Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Dissent and the Partition of Bengal, 1932-1947

Chhanda Chatterjee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367530976
• eBook ISBN: 9781000163780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This study on Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee will help the readers understand the circumstances under which he assumed the leading role in the carving out the province of West Bengal from the littoral that was soon to become the province of East Pakistan.
The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in demanding the separation of the Hindu majority districts in the western half of Bengal from the proposed East Pakistan has not been studied so far or documented. The 'Right' historians today try to view it as a great triumph for the Hindus while 'Secular' ones try to paint Syama Prasad as an 'arch communalist'. Underlying both versions of the story is an assumption that the partition of Bengal was a much sought after goal pursued by Syama Prasad. Yet an impassioned examination of the actual documents show that Syama Prasad tried to work out a formula for the co-existence of the Hindus and the Muslims till the very last.
Only when all attempts, including that of Mahatma Gandhi in the dark days of the Noakhali riots, failed to dissuade the Muslim League from trying to push the subcontinent towards partition that Syama Prasad launched his drive for the separation of the western districts of Bengal from East Pakistan. Partition was the bane of the Hindu Mahasabha. They had called a hartal on 3 July 1947 to register their disapproval of the idea. But once partition gained acceptance at all levels, beginning from the Congress to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Syama Prasad saw no alternative to making the best of a bad bargain and pushed for partition.
The bloodbath of 16 August 1946 in Calcutta and the reprehensible violation of Hindu women in Noakhali the following October cast the die. He took a leaf out of Master Tara Singh's plans in the Punjab for the regrouping of the provinces by isolating the non-Muslim population from the Muslim majority zones. The Congress Working Committee took the same line passing a resolution on 8 March 1947 in favour of the isolation of the non-Muslim areas in the Punjab from the predominantly Muslim ones. This strengthened Syama Prasad's case for the partition of Bengal. However, this was a last resort measure failing all other options.

Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

CHAPTER 1

‘A Novel Political Arithmetic’: The MacDonald Award of 1932 and the Challenge to the Hindus of Bengal

THE MACDONALD AWARD of 1932, which is also sometimes known as the Communal Award, awakened the Bengali Hindus for the first time to the necessity of having an organization of their own to put up a defence against the divisive tactics of the Government. Indian political circles were engaged in a frenzied speculation on a further devolution of power on the part of the Government as the periodic revision of the constitutional provisions of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms began to approach nearer. While mature politicians like Sir Fazl-i-Husain in the Punjab began to plan the contours of the predominance of their own community under the garb of provincial autonomy, political players of different hues began to think of wresting new concessions, both from the Government as well as other rival groups on the basis of new understandings. Different plans were floated for the purpose with claims and counter claims, none of which, however, yielded anything definite. The inability of the different interest groups to reach a consensus finally provided the Government with the opportunity of assuming the role of the final arbiter and come up with its own solution of the discordant claims in the shape of the Award of 1932. The Award inflicted a body blow on the Hindus by treating the Scheduled Castes as a separate category. Mahatma Gandhi could avert this attempt at splitting up the Hindus by making substantial concessions for the Scheduled Castes. For Bengal Hindus this proved to be a hard bargain, making further inroads into their slender constituencies. They had no one to help them out in these dark days of despondency. The Indian National Congress shied away from taking a strong stand against this surrender of Hindu interests in the face of a brute majority. It thus fell to the lot of the All India Hindu Mahasabha to organize public opinion against the Award and send a memorial of protest to the Secretary of State, the Marquis of Zetland in 1936.

The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 did not satisfy Indian nationalist aspirations for swaraj. Gandhi decided to give out his call for non-cooperation from Nagpur in 1920. The immediate provocation was the atrocities connected with the Jallianwala Bagh incident in Amritsar. Gandhi also tried to take advantage of the Muslim grievances at the Treaty of Sevres, which had forfeited the temporal possessions of the Sultan of Turkey, the Khalifa of the Muslims. The goodwill generated by the Lucknow Pact of 1916¹ brought the Khilafat Committee close to the Congress and scores of Muslims joined the Non-Cooperation movement.

