TRAIL OF BLOOD
THE CALCUTTA KILLINGS OF 1946 AND ITS AFTERMATH
On 16th August 1946, as India headed towards partition, Calcutta witnessed its biggest Hindu-Muslim riot, which led to the death of more than 4000 people. This tragedy is known as the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’. It marked an apex point amidst the series of mass-scale communal violence leading towards the partition of India. ‘Trail of Blood’ is an attempt at to recreate those collective memories and to reconnect them with contemporary India.
This photo exhibition is funded by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, under its project ‘Justice, Protection and Government of the People-A Two Year Research and Orientation Programme on Protection and Democracy in a Post-Covid World (2021-2023)’, and is part of the Calcutta Research Group’s ongoing programme on migration and forced migration studies, in collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS), Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, and several other universities and institutes.
Acknowledgement: This ongoing work was initially supported and funded by CPB Foundation - Ffotogallery/Diffusion for Imagining the Nation-State Grant and recently got the support of Generator Co-operative Art Production Fund by Experimenter Gallery.
Artist - Dipanwita Saha Curator – Debasree Sarkar
Several Muslims of Beliaghata were killed during the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’
in 1946. Hindu rioters used the roofs of these buildings to store weapons and to target the Muslim residents of the area.
Localities such as Mia Bagan (near Koley Barack), bear the names of Muslim dominated areas, but are no longer inhabited by Muslims. Muslim residents fled from this area after the riot. ( 2 November 2019, Koley Barack, Beliaghata, Kolkata)
Houses affected by the
riots…
Taltala, Kolkata. (4 June 2022)
The house of Jadav Chakraborty, a famous Mathematician. (6 September 2019, Razabazar, Kolkata)
Baithakkhana, Kolkata. (16 August
2019)
College Street, Kolkata. (18 October
2022)
Reports on the riots…..
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 August 1946.
Press & Journals, United Kingdom, 19 August 1946.
Jugantar, 20 August 1946.
The Civil & Military Gazette, 24 Aug 1946.
Photograph from Life magazine of the ‘Great Calcutta killing’. Photographer: Margaret Bourke-White.
Photograph from Life magazine of the ‘Great Calcutta killing’. Photographer: Margaret Bourke-White.
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 13 October 1946.
(On left) Sachindra Nath Mitra, the first martyr of independent India. Small scale communal clashes continued in Calcutta even after 1946. To stop riots in Calcutta after independence, Mitra, a staunch Gandhian, organized a peace procession on 1st September 1947. He was stabbed in that procession and passed away after two days.
(On right) Gandhiji’s letter to console Mitra’s wife, Anshu, who was also a freedom fighter.
Trains have often stood witness to incidents of communal violence in India.
There were several trains traveling from Decca (Dhaka) to Calcutta (Kolkata) carrying dead bodies after the Calcutta killing. On 27th February 2002, 58 Hindu pilgrims were killed when a train was set on fire at Godhra, Gujarat, leading to a violent backlash on the Muslims of the state. The image is
symbolic
(25 December 2019, West Bengal.)
In the memory of…
The artist’s family’s only traditional heirloom brought
from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) during the Partition.
(26 May 2022, West Bengal)
The last object carried by a Muslim family (the Ahmed family) during the time of their
displacement.
(28 September 2022, Kolkata)
Here on this diptych, the left side self-drawn map by the photographer demonstrates the Muslim areas of Kolkata, which were replaced by the refugees from East Bengal. On the right, the refugee certificate of the photographer’s uncle who had come to Calcutta at the age of one in 1948 after the Partition.
(2 May, 2022, Kolkata)
Migration certificate of the artist’s relatives.
