – to resist or to migrate. The
reasons why they chose the latter as means to resolve the dilemma lies within the structural
processes of the evolving nations. For East Pakistan, the project of establishing a post-Partition
national order involved the additional task of setting up a new infrastructure for government
offices and employees. Such a process involved not only requisitioning houses in the urban areas
to house the various departments of the new government, but also recruiting personnel to fill up
the administrative ranks depleted by the migration of the Hindus to India. Often Muslim refugees
from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who were unfamiliar with the traditional social and cultural
linkages in the East Pakistan countryside, obtained these jobs. Moreover, having been uprooted
themselves from their ancestral homes by neighboring Hindus in India, they were often
unsympathetic to the plight of the minorities in East Pakistan. The demand for personnel
sometimes opened up avenues of official authority to rural elites and local League leaders who
formed part of not only the Union Boards but also became members of the police and
administrative bureaucracy.16 Their official capacity often facilitated the increase of their
personal landholdings through the requisition of land and property left by the Hindu refugees.
15
Ibid.
16
Complaints about requisitioning are a significant theme within the minority rhetoric of victimhood. However, a
number of Muslims also had their houses requisitioned and a number of complaints dealt with local League leaders
using their official powers for personal economic gains. For details on requisitioning of property, see chapter 4.
177
Sometimes such requisitioning would also take place even in localities where Hindus and
scheduled caste minorities continued to reside.
Although violence had become the “order of the day” for some minority Hindus in East
Pakistan, complaints to the authorities provided little relief. In a memorandum to the Provincial
Minority Board describing the kinds of violence he and his family had to suffer, a resident of
Medinimandal in Munishiganj subdivision of Dacca district cited several incidents of
molestations of women and theft of household items. When his brother had been fishing in their
own tank, the writer alleged that four or five local Muslims abused him and forcefully pointed
out that “this is now Pakistan and all these belong to us. Who are you ‘sala’17 to catch fish here,
stop it at once.”18 Although the writer had identified the perpetrators, the police and local
authorities were of little use since the nearest police station was five miles away and the
perpetrators enjoyed the “full support” of the local Union Board president. He concluded that
such incidents were not “occasional happenings, [but] I should say of everyday.” For him and for
other Hindu minorities who became East Pakistan citizens after 1947, such forms of violence had
become regular occurrence.
Provincial and district minority boards were established in India and East Pakistan after
the Inter-dominion Conference of April 1948, to address minority grievances in each state. Each
board had a chairman and five members, three of who would belong to the minority community
of that state.19 However such boards functioned erratically, and a significant number of Hindu
members of these boards in East Pakistan had already migrated to India. With the departure of
17
A pejorative term that literally means brother-in-law but suggests an intimate relationship with someone's sister.
18
Unsigned Memorandum to the Provincial Minority Board, File: CR 7M-1, Home Political B Proceedings, 277303, September 1949, BNA.
19
Ibid.
178
such leaders and upper and middle class Hindus from the official administration, the political and
social life of eastern Bengal witnessed the splintering of traditional Hindu dominance in these
spheres. For those who remained behind and sought to adapt to the changing realities, incidents
or even rumors of such violence cast doubts on the wisdom of their decision to remain.
Such localized incidents of intimidation and violence were not always community
specific. Although official sources within Pakistan admitted to reports of petty thefts of crops
fruits fish and other village products and of cases of alleged intimidation to induce sale of land
by non-Muslims, they simultaneously pointed out “there is nothing extraordinary in these as the
victims are both Hindus and Muslims.”20 Changed realities of becoming marginal not only in
numerical but also in terms of the dominant community, heightened the sense of persecution
among those minorities who remained in East Pakistan.
At times these minorities used such reports of petty violence to legitimate their demand
for rehabilitation from the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. Thus instead of
writing to the East Pakistan authorities, the non-Muslim representatives from the villages within
Jaintiapur, Goainghat and Kanaighat Thanas of Sylhet District, East Pakistan, wrote to the Chief
Minister of Assam reporting violence and seeking protection from the Assam government.
Representing mostly the scheduled caste and tribals such as the Khasis and Mikirs, Jogendra
Chandra Nandi, Dhansing Khasia, Nanigopal Dey and others pleaded “We are mostly poor and
illiterate and as such many of us lack in courage to stand the oppressions of the Majority Muslim
community of our localities. Our life and property and above all our womenfolk and even
children are not at all safe in their hands.”21 Moreover, the writers alleged that there were
20
Intra-dominion telegram between Dacca and Karachi dated 4.3. 48. File: 12C-4, Home Political B Proceedings,
371-375, August 1949, BNA.
21
Letter dated 10.11.1947. File 4P-7/48, Home Political, B Proceedings, July 1948, BNA.
179
“several cases of kidnapping, abduction and rape. Loot has almost become the order of the day.
Only arson is not taking place on the ground as given by the perpetrators of all other misdeeds,
that after the non- Muslims will have been turned out their houses will go to them.”22 Violence
was thus represented as communal as well as being carefully planned by the Muslim majority
who sought economic gains.
Although this letter is similar to the written complaints sent to the provincial minority
board and to East Pakistani and Indian leaders, it is also representative in its demand for
rehabilitation within India. The only way for these villagers “of saving our life and property and
our womenfolk and children” was “by migrating altogether from our homes in Pakistan and
settling in the nearest available place in Assam within the dominion of India.”23 In support of
their request for rehabilitation in Assam, they claimed that if they were not allowed residence
within India then they would be converted to Islam en masse, and most likely would be
“exterminated by the neighboring Muslim population of our localities who are gathering much
arms etc. for launching an attack on us on a large scale.”24 If their continuing victimhood failed
to convince the Assam authorities to facilitate their migration and rehabilitation, they attempted
to establish historical claims by noting that the Jaintia Hills and Assam had been one unit before
the British in 1835 separated and annexed their particular region to Sylhet for administrative
purposes. In addition to evoking historical ties, the writers asserted that the Assam government
would accrue economic benefits of labor and revenue from the settlers. Thus it was not their
intention to migrate to Assam as refugees but as legitimate and productive citizens.25
22
Ibid. Emphasis added.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid. Report dated 17.3.48.
180
However, for the Government of Assam such migration was “not desirable” and Assam
authorities urged the East Pakistani officials to ensure that these people “may be set free from
apprehension and may rest contented without approaching a Government who have no
jurisdiction over them.” After an investigation, the East Pakistani Inspector General of Sylhet
found that the allegations were “maliciously false.” He also noted that people who were in
general migrating to India were not doing so as a result of torture by the majority community.
Rather, they left because “they are at heart deadly against Pakistan.” 26 According to the
Pakistani IG, the petitioners had painted such a false picture with the motive of getting reserve
land and rehabilitation in Assam. Thus economic benefits on the other side rather than minority
persecution in East Pakistan was represented as the primary basis for migration and new
citizenship.
b) Abduction and Conversion
Real and rumored incidents of conversion perpetuated the environment of violence.
These symbolized on the one hand, a forced negation of one’s religion and community and on
the other hand signified the numerical increase of one community at the expense of the other.
After the riots of 1946, the Bengal government proposed an ordinance that aimed to provide
relief to those who had been converted and to return them to the folds of their community.27
However what it actually did was to deny the “convert” any religion at all – by making their
conversion illegal not only were these victims not allowed to profess their new religion but there
25
See Chapter 6.
26
Letter from Sir Harold Dennehy, Chief Secretary, Assam, to Chief Secretary, Government of East Bengal, dated
12.1.48. File 4P-7/48, Home Political, B Proceedings, July 1948, BNA.
27
File: L/PJ/7/12239, IOR NEG 31866, “Forcible Conversions and Marriages Nullification Bill, 1947”, OIOC,
London.
181
was no mechanism by which these victims could be taken back into their former community.
Moreover the loyalty of converts continued to be suspect.
Conversion, especially of Hindus to Islam, was a key issue in the narratives of violence in
the post Partition period. Even when such conversions had come about under peaceful and
voluntary circumstances, they became significant within the post Partition definitions of loyalty
to the nation. D. L. Power, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of East Bengal, reported to
the Government of West Bengal that on 15 June 1948, two Muslim villagers, Barkatullah
Mandal and Insan Sardar, were severely beaten and had their beards cut off by local police
constables for performing milad (religious ceremony) at the former’s house the earlier evening.28
The situation acquired a complex character because like many of his compatriots, Barkatullah
had been a scheduled caste by the name of Brindaban Mandal before he converted to Islam in
1941 and changed his name. 29 The local authorities insisted that he reconvert back to Hinduism
and give his daughter in marriage to a Hindu. After a severe beating, he was released on a
promise that he would re-convert. The next day, the same officers came and harassed his wife
when they could not find Barkatullah. This incident forced Barkatullah and his family to take
refuge in Jessore and to seek help from the East Pakistani authorities. The case of Barkatullah
Mandal is indicative of how communal identity issues played out locally after the Partition. From
the perspective of the Indian officials, Barkatullah’s loyalty could only be ensured by his reconversion to Hinduism and thus legitimize his claim to Indian citizenship. The West Bengal
28
File: 1I 254 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 22-27, July 1949, BNA
29
Most Bengalis believe that proselytization and forcible conversion resulted in the numerical preponderance of
Muslims in the Bengal delta. Richard Eaton has argued convincingly that these conversions had more to do with
colonization of land in the eastern delta. As more and more people under the leadership of the pirs (sufi saints) cut
virgin forests to settle the land, they adopted a lifestyle in keeping with the teaching of the pirs and developed a
loose adherence to Islam. Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
182
government in their reply denied that such an incident had happened and noted that Barkatullah
was a suspect in a dacoity case. In their view, his migration reflected an attempt to escape prison
rather than flight from persecution.
Nowhere was the confluence of violence and identity formation more crucial than for
abducted women and their forcible recovery by the Indian and Pakistani states.30 In Bengal, the
intertwining of violence and women’s sexuality was manifested through abduction, conversion
and physical molestation during the riots of 1946, 1950 and 1964. In addition, sporadic incidents
of verbal and physical abuse targeting women during relatively peaceful times became ways in
which men, both Hindus and Muslims, communicated their threats on each other.
Unlike Punjab, where women were subject to horrific acts of physical disfigurement
targeting their reproductive functions, Bengal during the 1946 riots did not report many such
cases.31 In a secret note to Secretary of State Pethwick-Lawrence, reporting on the 1946
Noakhali riots, the then Governor of Bengal, F. J. Burrows wrote that one of the specific features
of the disturbances at Noakhali had been that “mobs seldom seriously injured or killed
women.”32 Rather, women were generally subject to conversion through the “removal of caste
marks from the foreheads of girls and women, breaking the conch bracelet on the wrists of
married women, and making them recite prayers and forcing them to eat beef.” Conversion was
30
Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin have argued that “Dramatic episodes of violence against women during
communal riots bring to the surface, savagely and explicitly, familiar forms of sexual violence- now charged with a
symbolic meaning that serves as an indicator of the place that women’s sexuality occupies in an all male patriarchal
arrangement of gender relations between and within religious or ethnic communities.” Ritu Menon and Kamala
Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, 41.
31
Although reported cases of abduction of women were few, some leading intellectuals in Bengal felt the need to
form an organization which would prevent crimes against women and “rescue, protest [sic] and rehabilitate abducted
women.” Known as the Bangiya Nari Raksha Samity, Sucheta Kripalani was its president and Radha Kumud
Mukherjee was the President of its Working Committee. HS, 5 August 1947, 3.
32
But he also pointed out the reluctance of the victims to admit to being raped, abducted or converted. F. J.
Burrows, letter dated 18 November 1946, File: L/PJ/8/575 coll.117/B5 Pt.4, Oct 1946-July 1947, OIOC, London.
183
taken to have dissolved all marriage bonds and as “for maidens it was but proper that they should
be wedded to the valorous warriors of Pakistan.”33 Women in such violence became symbols of
elite Hindu culture that had traditionally banned inter-personal and social relations with nonHindus. Conversion and marriage signaled a greater dissolution of such traditions than mere
decimation of the male members of the community. Women often committed suicide to escape
molestations and preserve family honor.34
In post Partition Bengal, although reported cases of abduction of women were few,35 fear
of such a catastrophe was always at the forefront in the minds of the Hindu minorities,
perpetuated by intermittent but consistent media reports on incidents of abduction and
molestation of Hindu women. In addition, reports of the Indian state’s recovery operations
carried out under the leadership of Mridula Sarabhai also received wide publicity and ensured
that violence against women continued to be a key theme within public discourse after 1947.
Bengali literature is replete with depictions of the plight of women in situations of
violence arising out of the riots during and in the post Partition period. Jyotirmayee Devi’s The
River Churning describes a Hindu family in an East Bengal village who become victims of
communal frenzy.36 When the father is killed and the mother jumps into a pond to preserve her
honor, their two daughters face abduction and physical molestation. For Sutara, the younger
daughter, who regains consciousness in her Muslim neighbors’ home, this one night of violence,
changes her identity. In addition to being a victim, her rescue by a Muslim family ensures that
33
Cited in Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 198.
34
Ibid.
35
The numbers are few only in comparison to the cases in the Punjab. East Bengal records provide intermittent
evidence of abductions of Hindu women beyond 1947. For example, see Home Political (CR) Proceedings, 218-219,
March 1950, BNA.
36
Jyotirmayee Devi, The River Churning, translated by Enakshi Chatterjee (Delhi: Kali, 1995).
184
she becomes an outcaste in her brother’s family. Her encounters force her to become
independent of her family, but her experiences of violence continue to color her interactions with
other people. Violence for Sutara comes not only from the “other” community but also from
members of her own community who refuse to include her within their fold of respectability.
Similarly, in “Karun Kanya” (Daughter of Sadness), a short story, Ramapada Chaudhury
portrays the fate of the women who had the misfortune of being caught in between the crossfire
of communal violence.37 State machinery in the form of the Recovery Program “rescues”
Arundhuti, the main protagonist, from her life as a wife of her abductor and returns her to family.
However, her family welcomes her only so long as the physical sign of her abduction, her child,
was kept a secret. Violence for these women did not end with the physical act of molestation and
rape. It began a cycle of exclusion and cultural censorship that hindered their assimilation as
citizens of the new nations and fractured their identities within their own families and
communities.
Women faced abduction not only from men of the other community but also from men of
their own community. J. M. Chatterjee, who was connected with the recovery program in West
Bengal, reported to Mridula Sarabhai that refugee women from East Pakistan, who had camped
out in Sealdah Station in Calcutta and other refugee transit centers after the riots of 1950, often
fell prey to enticement from traffickers in younger women.38 Newspapers intermittently reported
on cases where Hindu men posing as Congress workers kidnapped Hindu refugee women to sell
them.39
37
Ramapada Chaudhury, “Karun Kanya” in Manabendra Bandyapadhya (ed.) Bhed-Bhibed, 292-306.
38
J. M. Chatterjee to Mridula Sarabhai, April 1950, File: R/Bengal/15-1950-54, Mridula Sarabhai Papers, NMML.
Such incidents were also reported in HS, 7 July 1948, 6.
39
HS, 26 June 1948, 8.
185
Recovery operations were implicitly paternalistic in their aim to recover women. They
were essentially disruptive for the women whom they wanted to save in order to preserve the
honor of the community. A police report on the “rescue” of a Hindu woman from a Muslim
bustee (slum) in Calcutta reveals to the dispossession of the rights of the woman during the
process of preserving community and national honor. Some Muslims had killed Sarajbala Dey’s
husband during the 1946 riots. She had moved from Howrah to Calcutta with her six-year-old
son and began living with a man named Chatua. After seven months, she came to know that he
was actually a Muslim and his real name was Sadhu Mia. Recently they had again moved to a
Muslim bustee where he died of natural causes. On the day of her rescue, she had gone to take
water from a roadside tap and “came to the notice of neighboring Hindus who rescued her and
her son” and informed the local police station. 40 Although this was not a case of abduction, the
Hindu neighbors decided that Sarajbala Dey should be rescued once her male protector had
passed away and restored to her community.
In another incident, tension prevailed among Hindus at Sealdah Station over three
Muslim men escorting an unidentified woman to East Pakistan.41 Even though the police officer
in charge intervened and discovered that the woman was a Muslim, he failed to convince the
members of Hindustan National Guards who were on duty at Sealdah refugee center. Although
the three men and the woman were allowed to leave the next day, the Hindu public continued to
insist that she had been an Hindu and should have been sent to a rescue home. This episode not
only questioned the effectiveness of the state police, but also demonstrated that the
40
Noted by Sub-Inspector JL Sen dated 10 July 1948, File: PM 506, West Bengal Police (Special Branch)
(henceforth WBPSB), 1948. Some vernacular newspapers like the Dainik Basumati, also reported the story.
41
Ibid. Official Memo. 22 July 1948.
186
predominantly Hindu public of Calcutta felt responsibility for protecting what they considered to
be the embodiment of their honor.
c) Letters, Pamphlets and Propaganda
In the post-Partition period, the minority Hindu elite in East Pakistan began receiving
threatening letters asking them to leave their home immediately. One such letter, addressed to a
prominent Hindu of Rajshahi began with the premise that hitherto Hindus had oppressed the
Muslims and had “torpedoed” Muslim initiatives at bridging the social gap. Now that Partition
had become a fact, the letter warned that if the Hindus did not leave then “your dispensary [sic],
properties will be ruthlessly massacred, the prestige and honor of your womenfolk must be at
stake.”42 The letter than goes onto describe the act of intercourse between the writer of the letter
and the women in Hindu household, an act which threatened to physically “mark” their conquest
by making them pregnant. Although there were no reported cases of such incidents actually
happening, such letters acted as a catalyst for migration of the Hindus from the area.
In addition to such letters, in early 1951, a number of posters depicting Hindus as fifth
columnists began to appear at various railway stations in East Pakistan. Captioned in English,
Bengali and Urdu and bearing certificates of issue under Pakistan government, these posters
clearly identified the “enemies” of the state.43 One set showed a man dressed as a Hindu and
another as a Muslim engaged in conversation and the caption, “Beware! He maybe an agent of
our enemy. Watch your words.” In another set of poster, a Hindu is shown to be trying to
overhear what a Muslim is saying, with the subtitle “Speak Carefully. The enemy is listening.”
42
File: 972/47, WBPSB, 1948.
43
File: 11P-22/1951, Public Relations, B Proceedings 585-591, August 1953, BNA, See Appendix I (d) and (e) of
this dissertation.
187
The West Bengal government immediately petitioned for the withdrawal of such posters in East
Pakistan, but could not before some damage had been done.44
On the other side of the border in Calcutta, Muslim minorities were the objects of threats
from certain right wing Hindu groups. Barkat Ali Brothers, a well known tailoring concern in
central Calcutta, received a number of anonymous threatening letters around March 1948.
Written by a group claiming to represent the “Indian Terrorist Party,” one letter warned the
Muslim proprietors of Barkat Ali Brothers to stop “their anti-Indian and anti-Hindu activities.”45
Barkat Ali did not close their shop, such an atmosphere of distrust stimulated other minority
citizens to rethink their continued residence in West Bengal. Often a rumor of violence would
trigger a panic among the minorities. A West Bengal police memo dated 28 May 1948 noted that
there was general panic amongst the Muslims of Blockman Street, Wellesley Street and Elliot
Road in Calcutta because of a rumor of an imminent riot. Accordingly, “many Muslims had sent
out their wives and children out of Calcutta. They are disposing of their valuable furniture and
also ornaments.”46
The police in West Bengal reported that in the wake of the post Partition peace drive in
Calcutta “a campaign of vendetta against Muslims vis-à-vis the West Bengal ministry is being
carried on secretly.” To substantiate their claim, the police had seized the circulation of a “highly
objectionable and inciting” leaflet, which had been in circulation around end of August 1947 in
various congregation points in the city. The leaflet printed in Bengali under the caption “A Word
of Warning to the West Bengal Ministry” claimed to have been issued by the Revolutionary
44
File: 4L-B/1950, Home Political B Proceedings 142-145, September 1951, BNA.
45
File: PM 816/48, WBPSB, 1948.
46
File: PM 1019/48, WBPSB, 1948.
188
Party of Bengal. It claimed that the notorious Muslims officers such as Doha and Hafizuddin
who had subjected the Hindus to various tortures during the 1946 riots had gone to East Bengal
where the Hindus were being oppressed and urged the West Bengal ministers to prevent such
oppression of Hindus and take steps to rescue the kidnapped Hindu women. The leaflet
concluded with a threat that not a single Muslim will be left alive in West Bengal. Intelligence
officials were unable to pinpoint exactly who was behind the circulation of such malicious
propaganda but conjectured that it to be the work of an extreme and communal organization
known as the ‘Muchipara’ group who had taken an active part in the violence during the 1946
riots.47
Providing Continuity: Violence in the Public discourse
During the countdown to Partition, civic space remained communalized in both Bengals.
Small-scale incidents of violence, which most often resulted due to a temporary breakdown in
the law and order functions of the state, were swiftly translated into communal terms.
Occurrence of petty incidents of theft and murder and their intensive and continuous coverage in
Indian newspapers ensured that the specter of the Calcutta-Noakhali riots of 1946 persisted in
public memory.