The sudden revocation of the Non-Cooperation movement on 5 February 1922 created great disappointment among the Muslims. Meanwhile, the Khilafat issue lost its relevance in September 1922, when Kemal Ataturk defeated the Sultan of Turkey and abolished the Khilafat. However, the propaganda related to the Khilafat, the use of religious imagery and the involvement of the maulavis and ulemas in political matters had resulted in rousing the masses to a communal frenzy. Attempts to seek the alleviation of long standing grievances by people in various localities sometimes took the form of communal clashes as during the rising of the Moplahs in Malabar in August 1921, the Multan riots of September 1922 during the Muharram processions, the Bakrid riots at Arrah and Ram Lila/Moharrum disturbances at Allahabad during the years from 1923 to 1926. The playing of music by Hindu religious processions, passing a mosque caused at least 31 of the serious riots between 1923 and 1928.²

While the Lucknow Pact had reconciled the Muslims in provinces where they had been in a minority, it could not fulfil the ambitions of the Muslims in provinces where they constituted a majority as in the Punjab and in Bengal. In the Punjab their majority of 56 per cent had been curbed to 50 per cent and Fazl-i-Husain, the leader of the Punjab National Unionist Party continued to vociferate against it in his correspondence to his cohorts.³ In Bengal the middle class Bengali Muslim leader Fazlul Huq, representing the Provincial Muslim League, was denounced as a traitor for having accepted only 40 per cent. Up country leaders like the Punjabi Habib Shah, Kalami from Madras and Fazlur Rahman from Bihar made their place among the composite Muslim population of Calcutta through the Central National Muhammadan Association and spearheaded the agitation which tarnished Calcutta with the three day riots beginning on 9 September 1918. League defectors like Golam Husain Ariff and Dr. Abdulla-al-Mamun Suhrawardy organized under the banner of Indian Moslem Association tried to whip up Muslim passions by referring to northern Indian disturbances. More influential was the Bengali landholder Nawab Khan Bahadur Saiyid Nawab Ali Chaudhuri, the Eastern Bengal representative in the Imperial Legislative Council, who tried to exploit the undercurrent of Muslim discontent at having been deprived of a just reflection of their majority.⁴

Congressmen led by Motilal Nehru, B.S. Moonje and Chittaranjan Das interpreted this unrest as an offshoot of the lull in political activity in the wake of the Non-Cooperation movement. They decided to enter the councils to be able to paralyse the working of the councils from within. Since they could not do this under the banner of the Congress, they formed the Congress Swaraj Party and became known as the pro-changers.⁵ Das understood that in Bengal he could not hope to make much progress without the willing cooperation of the majority of the population who were Muslims. His overtures to the Bengal Khilafatist leaders like Sir Abdur Rahim ultimately materialized in the Bengal Pact of 16 December 1923. It conceded all the major Muslim demands like representation in the Bengal Legislative Council on the basis of population through separate electorates. Muslims were also given a 60 per cent share of representation in the local bodies, 40 per cent being left for the Hindus. The Mahommedans’ right to 55 per cent of the government appointments in the province was also recognized. It was also resolved that no law affecting a community could be passed without the assent of 75 per cent of the elected members of the community.⁶

Das, however, was not unaware of the hazards in trying to give shape to the provisions of the Bengal Pact. While the Muslims would like to reap the fruits of this Pact immediately, it would antagonize Hindu opinion to the verge of revolt. The clause relating to 55 per cent job reservation for the Muslims hurt them most as the middle rung jobs like those of school teachers, clerks and deputy magistracies, monopolized by the Hindu middle class, were the main bone of contention between the two communities. The supporters of the Government in the Bengal Legislative Council tried to embarrass Das by instigating Khan Bahadur Musharraf Hussain to bring a motion for the immediate implementation of the Pact. This would imply a 80 per cent reservation of all future vacancies for the Muslims till their quota reached the magic mark of 55 per cent. Das could escape the danger through an adjournment motion sine die by arguing that the Pact was meant to come in vogue once swaraj became a reality. However, Calcutta Corporation got wind of this tilt in favour of Muslims when Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy succeeded in getting elected as Deputy Mayor and Muslims secured 25 of the 33 vacancies when Subhas Bose was the Chief Executive Officer.⁷

