[Urbanstudy] Locating Criminality (earlier piece ..sending again)
Sugata Nandi
meetnandi at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 19 11:49:29 IST 2006
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
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