In July 1947 when some members of the Muslim League National Guard demanded free
mangoes from a local shopkeeper in Akhaura, on the border of Comilla and Tripura State,
trouble erupted when the shopkeeper refused. A fight ensued and the shopkeeper was severely
beaten.48 The next day rumors circulated that the Hindus had killed some national guards and
47
File: PM 506/47, WBPSB, 1947.
48
Editorial, HS, 15 July 1947, 4.
189
retaliatory violence included the burning of local houses belonging mostly to scheduled castes
and coolies. The Hindustan Standard carried an editorial on this incident that was symptomatic
of the prevailing communal environment. The editorial identified the Muslim national guards as
“minions of a theocratic state” out to “exact levies” from the Hindu minority of which the
shopkeeper was a member. While reporting on a familiar incident of abuse within the traditional
state-proletariat power structure, which had swiftly become communalized, the editorial also
contributed to Hindu elite’s fear of living in a “theocratic state” and being swamped by the
Muslim majority in Bengal.
By 1901, the enumeration process of the Census of India had established the numerical
predominance of Muslims in the Bengal delta. In addition, the Bengal Partition of 1905, which
aimed to divide the Muslim dominated eastern region from the Hindu dominated western Bengal,
and the Communal Award of 1932, for the Muslims in provincial governments had undermined
the traditional Hindu hegemony within the political structure in Bengal. Thus when this
particular editorial reported that “nearly 8,000 hooligans immediately made an attack on the
station… and then set fire to a number of adjacent houses,”49 it played on the existing
apprehensions of the Hindu bhadralok of losing power in the public sphere. News of incidents
of violence where the Muslims were the perpetrators usually emphasized their numerical
advantage over their “victims.”
Another key theme in newspaper reports describing aggression against Hindus was the
implicit and sometimes explicit allusion to the utter mindlessness of the violence. Rather, the
baser instincts usually drove the Muslim mob to attack innocent people. Thus the editorial
prefaced the report of the above incident with the following insight of the conditions prevailing
49
Ibid. , 4.
190
in East Pakistan, “these Muslim masses have been in many places charged with a fanatical desire
to exterminate the Hindus if they cannot be brought to a state of abject subjection. All the baser
propensities of their nature have been stirred up by this anti Hindu passion. No wonder that in
many a place in Pakistan the Hindus feel as if they are lying in a powder dump. For they know
that even the resistance to ordinary crimes like theft and dacoity, may well prove the fatal spark
to set ablaze the base below.”50 A corollary to such representations was the identification of the
Hindu minority as passive victims not as a sign of their emasculation but as juxtaposed with the
stereotype of the “fanatical” Muslim whose sole goal had traditionally been the decimation of
their Hindu brethren.
The same newspaper reported an incident of trespassing and abuse occurring in the
eastern sector of Dacca in the following terms. “On June 20th, 1947, some miscreants belonging
to the majority community along with a mob numbering three to four hundred forcibly entered
the house of Narayan Bose and molested some young men of the house and abused some other
members in the filthiest terms.”51 Superficially, such an incident was yet another example of the
powerlessness of the minority Hindu elite in eastern Bengal. However, what is more interesting
is the immediate background to this incident of forcible entry. A crowd had gathered near the
house to watch a game of kabadi (a game of tag) between two teams when
Suddenly a section of the Muslims pounced upon a Hindu boy. The boy was then
chased by the mob, who in spite of protest from the inmates entered the house of Narayan
babu shouting that Muslims were entitled to enter anywhere in Pakistan. Coming out of
this house the mob in pursuit of the boy attempted to enter other houses also and on the
way the mob caught hold of a young passerby named Kamal Bose, and severely
manhandled him.52
50
ibid. , 4.
51
HS, 25 June 1948, 4. Emphasis added.
52
Ibid.
191
The editorial thus indicates that the Muslim mob had randomly pounced upon a young boy, and
later for no reason again had harassed Kamal Bose. Not only had the mob violated the private
and now communalized space of a Hindu elite household but had dared to threaten it by
espousing their “rights of entry” in a place yet to become Pakistan.
The Indian newspapers, in the post-Partition period, continued to report cases of arson,
murder, and harassment of Hindu minorities related to the requisition of property and gun
control. These reports emphasized the quotidian nature of these crimes that sought to leave no
doubt in the readers’ minds, that such harassment and violence had become a regular feature of
daily life in East Pakistan and that the Hindu minority were usually the target victims of such
violence.53 Moreover, the requisitioning of houses in East Pakistan was portrayed in Indian
newspapers as a method of forced evictions targeting Hindu minorities even though houses of
both Hindus and Muslims were requisitioned for these purposes.54
Newspapers in West Bengal were significant conduits in the repeated portrayal of small
incidents of crime as challenges to pre-Partition social norms between elite but minority Hindus
and the majority Muslim underclass. Like many educational institutions funded by elite Hindu
groups in eastern Bengal, Daulatpur College, situated five miles from the district town of
Khulna, was also a religious institution with a temple within its premises. It did not hire nonHindu staff and segregated its Muslim students in residences outside the college campus. In
September 1948 when some Muslim students demanded accommodations within the College
compound after the migration of a majority of the Hindu students of the College, their action was
53
For news reports on violence and harassment of Hindu minorities in East Pakistan, see ABP, 22 February 1948, 8;
21 March 1948, 1,5; Editorial, 24 March 1948, 4; March 25 1948, 8; 14 April 1948, 8; HS, 1 June 1948, 6; 16, June
1948, 6; 25 June 1948, 6; 4 August 1948, 6; 24 August 1948, 6; 28 September 1948, 8; 19 October 1948, 4; 6
November 1948, 6; 7 November 1948, 10; 10 December 1948, 1; 23 December 1948, 5; 1 January 1949, 6; 2
January 1949, 6; 3 April 1949, 9.
54
See chapter 4.
192
construed as rebellion and “which threatens the very existence of the College.” The Hindustan
Standard reported the incident as another notch in the ongoing persecution of the minority
Hindus.55 Such cultural trespassing was a key theme in the narrative of persecution that
circulated in the media and in the minority grievances lodged with the East Pakistan
Government. For example, when the East Pakistan state proposed to reduce the annual Durga
Puja holidays from 12 days to four days, there was widespread protest. The Chittagong Bar
Association sent in a memorandum of protest to the East Bengal Minority Commission, arguing
that such an action was a “denial and deprivation of the right of the Hindus to worship the
goddess in a proper manner.”56
Newspapers published in West Bengal continued their circulation in East Bengal for the
next decade with intermittent bans on them by the East Bengal government.57 Although
newspapers published from East and West Pakistan, such as Azad, Insaaf and The Dawn claimed
to report incidents in the region, they also implicitly blacked out any communal incidents where
the Hindu minorities might have been the victims. Newspapers in India and in particular in West
Bengal also followed a similar policy with minimum coverage given to incidents where Muslim
minorities in the state might have been legitimate victims. However, newspapers in both
countries reported substantially on the alleged incidents of minority persecution in the
neighboring country. Most widely read Indian newspapers like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Ananda
Bazar Patrika, The Statesman and The Hindustan Standard had daily special sections devoted to
55
HS, 28 September 1948, 8.
56
Chittagong Bar Association to Manoranjan Dhar, Member of the East Bengal Minority Commission, dated 30
August 1950, File 2p-69, Home Political, B Proceedings 51-52, January 1952, BNA.
57
When certain Indian newspapers were banned on a temporary basis in 1951, the East Pakistan government
prohibited the correspondents of key Indian newspapers from operating in East Pakistan. Among those targeted were
reporters of Ananda Bazar Patrika, Hindustan Standard, Swaraj, Jugantar, Dainik Basumati, Ittehad, The Nation,
Roshni and Mandira.
193
news from East Pakistan and were the principal conduits of information for both the public in
West Bengal and in East Pakistan. These columns usually concentrated on small-scale, alleged
incidents of violence which continued the portrayal of that region as unstable and a place where
the lives of minorities were under constant threat from the majority community. Similarly, East
Pakistani newspapers highlighted incidents such as conflicts in Kashmir and Hyderabad and
reported minor incidents of desecration of mosques and bans on cow slaughter in India.58
Jai Hind, published from India, summed up the situation in East Pakistan as
There is economic boycott. There are more and more thefts and dacoities. There are
occasional indignities and insults. There are the general superior airs of the Muslims.
There is the extortion for the Jinnah Fund…. The air in East Bengal has in fact become
too poisonous for the Hindus to breathe. They feel that they are aliens in their own land,
and hateful unwanted aliens in the bargain.59
Such depictions of the conditions prevalent in East Pakistan while providing legitimacy for
Hindus to migrate tended to question the very basis of East Pakistan as a nation that was unable
to guarantee the safety and security of its minority citizens. By identifying religion as the
primary issue for minorities, such reports continued the communal rhetoric of Partition days. The
Ananda Bazar Patrika, a widely read Bengali newspaper in West Bengal, reported several
incidents of violence that allegedly showed how the religion and culture of the Hindus were
under attack. Published in the form of letters from victims to provide authenticity, one article
noted that in Barisal a Muslim youth had snatched the Narayan Shila (a symbolic representation
of Vishnu in stone) from a Hindu gathering and had spat on it. Again in East Dinajpur where
some “miscreants” had defecated within the local temple and the traditional weekly meeting to
58
Editorial, Pakistan Observer, 3 December 1949, 2.
59
Jai Hind, 12 March 1948.
194
sing kirtan (devotional songs) had stopped under threat.60 In addition to such symbolic
transgressions, the article also reported on physical beatings meted out to hapless minorities in
Pirijkandi. The Dainik Basumati, another Bengali newspaper, compared the conditions in Jessore
as Mager Mulluk61 (slang for land of the Muslims) and pointed out that the practice of abducting
minority women had become a normal affair in the region.62 In addition it detailed several
dacoities that had targeted Hindu households. Redress to the higher authorities had been
ineffective. In printing these stories, the newspapers urged the majority Hindu community to
respond to such attacks on their religion and honor in East Bengal by taking up the cause of
Hindu minorities with Indian authorities.
In Bengal, incidents of communal violence against women continued to be one of the
major themes of public discourse. Even during times of relative peace between communities,
Indian newspapers continued to highlight the latest cases of abduction and molestation of
women, especially those belonging to the minority Hindu community in East Pakistan.63 In
addition, reports of the Indian state’s recovery operations carried out under the leadership of
Mridula Sarabhai, also received wide publicity, ensuring that women continued to symbolize the
honor of the community. In a letter to the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika, one Rabindranath
Biswas of Calcutta expressed concern over the reports of missing Hindu girls and minor boys.
He asserted that most often, these abducted persons were recovered from Muslim houses, and
60
Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), 16 March 1948.
61
Although ‘Mag’ refers to the Maratha marauders who in the 16th and 17th century periodically attacked Bengal and
are incorporated into lullabies, recent usage of the term refers to Muslims.
62
Dainik Basumati (Bengali), 12 March 1948.
63
For reports on abduction and molestation of Hindu women in East Pakistan and failure of East Pakistan
authorities, see ABP, 9 February, 1948, 8; 10 February, 1948,5; 15 March, 1948, 5; HS, 1 May, 1948, 5; 16 June,
1948, 6; 25 June, 1948,6; 10 December 1948,1; 18 April, 1949, 8; 2 May 1949,3;
195
thereby demanded that the public be allowed to “search the suspected Muslim areas of Calcutta
which would lead to the recovery of many abducted Hindu girls.”64
The association of abducted Hindu women with Muslim communal places achieved more
prominence when the newspapers reported the recovery of a minor girl from the Gutihara Sharif
mosque in Calcutta. Although the information of a “devout” Muslim enabled the police to crack
the case, the media’s association of the kidnapping and the retrieval from a Islamic religious
place added to the existing view that all Muslim spaces including places of worship harbored
Hindu women and girls. 65 When the Indian Government announced that the week of 16
February 1948 as Restoration Week would be symbolic of the recovery of Abducted Women and
Children, several citizens expected immediate recovery of abducted women from Eastern
Pakistan. Claiming that it was a well known fact that many women remained behind the “iron
curtain” of East Pakistan, these citizens argued that the failure to recover and to return the
abducted women was yet another entry in the long list of false promises that the East Pakistan
government was becoming well known.66 If a state could not keep its promises with regard to
women, especially women suffering in such bleak circumstances, how would it be able to protect
its minorities?
In the communalized atmosphere of the post Partition period, violence against women
was seen as a violation of the perceived sanctity of the boundaries of the community. In
November 1948, Suresh Chandra Bannerji, the president of the West Bengal Congress
Committee, submitted a report to the major newspapers, that cited the oppression of Hindu
64
ABP, 2 July 1948, 4.
65
HS, 25 November 1948, 3.
66
Letters to the Editor, ABP: Rajoni Kanta Mojumder, 26 February 1948, 4; Ruby Chakravarty, 13 March 1948, 4;
Mrs. Amita Sen and Krishna Sarker, 22 March 1948, 4;HS, 28 November 1948, 4.
196
women in East Pakistan as the single most significant reason for the continuing migration of
refugees to India.67 To substantiate his claim, he cited numerous reports that his East Pakistan
colleagues had been forwarded to him. One report described how some Muslims of a village in
Faridpur district had forcibly kidnapped a local fisherwoman and how the police had arrested
those who had come to the defense of the woman. Such an incident had resulted in the mass
migration of fisher folk from that locality. Bannerji went on to clearly identify the nature of
oppression on women under three headings: a) Ugly gestures made by the majority community,
which “was responsible [sic] sending away women, specially young girls to safe places outside
Pakistan,” b) Ugly proposals made towards Hindu women in the absence of their male family
members, and c) Threatening letters made to rich Hindus demanding either their women or
money in exchange for the safety of the women. To bolster his argument he pointed out that
although the Muslim minority in West Bengal also bore the brunt of occasional localized
communal clashes they did not migrate because “their religion, their person, their property and
honor were safe here.”68 Thus it was not merely the threat of physical violence, but the threat to
something larger – religion and honor as embodied in their women- that propelled the minority
exodus from East Pakistan.
In a booklet published after the 1950 riots Samar Guha, the secretary of the East Bengal
Minorities Association and a veteran Congressman, identified crimes against Hindu women and
the lack of authoritative response from the government as the key reason why East Pakistan had
ceased to be an “honorable place for their (non-Muslims) peaceful living.”69 Guha cited several
67
The Nation, 28 October 1948, 3; also published in HS, 28 October 1948, 3.
68
Ibid.
69
Samar Guha, Non Muslims Behind the Curtain of East Pakistan (Dacca: East Bengal Minorities Association,
1951).
197
reports of crimes against women, particularly in rural areas. In one instance, the daughter of a
Hindu clerk in Rangpur was abducted by one of his subordinate employee. When both the
abductor and the abducted were arrested and produced at court in Dacca, the woman declared
that she had converted to Islam and had married her abductor. The abductor was acquitted and
the court recognized the marriage. Guha noted that such cases were frequent and interpreted the
court’s verdict as an “utter violation of Hindu sentiments” and were a catalyst to Hindu
guardians’ attempts to move their womenfolk to the other side of the border.70 What Guha and
others like him did not consider is the place of the abducted woman in Hindu society if she chose
to denounce and leave her abductor now husband.
Some members of the Hindu public in West Bengal made the connection between
migration and continued harassment of minority Hindu women in East Pakistan. B. K. Nag,
wrote to the editor of Hindustan Standard, that “there has been a continued threat to the prestige
and honor of women in Eastern Bengal to save which the Hindus have ever since been
evacuating their womenfolk to the Indian Union.” Nag’s sources were mainly newspaper reports
and hearsay from the refugees who had already crossed the border. He went on to conclude,
“When honor is lost, everything is lost” and urged the East Pakistan government to ensure that
such harassment cease and thereby also reduce the influx of refugees.71
Concatenation of Riots- December 1949-February 1950
Small scale and sporadic incidents of murder and looting, requisition of property,
propaganda, rumors and media reports on alleged incidents of violence created, at least for the
70
Ibid., 73-74.
71
HS, 28 November 1948, 4.
198
minorities in India and Pakistan, a volatile and insecure psychological environment that
continued as they began to identify themselves as citizens of the respective states. Narratives of
persecution gained currency through rumors and newspaper reports and drew upon communal
stereotypes to create a pre-history of communal animosity. The riots of 1950 that occurred in
West Bengal and East Pakistan seemed to corroborate the breach between communities. Even for
those minorities who had continued to reside in their ancestral homes in the hope that situation
after the Partition would stabilize, the 1950 riots only confirmed and sustained general
apprehensions that communal violence could only be resolved with the whole scale “population
exchange” or migration of minorities.
The Khulna-Barisal riots of February 1950, which witnessed the largest cross border
migration from East Pakistan and India, had little to do with communal tensions initially.72 Two
key incidents between the East Pakistan police’s attempts to control communist peasant activists
acted as catalysts that triggered mimetic riots across borders. On 20 December 1949 the police
carried out a raid on Kalshira village of Bagerhat subdivision in Khulna district to apprehend
some communists who were active in the local peasant movement. During their search for the
leaders, the police party tried to rape some women of the predominantly namasudra village. In
protest the villagers attacked the police party and killed one constable on the spot and injured
two others. Meanwhile, the local Ansars who had managed to mobilize some Muslims from
nearby villages and launched a rescue operation for the besieged policemen.73 The situation
quickly evolved into a communal conflict with battle lines clearly drawn between the police
72
In the year 1950, the influx of refugees from East Pakistan reached an all time high of 1575,000 recorded persons.
Report of the Refugee Rehabilitation Committee, Calcutta, Saraswati Press, 1980, cited in Nilanjana Chatterjee,
Midnight’s Unwanted Children: East Bengali Refugees and the Politics of Rehabilitation (Unpublished Dissertation
Brown University, 1992), 27.
73
Press Note issued by the Government of East Bengal on the 3 February 1950 in East Bengal Home Department,
Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances (Dacca: East Bengal Government Press, 1950), 38.
199
party and Ansars who were all Muslims and the villagers who were scheduled caste Hindus.
Apprehending trouble the villagers evacuated the area with taking minimal belongings and
crossed the border to India seeking temporary safety. In the next few days local Muslims
ransacked the abandoned Hindu houses and by the end of the month twenty people had been
arrested in this case.74
A similar incident occurred in the Nachol area of Rajshahi district leading to large-scale
migration of the local santhal residents to India. Traditionally, the Santhals had been
sharecroppers in this area and more recently had become involved in the tebhaga
movement.75From around May 1949, the police had been actively trying to quell the movement
and had indiscriminately torched several villages, arrested and tortured villagers, and looted
houses. Such actions had quickly identified them as agents of landlords and synonymous with
peasant oppression. On 5 January 1950, when a police party of three constables and a subinspector arrived in Ghasura village in Nachol to cease the paddy from being transported to the
local communist camp, they soon became targets of an angry Santhal mob.76 The situation
deteriorated as the mob killed all the members of the police party.
In retaliation, the East Pakistan government sent in armed troops and several Ansar
groups. Several villages were torched, and the skirmishes between the police and villagers
continued for a week. Members of the communist party were arrested and Ila Mitra, a young
communist leader was raped and brutally tortured in custody. Fear of police brutality led the
74
Badruddin Umar, Purba Banglara Bhasha Andolana O Tatkalini Rajaniti (The Language Movement in East
Bengal and Contemporary Politics) (Dhaka: Moula Brothers, 1995), 228.
75
The demand for tebhaga was a movement of sharecroppers to reduce their rent from two thirds to one third of
their crop.
76
Mesbah Kamal and Eshani Chakraborty, Nacholer Krishak Bidroho: Shamokalin Rajniti O Ila Mitra (Dhaka:
Institute of Liberation Bangabandhu and Bangladesh Studies, National University, 2001), 126-164.
200
Santhals to migrate en masse to Murshidabad where their tales of violence incited retaliatory
violence on the Muslim minorities in nearby towns of Behrampore, Nimtita and Beldanga.77 This
episode led some of these Muslim minorities to seek safety across the border in East Pakistan
setting off a chain of communal reactions.
What had started as anti-communist campaigns in East Pakistan were swiftly translated
into communal incidents through the narratives of violence of those crossing the borders and
through media representations in India and Pakistan. The persistence of an ecology of fear,
sporadic incidents of violence and unsettled political and economic conditions after the Partition
proved to be a fertile base on which communal antagonism rapidly escalated.
An adventitious set of circumstances in early 1950 considerably aggravated the situation.
The Hindu Mahasabha, which had been temporarily banned after the assassination of Gandhi by
one of its cadre members, held its first general conference in Calcutta between December 24 and
26, 1949. At this conference, N. B. Khare, its All India President, cast aspersions on the
legitimacy of East Pakistan State and demanded the accession of additional territories from East
Pakistan to accommodate the influx of refugees.78 He was not the first advocate the union of the
two Bengals and was certainly not alone in his demand for territory. In a series of speeches in
January 1950 delivered at urban centers such as Bombay and Calcutta, Sardar Patel, the Deputy
Prime Minister of India, held Pakistan responsible for India’s refugee problems and threatened it
with armed intervention if it did not fulfill its promises to safeguard its minorities. In his speech
77
Press Note issued by Government of West Bengal dated 6th February 1950 in Note on the Genesis of Communal
Disturbances in West Bengal, 40.
