[Urbanstudy] Locating the Origins of a Criminal Riot

[Sugata Nandi]

Hi,
I am Sugata Nandi, one of the holders of student stipend of Sarai for the 
year 2006. I am woirking to finish my Phd dissertation to be submitted to 
the Centre for Historical Studies, at the JNU, New Delhi.

My topic of research for the Saarai project is titled "A CRIMINAL RIOT: THE 
CALCUTTA RIOT OF AUGUST 1946 AND THE GOONDAS". In short the project is an 
attempt to look into various mechanism the criminal category of the Goondas 
were conceptualised, (re-) generated and employed in the discourses on the 
communal conflagration of August 1946 in Calcutta.

Here is my first write up for the project. I will be greatly benefitted if 
you all post your comments on the piece.

I must also add the text of the write up is annonated but as the attachment 
icon is not working at the moment I am being forced to post it without 
footnotes. The inconvenience thus caused is deeply regretted.

Sugata Nandi
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Title: LOCATING THE ORIGINS OF A CRIMINAL RIOT:
        Disorder, Criminality and Crowds in the Discourse on Great Calcutta 
Killing


By SUGATA NANDI
E mail: meetnandi at hotmail.com

(Body of the Piece: -)

“This is not a riot, it needs a word found in medieval history, a fury, yet 
‘fury’ sounds spontaneous … there must have been deliberation and 
organization to set this fury on the way. The hoards who ran about battering 
and killing with eight feet lathis may have found them lying about or 
brought them out of their own pockets but that is hard to believe. It is not 
mere supposition that men were imported into Calcutta in making an 
impression.”

     -- The Statesman, Calcutta, August 20, 1946.

“… for two days … Calcutta was thrown open to the hooligans and goondas of 
the city … during the 16th of August … looting, arson and murder went on 
with all furies.”

     -- Brigadier S.D.C. Sixsmith, British Indian Army,
Commander of the Bengal and Assam area.

“We felt that the Government of the day desired that goonda raj should be 
established to allow the goondas to murder with deadly weapons including 
fire weapons and to loot and commit arson”.

-- D. N. Dutta, Member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, Calling for a 
No-Confidence Motion against the Muslim League Government on September 
19,1946.


Introduction: The Criminal Riot
------------------------------------------

The riot of Calcutta, August 16-20, 1946 stands as a watershed in the 
history of communal politics in South Asia. The scale violence of the riot, 
the number of people killed, the patterns of violence, the consequences of 
the riot were unprecedented and are unmatched till date in the history of 
Calcutta. In popular as well as scholarly opinion the riot is named, the 
‘Great Calcutta Killing’ for the sheer number of lives lost and the savagery 
with which thousands were murdered within five days. To the eye-witnesses of 
the event and historians who have taken it as a subject of study, the Great 
Calcutta Killing (henceforth GCK) is documented as a pogrom. Historians, 
journalists, memoir writers and diarists have taken pains to demonstrate 
that the institutional politicians of Calcutta provided the master plan for 
the pogrom and gave patronage to the members of the underworld to actualize 
their plans. Criminality is, thus, seen as not simply as one of the integral 
parts of the GCK but as the most crucial constituting element of the riot.

In urban history of Calcutta the riot has been taken as the signal for a new 
chapter, especially so for its underworld. High rates of crimes against 
person and property, unforeseen forms of offence, large criminal networks or 
organized crime syndicates and their modus operandi, the high rates of 
population transfer within the city and the resulting ghettoization, the 
open illegal sale of fire arms, protection rackets run by local musclemen 
and topping it all the near paralyzation of the city police and the crisis 
of legitimate authority of the Bengal Government – all put together 
constituted an unusual period in the history of the city. For many who had 
observed the changes after August 1946 it was the time of the ‘Goonda Raj’ 
or a proverbial period of anarchy brought in by rule of the underworld.

The picturesque description of the time has been given by a Bengali popular 
fiction writer, Saradindu Banerjee. In one of his short stories set against 
the backdrop of post-August 1946 to pre-August15,1947 Calcutta he laments 
about the daily existence in Calcutta, stating: -
“The initial volcanic eruption of the Direct Action has dies down; a fiery 
undercurrent flows unceasingly, it comes out in sparks here and there … in 
the borders of localities inhabited by the different communities very often 
one hears the noise of trouble, shops are closed down in a flash and soon 
the streets are strewn with two or three bloody corpses. Suhrawardy’s (the 
then Bengal Chief Minister) police comes and terrorizes the Hindus in the 
name of controlling the situation, as a result the number of those dead 
increases by another two or three persons. The corpses are then picked up 
police vans which appear out of nowhere. Soon after such trouble apparent 
normalcy returns to the city and life goes on as before.”


