The Dagger: Dominating Interests’ Class War In East Bengal, 1946 And After
By Farooque Chowdhury
01 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
(Part V: A critical juncture)
A critical juncture, as defined by a group of political scientists, is “a period of significant change, which typically occurs in distinct ways in different countries (or in other units of analysis) and which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies”. (Ruth B Collier and D Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America, Princeton University Press, 1991) Critical moments of actions and reactions in areas of economy, society, politics and organization form a stream with ingrained forces while part of the stream appears as critical juncture although it’s difficult to separate one moment from another, and isolate a critical juncture from the rest of the moments forming the stream that takes part in shaping a broader historical phase. “Critical junctures may range from relatively quick transitions […] to an extended period […]” (ibid.)
Bengal along with the subcontinent was passing through a critical juncture since the end of the World War II. There were political atmosphere charged with sharpened conflict, poor peasants’ and share croppers’ unprecedented mobilization/struggle, incited communal rage, intensified competition between factions of compradors and their gangs of vandals in their wagons, questions related to transfer of power, weakening of state machine and attempts to re-enforce the machine/authority, after-effects of the World War and famine, increased repression, assault on people by formal and informal political instruments of power, competing publicity by political actors, and expansion and decline of influence of the political party upholding people’s cause – the Communist Party.
In those years, class struggle was intensifying in rural, urban and industrial areas as working people were getting mobilized, and politicization of the people was widening. In the first six months of 1946, Bengal experienced 242 labor strikes. It’s more than one strike each day! There was a strike by the postal workers union on July 11 that effectively cut off Kolkata from the rest of India in the weeks preceding the 1946 riot. Pranab Kumar Chatterjee in Struggle and Strife in Urban Bengal 1937-1947: a study of Calcutta-based urban politics in Bengal (Das Gupta & Co, Calcutta, 1991) cites further facts.
Pro-people cultural activities were expanding from urban to rural areas. Not only East Bengal, the broader area of the sub-continent was also awakening including rebellions in the local armed forces of the colonial masters, and was getting mobilized in the political fight of the day.
This perspective experienced a coup de main by the dominant interests, the 1946 riot – a fratricidal fight completely devoid of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, but loaded with medieval sense of sectarianship.
“From his earliest report to the Viceroy on the 16th, [Bengal] Governor Burrows warned that events in Calcutta were serious, but reassured Delhi that the ‘disturbances have so far been markedly communal and not – repeat not – in any way anti-British or anti-Government.’” (N Mansergh and P Moon, ed., The Transfer of Power 1942-7, (henceforth TOP) vol. VII, Burrows to Wavell, August 16, 1946, in Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: war, famines, riots and the end of empire, 1939-1946, dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Michigan, 2011) “In his final report of the 22nd, he again celebrated the fact that ‘though “Direct Action Day” was intended to be a gesture against the British the violence had remained entirely ‘communal.’” (TOP, vol. VIII, Burrows to Wavell, August 22, 1946, in ibid.) The lords were happy as happy were their chaapraashees, orderlies. Lumpens were organized to carry on the dagger-job on people, especially the working people.
The five-day August-1946 Kolkata riot experienced 876 and 1,916 rounds of ammunition fired by police and military respectively. The police used 500 tear gas shells and grenades. (Government of Bengal, Report of the Commissioner of Police on the disturbances and the Action Taken by the Calcutta Police between the 16th and 20th August Inclusive, Alipore, 1946, Home (Political) Confidential Files, West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Calcutta; Eastern Command, ‘Report on the Muslim-Hindu Conflict in Calcutta Following “Direct Action Day” 16th August 1946’, Home (Poll) Confl. WBSA, in Nakazato Nariaki, op. cit.) And, with the bullets, communal instigations and patronization, a class war was intensified by the dominant interests, especially by its hardcore reactionary, backward-looking factions as the charged situation scared the interests.