78
In the course of his speech N. B. Khare noted “ In East Pakistan also the Hindus are being persecuted and their
property and honor are not safe. As a solution for the sufferings of Hindus in East Bengal, in view of the common
factors between West and East Bengal, it is clearly in the interest of East Bengal to align with India. Failing this,
India should demand cession of two or three border districts from East Pakistan to rehabilitated their refugees there.”
Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances in West Bengal. Appendix, 2, 20.
201
on 15 January 1950, delivered in Calcutta, Patel clearly evoked the terror of the Calcutta and
Noakhali riots of 1946 and laid the blame squarely on the Muslim League. He argued that the
borders of West Bengal and East Pakistan were artificial and could not come in the way of
Hindus who wanted to help their distressed brethren on the other side.79 Such speeches provided
the fuel to the already smoldering communal antagonism on both sides of the border as well as
contributed to an atmosphere of imminent war.
Although newspapers had been instructed to black out reports of communal incidents
happening across the border, few adhered to such restrictions. Several editorials in popular
newspapers in West Bengal painted the anti-communist campaigns in East Pakistan in communal
overtones.80 In its editorial of 14 January 1950, the Ananda Bazar Patrika described the
conditions in East Bengal as such “News received here regarding the condition of Barisal may be
expressed in a sentence, - abduction, kidnapping, forcible conversion, forcible occupation of
Hindu houses and looting- these are materials by which the Pakistanis made their history”.81 The
editorial alleged that it was symptomatic of what was happening in the whole of East Pakistan
and borrowed the familiar tropes of violence, which had been in circulation in West Bengal’s
public discourse since Partition. The editorial also identified the East Bengal Hindus as separate
from the East Bengal Muslims because the latter had “made no contribution to the freedom
movement [but] have got the reins of administration in their hands. The Hindus by dint of whose
sacrifice, sorrows and struggle freedom has been achieved are being driven out and ejected from
79
Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances in West Bengal, 3-4.
80
See editorials in HS, 2 February 1950; ABP, 25 February 1950, 4; the major newspapers printed reports on the
Khulna and Nachol incidents from 15 January 1950 onwards.
81
Editorial, “Unbearable Conditions”, Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), 14 January 1950, 4.
202
their forefather’s landed property.” In this particular re-writing of the history of India’s national
movement, the Partition had clearly created a partitioned memory.
In their descriptions of the alleged atrocities happening in East Bengal, these editorials
were consistent in identifying two key distinctive features. First, violence was uni-directional,
aimed at minorities who were helpless, unarmed victims of a majority Muslim community. The
Jugantar, a popular Bengali newspaper claiming to serve fifty five thousand households,82
identified incidents in Khulna with “medieval barbarity.” It described the “official aggression of
the majority against the minority” in graphic terms,
Police spread out in villages and began beating and killing menfolk and raping
womenfolk. It is a repetition of that medieval barbarity of which we had so many
instances in 1946. Women are raped while their men are kept under arrest. The groans of
the mothers, sisters and daughters did not rouse in the Pakistani police any feeling for the
sufferers. But it excited their lust even further.83
The nature of violence itself was thus described in familiar and existing stereotypes of Muslim
aggression. The prevalent “historical” anecdote about the Muslim conquest of Bengal in the 12th
century C.E. seemed to effectively uphold the primary associative tropes of alleged
“medievalism” and the martial nature of Muslims. The popular version of the conquest notes that
a handful of cavalrymen under Muhammad Bhaktiyar entered the palace of the last Sena ruler of
Bengal while he was at lunch and defeated him in the ensuing skirmish.84 The small number of
82
Advertisement, Independence Number, ABP, Calcutta, 1947, 2.
83
Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.
84
A variation of the story of the conquest describes Bhaktiyar Khilji as a merchant in disguise who visited Nadia
with the pre-planned motive of conquering the province. When Lakshman Sena, on the pretext of buying
merchandise, came out of his palace, the Khilji soldiers, numbering only a few, attacked him. Although the king’s
bodyguards put up a good fight at the sudden unexpected attack, they were defeated and brutally killed. The king
was captured and Bhaktiyar Khilji became the lord of Bengal. Ramesh C. Mazumdar, Bangla Desher Itihash
(Calcutta: General Printers and Publishers, 1957), 91-97. The book was first published in 1943, as the first volume
of a comprehensive trilogy of Bengal’s history. Jadunath Sarkar wrote the second and third volumes. Mazumdar,
who was earlier the Vice Chancellor of Dacca University and migrated to West Bengal in the wake of the Partition,
provides detailed accounts of the popular stories of the Muslim conquest of Bengal but casts doubt on the veracity of
203
the soldiers highlights the martial prowess compared to the peace-loving nature of their victims
while the fact that they took the battle into the private domain indicates their total disregard for
the rules of engagement. Specific description of communal incidents continually drew and built
upon such stories. As the Jugantar informed its readers, it was not surprising that instead of
having the “normal” reaction to sufferings of minority Hindu women, the East Pakistani police
only felt lust. Another editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika identified the rioting in East Pakistan
as an instance of “primeval barbarism” and the Hindu minorities as ‘helots in a sacerdotal
land.”85 While Hindu “women must sink into dishonor worse- far worse- than death,” the rioting
had unleashed upon “unarmed, peace-loving people” a “violence- such as we do not associate
even with foreign conquering armies.”86 The contrasting imagery depicted in such editorials
aimed to evoke maximum sympathy from those readers whose cognizance of the sword wielding
Muslim fanatic gained an upper hand over shared culture and language as the rioting continued
to mirror the violence across borders.
Even the anti-communist origin of violence was, according to newspapers in West
Bengal, merely a ruse to further minority oppression. According to the Jugantar editorial
generally “Hindu young men are communist because their talent is progressive and
revolutionary, whereas the Muslim young men are old fashioned reactionaries.”87 Such a
depiction turned a blind eye to the anti communist stance in India and also to the fact that the
communist party in East Pakistan had a substantial number of “Muslim young men!”
the contemporary historical accounts such as those of Minhajuddin and Ishami. Also see, Richard Eaton, The Rise of
Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1-2.
85
Editorial, “A Grim Moment”, ABP, 26 February 1950, 4.
86
Ibid.
87
Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.
204
The second emphasis was to question the legitimacy of the East Pakistani state.
Depictions of violence underscored the tacit sanction and often direct official involvement of
East Pakistan authorities, which meant that redress would be futile. The failure to defend and
ensure the security of its minorities became the legitimate watermark of the “moth eaten”
Pakistan’s viability as a new nation state. Several editorials alleged that even after the Partition,
the Pakistan government “could not abandon their role of hatred for Hindus”88 and that the “East
Bengal government consider the Hindus to be so many outlaws.”89 Violence in East Pakistan, in
their opinion “draws inspiration and nourishment from a theory of State which legalizes tyranny
in the name of religion.”90 With such an unreasonable attitude, for which the editorials offered no
concrete reasons but left the readers to evoke a seamless history of communal antagonism, it was
imperative that the Indian government take up the cause of security and honor of the East
Pakistan minorities.
Government press reports published in major newspapers in both countries detailed the
incidents of violence but emphasized the reduced nature of communalism involved in these
incidents in an attempt alley the fears of their respective minorities. However, “real facts” only
confirmed the minorities’ worst fears. News also traveled with the victims of violence, was
rapidly disseminated, and were embellished as it circulated by word of mouth. By the end of
January 1950, as these stories and rumors of murder and violence began to circulate, the situation
in both Calcutta and Dacca rapidly deteriorated. Saroj Chakarabarty, the secretary to the Chief
88
Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.
89
Ananda Bazar Patrika, 18 January 1950, 4.
90
Editorial, “A Grim Moment,” ABP, 26 February 1950, 4.
205
minister B C Roy, provides a vivid contemporary account of the days prior to the riots in
Calcutta in early February 1950.
Stories of horrors and atrocities perpetrated on Hindu minority spread like
wildfire with the arrival of about 1300 fleeing refugees at the border town of
Bongaon...Masses of refugees were stranded at railheads, steamer stations and at the
Dacca airport waiting for transport…Stories of butchering of Hindus during transit by
train and steamer were pouring in and journey by land or river from East Bengal without
armed escort was extremely risky. One evening when he returned from the Secretariat,
news reached him from Sealdah Station that some bogies from border areas had reached
without any passengers. They were filled with broken conchshell bangles, shreds of
wearing apparels of women and men with bloodstains…Calcutta was in flames
immediately after this. The city of Howrah which contained industrial population was the
scene of worst rioting.91
As West Bengal newspapers published reports of attacks on trains plying across borders,
memories of train travel during the Punjab massacres hovered in the background. Even though
such attacks concentrated on looting the passengers and were frequently foiled by the presence of
armed escorts in the trains, stories of “empty trains and broken conch shell bangles” found fertile
ground on which to breed communal antagonism. In later years, memories of the1950 riots
inevitably brought up the specter of trains which arrived without passengers but “smeared with
blood, and adorned with remnants of torn dhoti, blouses and saris.”92
As the refugees from East Pakistan arrived in Calcutta, stabbings, arson and mob attacks
became daily occurrences in the city. Mridula Sarabhai, who was closely connected with the
refugee relief operations in Delhi, received daily reports from Congress workers in Bengal. A
typical report in the months of February talked about the “total annihilation of the Muslims,”
police incapability and occasionally their culpability in the rioting, and refugee camps opened up
91
Saroj Chakrabarty, With Dr. B C Roy, 154-5.
92
For example, see, Durgadas Acarya, Udvastu, Dandyakaranya o Andamana (Calcutta: Indian Progressive
Publishing Company, 1978), 7; Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Rup Rekha (An outline of India Pakistan)
(Nadia: Shyama Prakashani, 1968), 201-3.
206
in the city for Muslims displaced by the rioting.93 In addition relief workers strongly urged the
authorities not to let refugees from East Pakistan mingle with the citizens of Calcutta and spread
tales of their plight. Sarabhai came to Calcutta in March 1950 to oversee relief operations and
report on the situation. She concluded that although popular causes of rioting was retaliation for
events in the East, several anti social and communal elements such as the Hindu Mahasabha and
the Council for the Protection of Rights of East Pakistan minorities, a self styled semi-military
outfit led by J. P. Mitter, were primarily responsible for inciting the public in the riots in West
Bengal.94
Taya Zinkin, a correspondent of Manchester Guardian, reported on the riots in Howrah
thus,
I had seen horror plenty…above all in Delhi at Partition, but never before had I
seen such bestiality. The street was short and narrow. Coolie lines on either side faced
each other back to back…It must all have happened at night from the way the bodies
were sprawling…the wounds on those corpses were terrible –huge gashes cut into red
flesh gaping out of brown skins and blood caked all over the ground. Women, young and
old, children, men, infants. One slender corpse lay spread eagled across the street. A tiny
face rimmed with a thin beard, neatly severed from the neck rested, eyes upwards on the
man’s hand. A pack of flies had settled on the dead man’s excreta- death without dignity.
I nearly tripped over a loose hand which did not belong to anybody. Suddenly I froze.
The dead were mixed up with the living. In front of me a woman squatted, immobile. She
had lost an arm, severed from the shoulder which dipped from a huge blood clot. On her
lap lay an infant cut into two at the waist. But she the mother was alive. Shivers ran
through her mutilated torso as she stared into space. I ran back for help… We visited
each coolie house…we found some 20 survivors amidst 342 dead, in a street barely 300
feet long.95
93
No File number, Statement of Mridula Sarabhai, 1950, Home Political (Confidential), WBSA.
94
Ibid.
95
Taya Zinkin, Reporting India (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), 37-8.
207
Zinkin’s British origins may have influenced her allegorical descriptions of the woman with a
child cut in half,96 but there is no doubt that rioting in Calcutta in February 1950 was one of the
worst that the city had witnessed since 1946.
In Calcutta, rioting occurred in pockets where Muslims were a numerically substantial
presence but not the local majority. From 5th February onwards, Batanagar, Manicktolla
Ultadanga and Baghmari areas in Calcutta succumbed to arson and looting. In the subsequent
days, communal violence moved away from the city and spread rapidly into the border districts
of Murshidabad, 24 Parganas, Nadia and Coochbehar, which had been receiving a steady stream
of refugees since early January. In March 1950, Muslim members of West Bengal Legislative
Assembly submitted a memorandum to Nehru detailing the various aspects of a “reign of terror
and extreme lawlessness” in the previous two months. According to their report anti-Muslim
rioting reached its peak on 12 February when “arson, loot, plunder firings, bombings,
assassinations went on in full swing till late at night. The imams of Mosques were burnt alive
with the Holy Quran hung round their necks… and other innocent Muslims burnt alive.”97 The
legislators alleged that the Indian government had been paying scant attention to the sufferings of
its own minorities. Rather, “it appears that minorities in East Bengal are the sacred trust of India
and are the ‘blood of our blood’” if one compared the measures taken to alleviate their
sufferings.98
96
Zinkin’s description may be an allusion to the imperial guardianship now severed and wounded with the child cut
in half reflecting the states of India and Pakistan.
97
“Tragedy of Calcutta, January –March 1950,” Memorandum presented by the Muslim Members of the West
Bengal Legislative Assembly to the Prime Minister of Bharat, 7 March 1950 (Dhaka: West Bengal Refugees
Association, 1950) 4-6.
98
Ibid., 3.
208
The arrival of Muslim refugees in East Pakistan from three different provinces, Assam,
West Bengal and Bihar created a similar volatile situation in Dacca. Muslim minorities in Assam
had long been bearing the brunt of the Bongal Kheda (Oust Bengalis) movement aimed at
expelling Bengalis from that province. After Partition, this movement targeted Bengali Muslim
peasants who had settled in that province generations earlier but were now perceived as “alien”
to Assamese identity. Intermittent riots in Bihar had evicted a significant number of Bihari
Muslims who migrated to Dacca around this time. The last straw on the proverbial camel’s back
was the arrival of Muslim minorities from different parts of West Bengal who had faced
retaliatory persecution due to the incidents in Nachol and Kalshira.
Rumor, propaganda and stories of atrocities committed on the minority community in
India accompanied the recent arrivals in Dacca in early February 1950. The Chief Secretaries of
West Bengal and East Pakistan met in Dacca to discuss the various Inter-Dominion problems and
discuss proposals to contain the current phase of communal rioting. At the same time, on
February 10, the East Bengal secretariat employees held a protest demonstration and meeting at
Victoria Park, the traditional site for political rallies in Dacca. As the meeting broke up, the mob
turned violent and started ransacking and looting shops and commercial enterprises belonging to
minorities. On February 12, an armed mob attacked a crowd of Hindu passengers at the
Kurmitolla airport near Dacca, killing and wounding some of the passengers.99 In accounting for
the rioting in Dacca between February 10 and12, Tajuddin Ahmed, a prominent Awami League
leader, identified the main reasons behind the current riots as repercussion from the communal
violence in Calcutta. Further, minority representatives of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly
99
Nehru’s statement on the Bengal situation in Indian Parliament on 23 February 1950. Reported in ABP, 24
February 1950, 1.
209
had further exacerbated the situation by their decision to abstain from Assembly proceedings in
protest against the earlier atrocities against minorities. Thus when the clerks of the secretariat,
some of who were mohajirs from Bihar decided to protest on 10 February, “their action was like
setting a spark to a gunpowder pile.”100 As the mob violence spiraled out of control, curfew was
imposed on Dacca and the army patrolled the main roads and thoroughfares.
Amy Geraldine Stock, who was a visiting English professor at the Dacca University,
provides some vivid impressions of the situation in Dacca in 1950. Her first warning of any
trouble came from her Hindu chaprashi (peon) Kalipada, who had enquired whether it would be
wise for him and his family to leave East Bengal for India. On February10, Stock received news
of trouble in parts of the city. Her acquaintances in Dacca reported the circulation of a number of
rumors – that 3,000 women refugees whose husbands had been killed in Bihar, had just arrived
in Dacca bringing with them their tales of violence, or that reinforcements in the form of
firebrands from Mymensingh had arrived to participate in the day’s rioting which continued to
fuel communal violence in the city. The primary rumor which may have been the catalyst to
rioting was however the news that “Fazlul Huq’s nephew, a government official in West Bengal,
had been stabbed and killed by way of reprisal for events in Barisal. Troops had been called out
in Calcutta to check riots, a curfew proclaimed. Angry processions were going round Dacca,
police and military were on guard, and Nawabpur Road (the main road through the city from the
university side) looked ugly.”101 One of her students, Khorshed, reported to her that the news of
the Calcutta troubles and assassination had led the clerks at the secretariat to march in a protest
demonstration. The situation had deteriorated when some Hindu shops were looted and the
100
Excerpts from Tajuddin Ahmed’s Diary, reproduced in Badruddin Umar, Purba Banglara Bhasha Andolana,
235-6.
101
A.G. Stock, Memoirs of Dacca University, 1947-51 (Dhaka: Green Book House Ltd., 1973), 162.
210
owners fired in self defense killing four Muslims. “That Muslims could be shot in Dacca was too
much for the goonda’s public spirit- besides they were ready for some looking.”102 Later in the
day, Stock herself witnessed two policemen beating up some miscreants who had assaulted some
women and a fire in a Hindu owned chemical factory.
While Dacca remained at the eye of the storm, communal rioting spread rapidly to other
parts of East Pakistan such as Noakhali, Faridpur, Madaripur, Khulna, Jessore, Bogra, and
Mymensingh. In Chittagong, local mobs attacked Buddhist monasteries and a number of
Buddhist minorities were killed. Non-Muslims of that area crossed the border and took shelter in
the Lushai hills. Barisal, the home district of the Krishak Praja Party leader, Fazlul Haq, was one
of the worst hit districts in East Pakistan. Rioting here began on February 13 as rumors circulated
of the death of Fazlul Haq and/or his nephew in the communal riots in Calcutta. Huq who had
been at that time visiting Calcutta hastened back to East Pakistan but rioting in several villages
preceded his arrival. A Muslim student of Amy Stock, from an outlying rural district, later
reported having witnessed armed violence against passengers while he was traveling back to his
villages. According to his story,
A gang of goondas armed with knives boarded the train…and murdered all the Hindus
wearing dhotis. The others cried out that they were pious Muslims, circumcised. The
defenders of the faith were above the vulgarity of investigating the circumcision: to test
their orthodoxy they made them recite passages from the Holy Quran and stabbed all
those who, from ignorance or sheer panic, were unable to stand up to the catechism.103
The narrator himself had managed to have enough self-command to make the proper answers but
had suffered a nervous breakdown once he reached home. Such a story is reminiscent of Sadaat
Hasan Manto’s story of violence in the Punjab riots where rioters differentiated co-religionist
102
Ibid., 165.
103
Ibid., 180.
211
from their victims by their knowledge of sacred texts and on the physical evidence of
circumcision.104
Although the main phase of rioting petered out by the third week of February 1950,
intermittent incidents of violence continued to persist in the subsequent months. On the one hand
Liaquat Ali Khan and Nehru exchanged telegrams proclaiming their readiness to go to war if
needed. On the other hand, both assured each other of their efforts to protect the security of their
respective minorities. Meanwhile, panicky refugees from East Pakistan continued to arrive in
West Bengal in a steady stream via steamers, planes and trains. In a letter to B. C. Roy, Nehru
noted, “From 1950 -52, 9.32 lakhs of Hindus have come to West Bengal and 3.84 lakhs Muslims
have gone to East Pakistan.”105
East Pakistani authorities were not keen for Hindu minorities to cross the border and
sometimes were over-zealous in their attempts to curb their movement. In an urgent telegram to
Liaquat Ali Khan, Jawaharlal Nehru pointed out two instances of attacks on trains carrying
Hindu refugees to West Bengal. On 26th February 1950, some unknown “miscreants” stopped
the Dacca Mail and forcibly detrained the passengers. Nehru’s telegram cited another incident
where on
27th morning the steamer bound to Goalondo from Narayanganj carrying 1500 evacuee
passengers was forced by some Muslim volunteers to disembark on a char named
Kazirkhila in district Faridpur. This was not deemed a halting station and steamer left for
Goalondo leaving passengers stranded but carrying part of their luggage. After some time
they were attacked by local hooligans.106
104
Sadat Hasan Manto, “Mishtake,” in his Partition: Sketches and Stories, trans. by Khalid Hasan (New Delhi:
Viking, 1991), 33.
105
Jawaharlal Nehru, letter dated 2 December 1952. G. Parthasarathy, ed. Letters to the Chief Ministers 1947-64,
Vol. III (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985).
106
Telegram no. 30592 dated 2 March 1950, File: 214/50 Home Political CR, 1950, WBSA.
212
News of such train and steamer de-boardings were reported in the Indian newspapers depicting
yet more instances of persecution of Hindu minorities in East Pakistan.