(30 September 2020, Kolkata)
The Government set up "Permanent Liability" camps for women and the elderly who didn't have any relatives or male earners in their families. When the retaliation of the Calcutta Killing spread all over Bengal and India, Mrs. Minu Roy fled to West Bengal from Comilla (now in Bangladesh) with her two daughters, aged two years and six months respectively. Her husband died in the riot. She spent the rest of her life in this camp. Even after 75 years of Partition, the Indian Government failed to provide them with a proper shelter. Her two unmarried daughters were still living in this abandoned Anatha (local name, meaning orphanage) camp. (19 November 2021, Ranaghat P.L)
The witnesses…
Approximately 50,000 people became refugees because of the Noakhali genocide of October 1946. Many of the survivors migrated to West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam in India. Mrs.
Nirod Bala Debnath, aged 90, fled from Noakhali and took shelter at Ranaghat. During that time, like many other refugees, she moved in one of the huts (Nissen Hut) built during the World War II for storing food and ammunition. The image shows Nirod Bala in the same hut. (19 November 2021, Ranaghat, West Bengal)
Md. Khalil , age 87, states, “In 1946, we stayed near the Chitpur road. There were some Hindu neighbourhoods next to us. In fear, we used to stand on guard the whole night, on the roof, with hot water, chilli powder, and acid bulb sticks. As the shop was closed for several days, my father took some people from the neighbourhood with him and broke the lock of a ration shop and distributed the food in our locality. There were many children, women, and old people who had not eaten for days. Even after the trouble stopped, we used to take turns guarding for some days.” (10 January 2020, Zakaria Street, Kolkata)
Mariam Wali, aged 86, is a writer who currently resides in the Park Circus area. The 1946 riots tore apart not only the city, but also many families. “I grew up in a big house at Harish Mukherjee Road. My father was a barrister and my uncle a doctor. It was very close to the Gurudwara. During the riot, we fled from our house, with the help of a Hindu neighbour, and took shelter in the Park Circus area which had a Muslim majority. We were never able to return to our ancestral house at Harish Mukherjee Road. (28 September 2022, Kolkata)
Prabhat Kr. Roy Chowdhury, aged 98, is a descendant of Saborna Roy Chowdhury (a prominent zamindar who controlled a substantial region where the colonial city of Calcutta was subsequently founded), states that, during the Calcutta Killing, Muslim police were brought from outside and posted in the Colootola area, replacing the local Hindu police, and were given a free hand by the then Prime Minister Sohrawardy. (25 October 2019, Behala, Kolkata)
The ‘Great Calcutta Killing’ led to acts of vengeance at Noakhali. Communal riots gradually spread from Noakhali to Bhagalpur, from Bhagalpur to the Punjab. Continuous communal tension eventually resulted in the Partition of India, which was followed by the world’s largest mass migration of about 14.5 million people. (In picture) Ms. Niroda Debnath, 90 years old, is a victim of the Noakhali Genocide of 1946. She fled Noakhali through a forest, lost her husband on the way, and came to Tripura with her three children.
As a single mother, she has raised her children by working as a maid servant in the nearby Ranaghat rail quarters. “The river water had become red, fire was burning everywhere, and there were bodies everywhere. My mind keeps going to all those scenes throughout the night, and I can’t sleep.”, says Debnath. (19 November 2021, Ranaghat refugee camp, Nadia, West Bengal)
Rudraprasad Sengupta, 87, a prominent theatre artist, says, “I was staying at Karbala Tank Road near Maniktala at the time of the Direct Action (16th August 1946). I vividly recall those days when one had been able to kill another, their excitement rising with roars of ‘Allahu Akbar’ and
‘Bande Mataram’. My elder brother was a teacher. So, many students came to our house for tuition. On the day of the ‘Direct Action’, one student named Mujibbur Rahaman got stuck in our house for some days. Our mother instructed us to call him Mani da rather than Mujib da. When I was a kid, I never liked going to school.
Another incident I can recall is that most of those days I skipped classes and spent three to four hours sitting at the Dumdum rail station. I remember, one day I saw a train passing by with dead bodies on each door. Today, after so many years, I feel like crying by remembering those days.”