During their visit to Calcutta in 1918 Edwin Montagu and Chelmsford had expressed their disapproval of communal electorates where the Muslims were in a majority. Their joint report to the Parliament in July 1918 had spoken against it.⁸ As yet the British had not set their heart at totally undermining the Hindus in Bengal. They could still hold their own with the slight edge of 46 as against 39 Muslims in the Legislative Assembly brought into being by the Montford reforms. Das’ Swaraj Party could win over many but not all Congress Committees. The Burrabazar Congress Committee viewed Das’ encouragement to labour strikes with suspicion and eminent industrialists like G.D. Birla never wavered in their allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi. The Muslim practice of offering kurbani through cow slaughter was not viewed by the Marwaris with favour. In 1910 their attempt to stop this practice associated with Muslim religious sentiments saw a riot in Calcutta. In 1918 they tried once again to prevent the construction of a slaughter house in the city.⁹ Rich Marwaris like Kesoram Poddar had been lobbying the AICC during 1922-3 for imposing a restraint on cow slaughter in view of the deterioration of cattle in India and a Cow Preservation League had started working in Calcutta. It could win over many eminent and educated Hindus to its cause like Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University.¹⁰ Men like Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malaviya, M.S. Arley, B.S. Moonje and Narsimha Chintaman Kelkar had also started murmuring against the sell out at the Lucknow Pact and the Bengal Pact. It is remarkable that after 1924 the joint sessions of the Congress and the Muslim League which had come into being since the Lucknow session of 1916, were no longer in vogue. In 1924 Lajpat Rai published 13 articles between 26 November and 17 December in the Tribune disapproving of communal electorates:

Once you accept communal representation with separate electorates there is no chance of its being ever abolished, without a civil war. A civil war, will again, actually mean the supremacy of one of the communities over the other…. Communal representation with separate electorate is the most effective reply to the demand for swaraj and the surest way of Indians never getting it…. It provides for a complete division of India, as it is, into two sections: a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.¹¹

Referring to the unwillingness of Muslims to grant weightage to non-Muslims in the Punjab he even hinted at a partition of the Punjab, and if necessary of Bengal and to establish a federation of autonomous Hindu and Muslim states:

The Punjab occupies a unique position among the provinces of India. It is the home of a community who were the rulers of the province when the British took possession of it. That community is virile, strong and united. Will the community readily consent to occupy the entirely subservient position which this arrangement involves? … Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces, the West Punjab with a large Muslim majority, to be a Muslim governed province and the East Punjab with a Hindu Sikh majority, to be a non-Muslim governed province…. To me it is unimaginable that the rich and highly progressive and alive Hindus of Bengal will ever work out the Pact agreed to by Mr. Das. I will make the same suggestion in this case, but if Bengal is prepared to accept Mr. Das’ Pact I have nothing to say.¹²

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. A Novel Political Arithmetic: The MacDonald Award of 1932 and the Challenge to the Hindus of Bengal
• 2. The Working of the Provincial Autonomy in Bengal: The First Phase
• 3. The Mounting of Tensions and the Dacca Riots
• 4. The Hindu Mahasabha and its Works in Bengal, 1939–1941
• 5. Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Non-Communal Alternative: The Progressive Coalition Ministry
• 6. The Blighted Province: Communalism, Famine and Steps Towards Decolonization
• 7. Larke Lenge Pakistan (Pakistan by Force): Muslim League Direct Action in Calcutta and Noakhali
• 8. The Best of a Bad Bargain: Dr. Mookerjee’s Formula for Peace
• 9. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index