A contemporary observer wrote in his memoirs: -


“The great riot of 1946 turned the city into a fountainhead of criminality. 
Each community armed its youth for violence against the other community. 
Very soon it became a basic right of each citizen to commit crimes. During 
that period even the most law abiding citizen was forced to turn into a 
hardened criminal.”

Scholarly historical opinion on the subject is strangely similar. Suranjan 
Das in his study titled Communal Riots in Bengal 1905–’47 says: -
“The riot completely disorganized the city’s life… Calcutta witnessed a big 
exodus I the aftermath of the riot … 10,000 had migrated by 22nd August. 
Within the city itself there was considerable displacement of population, 
with the Hindus leaving the predominantly Muslim areas and vice versa. Fear 
of communal violence dominated ‘every phase of Calcutta’s life’ and both 
communities developed their own systems of defence. Nearly 100,000 were 
rendered homeless. Retaliatory measures adopted by both communities after 
the riot …”


Discursive Origins of the Criminal Riot
--------------------------------------------------

The unanimity on the devastatingly criminal character of the GCK, brings us 
to the question – what is the point of origin of disorder and criminality 
that in turn rewrote riot history for South Asia?

There is an uncanny unanimity on this question also among the various kinds 
of discourse on the GCK. Criminality and disorder, in the opinion of all the 
writers, originated from among the audience gathered at the Maidan of 
Calcutta for the mammoth Direct Action Day meeting held on August 16. The 
large crowd, more than 10,000 strong, going by one estimate, formed the 
source of mobs that eventually wreaked havoc in Calcutta by committing 
murders, rapes and arson.
This mammoth crowd is said to have travelled in small groups to different 
parts of the city, carrying with them message of Direct Action from the 
public arena of the Maidan to the localities and the interiors of the hearth 
and homes, where the same was translated in the language of violent crime.

At this point it is necessary to take stock of the strands of discourse that 
have studied or remembered the riot. These can be grouped under the heads: -
1.	Government Discourse consisting of the official reports ranging from the 
customary fortnightly reports to the proceedings of the Calcutta 
Disturbances Commission of Enquiry, under the chairmanship of the Justice 
Patrick Spens, which enquired into the GCK by recording statements from 
several witnesses in 1946-’47.
2.	Political discourse on the GCK produced through debates and discussions 
on the floor of the Bengal Legislative Assembly as also through pamphlets 
and newspapers functioning as the mouthpieces of political parties, e.g. the 
Azad, the organ of the Muslim League.
3.	Media discourse produced by the newspapers, other than the party organs, 
published from the city. After the GCK the media discourse was the most 
crucial source for recounting of the event.
4.	Non-Official discourse comprised of the vast amount of diary entries of 
eye-witnesses like eminent Gandhian and leading Indian anthropologist 
N.K.Bose, autobiographies political activists like Manikuntala Sen and Abul 
Hashim, memoirs of British Indian Army officers like Francis Tuker to the 
same of the middle level Calcutta police officers like Pancanan Ghosal.
5.	Literary discourse produced by popular fiction writers of the times like 
Saradindu Banerjee as also by later day journalist-novelists like Gour 
Kishore Ghosh and Shankar Ghose, who have produced detailed description of 
the GCK in their works.

In all the different kinds of discourse listed above the discussion on the 
riot of 1946 has started necessarily with the mammoth crowd gathered at the 
Maidan or a park located in central Calcutta, which had till then served 
mainly as a promenade for the Europeans or as the site for military exercise 
or encampment. August 16, being the day for Direct Action, the Bengal 
Provincial Muslim League had called for mammoth meeting of Muslims on that 
ground.

The most striking characteristic, in the eyes of a contemporary observer, of 
the crowd was that ‘every one was armed’. Another such observer claimed that 
the crowd gathered at the Maidan was comprised of Goondas who slipped away 
in the middle of the meeting and started rioting in thickly inhabited areas 
of north and central Calcutta. Still others have located a few criminal with 
past record of offences present in the Maidan the crowd as the unmistakable 
link between the GCK and the crowd.  Evidence as  sketchy and flimsy as 
these have been used in constructing the riotous and criminal character of 
the crowd.