In the months following the riots in West Bengal and East Pakistan, public opinion in the
former began to advocate a “population exchange” and long-term rehabilitation of the East
Pakistani Hindus. The prevailing public discourse on violence and victimhood of the East
Pakistani Hindus now reached an all time high as tangible victims bearing the marks of violence
crossed the borders. The Amrita Bazar Patrika decided to use its pages to elicit the help of its
readers in finding a solution to the crisis and requested them to provide opinions.107 The text of
the appeal referred to the earlier Gallup poll of April 1947 which had requested public opinion
on the issue of Partitioning Bengal. With similar intentions of gauging the public mind in 1950
the newspaper urged,
Today, in the face of a much bigger peril when the very existence of the 12 million of
East Bengal Hindus is at stake, the Government in all seriousness is searching for a way
out. We appeal to all our countrymen to give their considered opinion as to what may be
the permanent solution to this vital problem, so that our government might know the
voice of the people and act accordingly, once more. We shall send this national verdict to
the proper authorities and duly interpret them through our columns. Let our countrymen
help us in crystallizing public opinion on this most momentous problem of the hour.108
The appeal re-appeared several times in subsequent editions of the newspaper as it published the
letters in response as a full page feature.
Several readers urged the evacuation of the minorities as “the only solution.”109
Nalinakshya Sanyal, a veteran Congress worker, urged that “India should unequivocally declare
her doors open for the reception of the minority community of East Bengal and their re-
107
“ What is the Solution?” ABP, 28 February 1950, 1.
108
Ibid.
109
ABP, 25 February 1950, 4; 7 March 1950, 7; 13 March 1950, 4; 16 March 1950, 7.
213
settlement in suitable areas throughout India.” Further, the “protection of the person, property
and honor of East Bengal Hindus will be a concern for the Government of India” 110 and the
minorities should be declared Indian nationals even when they continued to reside in East
Pakistan.
For another section of the Patrika’s readers, evacuation was “cowardly and not
unmanly” and the East Pakistani minorities had as many rights of citizenship to their homeland
as their Muslim brethrens. Thus the Indian state should do everything to ensure the minority’s
safety and security in East Pakistan even if it meant going to war or the direct annexation of East
Pakistan to the Indian union. 111 Another letter described the events in East Pakistan in gendered
terms depicting the incidents as instances when the “very soul of India is being molested.”
Arguing that the question of evacuation of the minorities was no longer viable, the letter urged
all West Bengalis “to do or die for protecting the honor of their mothers and sisters” and save
“all that which makes a man a man.”112 Identifying the Muslims in East Pakistan with Nazis and
Japanese, Nirmal Sinha, a professor based in Burdwan, urged the Indian authorities, “Let us
therefore, with all our moral courage and unflinching devotion to the right cause tackle the
Pakistan danger rather than shrink from it and be dubbed moral cowards and defeatists. Moral
courage must be shown not only through words but also through action, when necessary.”113
In an atmosphere where both public and political rhetoric increasingly adopted a bellicose
attitude, Nehru and Liaquat Ali entered into high level talks and concluded a pact that promised
to ensure safety and security of minorities in each country. Known popularly as the Delhi Pact or
110
Ibid., 9 March 1950, 4.
111
Ibid., 27 February 1950, 4; 7 March 1950, 7; 16 March 1950, 7.
112
Ibid., 28 February 1950, 4.
113
Letters to the Editor, ABP, 15 March 1950, 4.
214
the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of April 1950, it urged minorities to return to their homeland where their
property would be returned and their personal safety assured by the respective governments. In
an effort to provide a sense of security to the minorities, the Pact incorporated provisions that
guaranteed equality of citizenship, job opportunities and safeguards for minority interests.
Although the Pact initially helped to check the exodus, conditions remained unstable in East
Pakistan and the migration continued unabated. Some groups like the Hindu Mahasabha
launched a strong public campaign to highlight the atrocities committed on the Hindu minorities
in East Pakistan. Even the more secular Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, comprising eminent
public figures in Calcutta, criticized the Pact as not having “at all helped to create confidence or
a sense of security in the minds of the Hindus.”114
The Nehru-Liaquat Pact was arguably a band-aid solution to curb minority migration and
reduce the risk of an international war. Although both India and Pakistan promised to protect the
rights of their minority citizens, provisions to implement such promises remained at best
rudimentary. For the refugees, the Pact represented a Hobson’s choice; they could either go back
to their home towns which continued to reverberate with communal tensions or the could remain
in an alien environment in West Bengal or East Pakistan as the case may be and hope to be
rehabilitated by the respective governments. A number of East Pakistani Hindus returned but the
deteriorating economic conditions, the continuation of sporadic communal violence and the
imposition of the Passport regulations at the border forced them to cross the border continually.
Amy Stock writes poignantly of the situation facing the minority Hindus in East Pakistan,
Kalipada decided not to emigrate for the present. But the crisis brought him to one
momentous step: he sold his remaining cow, his favorite a beautiful dark brown creature
with a newborn calf, to Abdul. He could hardly bear to part with her but the responsibility
114
Cited in Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities: East Bengal Refugees and their
Rehabilitation in India, 1947-79” in Howard Brasted and D Low eds. Freedom, Trauma, Continuities Northern
India and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998), 110.
215
of caring for a sacred animal in this troubled world was more than he could face, for if
any Muslim tried to steal or kill her it would be his religious duty to defend her life with
his own. Abdul promised not to slaughter her, and Kalipada put her under my protection
in committing her to Abdul and calling me to witness. The transaction took place in my
office, ceremoniously, as if it symbolized the ordeal of the Hindus and the irretrievable
decline of their security under the apparent restoration of goodwill. Kalipada shed tears of
emotion, and Abdul, who had made an excellent bargain, stood triumphantly erect…he
(Abdul) was a man of his word: cow and calf lived in safety, and if she ceased to be a
goddess the quality of her morning milk was not impaired.115
Conclusion
For Bengal, the Partition did not signal the end to communal violence nor did it mean a
restoration of security in the minds of minorities on both sides of the border. Instead, the post
Partition years were significant in their persistent uncertainty and recrudescence of urban and
rural violence that enhanced communal sensitivity as every event was invested with communal
significance. As religious identity became the primary form of recognition for minorities, small
incidents of transgression and breaches in pre-partition social equations created an “ecology of
fear” in the minority psyche. In isolation, any one incident of violence had little significance for
community identity. But the persistence of sporadic thefts, abductions and arson created distinct
communal spaces whose boundaries described each community’s vulnerability and fear of the
‘Other.’
In addition to physical aggression, psychological violence informed minority insecurities.
The public discourse on violence focused on validating hearsay and highlighting victimhood of
the minorities while emphasizing the wanton destruction of religious places such as temples and
mosques. Rumors and tales of atrocities across the border reported in the media continued to
circulate even during times of peace, feeding on existing paranoiac stereotypes of the “Other.”
Local propaganda of right wing groups like the Hindu Mahasabha underscored the cultural ties
115
Stock, Memoirs, 178.
216
of the East Pakistani minority Hindus with the West Bengali Hindus but in the same breath
denied ties of common language and cultural tradition to the Bengali Muslims.
The riots in 1950 found a prepared psyche that could easily accept and translate anticommunist repression as communal oppression. As communal frenzy boomeranged
unremittingly across the border and engulfed Hindu and Muslim minorities in its wake, an
unprecedented number of refugees sought shelter in India and Pakistan.
Both India and Pakistan were averse to the continued migration of Hindus and Muslims
respectively into their dominions. The next chapter examines the different ways in which both
states defined such migration and the migrants. Official understanding, especially in India, of the
specific nature of violence during and after the Bengal Partition influenced their decisions to
allot refugee status to the migrants as well as disburse rehabilitation resources. Such
understanding created the discursive notion that the East Bengali Hindu migrant cum refugees
had uprooted themselves to reap the benefits of India’s relief and rehabilitation policies.
However, the narrative of violence and victimhood were central themes in refugee demands for
rehabilitation and the demand for legitimate citizenship in India.
217
Chapter 6
Partitioned Identities and the Politics of Rehabilitation
The migration of the minority Hindus from eastern Bengal after 1947 did not take
the Indian state and the authorities in West Bengal by surprise. This movement had already
begun as an immediate consequence of the 1946 riots in eastern Bengal. Unlike the situation in
Punjab, which witnessed an exchange of minority Hindus and Sikhs from the West and Muslims
from the East,1 in Bengal between 1946 and 1950, the migration was mainly of minority Hindus
from East Pakistan into India.2
After the riots in Calcutta in 1950, many Muslims shifted from Bihar and West Bengal to
East Pakistan.3 A unique feature of the Partition in the eastern sector was the chronic nature of
migration that followed the peaks and valleys of violence and instability in the region which was
related to political or economic factors. Migration in Bengal remained intermittent for two
decades after 1947. Consequently the new Indian state had to formulate and execute relief and
rehabilitation measures for the displaced over a prolonged period.
This chapter has two interrelated sections. The first one explores the response of the India
and Pakistani states to the migration of East Pakistani minority Hindus to India and traces the
1
According to Government of India estimates, 4.5 million Sikhs and Hindus left their homes in West Punjab and
migrated to India and 5.5 million Muslims moved from different parts of India to West Pakistan. After Partition, 50.
For a good study on the impact of partition on Punjab, see Swarna Aiyar, “August Anarchy: The Partition Massacre
in Punjab, 1947,” in Low and Brasted ed. Freedom Trauma Continuities, 15-38.
2
The total number of migrants from East Pakistan to India between 1946 and 1950 was around 2 million
(2071197). This migration was mainly to West Bengal, though other neighboring states such as Assam, Tripura,
Orissa and Bihar also received refugees. In 1951, the percentage of displaced persons to the total population of each
state was 9.24% for West Bengal, 3.13% for Assam, 0.14% for Orissa and 0.19% for Bihar. Statistical Information
Relating to the Influx of Refugees from East Bengal into India till 31st Oct. 1971, Vol.4, Ministry of Labour and
Rehabilitation (West Bengal: Government of India, 1972).
3
In a letter to BC Roy, Nehru noted, “From 1950 -52, 9.32 lakhs of Hindus have come to West Bengal and 3.84
lakhs Muslims have gone to East Pakistan.” Jawaharlal Nehru, letter dated 2 December 1952 in G. Parthasarathy, ed.
Letters to the Chief Ministers 1947-64, Vol. III (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985).
218
changes in the policies of the Indian government towards these migrants. In the process of
identifying and defining the “refugee” from the eastern sector, the Indian state operated within a
limited paradigm of violence and victimhood that sometimes rendered these refugees as
illegitimate migrants. In questioning the legitimate rights of these refugees who migrated during
the 1950s and 1960s, the Indian state also created a specific “Bengali” refugee identity that was
unfavorably pitted against that of the enterprising “Punjabi” refugee in the West. The Indian
state’s rehabilitation policies as a crucial component in the fashioning of the paternal welfare role
of the new state had to balance the welfare of the migrant with the economic realities of postcolonial nation. In the efforts to publicize the success of its rehabilitation machinery that
ostensibly created citizens out of refugees, the Indian state ignored any criticism against its
policies that looked good on paper but often were only partially implemented. The Indian state
balanced its paternal role by continuing to offer relief and rehabilitation to the migrants from
East Pakistan while implicitly and sometimes explicitly shifting the blame for any failure of such
measures to the laziness and economic motives of Bengali refugees, which according to certain
sections within the government had led them to cross the border. The refugees from East
Pakistan were, in the eyes of Indian state, both victims in “need” of relief and rehabilitation, but
also the “cause” of any failure of such measures.
The second section examines the debates surrounding the grant of citizenship and
franchise rights to these refugees. The policy of the Government of India had been to allow
citizenship rights to those migrants who officially declared their intention to become citizens of
India and later acquired the necessary documentation. Getting one’s name on the electoral rolls
was one of the primary ways to ensure subsequent citizenship rights. Such a policy presented two
contradictory dilemmas for Indian authorities. On the one hand, by allowing any migrant to
219
acquire citizenship, it could limit its rehabilitation responsibilities towards the refugees. On the
other hand, the government feared that such a policy might encourage Hindu minorities to
continue migration that would create not only an economic strain but also threaten the secular
façade of the Indian state. In addition to restrictions on refugee registration, the Indian
government also fixed a time limit by which a refugee/migrant had to declare his/her intention to
stay in India. Finally, the government declared that inclusion within the electoral rolls would not
guarantee automatic citizenship rights.
From the very beginning the Bengali refugees countered official attempts to depict them
as lazy and unproductive. They argued that inspite of the Partition they were citizens of India and
claimed that it was the Indian government’s moral duty to rehabilitate them. They articulated
their demands for rehabilitation within a discourse of historic rights and partition victimhood. In
support they evoked earlier contracts in which Indian leaders had assured them of their
continuous support after the Partition. Although citizenship was the end goal for both the Indian
government and the refugees, the latter retained their refugee identity as a political choice as it
provided them with a concrete platform from which to articulate and to negotiate their demands
for social and economic integration.
Early Responses and Policies of the Indian State towards the Refugee Movement 1947-50
In 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru had designated refugee rehabilitation as a national
responsibility of the postcolonial government.4 He described it not only as a humanitarian act
4
At the discussion on a motion on relief and rehabilitation of refugees, on 29 November 1947, in the Constituent
Assembly sessions, Nehru declared “I should say that any government of India should make itself responsible for
the well being of every Indian in this country and not temporarily responsible but permanently responsible…We as a
government and we as a House must realize that it is our responsibility that every India should have food to eat and
a house to live in, and education and opportunities of progress. If that is so for everyone in the country, certainly it is
220
towards refugees but also a realistic one which would define the future and welfare of India.
However, the focus of rehabilitation measures was directed mainly toward the refugees from
West Punjab. The national leadership was ambivalent about the chronic refugee migration in the
eastern sector, viewing it as a threat to the fragile economy of India as well as undermining its
foundational principle of secularism. In 1948, Nehru wrote to B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of
West Bengal that,
It is wrong to encourage any large scale migration from East Bengal to the West. Indeed,
if such a migration takes place, West Bengal and to some extent the Indian Union would
be overwhelmed. The problem therefore, before us is how to keep up the spirits of the
Hindus in East Bengal and how to help them in so far as we can. If they come over to
West Bengal, we must look after them. But it is no service to them to ask them or
encourage them to join the vast mass of refugees who can at best be poorly cared for.5
Nehru reflected the dilemma of the official establishment with regard to the relief and
rehabilitation of the East Bengali refugees. On the one hand, the state felt responsible for
providing succor to the victims of Partition, but on the other hand the state deemed that too much
government-sponsored aid would encourage cross border movement to secure economic
benefits. This ambivalence influenced the Center’s financial commitment to West Bengal. B C
Roy, complained to Nehru that,
You are under the impression that your Government gave us a ‘large grant’ for the
purpose of ‘relief and rehabilitation’. Do you realize that the total grant received for this
purpose from your government in two years, 1948-49 and 1949-50, is a little over 3
crores, and the rest about 5 crores was given in the form of a loan? Do you realize that
this sum is ‘insignificant’ for 16 lakh displaced people because it works out at about Rs
20 per capita spread over two years. Will you call it magnificent?6
so for these unhappy countrymen of ours who have suddenly found themselves lost in the storm that arose. We
recognize that responsibility fully.” CAI (Legislative) Debates, Vol. II 1947, 917-922.
5
Jawaharlal Nehru to B. C. Roy dated 22 March 1948, in Saroj Chakarabarty, With B. C. Roy and Other Chief
Ministers, A Record up to 1962 (Calcutta: Benson’s, 1974), 30.
6
Letter dated 1 December 1949. B. C. Roy received a reprimand from Vallabhbhai Patel for his accusatory tone in
his letter to Nehru, urging him to be ‘deferential as is appropriate’. Durga Das ed. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence,
1945-50, Vol. IX (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 35-36.
221
Roy also reminded Nehru that West Bengal had begun with a deficit balance. As a border state it
had to incur significant costs to set up border police and develop border roads. Roy’s accusations
reflected a larger public belief that the Center’s aid package to West Bengal was far less than
what was allotted to Punjab.7
Unable to prevent migration, Indian and West Bengal authorities initially followed a twopronged solution of high level talks with East Pakistan authorities and provide temporary relief
to stem the tide of human movement across the newly created border. Indian authorities
consistently declared in public that conditions in East Pakistan were no longer unstable and that
the Pakistani government had promised to protect its minorities and guarantee them citizenship
rights. Addressing a press conference in July 1948, ten months after the Partition, B. C. Roy
noted, “ I still maintain that every attempt should be made not only to prevent exodus from East
to West Bengal but to induce people to return to East Bengal.”8 Shortly after independence some
Indian leaders publicly suggested that such migration was unwarranted, temporary and should be
reversed. Even after the riots of 1950, Indian rehabilitation policy implicitly advocated the return
of the refugees/migrants to East Pakistan. In January 1951 Charu Chandra Biswas, the Central
Minister for Minority Affairs claimed at a public meeting in Bhatpara, West Bengal, that, “
There could be no question that the best solution of the whole problem [of refugee influx] today
7
In 1956-57, the Indian government admitted that migration of displaced from the west and the east was now
numerically equal but on total expenditure towards rehabilitating these displaced continued to remain skewed. The
analysis of expenditure showed that the West Pakistan displaced persons to have received 170. 34 as compared to
111.00 (in crores) given to East Pakistan displaced. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, Government of India, 195657, 46. For details on differential policies of the Center towards refugees in the west and east, see Report of a Tour
of Inspection of Some of the Refugee Homes in North-Western India, reproduced in Jasodhara Bagchi and
Subhoranjan Dasgupta ed. The Trauma and the Triumph, 235-252.
8
ABP, 4 July 1948, 1.
222
would be for everyone to return to his home if he could do so. It was for the refugees to find out
for themselves whether conditions were such as would enable them to go back.”9
In portraying East Bengal as stable and free of communal animosity, Indian leaders
attempted to remove the central reason for the migration. Officials in West Bengal and in New
Delhi put their faith in high level talks with representatives from East Pakistan and strongly
believed that such meetings within the seclusion of official-dom would ensure that the refugees
would return to their home regions. These Inter-Dominion meetings and the consequent
agreements operated on the belief that such paper proclamations would restore “security” the
minds of the minorities.10 Despite the semi-annual meeting of the Chief Secretaries of the East
and West Bengal governments to discuss inter-dominion matters and to guarantee minority rights
to their respective citizens, small scale violence targeting minorities continued unabated in their
respective dominions. At the conclusion of the Inter Dominion Conference of 1948 a drop in the
volume of migration led to the mistaken belief that the worst of the evacuation was over.11
Some political leaders in West and East Bengal exhorted the Hindu minorities to stick to
their “hearth and home” rather than to become a burden on the Indian state as refugees. Gobinda
Lal Banerjee, the chief whip of the Congress party in East Bengal after Partition, urged
9
The Statesman, 30 January 1951, 5.
10
In the Inter-Dominion Conference held in Calcutta in April 1948, the two rehabilitation ministers of East Pakistan
and West Bengal, Ghulam Mohammed and K C Neogy respectively, made a joint declaration – “that they are
determined to take every possible step to discourage such exodus in either direction.” They also decided to establish
minority boards at the provincial and local levels in both countries to provide security in the minds of the minorities.
Cited in Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities,’ in Low and Brasted, eds., Freedom
Trauma and Continuities, 148.
11
Many of these early refugees followed the pre-Partition network of kinship ties and the tradition of moving to
Calcutta in search of occupation or education. A number of them were also Optees or those who had opted to join
the civil administration and the military in India inspite of the fact that their residence was in the newly created
Pakistan. Nilanjana Chatterjee, “The East Bengal Refugee: A Lesson in Survival,” in Calcutta: The Living City
(Calcutta : Oxford University Press, 1995), 72. Also see Chapter 4.
223
Those who have left their home and hearth in east Bengal in search of food and shelter I
have nothing to say to them. But those who have gone to West Bengal out of fear, I
would appeal to them to come back – let us assert our rights in the land of our forefathers
and die in the act of doing so. … It is a fight between progress versus regress and the
ruling people must have something progressive to give to the society if they want to rule.
Are you going to form a sect of refugees in west Bengal or become a charity citizen? Is it
not more honorable to stand on and fight for your rights and obligations as citizens of
your homeland in East Bengal?12
The act of migration was denied any connection with violence. Rather a lack of patriotism
prompted by fear was implied to be the root cause of refugee migration. Others such as Nalini
Ranjan Sarkar in West Bengal urged the wandering refugees from East Bengal “not to create a
sort of minority problem” within West Bengal.13 Rather, he urged them to bear with good grace
the consequences of historical change such as the Partition which he asserted was “vitally
necessary.” In a public meeting, on 5th February 1949, a minister of the West Bengal government
reportedly described the East Bengal refugees as “brother foreigners” from “another country”
and claimed that “the question of rehabilitating the refugees in west Bengal was not as important
as the question of sending them back to their own country.”14
In contrast to such pithy rhetoric, others described the term “refugee” as an “abominable
word” with its implicit connotations that the migrants were “strangers whose access to shelter
depended on the benevolence of the Indian people.”15 During a debate on the rehabilitation of
refugees in the Constituent Assembly, in 1947, a member argued that the East Bengali minority
Hindus were “natives” of India, “born of its soil” and had a “title and a right” to resettlement in
the country. He went on to demand that the government avoid using the word refugee which hurt
12
HS, 6 May 1949, 6.