Patronization to the riot was there. The form of patronization is evident from the following description:
“[T]he army had a sufficient force on standby to deal with civil disturbances in their Calcutta garrison on 16 August. Nonetheless, they displayed the greatest reluctance to come out in aid of the civil authorities. The long delay in the army’s action forms another important feature of the Calcutta riots along with the break down of the police system. […] It was not until midday of the eighteenth [August 1946] that an all-out effort to regain control of the whole of Calcutta was made. […] He [F R R Buchar, army commander] […] attended a meeting […] where Indian cabinet ministers […] and British officials met together to deliberate for the first time since the out break of the disturbances. It was decided that military pickets would be placed at important points throughout Calcutta. This meant a virtual reversal of the lukewarm stance previously adopted by the British high officials, including military generals. […] It soon became apparent that the ‘troubles’ were more of a communal nature than anti-British or anti-government […] The question, therefore, persists as to why experienced politicians and administrators like Burrows and Walker as well as military commanders like Sixsmith and Mackinlay continued to display so much reluctance to call in the military on a full scale until the arrival of Bucher on the eighteenth. […] [T]hey [the British] had attached greater importance to the prevention of anti-British riots, in other words, protection of British interests, than to other concerns such as suppression of communal riots. It is only in this context that the Emergency Action Scheme of the Calcutta police and the stubborn opposition displayed by such British high officials as Sixsmith and Walker to military intervention make any sense.” (ibid.)
It was followed by Radcliffe’s dagger-act, citing it allegorically, that made an unprecedented change in the entire perspective. Two states came into existence, and dominating interests entered into their business: consolidate class interests. And, there was the class war waged openly, and in the guise of sectarian hatred.
The assault based on communalism – riot, arson, loot, carnage and displacement of a part of population – was a form of ruling cliques’ class war although a part of discussion on the issue identifies communal riots as an attempt to transfer property from a section to another in the society. The dominating interests’ class war against people is missed if property transfer – forceful, illegal – is considered as the primary aspect of the political act. The property transfer-proposition also misses the dominating interests’ attempt to deform and divert contradictions antagonistic to it, thwart development of socio-economic formation antagonistic to the dominating interests, and transition to a new progressive system. Deactivating organizations and political party of the working people harms the act of carrying forward class struggle by the working people. The dagger-act did the job for a period.
This class war by the dominated interests distracted people’s attention from political betrayals, consolidation of comprador power in the state of Pakistan. It weakened people’s alertness, their political movements, organizations. People were made busy with the “game” the dominating interests designed. Simultaneously, the move strengthened the dominating interests hold on the society and tried to broaden its support base as its propaganda identified a part of the society as enemy, and as it organized aggressive participation of a part of the broader society – hoodlums, lumpen elements, and fortune seekers. The narrations from East Bengal cited above support the assertion made here. Other formal and informal documents are also there that support the assertion.
The class war initiated by the dominating interests in East Bengal had another significant aspect: ideological. It showed the interests’ condition and capacity.
“The ideas of the ruling class”, Marx finds, “are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” (The German Ideology) In East Bengal, the dominating interests in its class war against the working people had to resort to a backward idea: communalism. The interests’ capacity – failure to resort to an advanced idea – is exposed. The failure was bound to get reflected in its latter acts of ruling that, in turn, had other reactions not helpful to it.
Resorting to the reactionary idea – communalism – in the job of ruling showed the dominating interests’ weakness. In the middle age, identifying in the way – middle age – is not proper as Romilla Thapar argues, a number of rulers tried to avoid this sort of politics – politics with communalism, politics with exclusion. Crisis going beyond control pushed a ruler of the age to resort to the politics of exclusion. The dominating interests in East Bengal in the 20th century had to resort to that backward politics: exclusion. It had to resort to and fan up the politics of exclusion to have a practical basis for its backward ideology on which its state was standing and was trying to gain legitimacy. It was a show of its inner weakness, its failure to co-opt a major part of the populace the interests planned to dominate.
The jab with dagger on the back of East Bengal people’s movements and organization had another aspect: the dagger’s failure. Within a short time the failure became evident in East Bengal. Resilience of the people and the Communist Party, and their fighting spirit were resurfacing in practical terms. That’s another chapter, another critical juncture.
[Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka. The article, here in five parts, first appeared in Frontier, Autumn Number, 2015, Vol. 48, No. 14 - 17, Oct 11 - Nov 7, from Kolkata with the following heading: “Radcliffe’s Surgery And After: Class War in East Bengal, 1946 and Communist Party”]
Read Part I, Part II , Part III & Part IV