It needs to be pointed out that Government enquiry into the GCK proved that 
long before the meeting took off at the Maidan, the first victims of the 
riot had lost lives in a poor locality of north east Calcutta, named 
Manicktala. There clashes took place between migrant Muslim day labourers 
and Hindu up-country (meaning from present day states of Bihar and Uttar 
Pradesh) milkmen early in the morning, with the first casualty reported from 
the place as early as at 6:30 AM. This instance, though documented with the 
weight of enquiry and cross examination has not taken away the ‘riotous/ 
disorderly/ criminal’ epithet off the crowds gathered at the Maidan.

This brings us to the first paradox of the riot discourses on the GCK, which 
in simple terms is that the discourse on the riot equates the crowd at the 
Maidan meeting with the riotous mob responsible for actualizing the savagery 
and butchery while there is hardly any evidence to back up such a claim.


The Roots of the Paradox
------------------------------------

The question that rises at this point is how does the criminal riot 
discourse take off from the point where a large Muslim mass gathers in the 
Maidan in spite of there being no evident link between the two?

The answer to the question should be sought from the political context of 
the riot. Communal riots that the South Asia witnessed onwards from August 
1946 had been rightly distinguished as Partition Riots. These riots, though 
of varying intensity depending upon their geographical and social settings, 
were characteristically genocidal. Communal violence that British India had 
experienced prior to 1946 was in no way similar to that of the Partition 
riots. Violence of these riots was aimed basically at the exterminating an 
entire religious community from within a well defined territory, which could 
be a locality within a city, as observed in Delhi and Calcutta or even an 
entire village as in the case of east Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab.

The Direct Action Day was a call to arms sounded by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the 
Muslim League President to the Muslims of British India in support of the 
demand for partition of the country and the creation of a homeland for the 
Muslims. The actual programme of Direct Action, though couched in the 
language of war like violence, was deliberately left ambiguous. Studies on 
the riot have shown that the Muslim League prepared large numbers of its 
supporters for the spectacular acts of communal violence as part of 
secessionist policy of the League, but mobilization for the event was 
carried out by preparing small groups of men, focussed on a locality or an 
area within the locality, for such acts.

Running parallel to such preparations the League mobilized the Muslim masses 
residing in and around Calcutta for the largest public meeting in its 
history. The meeting was to serve as the platform for the League’s political 
assertion of never-before proportions.

That the League programme of mass mobilization was a success was evident 
from the morning of August 16. League supporters took to the streets in 
large numbers. The crowd has been claimed to have been armed with lathis 
(clubs), daggers and soda water bottles.

As the meeting got under way the restiveness of the crowd that gathered 
there rendered even the League leaders addressing the audience nervous. Abul 
Hashim, an eminent League leader who was one of the speakers at the meeting, 
has emphatically noted in his autobiography that the restiveness of the 
crowd increased with each and every speech and fear of the crowd turning 
unruly loomed large in the minds of the League leaders themselves.

Belying the fears of the Muslim League leaders the mass at the Maidan did 
not turn unruly and the meeting was finished as per schedule in the 
afternoon. The crowd dispersed from the place right after the meeting and 
before that news of rioting had started pouring in from different parts of 
the city.

In spite the very evident lack of link between the beginnings of the riot 
and mass meeting of the Muslim League in heart of the city, the crowd/s 
gathered at the meeting has been treated as the first evidence of invasion 
of criminality in the riot of 1946.

The mammoth gathering in the Maidan was essentially a political rally. The 
size of the mass though indeterminate was not a novelty to Calcutta of the 
1940s; the city had witnessed mass demonstrations by crowds much larger on 
occasions like the Rashid Ali day and the INA day. The crowds on those days, 
however, have not attracted descriptions similar to that of the Great 
Calcutta Killing.

The reason behind the ‘criminalization’ of the crowd/s at Maidan on the 
first day of the riot should be sought in the wider context of discourse on 
communal politics produced immediately before the riot.

In the language of the propaganda literature and media discourse on politics 
of Direct Action, August 16 was judged in the parameters of the governmental 
responsibility towards a city as against the political objective of a party. 
Legality-illegality/criminality became a part of the discourse from the very 
beginning.