13
The Nation, 12 February 1949.
14
Sarat Bose, Selected Speeches and Writings, 1947-1950 (Calcutta: Thacker’s Press, 1954), 72.
15
Proceedings of the CAI (legislative) v. II no.1, cited in Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children, 72.
224
the “self –respect” of the displaced and proposed that they be called pravashi which means exile
because the partition had exiled people who had originally been a part of the Indian nation.16
Newspapers such as The Statesman, which had long been the implicit spokesman of
colonial authorities, took up the cause of portraying East Bengal as free of communal animosity
and violence. In August 1948, its special correspondent published a two-part article highlighting
the communal peace and security in the villages of East Bengal. The interactive session between
the correspondent and an anonymous villager was represented thus,
“Moving unescorted along village roads, your correspondent questioned many Hindu
villagers and the conversation proceeded after this fashion,
Q- Are you happy in Pakistan?
A- Yes. (with evident surprise at the question)
Q- Has anyone attempted to seize your crops or your fields?
A- No
Q- Do Muslims harass you in any way?
A- No. Some said, “They did once, but not now.”
Q- Do your women go about without fear?
A- Yes
Q- What is your biggest worry?
A- Crops
Q- Do you intend to stay in Pakistan?
A- Yes, Some qualified this with “Unless all the other Hindus leave.”
Q- Have any villagers you know left Pakistan?
The answer invariably was No. Sometimes, “Yes, for lack of food.”17
In this representation the East Bengali Hindu minority had no experience of harassment or any
other problem than “lack of food” to migrate to India. In the event of migration, these villagers
and others like them should thus be labeled as economic migrants rather than as Partition victims
or refugees.
In January 1950 after the riots in Khulna in December 1949, The Statesman assured
readers in West Bengal that “Politically, the East Bengal scene is on the whole one of unbroken
16
Ibid.
17
File: II-238/1948, Home Political B Proceedings, July 1949, BNA, The Statesman, 3 August 1948, 8.
225
peace. The minorities appear more confident and have lost their earlier nervousness which
showed itself in sudden bursts of exodus.”18 At the height of communal tension during February
1950, the newspaper published a front-page article by a Christian missionary that gave his
impressions from recent travels to East Bengal. Rev. W E French of Union Christian School,
Bishnupur, 24 Parganas wrote that,
We spent three happy days in Barisal, with no sign of any trouble at all. Barisal has a
good reputation in the matter of communal relations. …. Exaggerated accounts of the
communal disturbances in Calcutta had reached Khulna, so no Hindus were allowed to
travel, and Muslims were advised not to do so. We were allowed to travel. One of our
number who was wearing a dhoti (white long piece of cloth wrapped around a lower half
of Hindu men) was held up, and I went to the enclosure where the passengers had been
seated, and was impressed by the friendly way in which the Pakistan Police were dealing
with them and was assured that the women were well treated.19
It is likely that The Statesman hoped that by publishing the views of a third party, it would be
able to reassure the public of its dispassionate reporting and its role as the purveyor of
“authentic” news at a time of officially sanctioned media blackouts. The missionary continued
thus, “It was obvious that these wild rumors are responsible for the present excited state of mind
on both sides of the border. We would strongly urge everybody not to believe these rumors, but
to seek accurate information from people who really know.”20
Early policies of the Indian government towards the East Bengali refugees operated on
similar beliefs of a temporary and reversible migration and were geared toward the containment
of the “problem” by giving rudimentary relief to the refugees and trying to ensure that they
returned across the border. In addition Indian officials held regular meetings, appointed a Deputy
High Commissioner in Dacca and one in Calcutta, and ensured that each state had a functional
18
The Statesman, 1 January 1950, 4.
19
The Statesman, 16 February 1950, 5.
20
Ibid.
226
Minority Board. The Indian state sought to combine high level, inter-dominion agreements with
temporary relief measures in the form of subsistence doles and the establishment of relief camps
along the border. The term “relief” was applied to its enumeration and classification of refugees
in terms of their social and economic background and some provision of assistance for daily
survival.
The Government of India opened relief camps and transit camps21 along the new
international border and in Calcutta and its adjoining areas. The Government of West Bengal
also opened “Interception Centers” that worked in conjunction with the relief camps at the
border, where “migrants on arrival, were questioned and issued with Interception Slips to qualify
them as bonafide refugees.”22 Those “migrants” who were in need of immediate assistance and
sought relief and rehabilitation assistance were admitted to camps run by the West Bengal
government.23 Even those who did not require government help could obtain refugee slips that
qualified them as refugees for other benefits including special quotas for education and jobs.24
Although the Indian state identified those who crossed the border in the late 1946 through middle
of 1948 as “refugees” and later identified them as the “displaced,” its underlying belief was that
21
These camps were classified as Temporary and Permanent Liability Camps, Worksite Camps and Colony Camps.
For details on various government measures towards refugees in this period see, Samir Kumar Das, “Refugee Crisis:
Responses of the Government of West Bengal,” in Pradip Kumar Bose ed. Refugees in West Bengal, Institutional
Practices and Contested Identities (Calcutta: Calcutta Research Group, 2000); Prafulla Chakravarti, Marginal Men
(Calcutta: Lumiere, 1990) and Jhuma Sanyal, Making of a New Space, Refugees in West Bengal (Calcutta: Ratna
Prakashan, 2003).
22
Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri
Commission of Inquiry (Delhi: Government of India, 1967), 1.
23
Once the refugees obtained refugee slips, they were then transported to a transit camp. Here, camp officials
collected information about their earlier professions and gave them cards which authorized them to live in regular
camps and to draw on maintenance grants. The Great Challenge: And still the trek continues, Refugee Relief and
Rehabilitation Department (West Bengal: Government of West Bengal, 1957), 15.
24
Ibid., Out of the 13.78-lakh persons displaced by December 1949, only 1.06 lakhs sought admission to these relief
camps. In later years the Indian Statistical Institute conducted several surveys in an attempt to identify the socio
economic origins of the displaced.
227
the phenomenon was temporary. The terms “refugee” and “displaced” signified that once the
conditions in East Bengal stabilized, Hindu minorities would have no reason to seek shelter and
relief in India and would return to their homes in East Pakistan. Further, the identification of
people as refugees was arguably an attempt to differentiate them from citizens of India.
By mid 1948, the continuing refugee influx into West Bengal had seriously strained the
relief and rehabilitation resources of the state. In the face of their inability to cope with such high
numbers, and all portents indicating continuing numbers, the state devised various means to limit
their responsibility for refugees.
Initially the central Indian state fixed the date by which a migrant could identify himself
or herself as a refugee and receive the attendant benefits. In June 1948, a West Bengal
Government Press Note, published in all major newspapers, stated that although there was a lull
in migration after the recent Inter-Dominion Conference, the number of refugees was again on
the rise.
Government feels that whatever might have been the cause of the exodus in the
past, similar situations do not now prevail. There is hardly any communal disturbance in
Eastern Pakistan nor have the minority community there any great reason to entertain fear
of such disturbance. Therefore the present continued exodus is due to economic causes.
Accordingly the Government has decided to notify that persons arriving into this
province from Eastern Pakistan after June 25, 1948 will not be entitled to registration as
‘refugees’, nor will they be eligible for such special assistance as may have been planned
by the government for the refugees.25
To prove that they had arrived in India before June 25th, refugees now had to provide either
ration cards in their names or tokens from district magistrates that recorded their arrival date. B.
C. Roy defended the West Bengal government’s decision as a “preventive measure against
further exodus from East Bengal.”26 Such measures did not go unchallenged as the president of
25
HS, 25 June 1948, 3.
26
HS, 26 June 1948, 5.
228
the East Bengal Minority Welfare Committee in Calcutta exclaimed that, “The Press
Note…lightheartedly refers to the ‘economic causes’ of the steadily continuing exodus. These
‘economic causes’ are a direct consequence of Partition on a communal basis.”27 Thus the reason
for migration, at least in the mind of the President and others like him, was firmly rooted in the
Partition. In the face of public protest, the West Bengal government was constantly forced to redefine the date by which migrants from East Pakistan could be eligible for refugee slips.
By 1950 it was clear that the refugees from East Pakistan were not likely to return. Thus
in addition to fixing a time limit, the central government issued clear instructions to all state
governments regarding the specific meaning of the term “refugee.” To obtain rehabilitation
assistance granted to refugees, the Government of India identified a “displaced person” to mean,
A person who a) was ordinarily resident of East Bengal but on account of communal
disturbances occurring after the 1st day of October 1946, left East Bengal and arrived in
West Bengal on or before the 31st of December 1950 and b) has no land in West Bengal
which he is the owner and c) has affirmed in an affidavit filed in the office of Relief and
Rehabilitation commissioner, West Bengal that he does not intend to return to East
Bengal.28
In contrast to the earlier mechanisms of temporary relief, after 1950 there was a definite shift in
the view that the migration was reversible. According to the above definition, in addition to
migrating from East Pakistan by a specific date, a person also had to declare his intentions of not
returning. By becoming a refugee in order to receive the government’s rehabilitation benefits, a
refugee not only had to disown his or her ancestral village but also declare that his or her move
had been a permanent one.29 The Rehabilitation Ministry evolved detailed instructions on who
27
28
Ananda Bazar Patrika, 26 June 1948.
File: 18R-3/51 B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA.
29
This was in direct contradistinction to the Nehru Liaquat Pact which urged the displaced to return to their natal
villages where their citizenship rights would be guaranteed.
229
had rightful access to the benefits. A family could claim refugee status only if the head of the
family fit the above definition. Thus it attempted to exclude all those who had followed the
traditional path of migration to take advantage of the urban opportunities in Calcutta but now
because of the changed political situation and ensuing turmoil, had had their families migrate to
India.30
At times, it was not even an issue of rights of rehabilitation but the question of whether
an applicant was qualified to be a citizen of India. The application of an unnamed seaman for
relief and rehabilitation is a case in point. Born in Sylhet that was included in East Pakistan, this
individual had come to Calcutta in 1947 and then left for Rangoon, Burma in search of a job.
After a three year stay, he returned to Calcutta and declared his intentions of remaining there and
had applied for Indian citizenship. His application was rejected on the basis that he could not
qualify as a refugee under Article 6 of the Constitution that outlined the rules by which East
Bengali refugees could acquire Indian citizenship.31
A further revision of the definition of a “refugee” in July 1951 sought to include
30
File: 18R-3/51 B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA. In all fairness, authorities also
appended a clause that “ If however the RR commissioner or the District officer of the district in which RR facility
is sought for is satisfied that even though the head of a family is not a displaced person according to the above
definition, the individual status as DP of other members of the family justifies the extension of RR benefits to the
family as a whole, he may direct the extension of such benefits in such cases.” However, this left the refugee family
at the mercy of the district officer.
31
Article 6 of the Indian Constitution charts the rights of citizenship of ‘certain persons who have migrated to India
from Pakistan. According to the Indian constitution, a person who has migrated to the territory of India from the
territory now included in Pakistan shall be deemed to be a citizen of India at the commencement of this Constitution
if (a) he or either of his parents or any of his grand-parents was born in India as defined in the Government of India
Act, 1935 (as originally enacted); and (b) (i) in the case where such person has so migrated before the nineteenth day
of July, 1948, he has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India since the date of his migration, or (ii) in the
case where such person has so migrated on or after the nineteenth day of July, 1948, he has been registered as a
citizen of India by an officer appointed in that behalf by the Government of the Dominion of India on an application
made by him therefore to such officer before the commencement of this Constitution in the form and manner
prescribed by that Government: Provided that no person shall be so registered unless he has been resident in the
territory of India for at least six months immediately preceding the date of his application. The Constitution of India,
Government of India, 1950, http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/const.html; Internet; accessed 15 April 2005.
230
a person ordinarily resident in the territories now comprising East Pakistan or being a
Bengalee in the territories now comprising other parts of Pakistan or in an Indian state
which is not an acceding state who has since 1st June 1947 arrived from the said
territories or state in a place in west Bengal on account of civil disturbances or fear of
such disturbances or the Partition of India, and intends to take up his permanent residence
in the state of west Bengal in the union of India.32
Initially it appears that this modification widened and encompassed all those migrants who had
moved across borders not only during the immediate post-Partition turmoil but also those who
had moved after the “civil disturbances” from 1949 to 1950. The West Bengal government also
sought to provide relief and rehabilitation to those who had crossed the border from East
Pakistan to neighboring states such as Assam and Tripura before making their way to West
Bengal. However, such modifications came with a string of clauses which aimed to exclude
those who had moved before June 1947 unless they had been residents of the riot torn districts of
Noakhali and Tipperah, in which case the beginning date of migration was taken to be 1 October
1946. All government employees who had opted for India would be excluded from rehabilitation
benefits.
The status of the head of the family continued to be the primary criteria for any refugee
family. Since migration in this region often followed the traditional pattern of the eldest able
male crossing the border and finding employment, with the crucial difference that, after Partition,
he tended to be accompanied by his family. Relief and rehabilitation benefits thus were focused
only towards those families who not only crossed the border as a whole but also continued to
remain destitute until they sought government aid.
32
Note dated 10 July 1951, Signed by Assistant Secretary, Rehabilitation Branch, RR Department in File: 18R-3/51
B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA. Emphasis added.
231
Paradigm of Violence in State Discourse
The violence of the Punjab riots between 1947 and 1948 and the resulting migration of
refugees from the west demanded significant economic and human resources from the new
Indian state. Already inundated with more refugees than it could handle, the Indian state was
straining to provide for those crossing the border in the east. As the Partition in the east did not
appear to be accompanied by cataclysmic communal violence which necessitated permanent
migration, Indian authorities offered only temporary relief to migrants in the east. The relief and
later rehabilitation policies were formulated within a paradigm of cataclysmic violence that took
the Punjab riots as the quintessential model. Consequently Indian policies ignored the small scale
and sporadic violence that had become part of everyday life for minorities in both India and East
Pakistan.
Official representations of a less violent Bengal Partition were key to the attempts of the
Indian state to prevent and regulate the refugee migration and limit their relief and rehabilitation
responsibilities. On the one hand, the state aimed to project itself as paternalistic and
humanitarian by continuing to offer relief until 1950 and formulating rehabilitation schemes
based on the political and economic conditions in East Pakistan. On the other hand, it had to face
the reality that refugee migration from East Pakistan had severely circumscribed its economic
resources. Limiting refugee status thus became a crucial, if partial, solution to the “problem.”
Embedded within such definitions was the belief that political and social circumstances in the
East Pakistan were normal and did not warrant large-scale migration. Daily communal violence
targeting minorities seemed inconsequential when compared to the devastating riots of Punjab
during 1947-48. The Indian state had early on identified the refugee migration as a “problem”
and in the later decades Indian leaders in New Delhi projected West Bengal as a “problem”
232
province. For example, a cartoon in Amrita Bazar Patrika showed B. C. Roy, who was a
physician by profession and Vallabhbhai Patel, examining an anthropomorphic West Bengal who
was suffering from “refugee-titis.” 33
The official policy of both India and Pakistan was to deny violence in the east.
The migration of Hindu minorities called into question the credibility of the East Pakistan state
that seemed unable to guarantee citizenship rights to its minorities.34 Although some East
Pakistan leaders such as Hamidul Haq Chowdhury, the Finance Minister in East Bengal, denied
the existence of any large-scale migration,35 others such as Nazimuddin, the Provincial Premier,
contended that the agents of land development companies based in West Bengal had triggered
the migration of minority Hindus. These agents “were at work inducing feeling of insecurity
among non-Muslims of East Bengal so that they would migrate to West Bengal and thereby
enable such companies to make money out of their business. They have been known to
manufacture stories and cause incidents the authorship of which is maliciously ascribed to
Muslims.”36 Nazimuddin’s claim reflected the official policy of denying any harassment or
violence toward minorities. For the East Pakistan government, refuting incidents of violence
33
ABP, 14 January 1950, 5. See Appendix 1(f).
34
The situation was different in East Pakistan compared to West Pakistan as the former continued to have a
substantial percentage of non-Muslims who resided there.
35
Hamidul Haq Chowdhury clearly denied any allegations that minority Hindus were going away because of
physical violence, kidnapping, abduction and forcible conversions. He further added, “If however a man does not
want to reconcile himself to Pakistan and wants to leave the Dominion, he cannot be prevented.” HS, 1 November
1948, 3.
36
File: 12C-3 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 399, July 1949, BNA.
233
allowed it to dissociate itself from the causes of migration and assert that there was a “natural
attraction of the Hindus for the Hindu majority Indian Union.”37
Coupled with the claim that the minorities had a “natural” predilection towards India that
surpassed traditional ties to their land and society, the East Pakistan government also accused
minorities of fabricating stories of violence against them. An intelligence report from Dacca
noted that, “There are several instances in which the minority community has been known to
manufacture stories and cause incidents, the authorship of which was ascribed to the majority
community.”
38
The Superintendent of Police in Backerganj reported multiple incidents of
breaking of Durga images in his district that upon investigation was found that some Hindus in
the area desirous of migrating to West Bengal were found to have perpetrated. He claimed that
all the images had remained untouched between “Shasthi (the day of Pran Pratishtan, to infuse
life) and the Dasami (the day of immersion), as it is sinful for a Hindu according to Hindu
religion to break any image during the said period. But prior to that when the images are in the
process of making there is no such religious bar.”39 His report concluded that some Hindus of the
area, who sought to create panic among the minorities who remained in East Pakistan, had
desecrated the images.
The migration of minorities became a symbolic blueprint in discerning the efforts that
respective governments took toward ensuring rights of citizenship to minorities. After the 1950
riots, Nurul Amin, the Premier of East Bengal, denied any instances of communal tension in
Eastern Bengal. He simultaneously accused the West Bengal government to facilitating easier
37
Najimuddin’s answer given to unstarred question in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly by Jatindra Nath
Bhadra, MLA enquiring about the causes for the evacuation of the minority community from East Bengal. 2 April
1948. File 12C-3 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 399, July 1949, BNA.
38
Report dated 8.4.1948 in File 12C-9 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings 940, April 1953, BNA.
39
Ibid.
234
cross border movement that was inhibiting the return to normalcy in the region.40 At one level,
the Indian state undercut any connections between the migration of the East Bengali refugees
with any experience of legitimate violence, while at another level their very act of migration
became a watermark in gauging the stability and the consequent legitimacy of the East Pakistan
state.
Indian officials and political leaders identified several reasons for the migration including
threats to honor and religion, economic sanctions against minorities and general instability in the
region. After the riots of 1950, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee asserted that,
Since independence it may be that the figure (of those coming from East Bengal) stands
at about four millions. Nearly two millions of these were expelled not by personal
persecution and danger to life, but by the systematic preference for Muslim employment
in the professions and retail trade and petty business which was studied policy of the
Pakistan government.41
Indian officials sought to dissociate between actual physical violence perpetrated on the body
and psychological violence characterized as irrational fears and hardships. In their opinion the
latter did not necessitate permanent migration across international borders. Simultaneously,
highlighting such reasons questioned Pakistan’s nationhood at its core.
For the Indian state already inundated by refugees from West Pakistan, such chronic and
continuous migration was a burdensome responsibility. To discourage migration from the east,
the Indian state focused on the lack of violence in East Pakistan as compared to Punjab and
identified the cause of migration as psychological insecurities brought about by socio-economic
40
In the Press Report titled “No Cause for Exodus from East Bengal”, Premier Nurul Amin wrote, “My Government
wish to state in unmistakable terms that there is now no cause whatever for the evacuation or exodus of the minority
community from this province…. These special facilities [air lifts] and.…Statements such as that of Dr. Roy are
bound to encourage the exodus and retard the return to normal conditions in East and West Bengal.” The Statesman,
24 February 1950, 5.
41
Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, “Piercing the Pact,” Eastern Economist, Vol. XV, no. 6 (New Delhi, August 11, 1950),
in SPM Papers, No. 5, NMML. Italics in original.
235
conditions in East Pakistan. India officials publicly identified the migrants as suffering from a
“psychological” problem of insecurity and the Indian state sought to differentiate those who
suffered violence from those who feared violence. This distinction privileged physical violence
whose victims could substantiate their narratives with the tangible marks of violence. In the
Amrita Bazar Patrika, Satish Chandra Dasgupta, a well-known Congress member, claimed that
“if enquiries are made about those who are evacuating, generally the reply is that nothing has
happened but there was fear of aggression and insult. Fear there is. But fear is a mental
attitude.”42 He argued that the current food crisis in West Bengal had been exacerbated by the
influx of the East Bengal Hindus. Consequently, such migration rendered the Hindu minorities as
potential economic abusers. To prevent the exploitation of the strained economic resources in
West Bengal, Dasgupta depicted the migrants as “guests” whose presence should be temporary.