(26 January, 2022, Vivekananda Road, Kolkata)
Veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee, then aged 84, describes, “I was ten when the riot broke in Panchanantala, Howrah.
We used to play on the playground every afternoon. Like every day, I went out to play. But when I arrived at the fringe of the neighbourhood, the elders of the locality scolded me and sent me home. A few days were spent at home like this. One day, I saw from our balcony that a Muslim trader was running and some people were running after him, holding knives. I can clearly remember that the Muslim man slipped and he was butchered in front of our house.”
(22 June, 2019, Kolkata)
Chittatosh Mookerjee, 90, former Chief Justice of the Calcutta and Bombay High Court, happens to be the grandson of the educationist Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee and the nephew of the Hindu nationalist leader Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. He remembers:
”The doors of the Ashutosh College were opened for sheltering the Hindus. I can clearly recall people killing the Muslims for revenge, in our locality. A Muslim cobbler was killed in front of our house.” (12 Nov, 2019, Bhawanipore, Kolkata)
“During the riot, we stayed in the Entally area which had a big Muslim population. Our signal was the conch sound. If any attack happened we used signal by blowing the conch to alert the others of our locality. We kept watch on the roof all night with guns, acid bulbs, hot water, and bricks, but no one attacked us there”, stated Shankar Chowdhury (age 87). (22 November 2019, Beliaghata, Kolkata)
A famous Indian comic artist, writer and illustrator Narayan Debnath, then aged 95, was an eyewitness of corpses lying on the streets: “I was studying in the Art College at that time. The College was closed for a while. I can remember that, after some days, when the situation was little bit stable, I went out of my house to go to the College. I saw hundreds of lying on the road.
The tram didn’t stop anywhere between the
boarding stoppage and the last one”. (29 Nov,
2019, Howrah)
In 1946, late Bibhabati Saha (the artis’s grandmother) was residing in Dacca. She stated: “Your grandfather was working at a jute mill as an accounts officer and we were living at the office quarters. When the riots broke out, your dadu (grandfather) was stuck at his office. I had to lock myself in and switch off the power to pretend that no one was inside. Our Muslim guards and neighbours helped me a lot by supplying food.“ (20 October 2019, Kolkata)
The 90-year-old Syed Zaffar Abbas can recall that many
boats were set ablaze at Bichali Ghat, and Hindu workers at the Kesoram Cotton Mill were killed. (17 August 2021,
Metiaburuz, Kolkata)
Gopal Mukherjee, known as Gopal Patha, was a prominent figure during the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’. While he had reportedly killed several Muslims in the communal clashes, many residents of Bowbazar consider him their saviour and think that they would not be alive had Gopal Patha not been there.
(10 January 2020, Bowbazar, Kolkata)
We are still here…
The Deshbandhu Sweet shop at Maniktala was the first point of entry for the attack of 16th August, 1946, after which communal violence spread throughout the city. (16 Aug 2019, Maniktala, Kolkata, India)
An area affected significantly in the Calcutta Killing of 1946.
(18 October 2022, Colootola, Kolkata)
Abdul Majid murmured, “This 250-year-old cemetery once had 6-7 gates, but after the 1946 riots they all became closed and now only one is left. All around there were Muslims, but the majority of them have departed. Some had gone to Bangladesh, some to Khidirpur, Rajabazar, or Belgachhia. I have spent my entire life caring for this place after my father. On this ground, my Abba (father) and Ammi (mother) are lying. Where would I go leaving them at this age of 80?”
(31 March, 2022, Maniktala, Kolkata)
After the riots of 1946, the demography of Calcutta began changing slowly and people started living in a clustered was. The image on right shows the Islamia Library at 15, College square, Calcutta (copyright:
Life Archives. Shot by Margaret Bourke-White). Now it is transformed into Srinath Library (left). (18 October 2022, College street, Kolkata)