While on the one hand the League was promoting the idea of Direct Action to 
the Muslim youth and the city based Muslim lower classes as a call to 
militate for their nationhood, on the other the Hindus questioned the 
legality of their action by stating that the Muslim League Government was 
carrying out preparations for the victimizing the Hindu the population by 
means of arming the Muslims, specially of the lower strata. The contention, 
in the main, was focussed on a hartal or a general strike to be enforced by 
large number of League supporters. In other words, the fear of the crowds 
had by then been well instilled in the minds the educated and respectable 
sections of the Calcutta society.

The stereotype for the mass at the Maidan of August 1946 was produced before 
the crowd actually gathered there. It was manufactured by a thorough print 
media campaign. The binaries generated by a riot e.g. the victim – aggressor 
and the criminal – legitimate, were already in place before the riot 
occurred. The binaries dissolved the boundaries separating secessionist 
politics from communal violence and criminality.

Propaganda literature produced by the Muslim League generated and reinforced 
the social image of a militant Muslim mass, it voiced threats of extreme 
violence and sounded a call to the Muslim mass to take to arms as a strategy 
for attaining Pakistan. Pamphlets issued both in Urdu and Bengali by the 
League painted highly romanticized wordy pictures of would be violent scenes 
of Direct Action. In one such pamphlet one finds imagery of the thousands of 
Muslims armed with swords killing Hindus to make rivers of blood flow 
through the streets of the city. In another a Bengali poem warns the Hindus 
whose heads were about to roll as armed bands of Muslims were approaching.

Imageries such as these, though couched in flowery and romantic language, 
were sufficiently powerful to send the message of the an impending civil war 
like situation about to arise as the Muslim masses responded to the League’s 
call for the Direct Action.

Added to these the pronouncements of League leaders like Akram Khan and the 
Mayor Calcutta, Mohammed Osman, which amounted to public warnings issued by 
men holding public offices, had the effect of creating a sense of panic 
among the Hindus days before the riot had actually raged in the streets of 
Calcutta.

The fact that the idea of a dangerous Muslim mass had struck roots in 
becomes evident in the columns of newspapers, published from Calcutta, which 
catered largely to a Hindu readership. A Bengali newspaper published from 
Calcutta, Dainik Basumati, wrote on August 11: -
“The League-wallahs should know that mere threats will not work. They 
(Hindus) are known to face bullets and bayonets with a smile … they do not 
accept defeat even for a moment … The League is free to test our resolve but 
only at its own peril.”


Three days later the main news story of the paper was
titled ‘Large Scale Clash of the Hindus and Muslims Feared Ahead’.

The Amrita Bazar Patrika, a newspaper known by then for its Hindu 
communalist leanings, carried out a series of stories and editorials stating 
that a general strike would be forced on the Hindus on August 16 by large 
number of Muslim League supporters, who would freely employ violence to 
attain their ends.


Conclusion
--------------

Crowds in the riots have always been seen as a destructive force that ushers 
in a temporary reign of disorder. A classic study on urban crowds, George 
Rude’s book, ‘The Crowd in the French Revolution’, shows that historical 
narrative of urban upheaval during the revolution depended heavily on the 
construction the crowds. Rude has shown that the entire phases of the 
revolution were explained by nineteenth and early twentieth historians by 
use of the conceptual category of the crowds. He is of the opinion, “… it 
(i.e. the crowd) has been treated by one and all as a disembodied 
abstraction and personification of good or evil”.

The uniqueness of the different strands of discourse on the GCK is that 
while following the usual pattern of employment of the category of crowds 
either as good or as bad, the production of the stereotype preceded the 
actual coming into being of the crowd. In other words in this case the 
discourse brought in crowds in the public sphere much before the actual 
gathering had taken place, and thus, the stereotypes produced beforehand 
determined the perceptions on the crowd when it really came into being. In 
this way the creative foresight of political propagandist and the 
contemporary observer of the GCK has informed the hindsight of historians of 
the riot.

The image of a very large and the ferocious crowd had been created and 
established in the public sphere mainly through print in the run up to the 
riot. The crowd at the Maidan was made to fit squarely into the fears and 
that in turn resulted in its being documented as the point of origin of a 
criminal riot.