He continued, “It may be said the East Bengal Hindus would expect hospitality from West
Bengal people as their guests. But guests are guests. They come and go. They do not settle down
to share the house with the host for ever.”43 A few days earlier Dasgupta wrote to the East
Pakistan Prime Minister, Nazimuddin, and urged the need for official measures to contain the
flight of the evacuees from East Pakistan. However, rather than the usual instructions on the
maintenance of law and order in East Bengal, Dasgupta noted that current migration mainly of
people belonging to the middle classes was “dictated by personal likes and dislikes.” He feared
that if the West Bengal government promised resettlement then it would be a “direct invitation to
them [the evacuees] to come to West Bengal…Then despite all the preaching against mass
evacuation more and more evacuees will be encouraged to come and demand of the West Bengal
42
S. C. Dasgupta, “Residential Dharma of East Bengal Hindus,” ABP, 13 April 1948, 4.
43
Ibid.
236
government the promised amenities.”44 He proposed that Indian government should use its
resources to facilitate the return of the evacuees to East Pakistan instead of rehabilitating them in
West Bengal. For Dasgupta, the conditions in East Bengal did not warrant any mass evacuation.
Dasgupta’s observations echoed some of the sentiments evolving in West Bengal toward
the continuing migration. Commenting on the widely discrepant figures for the migration that
the Congress leaders announced, a reader of the Amrita Bazar Patrika noted,
The average person West Bengal and particularly of Calcutta town is however, feeling
the brunt of the exodus. Foodstuffs are becoming more scarce and costlier.
Accommodation difficulties have become a menace; apart from the avarice and
harassments of the owners of houses and of fallow lands on which some sort of hutments
could be raised the congestion is likely soon to endanger sanitation.45
Although this letter concluded with an indictment of the Government’s meager and unorganized
efforts toward relief and rehabilitation of these refugees, it also outlined the critical problems of
space and resources which the people of West Bengal were now forced to share with the
refugees. In addition, the congestion of refugees had increased Calcutta’s health risks by
ensuring that it was “fast becoming a large scale TB sanatorium.”46 Indeed, the West Bengal and
Indian governments were aware of such health risks and ensured that tuberculosis inoculation
was part of the primary and immediate relief measures at the border centers and refugee camps.
A Press Note published in July 1948, within one year of the Partition, similarly stated in
clear terms that the West Bengal government did not desire that the East Bengalis leave their
homes. However, the Press Note warned, if they “persist in coming they will not merely
44
Satish Chandra Dasgupta, “Rehabilitation of East Bengal Evacuees in East Bengal,” dated 29 March, 1948, File:
12-E-1, Home Political B Proceedings 59-61, July 1948, BNA.
45
ABP, 13 March 1948, 4.
46
Ibid.
237
embarrass this government but will also greatly endanger their own health and welfare.”47 In all
these pronouncements there was an implicit belief that this migration was preventable and
unwarranted.
Dasgupta was not alone in deeming physical violence as the principal reason for
legitimate migration. Government spokesmen such as Sri Prakash, the Indian High
Commissioner in Pakistan, emphatically noted that, “the real reason [for the migration] lies in the
fact that the Hindus feel spiritually hurt when they are told that they are no longer Indians.”48 In
his analysis of the causes for the migration, Sri Prakash emphasized “age old connections, social
and political ties [which] have made the whole of India the common home of Indians living in
any part of the country.”49 Echoing the Indian government’s warped logic, he privileged patriotic
national identity over ties to one’s regional community and locality, the very ties that in the
official view had ensured that the Partition in the east did not experience any cataclysmic riots.
Thus even when migration maybe attributed to issues of identity, it was robbed of any
association with violence or fear of violence.
In the aftermath of the 1950 riots in East Pakistan, the Indian government sent high-level
delegation to East Bengal to gauge the communal situation and to provide what they termed as
“security in the minds” of the Hindu minorities who continued to reside across the border. Charu
Chandra Biswas, the Minister for Minorities in the Interim Government of India and later the
Union Law Minister in independent India,50 asserted that, “Little more was happening in East
Bengal than occasional incidents, many of which one could expect in the ordinary course of
47
HS, 1 August 1948, 3.
48
HS, 16 May 1948, 8.
49
Ibid.
50
A prominent lawyer and judge, Biswas was also a member of the Bengal Boundary Commission in 1947.
238
crime. The trouble was that in the present state of Hindu morale, every incident was felt to be
communal – the theft of a chicken was taken as a warning of worse to come.”51 At one end
Biswas concluded that there was indeed a general feeling of insecurity which only the East
Pakistan Government could ameliorate, while on the other end, as a representative of the Indian
state, he attempted to cast doubts on the refugee narratives of actual violence.
As the refugees carried tales of small scale and personal violence to India and the
newspapers in West Bengal continued to highlight instances of loot and murder, the Indian and
West Bengal governments consistently urged the refugees to return to East Pakistan. This
response triggered allegations of a differential attitude towards these refugees as compared to
those arriving from West Pakistan. In its editorial in April 1948, the Jai Hind, an English daily,
argued that,
We have never heard of such arguments [for return] when the government of
India were themselves evacuating Hindus from West Punjab, Sind and NWFP. There is
obviously sympathy and understanding for the Hindus of the West Punjab, Sind and
NWFP and of Kashmir and Hyderabad, but none whatsoever for the Hindus of East
Bengal. Instead of help and sympathy they receive lectures and are coldly asked to go
back to or stay in Pakistan.52
Relief and rehabilitation measures of the Indian government operated within a limited paradigm
of violence and victimhood. The Government of India’s definition of a Partition refugee also
implicitly required one to be a victim of violence. The Census of 1951 that first differentiated
between displaced migrants and ordinary economic migrants defined the former as “ a person
who came to India (having left or been compelled to leave his home in Western Pakistan on or
after 1st March 1947, or his home in East Pakistan on or after 15th October, 1946) on account of
civil disturbances or the fear of such disturbances, or on account of setting up of the two
51
52
Manchester Guardian, 18 June 1950, File 12 P-26, Home Political B Proceedings 41-58, September 1951, BNA.
Jai Hind, 17 April 1948.
239
dominions of India and Pakistan.”53 Such a definition required violence or the fear of violence as
the necessary corollary to migration and refugee rehabilitation in India. However, even while the
State identified “fear” of violence as a credible reason for migration, understandably it was
unwilling to define the exact parameters of what such a “fear” would be to merit rehabilitation in
India.
After the riots of 1950, which witnessed the highest peak in migration between India and
East Pakistan, both countries urged their respective minorities to return home and officially
guaranteed their security upon their return. However, they lacked both manpower and finances to
ensure the effective implementation of such promises. Immediately after the conclusion of the
Pact of 1950, newspapers such as The Statesman began to report daily on the number of migrants
who returned home.54 The statistics, which remain questionable since they do not cite any
sources, usually showed the outflow to be higher than the inflow, thereby proving the success of
the Pact. Such goals were achieved only on paper as the migration continued unabated from East
Pakistan. For those who did return to East Pakistan, conditions did not improve. They shifted
back to India after disposing of their properties.
Politics of Rehabilitation
Confronted with the continuing tide of refugees, the Indian and West Bengal
governments introduced new methods to tackle the “problem” and to continue rehabilitation. A
close examination of some of the relief and rehabilitation policies of the Indian state reveals how
such measures, as central tools which constructed the new nation’s paternal image,
53
Census of India, 1951, Paper No. 4 on Displaced Persons, (New Delhi: Manager of Publications, GOI, 1954), 1.
54
See reports published in The Statesman between June and December 1950. A government Press Note to this effect
was published in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 5 September 1950.
240
simultaneously had to deal with the economic factors of rehabilitating refugees. In the process,
the Indian state’s interventions and interactions with the “migrants” in the east led to the
evolution of a specific “refugee” identity in the east.
To emphasize the numerical impact of the Partition, the Government of India used its
publicity division to issue pamphlets and brochures that documented the number of refugees with
pictures of long lines of men and women with their meager belongings at the border. Often with
captions such as “Millions on the Move”55 or “The Unending Trail” these publicity documents at
one level aimed to convince the public that the Indian government was doing its humanitarian
best to care for such large numbers. At a more implicit level, these depictions also performed the
task of representing the migration as “influx” or “exodus” and after the 1965 India-Pakistan war
as “infiltration.” These migrations and demands for relief and rehabilitation represented a
constant impediment to the normal development of Indian economy and society.56 Such a
continuous process understandably strained the resources of the new state that could not contain
the relief and rehabilitation of these refugees within one concentrated period.57
To tackle the needs of refugees in an organized manner, the West Bengal government had
established an independent Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department in mid June 1949.58 In
addition it commissioned several surveys that attempted to provide data on the magnitude of the
55
Millions on the Move: The Aftermath of the Partition, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting (Delhi: Government of India, 1949).
56
Rao noted that this “unending trail … tells of the constant stream of desperate, fear crazed people, drained of the
last drop of hope, that pours into this country from east Pakistan. When will this stream dry up?” U Bhaskar Rao,
The Story of Rehabilitation, Department of Rehabilitation, Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation
(New Delhi: Government of India, 1967), 143.
57
Official reports on rehabilitation of the east Bengali refugees always began with outlining the two main
difficulties – chronic unending migration and lack of space – which restricted the success of their efforts. Relief and
Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, Home (Publicity) Department on behalf of the Refugee Relief
and Rehabilitation Department (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1956).
58
B. C. Roy personally oversaw the work of this department.
241
task of rehabilitation. At the behest of the West Bengal and Indian governments the Indian
Statistical Institute undertook to quantify the migration from mid 1948.59 In addition, the State
Statistical Bureau in West Bengal undertook surveys in 1951, 1955 and 1956 “to make a correct
assessment of the size of the problem of rehabilitation.”60 Even after the riots of 1950, at one
level, the Indian government continued to pursue and promote its policy of providing relief
(trankarya) instead of rehabilitation (punarbashan).61 In his visit to Calcutta in March 1950,
Mohanlal Saxena, the GOI Minister for Rehabilitation, instructed the representatives of Tripura,
Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal to continue to restrict government work to relief. Such a
policy was consonant with the aims of the Delhi Pact in April 1950 that urged minorities to
return home. Saxena also reasoned that unless and until the actual dimensions of the migration
were gauged, it would not be possible for the Indian government to devise any plans for
permanent rehabilitation. In 195, Mehr Chand Khanna, the Minister for Rehabilitation after
Saxena, reportedly noted, “We will try to provide for the four million here (eastern region) as we
did for the million in the Punjab. The only trouble is that I am never sure that four million is the
final figure. Our planning is at the mercy of the Pakistan government. We provide for five
thousand refugees; instead, fifty thousand are turned out. What are we to do?” 62
Official attempts at rehabilitation on a permanent basis crystallized in the mid-1950s.
These rehabilitation schemes were divided into rural assistance programs targeting mainly the
agriculturalists and urban resettlement programs geared towards providing homestead land in
59
N. C. Chakravarti, Report on the Survey of Refugee Population in West Bengal, 1948 (Calcutta, 1949).
60
Rehabilitation of Refugees: A Statistical Survey, State Statistical Bureau (Calcutta: GOWB, 1956), 2, cited in
Kanti Pakrashi, The Uprooted (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1971).
61
Hiranmay Bandyopadhya, Udvaastu (Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad, 1970), 59-60.
62
Reported in Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation, 146.
242
government sanctioned colonies. In the Calcutta region, the government helped to expand civic
amenities to the refugee settlements, and townships such as Ultadanga, Sodepur, Bijoygarh,
Mahdyamgram came into existence. The West Bengal government also regularized squatter
colonies which had arisen by the end of December 1950. 63 Permanent rehabilitation to the
refugees primarily involved the task of finding land for these refugees.64 The Partition and the
consequent demographic changes and boundary adjustments, both in the east and the west, had
ensured that West Bengal became the most densely populated state within India. Moreover, in
terms of Muslim evacuee property, West Bengal did not have much to offer as most Muslims
who moved to East Pakistan did not hold land in West Bengal. The West Bengal government
consistently deemed that the state lacked the fiscal resources and the land to accommodate and
rehabilitate the incoming refugees.
In 1955 Renuka Ray, the State Rehabilitation Minister, categorically declared that “We
have reached a saturation point and whereas we must satisfactorily help to settle those who have
come earlier, it is beyond the capacity and powers of this state to provide land for cultivators and
even for homesteads in urban areas for those who are new comers and will still continue to
come.”65 The solution had to come from incorporating state level relief and rehabilitation
measures with the “national level” and in urging other states to share the responsibility. Besides
requesting states such as Bihar, Orissa and Assam to assist in rehabilitation, the Indian
government also identified areas such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the
63
A detailed account of the politics of squatter’s colonies is provided in Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children,
Chapters 4 and 5.
64
Most of the later refugees were agriculturalists. Kanti Pakrashi provides a sociological and statistical analysis of
the composition of the refugees between 1946 and 1970. Kanti Pakrashi, The Uprooted, 24.
65
Speech given to welcome the Union Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation at a function organized by the
Dumdum Rajerghat Rehabilitation and Welfare Board, Calcutta. 7 August 1955, in Renuka Ray Papers, File: 27,
NMML.
243
Dandyakaranya in central India as potential regions for the rehabilitation of East Bengali
refugees. Although Bihar and Orissa were initially favorable to the idea of rehabilitating the
refugees, inter-state plans were rarely implemented. For example, Assam was reluctant to resettle
East Bengali refugees who might further complicate the concurrent problems “BengaliAssamese” identities in the region.66
To arrange the settlement of refugees in the Andamans, the Government of India
undertook explicit campaigns in the media that highlighted the positive features of the islands.
Nikunja Behari Maity, the Relief Minister of West Bengal and the leader of the Indian
Exploratory Party to the Andaman Islands, submitted a press report extolling the virtues of the
islands for immediate settlement. According to the report, not only was “the climate of the
Andamans is [sic] wet and humid,” but an agricultural survey conducted by government
appointed experts pointed to “large possibilities for settlement by those who take to cultivation or
fishery as their principal occupation.”67 Maity’s report emphasized all those aspects of livelihood
to which the refugees would have been accustomed in their original residence in East Bengal.
Moreover, the Bengali refugee would supposedly be free of diseases common to the Bengal delta
such as plague, small pox, cholera and, most importantly, malaria. The islands, in official
depiction, were idyllic for colonization.
Meager rehabilitation assistance coupled with the history of the Andamans as a penal
colony soon elicited a reverse migration of those who had earlier decided to accept the
government’s aid. Refugees in Dandyakaranya, in central India, also began to return in the 1960s
66
The correspondence between Nehru and Gopinath Bardoloi, the Chief minister of Assam at the time, clearly
outlines Assam’s views with regard to the East Bengali refugees. Nehru to Bardoloi, Jawaharlal Nehru Selected
Works, vol. 6 letter dated 29 May 1948, 118; Nehru to Bardoloi, JNSW, vol. 11, letter dated 18 May 1949, 70-2;
Also see Nehru’s note entitled “Migration from East Bengal to Assam’ JNSW, vol. 7, 21 July 1948, 67-8.
67
“The Andamans of Today,” MR, vol. 85, March 1949, 216.
244
and demand rehabilitation within West Bengal.68 Instead of acknowledging such problems as
barren soil and the lack of agricultural tools in areas that often experienced drought in the
successful implementation of rehabilitation, official discourse viewed the return of the refugees
from other states as related to the parochial character of the Bengalis.
Even as the Indian government sanctioned financial assistance for West Bengal in the
form of soft loans towards education, vocational training, efforts to curb the migration continued.
By 1952 the West Bengal government set up elaborate machinery to control its border in the
east. It continued to narrow its definition of a refugee. By 1955 migration by itself was no longer
a valid reason to secure relief and rehabilitation. The refugees had to provide documentation to
prove not only their migration but also their victimhood. It included migration certificates,
refugee slips and citizenship papers from Pakistan. If the person had none of these documents
then “their status would be determined on the basis of circumstantial evidence by an officer not
below the rank of a subdivisional magistrate.”69 Ironically, the more the West Bengal state aimed
to categorize and identify legitimate refugees or displaced persons, the more difficult it became
for those minorities who wanted to cross the border. The institution of migration certificates,
which the Indian High Commission at Dacca issued, ostensibly was to sift out the legitimate
victims of violence from those who wanted to migrate to India because of economic reasons.70 It
is not clear how the High Commission determined such victimization. Even when the Indian
68
For a detailed account of the public campaign to bring the refugees back to West Bengal from Dandyakaranya, see
Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities,” in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, 148162. Also see Durgadasa Acarya, Udvastu Dandyakaranya o Andamana (Calcutta: Indian Progressive Publishing
Company, 1978).
69
Summary of the Recommendations made by the conference of the rehabilitation ministers from the eastern state
held at Darjeeling on 20 to 22 October 1955, Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 1955-56, Appendix A, 87, The
conference also declared that no person migrating after the 15 October 1952 should be recognized as a displaced
person unless he produced a migration certificate.
70
File#1/1/56-FIII, M/O Home Affairs, GOI, 1956, NAI.
245
state sought to identify legitimate applicants for the migration certificates, its guidelines were
inflected by the state’s paternalistic assumptions. Thus, it instructed the Deputy High
Commission in Dacca to issue migration certificates to:
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
v)
vi)
vii)
Orphans with no guardians in East Pakistan
Unattached women and widows with no means of livelihood in East Pakistan
Grown up girls coming to India for marriage (the migration certificates in such
cases were to be issued only to the girls concerned).
Wives joining husbands in India
Families living in isolated parts
Members of split families a part of which has already settled in India
Persons, whose near relatives are in India.71
The above list reflects not only the Indian state’s paternal concern for unattached women and
children, but also followed the general pattern of migration that was a unique feature of post
1947 in Bengal. By assuring that priority would be given to such cases, the Indian authorities in
effect legitimized certain kinds of migration and sought to control movement of specific groups.
In the absence of any major riots between 1950 and 1964 the Indian state was convinced
that economic factors stimulated migration in the eastern border. By 1956 the Indian government
in an effort to stop the migration began to close its relief camps.72 By 1958 the West Bengal
government followed its lead and shut down most of its relief camps and stopped all financial
assistance. The Indian state also declared that anyone crossing the border after 1958 would no
longer be legally recognized by the state as a “refugee.”73 In effect, there was a clear reorientation of planning and implementation of rehabilitation schemes occurred from 1958.
71
Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1964-65), 6.
72
At a conference between Central (Union ministers for Finance, Law and Rehabilitation) and State (chief minister
and rehabilitation minister of West Bengal) ministers held at Calcutta on 3rd and 4th July, it was decided that by 31st
July 1959, all camps would be closed down. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India,
1958-59), 9.
73
This changed with the riots of 1964 when the displaced were given permanent refuge in India through the civil
war in Pakistan in 1971 after which East Pakistan seceded to become the state of Bangladesh.
246
Subsequently Government of India undertook large-scale measures that sought to integrate
rehabilitation with the development of the Indian economy.74
The shift in the Indian government’s policies towards East Bengali refugees from relief to
rehabilitation signified the official acknowledgement that this migration was permanent. The
Indian government, however, justified these dilatory attempts toward rehabilitation with the
argument that government relief in the form of doles and temporary stays in relief camps had
created demoralized and lazy refugees. A 1956 report on relief and rehabilitation of the refugees
indicated that “In order to counteract the demoralizing effect of prolonged stay in camps,
Government introduced the system of keeping able-bodied men engaged in useful work in places
meant for ultimate rehabilitation of the camp people, where they helped in the development of
the area.”75 In fact, these relief camps were “symbols of continuing dependence.” Government
officials feared that the able-bodied males within refugee camps would become accustomed to
the meager relief, which would erode their moral fiber and produce a culture of dependency.
They argued that the refugee population “living on the charity of doles, and in the process of
sinking into a state of hopeless demoralization” needed to have “their self respect and self
reliance” restored as soon as was possible.76 Rehabilitation rather than relief alone was the only
way such an end could be achieved.77
74
Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1958-59), 3-4.
75
Relief and Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, Home (Publicity) Department, on behalf of the
Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department (Government of West Bengal, 1956), 2. Emphasis added.
76
U Bhaskar Rao, Story of Rehabilitation, 160.
77
At a conference of State and Central ministers in Calcutta in July 1958, it was decided that all camps in the eastern
region would be closed down by July 1959.
247
The Indian state defined rehabilitation “as a process of reinstating or reestablishing one in
the esteem of others.”78 Thus rehabilitation would be the “coping stone” of the Indian state’s
humanitarian aid and lead to the moral and economic uplift of the refugees. U Bhaskar Rao, who
was closely connected with the official rehabilitation process, pointed out that providing relief
had only been half of the planned efforts at aiding the refugees. The other half consisted of the
“rehabilitation of the hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by the cataclysm,” and restoring
“something like their former dignity.”79 From the 1950s migrants were taken directly from
reception centers to worksite camps, “where they are provided with work. This helps to check
indolence and demoralization.”80 Rehabilitation measures directed towards East Pakistani
refugees were usually couched within the development rhetoric of the new nation which sought
to create new hardworking citizens.81
Through the decades of implementing rehabilitation schemes and establishing refugee
colonies, the Government of India continued to be concerned about creating ideal citizens instead
of idle camp refugees. A publicity booklet, which evaluated the ongoing rehabilitation of the
East Pakistani refugees, noted that,
Idleness is the greatest enemy of the refugee. And because the government is keenly
aware of it, endeavor is made to keep the camp population engaged, as far as possible, in
useful work connected either with the development of eventual rehabilitation sites, if
these are nearby or in the many river valley and industrial projects now in the process of
implementation in India.82
78
U. Bhashkar Rao, Story of Rehabilitation, 48.
79
Ibid.
