The Dagger: Dominating Interests’ Class War In East Bengal, 1946 And After - (Part I: A snaking line)

By Farooque Chowdhury

28 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Cyril Radcliffe, an obedient servant to the British imperial interests, wrote to his stepson: “Nobody in India will love me for the award about the Punjab and Bengal and there will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will begin looking for me. I do not want them to find me.” (Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, Penguin, New Delhi, 2004) Radcliffe, one of the personifications of imperial conspiracy, wrote the letter on August 14, 1947. It was actually a confession about an imperialist act: under an umbrella of law, a jab by a dagger to inflict a fatal injury to a people’s struggle for freedom, part of a class war the dominating interests was conducting against the people.

With shrewdness accumulated over centuries, and in collaboration with compradors, the imperial masters tore down a country – India – to create two. It was a well-planned imperial tact for retaining status quo, and for subverting a people’s democratic struggle that was developing across the land. Antagonism, bloodletting and confusion were seeded among the people. “[T]here [were no] maps to help even the most well-informed English-speaking listener understand what was happening. It was left to the newspapers to publish their own creative interpretations of exactly where a new borderline, snaking through Bengal in the east and Punjab in the west, might fall once the country was divided. The real line would not be presented to the public until two days after the new states had come into existence, on 17 August, and would be hurriedly marked on maps using censuses of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ populations. The border would be devised from a distance; the land, villages and communities to be divided were not visited or inspected by the imperial map-maker, the British judge, Cyril Radcliffe, who arrived in India on 8 July [1947] to carry out the task and stayed in the country only for six weeks.” (Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan, Yale University Press, 2007) The Radcliffe Report of 16 pages was released on August 17, 1947 although the Award on Bengal was submitted to Mountbatten on August 9, 1947. (Nitish Sengupta, Land of Two Rivers: A history of Bengal from Mahabharata to Mujib, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2011)

The stabbing with dagger, crime against humanity indeed, overwhelmed a land with hatred, fatally hurt a people with communal injury, and drowned them in blood so that their struggle for liberation from all sorts of exploitation goes in vain.

The partition was paid with “the hundreds of thousands of dead”, with “the twelve million displaced.” (Yasmin Khan, op. cit.) Bengal and the Punjab paid the most. It was paid with life, resource, and the struggle for liberty from the yoke of all forms of appropriation. “In 1947 the fabric of Bengali rural society woven together by a common language and a […] popular culture was torn asunder on lines of religion.” (Sugata Bose, “The roots of ‘communal’ violence in rural Bengal, a study of Kishoreganj riots, 1930”, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, 1982) The Kolkata killing was instigated.

“The Calcutta [Kolkata] disturbances marked a very crucial turn in the political developments during the last days of the British rule. […] At the same time, the swelling tide of mass movements was beginning to scare the colonial authorities and the nationalist leadership alike. […] The repercussions of the Calcutta riots were tremendous. […] [T]hey […] brought Hindu-Muslim antagonism to the point of no return [….] [T]he space of partition riots formed an arena in which the established political forces, such as the Congress, the Muslim League, the British raj, struggled for influence, survival, etc.” (Nakazato Nariaki, “The politics of a partition riot, Calcutta in August 1946”, in Sato Tsugitaka (ed.), Muslim Societies: Historical and comparative aspects, RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2004) The “struggle for influence, survival, etc.” didn’t hampered their class/factional collaboration against people.

Compradors were integral part of the collaboration. In addition to their political parties there were other organizations representing their interests and/or under their control.

There were the Associations of Municipal Commissioners, Union Boards, Zamindars’ Associations, Bar Associations, Trade Associations, Ratepayers’ Associations. (Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu communalism and partition, 1932-1947, Cambridge University Press, 1994) None of these organizations stood against the stream of mutual hatred flowing through the floodgate of divisive politics instigated by the colonial masters and their lackeys. On the contrary, they strengthened the atmosphere of hatred and killing as it was their class war against the people.

Most of the huge mainstream literature on the issue focuses on the role and responsibilities of the parties involved – the colonial masters and their friends, the Congress, the Muslim League and others – with the act of carnage and destruction. A bulk of mainstream literature concentrates on individuals – individual’s role at individual moments. It carries on its entire dissection and discourse on the following funny way: Party A said this and Party B opposed this, leader C was doing this and leader D was doing that, E proposed and F opposed, etc. It places its magnifying glass of deep searching research on minute by minute details while misses the basic position: the class(es), the factions within the class(es), the interests that pulled together the class(es) on a position opposed to the masses of people, and opposed to the advancement of a society.

As an appendage, losses – death, etc. – are presented on table of discussion. The mainstream discussions abstain from discussing two aspects of the dagger-act: the harm to people’s struggle for a democratic life free from injustice, exploitation and indignity, and resistance by and suffering of the Communist Party to the dagger-job.

Injury to/subverting of people’s struggle is a fundamental loss to a people striving for building up an advanced democratic society. Assault on people’s struggle shows dominating interests’ (1) far-sightedness; (2) cruelty; (3) hostile attitude to people’s interests and organizations; and (4) the ulterior motive to perpetuate the shackles of exploitation. Considering the hardship born and sacrifice made by people to build up their organizations and struggles help perceive the extent of loss they faced with the negative effect on these. Moreover, overwhelming an environment of struggle with an atmosphere of hatred is a bigger loss than the loss of a struggle and organization as the atmosphere of hatred makes organizing struggles more difficult. The pre- and post-partition East Bengal, now Bangladesh, is a burning example of the injury to people’s struggle and the Communist Party’s resistance and suffering. Igniting the communal fire in the period was a blitzkrieg by the exploiters. The people and the political party upholding their interests – the Communist Party – were not politically and organizationally equipped to counter the full throttled campaign by the dominating interests. The jab was made in 1946, and the job continued in post-’47 East Bengal.

[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”.]