80
Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955-56), 4.
81
Joya Chatterji has argued that the Indian state constructed the relief and rehabilitation measures as charity rather
than under any obligation towards the refugees. Joya Chatterji, “Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and
Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947-50”, in Suvir Kaul, ed. The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division
of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), 84
82
And still the trek continues, 16
248
These development projects were temporary and at times seasonal in nature. Moreover, the
Indian State had limited its capacity to provide such employment for every male who crossed the
border. It strongly believed in the adage of an empty mind being the devil’s workshop, and
ensured, in areas where it was difficult to find work for the refugee males, that they were
“gainfully” employed. To make certain that these refugees remained active at all times, the
Indian government also provided “other types of employment such as tent-making, basket
making and brick manufacturing in these worksite camps.”83 Continuing their effort to re-make
demoralized refugees into “disciplined, self reliant workers and useful citizens” the Indian
Government constituted the Rashtriya Vikas Dal Scheme in 1964. Its stated aims were on the one
hand to “provide disciplined workers for the execution of development projects” and on the other
hand to “provide gainful employment to migrants.”84 The Indian government argued that
membership and participation within this scheme would “instill the habit of manual work in the
migrants and propagate among them the ideal of dignity of labor.”85 Thus the state’s efforts
towards rehabilitation were designed not only towards economic rehabilitation but also aimed to
reinstill the moral virtues of hard work that the refugees seemingly had lost by their act of
seeking help within relief camps. Although this particular scheme was not specifically targeted
towards the refugees from East Pakistan, in its implementation it involved significant number of
camps where the East Pakistani refugees had been relocated.86
83
Relief and Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, 2.
84
Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1966-67), 50.
85
Ibid.
86
For example, out of the 1790 sahakaris (as these workers were called) deployed for rehabilitation, 187 were from
Dandyakaranya Projects, 495 from the Andamans and 314 from the Chanda project in Maharashtra, where the main
inhabitants were the “new migrants” from East Pakistan. Ibid. 50-51.
249
Implicit within the government’s efforts towards rehabilitation was the paternalism of a
state geared towards enmeshing development with the moral virtues of humanitarianism. In this
role, the state sought to define itself as a caregiver and savior of the refugees. A report assessing
the “success” of the efforts of the ministry of rehabilitation, thus concluded “throughout the last
eighteen and nineteen years, under each rehabilitation programme Government have made
efforts to extend to all categories of displaced people a degree of assistance which together with
their own enterprise and self help, would enable them to achieve access to a level of livelihood
comparable to prevailing standards in India.” The official claim was that the state had been
responsible in turning these refugees into “useful citizens” in their new communities. 87
Clearly by 1964, the government no longer asked the refugees to declare loyalty to Pakistan.
Rather, in a discursive way, these refugees by their very presence and continuous migration gave
legitimacy to the stability of India vis a vis East Pakistan. By promoting the creed of “refugees
turned citizens” the Indian state could claim to consolidate its successful benevolent image.
Nowhere was the state’s role as the caregiver more apparent than in the case of those they
termed as “permanent liability.” In this group belonged the old and infirm, unattached women,
either unmarried or widowed, and orphans.88 In providing homes for unattached women and their
dependents, the Indian state arguably assumed the role of the male provider. Like the men, the
state sought to introduce the women to a work ethic “to keep them busy.” Vocational training for
these women concentrated on the traditional women’s occupation such as needlework and arts
and crafts. The Indian state also instituted a provocatively titled National Discipline Scheme in
87
Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri
Commission of Inquiry, 22.
88
According to official estimates, around 53232 persons fell within this category by and were in various
government-instituted homes. And Still the Trek Continues, 16.
250
its eastern and the western borders, “In order to bring the younger generation under a code of
discipline and to infuse in them the ideals of good citizenship and comradeship.”89 In their efforts
to provide physical and spiritual training of displaced children, the government specially trained
instructors who were either ex- Indian National Army (INA) members or servicemen. They were
to ensure that the children were disciplined in mind and body through physical drills and were
“informed about the country’s glorious past, its cultural heritage and the deeds of valour and
chivalry of our ancestors.”90 Nationalism had found ready ground for dissemination. In
instituting rehabilitation measures targeting these “permanent liability” groups, the Indian state
recreated the familial traditions of paternalism where the eldest able-bodied male takes care of
the women, children and the old in the national family.
The Bengali Refugee: Victim of Violence or Economic Migrant
During the 1960s and 1970s, the official discourse on the Government of India’s efforts
at rehabilitation described it in terms of heroism and unflinching endeavor in the face of
indomitable odds. Bhaskar Rao described the role of the Indian state in rehabilitation as an
“indefatigable effort to bring healing to these bruised masses of humanity, wipe their tears, apply
balm to their wounds, assuage their hunger and thirst, clothe their nakedness. And more, to set
them on their feet and restore to them the dignity of man.”91 Such self-congratulatory remarks at
one level elevated, established and enhanced the status of the Indian state as the primary donor
for all refugees. At another level, it reiterated the portrayal of the refugees as victims of fate, who
89
This scheme was the brainchild of J. K. Bhonsle who was the Deputy Minister of Rehabilitation in 1955. Around
7,000 children participated in this program in West Bengal out of 40,000. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 195556, 12-13.
90
Ibid.
91
Story of Rehabilitation, 1-2.
251
required the Indian state’s help to regain their “human dignity.” Thus newspapers and official
publicity documents consistently focused on the women and children in their depictions of the
refugees from East Pakistan.92
In assessing the “success” of various schemes that the government had undertaken to
integrate the East Bengali refugees into the new nation, a report to the Lahiry commission in
1964 concluded that the government had, since 1947, recognized the rehabilitation of the
displaced as a national problem. By 1964, the Indian government implicitly acknowledged their
paternal role and traced the history of such paternalism to an early response towards
rehabilitation from 1947. The government clearly considered the complaints against its meager
relief efforts, limited financial assistance towards East Bengali refugees and late start on
rehabilitation as specious hair-splitting. In providing shelter and “succor in salvaging remnants
of their shattered lives,” the report noted that the progress of rehabilitating the refugees from East
Pakistan had been slow, difficult and uneven “by reason of both nature and magnitude.”93
However, the report continued, “But as all concerned, both inside and outside Government, with
rehabilitation work must be aware, the sustained and wide ranging efforts of both the
government of India and the government of West Bengal for the resettlement of the lakhs of
displaced people who have continued to pour into India at intervals in 1947, have achieved a
considerable degree of success in spite of the complexity and massive dimensions of the whole
problem.” 94 While acknowledging that rehabilitation efforts had been limited in their ability to
help the refugees, this official assessment suggests that such limitations lay in the fact of
92
See Appendix 1(h) of this dissertation.
93
Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri
Commission of Inquiry, 22
94
Ibid.
252
overwhelming numbers of refugees themselves rather than in faulty mechanisms of the
rehabilitation machinery.
The Indian state alternatively represented the East Bengal refugee as troublemakers, lazy,
economically needy and parochial. Such a representation arguably allowed the state to shift
blame from their own failures at rehabilitation to the ‘inherent’ nature of the Bengali refugees.
Any criticism, limitations or evidence of failure of the rehabilitation schemes did not find place
within official documentation.95 Where it was difficult not to acknowledge the problems, official
rhetoric pointed a finger at the inherent nature of the refugees themselves. For instance, after the
riots of 1950, the arrival of a large number of refugees strained the space and economic resources
of West Bengal, especially in Calcutta. Instead of waiting for the government aid, some refugees
decided to undertake self rehabilitation by taking possession of empty World War II military
barracks and setting up temporary huts in empty land in and around the city.96 These
“jabardakhal” or squatter colonies became sites of contestation between the West Bengal
government and the refugees. Instead of seeing them as entrepreneurs, the West Bengal
government first tried to evict them through police action. When such measures failed, the
government sought to “regularize” these colonies, but not before the protesters had been
portrayed as “troublemakers” in leading newspapers. 97
95
However, a close reading of the Council Debates of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in the years 1952-55
reveals, that the government was aware that its efforts toward rehabilitation remained limited and that resources
often did not reach their target population. See Council Debates (Official report), West Bengal Legislative Council,
First Session, June – August 1952, vol. I, 51.
96
By December 1950, there were about 149 squatter colonies in the Greater Calcutta metropolitan area. The
Government decided to “regularize” these colonies around 1951. For details on Squatter’s Colonies see Pranati
Chaudhuri, “Refugees in West Bengal, A Study of the Growth and Distribution of Refugee Settlements within the
Calcutta Metropolitan District,” Working Paper no. 55 (Calcutta: CSSS, 1980).
97
The Statesman, 11 November; 3 December 1950, 5.
253
When the refugees protested against inadequate rehabilitation measures in settling them
outside of West Bengal and began returning to West Bengal, the Indian government argued that
the Bengali refugees were parochial. Reporting on the government’s failure to rehabilitate the
Bengali refugees in other parts of the country such as Orissa and Bihar, the Rehabilitation
Minister, A. P. Jain, noted during his Calcutta tour in January 1951 that, “an important factor that
stood in the way of rehabilitation of East Bengal refugees was their disinclination to leave West
Bengal and adapt themselves to new environments in other states…” Further, the East Bengal
refugee in Jain’s opinion, “was still unsettled in his mind and had not broken all ties with East
Bengal” and “looked back longingly to his paddy field, his cottage and the natural conditions of
that province. Many families were also divided half the number having been left behind.”98 What
Jain did not mention in his speech was the fact that the particular region in Orissa where the
refugees were settled had experience famine conditions for the past few years. Instead,
psychological insecurities, instead of material conditions were highlighted as the reasons why
the rehabilitation of refugees outside of West Bengal had failed.
Central to the Indian state’s paternalistic and humanitarian image was the creation of a
specific identity of the refugee as a victim who would unquestioningly and with gratitude accept
whatever assistance the state would hand out. In the case of the East Bengali refugees such an
understanding of refugeehood was further complicated by the official belief that they were
economic migrants and not legitimate victims of violence. By assigning psychological factors
such as “insecurity,” “fear” and “panic” as the only plausible causes for migration, the
government officials depicted male refugees as effeminate individuals, who had been incapable
98
The Statesman, 22 January 1951, 5.
254
of fighting for their citizenship rights because of their mental weaknesses.99 It was only a short
leap to argue that any failure or inadequacies of the rehabilitation mechanisms were not the
responsibility of the government but related to the lazy and parochial nature of the refugees
themselves. Bhaskar Rao thus described the refugee from East Pakistan as a “creature apart.” In
describing government efforts to shut down relief camps and rehabilitate them in spaces outside
of West Bengal, Rao blames the psychological makeup of the East Bengali refugees. “The more
serious difficulty arose out of a certain psychological weakness or deficiency among the fairly
large sections of the camp population. Many showed a reluctance to forgo the advantages of
gratuitous relief, a disinclination to embrace the rigorous discipline of an independent
existence.”100 Rao argued that although comforts in the camps were meager, “one enjoyed the
luxury of idleness.” It was this inherent lazy temperament that made the Bengali refugee
impervious to “all inducements” and “cling precariously to their shelters demanding the
impossible- rehabilitation in West Bengal.”101
To emphasize this point of psychological ineptitude, official discourse borrowed from the
colonial nineteenth century tropes of Bengali effeminacy and martial races. In the 19th century,
British officials had conventionally regarded physical weakness and lack of vigor, lethargy,
effeminacy and an absence of moral backbone as the essence of the Bengali male.102 As a
counter to this stereotype, another commonly held belief among the colonial rulers had been the
99
In his study of the Punjabi refugees, S. L. Keller also develops a theory which he terms ‘refugee syndrome’ based
on the comparative psychology of the Punjabi and Bengali refugee. S. L Keller, Uprooting and Social Change: The
Role of Refugees in Development (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1975).
100
The Story of Rehabilitation, 155.
101
Ibid., 156.
102
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, The ‘Manly’ Englishman and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late
Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
255
“martial” nature of the Punjabis and Gurkhas who had remained loyal to the British Indian Army
during the 1857 Revolt. Ironically, the rehabilitation officials continued to borrow on these
tropes to describe and compare Bengali and Punjabi refugees. While A. P. Jain described the
refugees from West Pakistan as full of both “energy and determination,”103 Bhaskar Rao depicted
them as symbols of “toughness…sturdy sense of self reliance and pride” which never let them
“submit to the indignity of living on doles and charity.”104 In contrast to the East Bengal
refugees, “the displaced persons in the west revealed a praiseworthy mobility- they were ready to
spread themselves out over the whole country, as it were.”105 Moreover, the most important thing
that differentiated the refugees from the east and west and determined the failure and success of
government efforts respectively towards their rehabilitation “was the character of the refugees
themselves. In the western region they were tougher, more resilient of spirit and much more
adaptable. It was easier for them to turn their hands on any job that came along.”106 At no point
in this comparison did Rao mention that government assistance was skewed towards those
migrating in the western zone. Similarly, H J Stooks, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of
India and attached with the Home Ministry, received an official assessment of the phenomena of
return refugees from the Andaman and Nicobar islands. A K Ghosh, the Government’s man on
the spot, reported that although each refugee family had been given more than five acres of
paddy land, the refugees had only cultivated half the land. His reasons included a shortage of
plough animals but also because the East Bengali refugee lacked the “pioneering spirit.” Ghosh
claimed that,
103
A. P. Jain, The Statesman, 22 January 1951.
104
The Story of Rehabilitation, 38.
105
Ibid., 147.
106
Ibid.
256
They come from East Bengal, where the land is flat and soft, and possibly amongst the
most fertile in the world; all the cultivator has to do is to scratch the soil, put in his seeds,
and then sit back and wait for the harvest. Here they have had to break up virgin soil; and
that is one of the reasons why less than half the land has been cultivated this year.107
Depictions of the “lazy” refugees from eastern Bengal were at times contrasted to those who
became “productive citizens” through governmental efforts. As a corroboration of the
government’s success in relief and rehabilitation, the East Bengali refugee could become
hardworking and happy in his rehabilitated surroundings. When Maitreyi Devi, founder of the
Council for the Promotion of Communal Harmony in 1964 and the Vice-President of the AllIndia Women's Coordinating Council, visited Dandyakaranya in central India to assess the
success of government’s rehabilitation efforts, one ‘settler’ reportedly noted that, “It is a
Ramrajya.108 No father can look after his son the way we are looked after by the
Government.”109 In this version, not only was the Bengali settler happy in Dandyakaranya but
also regarded the Indian government in paternal terms. Similarly, in a speech in 1955 at a public
meeting of representatives of 53 squatter colonies in the Dumdum area of Calcutta, Renuka Ray
pointed out that “most of the refugees who have come at the outset before their numbers have
become large, have proved an asset to the state for they struggled and cooperated with the
government and are struggling valiantly to settle down. Many of them who are cultivators have
helped to solve the food problem and products of other skillful artisans who have come from
East Bengal delight the eye and are finding markets.”110 Underscoring refugee cooperation with
governmental rehabilitation efforts as the key formula for success and happiness to the refugees
107
Letter dated, 24 September 1949, File # 53/10/49- AN, M/O Home Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.
108
Dandyakaranya is a prominent region depicted in the well-known epic Ramayana. According to mythology,
Rama tried to bring agriculture to the wild tracts of Dandyakaranya but did not succeed.
109
Maitraye Devi, Exodus (Calcutta: S Das, 1974), 12.
110
Renuka Ray Papers, File: 27, NMML.
257
seem deliberate given that she was speaking to representatives of squatter colonies who had
earned their political spurs through agitation against the government’s rehabilitation efforts.
Sharanarthi111 Key? Refugees and the Discourse of Citizenship Rights
a) Response of the Refugees: Right to Relief and Rehabilitation
The official attempts to represent the Bengali refugees as victims of intangible
persecution fears and later as economic migrants did not go unchallenged in the realms of public
and non-official political discourse of the time. The category of a “refugee” in the post-Partition
decade became central to the debates on entitlement and citizenship. The term “refugee” or its
Bengali variants of sharanarthi, bastuhara and udvaastu, evoked images of dependence, charity
and rootlessness that the East Bengali Hindu migrants were quick to counter.
However, it was this very term “refugee” which became the catchphrase in the
negotiations between the displaced and the government in later years. Although they may not
have agreed with the connotations of charity and paternalism that came attached with the term,
the East Bengali Hindu migrants appropriated such an identity to collectively represent their
interests and negotiate for adequate relief and rehabilitation from the West Bengal and the Indian
government. By 1949, a number of the refugee camps and colonies had their individual
Bastuhara Samities or Refugee Committees to represent their complaints and demands to the
local camp superintendent and to the officials within the West Bengal government. In addition, a
number of quasi-political organizations took up the cause of refugees’ rights in West Bengal.
The two main umbrella organizations in this context were the United Central Refugee Council
111
Person who seeks refugee from higher authorities.
258
(UCRC) and the Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council (RCRC) both formed in 1950.112 In
later years, these organizations became essential components of political parties, the Communist
Party of India and the Revolutionary Socialist Party respectively, as articulation of refugee rights
became integral to the left political movement in West Bengal in the late 1960s and 1970s.113
Although the refugee committees remained unstructured and fragmented in the initial years of
their formation, their demands and petitions to the higher authorities had a similar foundation. In
their campaigns the committees insisted that the Hindu minorities of East Bengal, once they had
crossed the border to India, had the right to receive relief and rehabilitation that would lead to
their successful incorporation as citizens of India. They stipulated that such rehabilitation should
be undertaken within West Bengal.
By 1950 as the Government of India entered into high level talks with states such as
Assam and Orissa to rehabilitate Bengali refugees in those areas and began to consider the
Andamans as a possible location, a strong public campaign emerged against moving the refugees
outside of West Bengal. Critics argued that “the government are making full use of this [sic]
wandering refugees to strike political bargains with other provinces only to add to their distress
by dragging them into none too pleasant controversies of provincialism.”114 Similarly, a Calcutta
resident noted that if the Government’s plans to resettle refugees outside of the West Bengal was
112
The UCRC central council included members with affiliations with the CPI, Forward Bloc, the Socialist Unity
Center of India, the Revolutionary Communist Party of India, the Democratic Vanguard, the Bolshevik Party, the
Socialist Republican Party, and the Hindu Mahasabha. The RCRC also consisted of card-carrying members of such
left parties as the RSP, RCPI and the Socialist Party. At a meeting held at the Calcutta Maidan to protest against
government apathy organized by the UCRC was attended by 50,000 refugees. For more details on these
organizations and their activities with regard to refugee mobilization, Prafulla Chakrabarty, Marginal Men, 76-88.
113
Prafulla Chakrabarty has argued that the refugees provided the fodder or the stepping-stone for the left parties to
come power in West Bengal from the late19 70s. Joya Chatterji has disputed such claims by arguing that the refugee
movement in its quasi political form had began to demand rehabilitation rights much before the left politics managed
to organize the refugees and their political demands. Joya Chatterji, “Right or Charity,” 83-85.
114
‘Rehabilitation of East Bengal Refugees,’ letter dated September 3, 1949, Voice of New India, A Tale of Woes
East Pakistan Minorities (Calcutta: D. R. Sen, 1966), 21.
259
executed, then “wherever they are resettled they will form a minority community and will
undergo the same political social and economic disadvantages that the Bengali Hindus settled at
present in Assam, Behar and Orissa have been subjected to.” He feared that in time “they will
loose their culture, language and customs which are so real to the Bengali Hindus.”115
A large section of the Bengali intelligentsia argued that West Bengal had the resources of
land and money to rehabilitate the refugees within the state. In 1950, the Bengal Rehabilitation
Organization presented a plan that claimed that if the rehabilitation process was “scientifically
planned and implemented, [it] may give a new lease of life to the decadent, truncated state.”116 It
suggested that mechanized and cooperating farming through large-scale land colonization would
lead to successful rehabilitation. In contrast to the government’s depictions of the lazy refugee,
Radha Kamal Mukherjee, a well-known economist and sociologist and a prominent member of
Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, described the East Bengali farmers as people with “the
sturdy spirit of individualism, courage and enterprise” that was needed for land colonization.
They were the pioneer settlers “who [had] fought the tiger and the crocodile, and who overcame
the hazards of the forest and the flood that created in East Bengal the granary of rice and jute in
India.” 117 Mukherjee evoked the historical precedence of Bengali peasants who between the 12th
and 18th centuries had moved eastwards into the Bengal delta and colonized jungles into
farmlands.118 Similarly, Shyamaprasad Mukherji argued that the cultivators amongst the
migrants “were an asset” and that the government would “do a great disservice to ourselves if we
115
HS, 16 November 1948, 4.
116
“Summary of Refugee Rehabilitation Plan,” Bengal Rehabilitation Organization in SPM Papers, File: 38, 4,
NMML.
117
Ibid.
118
See Eaton, Rise of Islam where he outlines the different political, ecological and social reasons that facilitated
such settlements and the helped to establish specific strains of Islam in the Bengal delta.
260
send them to Hyderabad and Mysore without exploiting the rich possibilities of the home
state.”119
Although the UCRC and RCRC and many other smaller organizations expanded the
cause of the refugees and in later decades interjected their demands within a leftist political
agenda, a number of individuals, both refugees and residents of West Bengal, voiced their protest
against the Indian government’s policies towards the East Bengali refugees. In an attempt to
counter what they considered to be specious hairsplitting on the official definitions and
distinctions between a political and economic migrant, their letters to political leaders and to the
media provided different justifications towards recognizing the East Bengali Hindu migrant as a
“refugee” and entitled to relief and rehabilitation measures. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, who was
the president of the Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, asserted that it was “moral” duty of the
Indian government to ensure that those who crossed the border received adequate relief and
rehabilitation. He cautioned that failure to provide such assistance might lead to
that inevitable destiny where the abject poverty illiteracy scorn and disdain from all
around, and hunger and social disintegration and moral degeneration are sure to lead. The
younger boys and girls will become specters of their former selves as they are tending to
be; the boys - pickpockets pilferers and thieves and the girls will take to the life of shame
and vice beyond redemption.120
D. R. Sen, under the pseudonym “Voice of India,” took the argument of moral duty one step
further. He wrote a series of letters to Indian leaders and to newspaper editors that were
published in a brochure entitled “What the Evacuees from East Pakistan Think.” In these letters,
Sen underscored the commonality of culture and religion between the Hindus of East and West
Bengal inspite of the Partition. If this connection alone was not enough for the West Bengal
government to undertake proper rehabilitation of the refugees, then Sen pointed out that the
119
‘The Problem of Refugees from East Bengal’, in SPM Papers, #34, Index 1 (1949-51), NMML.
120
Ibid.
261
Scheme for rehabilitating the evacuees can well be fitted in with the programmes for
constructive works in the rural areas, to which the government is already committed….
The task of rehabilitation involves…rural constructive schemes, reclamation of
wastelands, establishment of schools and hospitals, improvement of sanitation,
development of agriculture, cottage industries etc.121
Incorporating such schemes with rehabilitation, Sen argued, would provide “fresh blood, will
have a stimulating bearing on the constructive works in the decadent villages. The conditions
recedent [sic] for resuscitating a village is that it must have a virile and sturdy population willing
to work.”122 Sen’s depictions of the refugees comprising “virile and sturdy population willing to
work” went counter to the stereotype of the Bengali refugee promoted by the government.
Instead of being a drain on the Indian economy, he argued that proper rehabilitation of the
refugees would in fact infuse the system with much needed “fresh blood.” Similarly, in
September 1948, Jadunath Sarkar, urged the government and political leaders to “engraft this
rich racial branch upon its old decaying trunk” for the sake of future prosperity.123
Official depictions of East Bengali refugee as a economic migrant was offset also by an
editorial in the English daily, Amrita Bazar Patrika that noted, “We cannot bring ourselves to
believe that these multitudes are frivolously leaving their hearths and homes in the prospect of
finding ready made comforts and adequate means of living in an unaccustomed surroundings.
We believe that the government of India should accept their share of responsibility for settling
emigrants in the best manner possible.”124 The manner in which government relief and
rehabilitation measures were being doled was also under scrutiny. Some sections of the media
condemned official action as “wooden and unimaginative approach to a great challenge.” An
121
A Tale of Woes, 2.
122
Ibid., 3.
123
Jadunath Sarkar, “Brothers from over the River,” MR, Vol. 84, September 1948, 236.
124
ABP, 14 March 1948, 4.
262
editorial in the Eastern Economist pointed out “There has been …a pitiful look [sic] of
appreciation of the economic issues involved in what is called the ‘problem of West Bengal’.
Charity alone is not what the province needs; charity alone is all the province continues to
obtain.”125
In the absence of large-scale violence, it was easy to suspect the motives of the
refugees for crossing the border. The refugees themselves were aware of such suspicions and in
their demands for relief and rehabilitation, consistently underlined their victimhood and the
circumstances, which “forced” them from their homelands. They argued that they had not
become refugees by choice but by circumstances beyond their control that were both physical
and psychological threats to their continued residence in Eastern Pakistan. Such an argument
helped to counter the negative stereotype of the refugees as economic parasites. In a reply to
Satish Chandra Dasgupta’s article mentioned earlier, A. T. Ganguli noted that the “East Bengal
Hindus are not leaving their ancestral hearths and homes for the mere fun of it. To say that panic
is born of the fear of aggression alone is to over-simplify the matter.”126 Moreover, the refugees
underscored the issue that it was the Partition, a decision taken by Indian leaders, which had
rendered them, homeless. However, given the right amount of relief and rehabilitation, they too
could become productive citizens of India. In fact, as sufferers of Partition and of violence, they
pointed out that they were entitled to receive such humanitarian aid automatically.
b) Response of the Refugees: Demands for Citizenship
Even while the Indian state insisted that the refugees return to their homes across the border,
the success of their rehabilitation policies depended on the incorporation and transformation of
125
“Piercing the Pact,” Eastern Economist, Vol. XV, no. 6 (New Delhi, August 11, 1950) in SPM Papers, File no,
39, Index vol. 1, NMML. Emphasis added.
126
ABP, 17 April 1948, 4.
263
the refugees into productive citizens. The refugees who had no intention of returning had a
similar end in mind. However, in the absence of clear directives on how these migrants could
become citizens of India, it became imperative for some of them to acquire a refugee identity
that they hoped would provide them with necessary citizenship documentation in terms of
rehabilitation. Becoming a “refugee” was a conditional stepping-stone to acquiring citizenship in
India. This is not to say that the East Bengali Hindu migrant preferred the appellative or the
circumstances of camp colonies designated for refugees. Rather adoption of refugee status
provided them with the political arsenal in their negotiations with both the government and the
general public in West Bengal. Further, their continuing refugee status acted as an indictment of
the government’s failure to rehabilitate them and transform them into citizens.
In addition to announcing the termination of refugee registration in July 1948, the
government of West Bengal also took up the issue of conferring citizenship and franchise rights
to those who sought such rights. In a press conference, B. C. Roy announced that anyone from
East Bengal or from Burma, Ceylon and Malaya could acquire citizenship of India if they had
resided in the territory of India. For this purpose the applicant would be required to deposit to the
office of a District Magistrate “a declaration in writing of his desire to acquire Indian domicile”
or a letter from the enumerator connected with the preparation of the electoral roll which stated
that the applicant “had been residing in the Indian union and desired to do so in the future.” The
only restriction for acquiring such a legal status was that the applicant should not have obtained a
foreign passport from any country including Pakistan before the date of commencement of the
new Constitution of India. In addition, the legal right to vote was conditioned not only upon
264
acquiring citizenship, but by the applicant’s residence “in a place in the Indian Union for 180
days in the financial year ending March 31, 1948.” 127
Immediately after this announcement, several problems emerged. A Hindustan Standard
editorial noted that many district magistrates had refused to entertain applications for citizenship
and some had insisted on applications written on costly stamped papers. The editorial further
claimed that there were no provisions to supply the applicant with any certificate proving his
legal status as a citizen.128
Petitions and letters from refugees also underscored the implicit demand that they had been
and were organically connected to India before the Partition and should again be incorporated as
citizens of new India. They contained within them a discourse of historic sacrifices for cause of
India’s freedom that demanded inclusion within the Indian nation through the insistent claims of
a shared political brotherhood. D. R. Sen argued that “These Hindus have made sacrifices galore
in the cause of Indian Union, and one might say, they have been made the sacrificial goats in the
great yajna [sacrificial fire] of India’s freedom. If even now the government ask them to behave
like good boys by staying at home, they might as well ask them to embrace Islam.”129
Radhagovinda Nath, in referring to the problems of evacuees migrating from eastern Bengal,
noted “unless the government came to their rescue and secured lands for them their settlement
would not be possible. It would be the duty of Government to see that those members of the
minority community who had already migrated from east Bengal or would be migrating in the
future were not deprived of the Indian union citizenship.” Nath claimed that the refugees had
127
HS, 28 July 1948, 4.
128
Ibid.
129
Tale of Woes, 15.
265
been victims of political choices beyond their control. “It was due to the division of India and
Bengal that they had been placed in such a position. At the time when the agitation for the
partition of Bengal was being carried on leaders of the country assured members of the minority
community of east Bengal that they would receive all sorts of help from the Indian union. That
assurance has got to be implemented now.130 Similarly, another letter entitled “Waifs of East
Pakistan” pointed out that the “minorities of East Bengal have a right to demand a place in India
if that is possible without doing any violence to the secular conception of the state.” Such
petitions usually underlined the utter incomprehensibility of the Partition and its consequent
victimization of the Hindu minorities. Thus the letter described the writer’s situation in East
Pakistan in the following terms, “we are left stranded leaderless and rudderless – a group of
human relics who can neither appreciate the strange forces let loose by the partition nor find it
easy to make terms with the new socio political set up that has come into being.”131
In addition, some of these petitions also underlined the fact that they were “victims” of failed
promises on the part of the Indian government who had earlier agreed to take care of the
minorities in Pakistan. The refugees contended that the Indian government in the post-Partition
period had only paid lip service to such promises and had been unable to protect their rights in
their home country. As a result they had been “forced” to migrate, and thus were entitled to
become automatic citizens within their “imagined” nation. For example, one refugee argued that
They [the government] seem to have formed a habit of speaking about the refugees in a
patronizing way lacking real sympathy, forgetting that the East Bengal Hindus have as much
right as their compeers in West Bengal to consider this part of Bengal as their home. Whether
one likes it or not…the West Bengal government can hardly escape their responsibility in the
matter of absorbing them as citizens of West Bengal.132
130
ABP, 4 July 1948, 3. Emphasis added.
131
ABP, 12 March 1948, 4. Emphasis added.
132
ABP, 21 July 1948, 4.
266
In the absence of specific instructions on the procedures to acquire Indian citizenship, such
arguments of historic sacrifices and “genuine” victimhood were, at best, discursively successful
in establishing a claim to the Indian nation. A sure way to ensure citizenship remained, in these
early years, to get one’s name on the electoral lists for the upcoming general elections of 1952.
Prominent leaders in West Bengal such as Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, argued that the East
Bengali migrants, by virtue of a Partition covenant between the Indian leaders and the Hindu
minorities that had guaranteed their well-being in India, now had the “moral right” to claim
citizenship in India.133
According to the enumeration handbook for the Census of 1951 (West Bengal and Sikkim),
the Determination of Indian Nationality specified that a person who migrated from Pakistan to
India on or after 19th July 1948 but before the 25th July 1949 will be a citizen if he applied for
and obtained registration as a citizen and possesses a citizenship certificate (registration as a
citizen is different from registration as refugees). But, “no person who migrates from Pakistan to
India on or after the 25th of July 1949 can be an Indian citizen.”134 Consequently, over 31 lakhs
of East Bengali migrants who had migrated after 25 July 1949, the deadline for refugee
registration, signed a petition demanding inclusion within the electoral rolls. Drawn from
refugee colonies all over West Bengal, the signatories claimed on behalf of 50 lakh refugees in
West Bengal, the right to citizenship and franchise.135
133
Letter to B. C. Roy, dated 22 August 1950, SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File no, 39, Index
vol. 1, NMML.
134
Ibid.
135
SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File no, 39, Index vol. 1, NMML.
267
Conclusion
The relief and rehabilitation efforts of the Government of India operated on a specific
paradigm of violence as represented in cataclysmic riots in Punjab. Such a framework allowed
the government to argue that the East Bengal refugees had crossed the border to reap economic
benefits. In portraying the East Bengali refugee as illegitimate, lazy and parochial, the Indian
state shifted the blame for a failed rehabilitation onto the shoulders of the refugees who by their
sheer numbers, illegitimate claims and their refusal to be resettled in the Andamans and
Dandyakaranya had ensured the failure of the state initiatives. At the same time, it continued to
provide rehabilitation measures, however inadequate, to the refugees beyond 1964 to maintain its
self-portrayal of a paternalistic and humanitarian state.
The government’s inadequate measures towards rehabilitating the refugees did not go
uncontested as refugees themselves organized themselves over time to petition jointly for their
rights to resettlement and citizenship. In their demands they emphasized their victimization due
to partition violence and their past sacrifices in the cause of India’s freedom to now claim
automatic political citizenship in India. Although they adopted a refugee identity, they expected
such a measure to be a temporary yet necessary one for their incorporation within the Indian
citizenry.
268
Chapter 7
Conclusion
It has become almost a truism to identify August 1947 as both the end of colonial rule
and the beginning of independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. However, both Partition
studies and research on South Asian nationalisms remain unclear on the processes that produced
the “nation” within these nation-states. This ambiguity, in turn has produced two crucial but
problematic assumptions, that national citizenship was automatic upon residence and that
contemporary reflexive nationalisms among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were engendered at
Partition, the moment of origin, at Partition. The main conclusions that emerge from the
foregoing analysis counter such assumptions and complicate and historicize the project of nation
building. The aftermath of the Partition in the Bengal region with its low scale, intermittent
violence, chronic migration and contested border provides a unique template to examine the both
the establishment of the post-Partition national orders in India and Pakistan and the myriad ways
in their citizens contested and subverted such projects.
To understand and historically contextualize the efforts of India and Pakistan in the 1950s
and 1960s to reconstruct the sociological, demographic and cultural map within the partitioned
provinces, I have adopted a cross border perspective and evaluated the Bengal region as a whole.
Although constitutionally regarded as parts of two separate and distinct nation states, geopolitics
in West Bengal and East Pakistan remained intricately entwined decades after the actual
Partition. Both states, in the initial years, sought to legitimize and symbolically reproduce
democratic nationalist orders. Often these processes involved conflicting attempts to homogenize
national identities in religious terms. My dissertation argues that such homogenization continued
to be contested in the post Partition period, as identities based on region, language and culture
269
jockeyed into primacy at different points of time. Minorities, Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in
India, thus became intricately linked with the evolution of national identity, self-definition and
honor of each State. As India and Pakistan sought to control the cross-border population
movement in the eastern sector and identify who would and could be their citizens, minorities in
each state became key groups whose loyalties to their respective nations remained contested.
The central themes of violence, territoriality and national citizenship, in this dissertation
have attempted to grapple with the following questions. Where do the histories of Partition end
and the histories of new nation states of India and Pakistan begin? Can such a project, which
genealogically remains embedded within the event of Partition, attempt to objectively distance
itself from enquiries into nation building? More importantly, can such interrogations that
necessarily require analysis of official documents generated at the center of the nation also
incorporate unofficial negotiations on identity and citizenship that occurred at the periphery of
the nation?
In addressing these issues, this dissertation has moved away from the inevitability of the
political division and the attendant cognitive partitioning of identities along communal lines and
argues that contingent factors influenced both. Along with political mobilization and fracturing
of cognitive nationalisms along religious lines, the voices of many Bengalis, both Hindus and
Muslims, who argued against the Partition of the province in 1947. Continuation of cultural,
social and economic ties informed these arguments and helped to articulate the nation in
territorial terms. Although the Partition added empirical weigh to a sociological map of the
region that made religious affiliation a pre-eminent form for both community and cartography,
after 1947, both sides of Bengal began as parts of India and Pakistan with sizeable minority
citizens who defied such implicit dictates. In these cases, locational ties prevailed over nation,
270
religion and community. Even for those who sought security across the new border, such moves
were deemed temporary rather than ones of permanent uprooting. Many hoped to return home
once what they perceived as a political impasse was resolved.
The climate of uncertainty and impermanence was heightened by changing and differing
policies of the Indian and Pakistani states with regard to their western and eastern border.
Moreover, both states guaranteed citizenship rights to their respective minorities on paper but
were often unable to ensure such rights in practice. Questions of loyalty to the nation became
imbricated within the project of nation building as each state sought to control the movement and
fix residency of their citizens. In the eyes of each state, the act of crossing the border became
tantamount to choice, an implicit renunciation of one’s citizenship of one country in favor of the
other.
The project of nationalizing the nation involved both demarcating and controlling
territory and people. The Radcliffe Line was not only the signifier of the Partition but became
central to re-territorrialization efforts of the new states. The borderland in divided Bengal
became a zone of dispute in terms of its actual delineations. It disrupted traditional activities of
those living in the region. Almost overnight the border became an economic frontier and officials
of both states became arbitrators who had the authority to demarcate the customary from the
criminal. In addition the border evolved as a site where competing Indo-Pak nationalisms played
out through demands of loyalty of the border citizens and border-dwellers. This dissertation has
argued that there was no foreordained plan to control the mutual border. Official policy on the
border evolved in conjunction with political and economic needs of both states. The persistent
movement of people back and forth across the border contested the delimitation aims of each
nation state. The introduction of the Passport and Visa Scheme was thus an attempt to control
271
such movements and to differentiate between “infiltrators” and legitimate migrants. It was at the
border the national identities were externalized within the spatial dialogue between the center
and the margin. The periphery was central to the establishment of the new national orders.
Minorities in each state, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in India, became central to
the project of national citizenship as both India and Pakistan continue to employ Partition idioms
to denominate their citizens. One the one hand, minorities guaranteed the legitimacy of each state
and acted as tacit “hostages” whose safety and security guaranteed the same for those on the
other side of the border. On the other hand, officials in each state put their respective minority
citizens under the microscope to determine their perceived loyalty to the nation. In the volatile
post-Partition period in which India and Pakistan adopted a belligerent posture towards each
other and went to war in 1948 and 1965, the citizenship of Hindu and Muslim minorities became
invested with religious connotations and they became the usual suspects for any perceived antistate activity. The implication of being hostages was not lost on the minorities as some of them
found it easier to cross the border than to face the continuous litmus test of loyalty. Such
migration was usually temporary, imbued with the prospect of return.
However, in the case of East Pakistan the needs of nation building became interlinked
with migration of minorities and the rhetoric of perceived persecution. As they crossed the
border to India, the East Pakistani Hindu citizens became “evacuees” in their home state, while
they became classified as “refugees” in India. The changes in state policy and the changing
dynamics of inter-dominion relations between India and Pakistan ensured that the possessions
they had left behind changed from being ‘evacuee’ property in 1947 become “enemy” property
by 1965.
272
For India, these “evacuees” from East Pakistan tested both the limits of the fragile
economy and the projected secular claims of the new state. Already inundated by Hindu refugees
and returning Muslim citizens on its western border, the Indian state attempted to regulate this
movement of people. In its eastern border, it denied any incidents of violence to justify the
migration of refugees from East Pakistan. This dissertation has argued that difference in the
Indian state’s rehabilitation policies and attendant disbursement of resources between its western
and eastern borders operated within a specific paradigm of large-scale violence that rendered the
East Pakistani refugees as illegitimate migrants. However, the continued and chronic migration
of these refugees was crucial to the construction of the Indian state’s self image as a paternalistic
and humanitarian nation. Consequently, Indian authorities attempted to place any failure and
limitations of the rehabilitation process in the east on the shoulders of the refugees themselves by
depicting them as lazy, parochial and effeminate. However, as this dissertation illustrates,
violence, especially against Hindu women and participation in the anti-colonial struggle provided
the epistemological framework for the East Bengali Hindu minorities to justify their demand for
full rehabilitation and Indian citizenship.
Scholarship on rehabilitation in West Bengal has emphasized the role of different
individuals and civil and political groups in protesting against the failure of the Indian state to
rehabilitate the refugees on the same footing as their western counterparts. This dissertation has
urged for a re-centering of the rehabilitation process and placing it within the project of
establishing a post-Partition national order. Minorities in one state became “evacuees” and later
“refugees” in another state. The processes initiated by both India and Pakistan to control territory
and identify their population also generated a unique form of trans-territorial identity for their
respective minorities. Such trans-territoriality contributed to the homogenizing trends and
273
contested the limits of each nation as Indian and Pakistani authorities remained and continue to
remain concerned about minorities across their borders.
This dissertation has traced part of the historical trajectory of the post-Partition period
and argued that the contemporary reflexive nationalisms of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were
not entirely immanent within Partition. Such developments depended on perceived selfdefinition of each state, within delineations of territorial jurisdiction and the complex demands of
national citizenship. Although partitioned, the new nation-states remained organically linked
through the movement of their citizens between 1947 and 1965. Any analysis of this period and
the partitioned regions has to move away from the assumptions of a “partitioned” history and
incorporate regionally specific processes on both sides of the border. The influences of the
tebhaga movement of 1945-47, the connections between the linguistic reorganization of states in
India in the 1950s and the contemporaneous language movement in East Pakistan remain underanalyzed in the context of Partition studies.
This dissertation challenges the notion that the histories of Partition end in 1947 and are
separate from the narrative of Independence and post-1947 projects of nation building. More
importantly, it complicates the accepted and normative discourses of state identity formation in
South Asia and the uncritical understanding of “secular” India and “Islamic” Pakistan and in the
process, contributes to the still fledgling historiography of post-independent South Asia.
274
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289
1. A
HS, May 17, 1947, 5.
290
1. B
HS, 17 May 1947, 1.
291
1. C
The Radcliffe Line
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292
1. D
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293
1. E
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294
1. F
ABP, 14 January 1950, 5.
295
1. G
ABP March 17 and 20, 1950.
296